On to the westward though we raced still, our rear-guard line of cruisers now the targets of numberless heat-guns. Still cruisers among them were being destroyed by the heat-shells, and still, too, they were striking savagely back to find their marks here and there among the mass of our pursuers. On and on we rushed, the European fleet closing gradually toward us, and now we were but a score or so of miles from the coast, I knew, and should be sighting the great double line of our air-forts that were hanging far out to sea. It was the one chance of escape for our outnumbered fleet, I knew, to gain the shelter of those great forts. And now it was clear that it was with this object that the First Air Chief was leading our fleet in full retreat westward. But as we gazed ahead, we saw that though we should have been within sight of them the great air-forts were nowhere to be seen! Save for a great, long bank of floating white clouds ahead the sky was completely empty, and of the air-forts there was no trace! "The air-forts gone!" I cried. "Our last chance gone!" "But our fleet's going on!" exclaimed Macklin. "The First Air Chief's leading us into those clouds!" The Ambush Gazing ahead, incredulous, I saw in a moment that it was so, that the First Air Chief's cruiser was flying straight on toward the great long bank of clouds ahead, leading our whole fleet into their fleecy white masses. Even as I stared unbelievingly, I saw his silver-striped ship rush into those clouds and vanish from view, and after it were rushing our own ship and all those about us, all the long mass of our fleet! Unable to credit my eyes, almost, I stared, for it was a suicidal maneuver, to attempt to elude our pursuers in those fleecy masses. They needed only to surround the cloud-bank and then wait and destroy us one by one as we emerged again. Yet even as I gazed forward our ships were speeding into the white masses of vapor, after our flagship, our rear cruisers still returning the fire of our pursuers. Then as our own cruiser flashed into them, all things vanished from about us save the thick masses of cloud-vapor that hemmed us in, that seemed to press against our windows, curtaining all things else from sight!