In a moment a fleet of combat planes left the ground and headed westward. Using his glasses, Roger saw the reason. The three huge lunar globes which had, only a few minutes before, been reported on the way to the United States, were flying swiftly toward the Capitol, raking the ground beneath them with their deadly green rays, more than a dozen of which shone from each globe—and occasionally destroying aircraft that approached them. Standing on the hotel roof beside Ted’s aerial freighter was the helicopter limousine of the President. Its chauffeur was idly leaning against a wing, watching the fast disappearing squadron which had just risen. “Quick, Bevans!” said Roger. “It’s you and me for it! Grab those controls and I’ll bring a degravitor!” They rose, a moment later, with helicopters roaring, while the President’s pilot, who had lost his prop and his balance, scrambled to his feet and gaped after them. The plane was a swift one, and in a few minutes Bevans had brought it close behind the aerial squadron. “Straight up, now,” ordered Roger, “and make it snappy.” As they began their ascent the battle started with the rattle of machine guns and the boom of rapid fire turret guns. Then the globes, apparently unharmed by the gunfire, began systematically wiping out the defense squadron with their green rays. One by one, huge combat planes were crumpling and crashing to the ground, when Roger brought his degravitor to bear on the foremost globe. His invisible ray cut a round hole about four feet in diameter clear through the center of the lunar vehicle, with no apparent effect on its progress or lethal ray projectors. But he had only to lower, then slightly elevate his weapon, and the globe was divided as neatly as a knife divides an apple, both halves crashing instantly to the ground. Swinging his degravitor into line on another globe, Roger proceeded to halve it as he had the first, but before he could turn it on the third globe, the latter, its commander apparently fearing the fate of the first two, elevated its forward disc and shot straight up into the air with such appalling speed that it disappeared completely in a moment. Roger clapped his binoculars to his eyes, but even they failed to reveal the swiftly flying globe. “No use to follow that bird, Bevans,” he said. “He’s well on his way to the moon by this time. Let’s go and have a look at the ones we brought down.” They descended, but a half dozen of the government combat planes were ahead of them, and the men were dragging the bodies of stunned and dead Lunites from the wrecks when they arrived. Forty dazed prisoners, most of whom had fractured limbs, were taken from the wrecks, and twenty-six bodies. Roger’s great fear was that he might find the body of Professor Ederson in the wrecks, but there was no sign of it. Either he had been completely destroyed by the degravitor rays, or was in the globe which had escaped.