at dawn?"

"Not on your life," replied Murray. "This hooker is going to pull in at the nearest garage until we learn what it's all about. Talk about arithmetic! This is worse than figuring out a time-table."

Gloria laughed, then her face became serious. "Do you think they'll bomb us again, Mr. Beeville?"

"I don't see why not. They were clear winners in the last battle. But what gets me is where they come from. Why, they're a living refutation of the laws of evolution on the earth! Four wings and two legs! Although ..." the naturalist looked at the sliding parts of his own arm, "they are rather less incredible than the evolution that has overtaken mankind, unless we're all off our heads. Do you know any way to account for it?"

"Not me," said Murray, "that's supposed to be your job; all we do is believe you when—" Bang! The anti-aircraft gun had gone off just outside with an earsplitting report. With a common impulse the three made for the door and looked upward to see the shell burst in a puff of white smoke, outlined against the dark clouds of evening, while above and beyond it sailed a black dot with whirring wings.

"That settles it," said Murray. "Whether we like it or not, we're going away from here. I wish those nuts hadn't fired though. Now the birds know what we've got. Trot down and tell them to get up steam, that's a good girl, Gloria."

The lone tetrapteryx seemed no more than a scout, for the attack was not followed up. But it takes time to get steam up on long disused marine engines and all hands were below when the real attack was delivered.

It began with the explosion of a bomb somewhere outside and a dash of water against the vessel's side that threw all of them off their feet. There was a clang of metal and a rush for the deck—cut across by Ben's voice. "Take it easy! Everybody to the engines but McAllister, O'Hara and the navigators."

The four sprang for the ladder, Murray in the lead. Crash! A sound like the thunder of a thousand tons of scrap iron on a sidewalk and the destroyer pitched wildly.

Murray's head came level with the deck. Instead of the darkness he had expected it was flung into dazzling illumination by a flare burning on the water not fifty yards away, with a light so intense that it seemed to have physical body. There was a perceptible wave of heat from it and the water round it boiled like a 

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