e or two that had elapsed since the encounter, the enemy
had been active. Crash after crash was resounding from various parts
of Washington. Buildings were rocking and toppling, debris strewed the
streets, fires were springing up everywhere. A thousand feet aloft,
Dick could see the holocaust of destruction that was being wrought by
the infernal missiles.

Bombs of such power had been the unattained ambition of every
government of the world--and it had been left to the men of the
Invisible Emperor to attain to them. Whole streets went into ruin at
each discharge and from everywhere within the city the wailing cry of
the injured went up, in a resonant moan of pain.

In the central part of the city, the district about F Street and the
government buildings, nothing was standing, except those buildings
fashioned of structural steel, and these showed twisted girders like
the skeletons of primeval monsters, supporting sections of sagging
floors. Houses, hotels had melted into shapeless heaps of rubble,
which filled the streets to a depth of a dozen yards, burying
everything beneath them. Yet here and there could be seen the forms of
dead pedestrians, motor-cars emerging out of the debris, lying in
every conceivable position; horses, horribly mangled, were shrieking
as they tried to free themselves. And yet, despite this ruin, the
general impression upon Dick's mind, as he beat to and fro, signaling
to his flight to spread, was that of a vast, empty desolation.

* * * * *

Further away: where the ruin had not yet fallen, thousands of human
beings were milling in a mass, those upon the fringes of the crowd
perpetually breaking away, other swarms approaching them, so that the
entire agglomeration resembled a seething whirlpool turning slowly
upon itself.

Then of a sudden the strains of the national anthem floated up to
Dick's ears. A band was playing in the White House grounds. The tune
was ragged, and the drum came in a fraction of a second late, but an
immense pride and elation filled Dick's soul.

"They'll never beat us!" he thought, intensely, "with such a spirit
as that!"

He had signaled his flight to spread, and search the air. He could see
the individual ships darting here and there over the immensity of the
city, but none knew better than he how fruitless their effort was. And
the marauders had not ceased their deadly work.

A bomb dropped near the Washington Monument, sending u