"Sleep!" exclaimed Stanton. "Sleep? On a night like this?" "Oh, Dirk," pleaded Inga, "stay here with me, won't you? I am not going to bed because I just know that I wouldn't be able to close my eyes." "Let him go, Inga, if he wants to sleep," urged Stanton. "I will stay here and keep watch with you." "--and if order is not restored in the streets of Manhattan within the course of a short time, the authorities will resort to morphite gas to quell the turbulence and rioting--" "The streets must be frightfully congested," said Inga. "It is the first occasion in a long time that the police have had to threaten the use of morphite." "--we do not want to alarm people unnecessarily but we have to report," came the hurried voice of the broadcaster, "that the monstrous mass that has been hanging above the city just made a sudden drop of five thousand feet and again came to a stop. It is now a little more than six miles over Manhattan and--again it has dropped. This time it fell like a plummet for twelve thousand feet. It is now about twenty thousand feet, some four miles, above Manhattan and--" * * * * * A cry of alarm came from the lips of Inga as she gazed upward and saw that gigantic, ominous-appearing object loom dim and vast in the darkness above them. She went to Dirk and threw her arms around him, as if she were clinging to him for protection. "Don't leave me, Dirk," she whispered. "I can just feel that something terrible is going to happen, and I want you with me!" "I'll stay with you, of course," whispered Dirk. Something of that feeling of dread and apprehension which so fully possessed his two companions entered into his mind. "Don't tremble so, Inga," he pleaded. "It is a strange thing, but we will know more about it in the morning. Be calm until then, my dear, if you can." He looked over the shoulder of the girl, whose face was buried against his breast, and he saw a hundred great red and green shafts of light shooting up into the air. Fleeting shadows seemed to pass swiftly up and down them, and he knew that thousands of planes were abroad, some of them seeking the heights and others dropping down. The great towers of Long Island were all aglow, and it was apparent that few people were sleeping that night. The scarlet sky over Manhattan indicated that the center of the metropolis, too, was alive to the menace of the weird visitant that now was so plainly visible. All night long they remained on the terrace. Dirk and Inga seated close together and Stanton, at a distance, brooding alone over the disaster which he felt was impending. The illuminated dial of the great clock that was a part of the beacon-tower on the Metropole Landing Field told of the slow passing of the hours. All night long they listened to the reports that came through the radiovisor and watched that immobile, threatening monster of metal.