It was a maneuver that gained us a moment's advantage; since when the pursuing ships drove up through the vapor-masses again on my track, it took them an instant to locate and shape their course after me. In that instant we had moved a little from them; but now, remorselessly as ever, they came on after us, as pursued and pursuing ships drove like light toward the flaming western sky. On and on, on until again they were close behind, until again their guns were beginning to thunder, and then I repeated my former maneuver, my last resort. I dived headlong downward again through the vapor-layer, and upward again, as their ships drove after me. But, when I flashed up again through the vapor-masses this time, I suddenly slowed my ship, slowed it and then held it motionless there in mid-air, with cold of icy fear tight around my heart in that moment! For, this time, half of the hundred pursuing ships had not dived down after me but had flashed on ahead as I drove down; and so, now, when I flashed up they hung before me, while the remainder drove still toward me from behind! I was trapped at last between their masses of ships before and behind me! Slowing my cruiser, holding it motionless there with mechanical fingers in that moment, I knew it to be the end. Our last moment had come. The two masses of ships were moving toward me, from ahead and behind, were moving toward our cruiser. Our only escape cut off, no twists or turns now could save us; they were converging upon us, were moving deliberately toward us from either side. Another moment, I knew, and hundreds of heat-guns would thunder from them, hundreds of heat-shells would send our ship downward in flaring, fusing destruction. Another moment-- A great cry sounded beside me, and I wheeled to find Hilliard pointing mutely upward toward a mass of long, gleaming shapes that were rushing headlong down upon us from high above, that were diving headlong down upon the European cruisers to east and west of us, raining a hail of heat-shells upon them! "American ships!" My cry was echoing Hilliard's. Great gleaming cruisers, outnumbering the hundred east and west of us, were driving down upon those hundred with all their heat-guns thundering! Then in the next moment, while our own cruiser hung motionless, helpless there in mid-air, American and European cruisers were whirling in a mad, swift battle about us, ships striking and falling like lightning on all sides of us. And before we could comprehend with our stunned minds what was taking place, the European cruisers had suddenly dropped from that battle, had massed together and were splitting the air eastward, rushing back eastward and disappearing toward the mighty approaching armada of great air-cities and cruisers of which they were the scouts.