A cry from Inga startled them and they saw that she was looking skyward, with terror in her eyes.
They followed her gaze and there, streaking through the black clouds, they saw a long trail of white fire.
“It’s that thing!” exclaimed Fragoni. “I tell you that those upon it still live and that they are about to wreak vengeance upon us.”
“No,” said Steinholt positively. “You are wrong, Fragoni. What is happening may be almost as disastrous, though,” he admitted. “That leviathan is in its death agonies; it is a metal monster gone mad, and none can say what will happen before it expires.”
“The place for us,” asserted Dirk hurriedly, “is in the Worldwide Tower. There we can keep track of what is transpiring and try to decide what to do.”
The others agreed with him and, seeking the westward level of flight, he sped the plane in the direction of the mammoth pyramid from which the news of the world was broadcast.
They reached the vast structure in a few minutes, and, after dropping the plane on a landing stage, they went into the operating room.
Here they learned quickly that the craft of the Lodorians was doing incalculable damage, and that it was throwing the population of the world into an unprecedented panic.
It was, apparently, following an erratic, uncertain orbit that took it far out into space and then back quite close to the surface of the earth again.