only to learn the extent of our
knowledge, our culture? Were they friendly, perhaps?--half-timid and
fearful of what they might find?

A star moved in the sky, a pin-point of light that was plain in its
message to the aviator. It was Blake, flying high, volplaning to make
contact and learn from the air what this stranger might mean. The
light of his plane slanted down in an easy descent; the flyer was
gliding in on a long aerial toboggan slide. His motor was throttled;
there was only the whistle of torn air on the monoplane's wings.
McGuire was with the captain in his mind, and like him he was waiting
for whatever the stranger might do.

Other lights were clustered where the one plane had been. The men of
the 91st had their orders, and the fingers of the watching, silent man
gripped an imaginary stick while he wished with his whole heart that
he was up in the air. To be with Blake or the others! His thoughts
whipped back to the mysterious stranger: the great shape was in
motion: it rose sharply a thousand feet in the air.

* * * * *

The approaching plane showed clear in the moon's light. It swung and
banked, and the vibrant song of its engine came down to the men as
Blake swept in a great circle about the big ship. He was looking it
over, but he began his inspection at a distance, and the orbit of his
plane made a tightening spiral as he edged for a closer look. He was
still swinging in the monotonous round when the ship made its first
forward move.

It leaped in the air: it swept faster and faster. And it was moving
with terrific speed as it crashed silently through the path of the
tiny plane. And Blake, as he leaned forward on the stick to throw his
plane downward in a power dive, could have had a vision, not of a ship
of the air, but only of a shining projectile as the great monster
shrieked overhead.

McGuire trembled for the safety of those wings as he saw Blake pull
his little ship out of the dive and shoot upward to a straight climb.

But--"That's dodging them!" he exulted: "that's flying! I wonder, did
they mean to wipe him out or were they only scared off?"

His question was answered as, out of the night, a whistling shriek
proclaimed the passage of the meteor ship that drove unmistakably at
the lone plane. And again the pilot with superb skill waited until the
last moment and threw himself out of the path of the oncoming mass,
though his own plane was tossed and whirle