But now as our ships slowed at sight of the ominous fingers of light far ahead I spoke quickly into the distance-phone. "Our one chance is to go through the vapor-layer," I said, "and use our cruiser-finders to avoid the air-mines. By going through in a three-ship column we may be able to make it." At my order therefore our great triangle of cruisers shifted its formation abruptly into one of a long slender line, three ships in width, and then that line with my own cruiser at its head was slanting sharply downward toward the great mists beneath us. A moment more and our cruisers had entered those mists, were moving forward enveloped in them, the great vapor-layer through which we moved hiding all things from about us, hiding our cruisers even from each other. But though we could not see them, we knew that the great air-forts hovered ahead and above us, now, and that the vapor-layer into which we were moving was one sown thick with the deadly air-mines. So, with Macklin at the cruiser's wheel guiding it slowly forward at the head of our column of ships, holding a course eastward through the mists by the compass and creeping forward now at the same low speed as the ships behind, I ordered Hilliard, beneath, to swing out the cone-like cruiser-finders from our ship's sides, and to report instantly any air-mines they detected before us. Behind us, too, the cruisers that followed were using their own cruiser-finders as they crept through the mists after us, at my order; for though as leading ship we could report to them all air-mines which we encountered before us, it was necessary for the cruisers behind to feel their way forward independently, since in the concealing mists they could not follow exactly upon our own ship's track. Now, though, listening intently at the order-phone, I waited Hilliard's reports. And in moments more, as our cruiser-finders' coils picked up the hum of the enemy's electrostatic-motors a little ahead and to the right, he reported sharply and I repeated the information swiftly to Macklin, who instantly swung our ship a little to the left. And still Hilliard remained with the cruiser-finders, whose super-sensitive coils caught instantly the electrostatic-motors of the air-mines before and about us.