The doomed space ship--gyroscope still keeping the ray pointed Earthward--describing an erratic course, was shooting farther upward into the stratosphere, propelled by the ghastly ray which, now no longer controlled by Wang Li, drove the space ship madly through the outer cold. Far below the partners many things were falling: broken furnishings of mad dreamers' stratosphere laboratories, parts of strange machines, whirling, somersaulting things that had once been men. The partners looked at each other. The same thought was in the mind of each, as the four remaining planes came in toward them to convoy them down--that when the lords of the stratosphere finally reached the far Earth, only God would know which was Sitsumi and who were the Three. * * * * * End of Project Gutenberg's Lords of the Stratosphere, by Arthur J. Burks