A wild impulse was surging up in the breast of Pelton—an intense desire to take an active part in the victory he had done so much to bring about.
He turned to his companion: "Keep the outfit running, Jerry, I've simply got to be in this fight."
As rapidly as his legs would carry him, the young scientist raced to the little shed nearby where he kept his flier. In his hand he carried a small black tube fitted with a pistol grip and trigger. It was a ray projector.
In a moment he had dragged the little craft out and climbed into the cockpit. He turned a dial that operated the gravitational screen. There was a sudden feeling of weightlessness—and then he shot upward amid the gust of rising air.
Three thousand feet Pelton ascended before he started his terrorium rocket-motors.
At a distance of perhaps half a mile, a "dog-fight" between countless small craft, was in progress.
At first he thought there was no one in his immediate vicinity; and then, above him and a little to the north, he saw a flier similar to his own, but obviously Asiatic. A bar of opalescence leaped out from the little weapon in Pelton's hand, and the enemy pilot was no more.
The discoverer of the crystal ray was in the act of turning around to join the "dog-fight" when a dozen or more bullets directed with an uncanny accuracy swept down upon him from above. He was unhurt, but a lead pellet had struck his weapon, destroying it completely. When he looked up, clammy fear seized him; for he saw a black flier painted with orange suns and piloted with a fiendish skill, diving straight toward him. Every inhabitant of the United States would have recognized that craft. It belonged to Saku, the ace who had shot more than a hundred opponents from the sky!
Impelled by the instinct of self-preservation, Pelton shut off the power from his gravitational screen. It was all he could do. He thought that perhaps by a rapid dive he could escape the yellow ace; but it was a vain hope. Even as he began to fall plummet-like toward the earth, a gust of poisoned bullets ripped through his body. Probably his sense swam, and it was certain that he felt no pain; for death in those cases is a matter of an instant. Nevertheless a faint smile crossed his lips. Against the blackness of the eternity that poured into his brain, he seemed to see his name written so that people of the future would read with awe, and after his name the words: "He won the war!"
THE END