Davis pushed a button, and a green light glowed beside the red one in the hood below the machine. In a moment the receipt of this signal by those below was evidenced. The searchlights took up their task with renewed vigor, searching the sky frantically for a sign of the black flying machine. The hood below the biplane allowed the signal to be seen by those on the ground, but made the light invisible to any one in the air. The biplane swung in wide circles, Teddy and Davis with every nerve taut and every sense alert, aflame with eagerness to sight their quarry. They saw it, outlined for an instant by the white beam of one of the circling lights.
It was dropping like a stone from the clouds. The searchlight rays glistened from polished black sides and were reflected from shimmering propeller blades above it.
"Helicopter," said Davis crisply. "Now!"
The black flyer was a thousand feet below them and still falling. The nose of the biplane dipped sharply and it dived straight for the still falling machine. Teddy gripped the machine gun and sighted along the barrel. Down, down, the biplane darted, all the power of its eight hundred horse power aiding in the speed of its fall. The glistening black machine checked in its drop and hung motionless in mid-air. The pilot was evidently unconscious of the machine swooping down upon him.
Five hundred feet down, six hundred——Teddy pulled hard on the trigger, and his machine gun spurted fire. A stream of explosive projectiles sped toward the menacing black shape. Teddy saw them strike the shining sides of the machine and explode with little bursts of flame. The biplane was rushing with incredible speed toward the other flyer. Teddy played his machine gun upon it as he might have played a hose, and apparently with as little effect. The tiny explosive shells struck and flashed futilely. The black flyer seemed to be unharmed. After a second's hesitation, it dropped again abruptly. The biplane shot toward the spot the other machine had occupied. The distance was too short to turn or swerve, quickly as it responded to the controls.
"Flares," gasped Davis, but before he spoke Teddy was pressing the small button that would set them off.
A burst of tiny lights shot out before the biplane, many-colored balls of fire driven forward from a tube below the fusilage. They illuminated the air for a short distance, entering the space from which the black flyer had just dropped. Teddy and Davis saw a small cloud of what seemed to be mist or fog hanging in the air. The tiny fire balls darted into it the fraction of a second before the biplane itself had to traverse the same space. As the first of the lights struck the fringe of the whitish cloud it flared up. The fire ball had touched a droplet of liquified gas and set it flaming. It burned fiercely and with incredible rapidity, setting fire to the remainder of the cloud. Teddy ducked his head as the aëroplane shot madly through a huge globe of blazing gas in mid-air.
"Great God!" gasped Davis. "Now where's Varrhus?"
The heavy masks the two aviators had worn had protected them from the flaming hydrogen, and their goggles had saved their eyes. Now Davis was only eager to make a second attempt upon the black machine. He swerved and circled. The searchlights below were waving frantically through the air. The flare aloft had been seen, and they concentrated upon the space below the spot. In a second the black flyer was once more outlined by half a dozen beams. Davis banked sharply and darted toward it again.
The pilot of the strange machine seemed to be quite confident that he had disposed of his antagonist, and was apparently busy with something inside the cabin. He was probably preparing to release his cold bomb, but was again interrupted. The biplane approached. Teddy saw his explosive bullets strike and flash. He knew they struck, but they seemed incapable of doing harm. The black flyer was clearly defined by the searchlights, and Teddy could see it distinctly. It was a long, needlelike body with a glass-inclosed cabin near the center. Above it four whirring disks of comparatively huge size showed the position of the vertical propellers that enabled it to rise and fall and to hang suspended motionless in the air. A fifth propeller spun slowly at the bow. That was evidently not running at full speed. Below the needlelike body hung a misshapen globe, like the bulging ovipositor of some strange insect.