He had even forgotten Morgan; perhaps he was never fully conscious of his coming from the moment when that other trembling, shaken man had shouted: "New York! New York's gone!"
"There aren't two more," the Infant was saying from his seat at the rear of the cabin: "there's just one. Those three lines were always parallel except when they widened out: that meant that he had gone up higher. If we ever see that ship, we'll see three discharge tubes for the ray."
Danny O'Rourke turned his eyes that had gone haggard and deep-sunk with the sights they had seen. He stared vacantly at the Infant.
"Didn't know," he said thickly, "—didn't know you were here. I'll set you down; I'll let you out before I ram him...."
For reply, the other pointed ahead. The red ship had torn through a layer of thick clouds; Danny was flying below them above a mountainous world of bare hill-tops and wooded valleys. Directly ahead, hovering high over a mountain higher than its fellows, was the white craft of the enemy; Danny, saw it in hard outline against the darker masses of clouds beyond. He saw that it was motionless, that a slender cable was suspended for a thousand feet below, and that the end of the cable, hanging close above the mountain top, was split into a score of wires that stood out in all directions, while, from each, poured a stream of blue fire.
And once more all this that he saw was as nothing to the pilot; all thought, too, of his fellow victim went from his mind. He could see only the white ship, doubly hideous because of its seeming purity; and, as before, he brought the cross hairs of directional sights upon it while he opened the rocket exhaust to the full.
But even pilot O'Rourke, with the highest rating in the A. F. F., could not follow the lightning-swift leap of the snow-white thing that buried itself in the smother of cloud banks above.
Danny set his red ship down on that same barren hilltop; he motioned Morgan to follow as he stepped out.
"We're somewhere in Pennsylvania," he announced. "You're stayin' here. Sorry to dump you out like this, but you'll find a way out. Get to a radio—call a plane." He held out his hand in unspoken farewell.