re behind them.
And underneath the whole, a landing gear of the Fraser-Mood
springed-cushion type: and an expanding, air-coil pontoon-bladder for
landing upon water.

* * * * *

All this was usual enough. Yet, with the brief glimpses I had as my
captors hurried me toward the landing incline, I was aware of
something very strange about this flyer. It was all dead black, a
bloated-bellied black bird. The moonlight struck it, but did not gleam
or shimmer on its black metal surface. The cabin window-portes glowed
with a dim blue-gray light from inside. But as I chanced to gaze at
one a green film seemed to cross it like a shade, so that it winked
and its light was gone. Yet a hole was there, like an eye-socket. An
empty green hole.

We were close to the plane now, approaching the bottom of the small
landing-incline. The wing over my head was like a huge fat barrel cut
length-wise in half. I stared up; and suddenly it seemed that the wing
was melting. Fading. Its inner portion, where it joined the body, was
clear in the moonlight. But the tips blurred and faded. An aspect
curiously leprous. Uncanny. Gruesome.

They took me up the landing-incline. A narrow vaulted corridor ran
length-wise of the interior, along one side of the cabin body. To my
left as we headed for the bow control room, the corridor window-portes
showed the rocks outside. To the right of the corridor, the ship's
small rooms lay in a string. A metal interior. I saw almost nothing
save metal in various forms. Grid floor and ceiling. Sheet metal walls
and partitions. Furnishings and fabrics, all of spun metal. And all
dead black.

We entered the control room. The two men holding me flung me in a
chair. I had been searched. They had taken from me the tiny, colored
magnesium light-flashes. How easy for the plans of men to go astray!
Hanley and I had arranged that I was to signal the Porto Rican
patrol-ship with those flares.

"Sit quiet!" commanded my guard.

I retorted, "If you hit me again, I won't."

* * * * *

De Boer came in, carrying Jetta. He put her in a chair near me, and
she sat huddled tense. In the dim gray light of the control room her
white face with its big staring dark eyes was turned toward me. But
she did not speak, nor did I.

The bandits ignored us. De Boer moved about the room, examining a bank
of instruments. Familiar instruments, most of them. The usual
aero-contro