"The point is, though, that if you go, you go alone!" They looked at one another unwaveringly. "So far as I'm concerned, I shall spend the rest of my life on Holl! No Hafen for mine! From now on I live with the workers. Come--what do you say, Mona?" She answered instantly and stubbornly: "I go back. What about you?" He took a parachute from a locker. "Holl is below." He buckled the thing across his chest and stepped up on the edge of the cockpit. "Do you mean it, dear?" said he softly. She stared at him stonily. He turned away, his mouth shaking slightly, then held out his hand. "Good-by, then, for the last time!" Mona suddenly grasped his hand. For an instant hope flared in Fort's eyes, then faded, leaving his face gray and drawn. He poised hiself, letting go her hand reluctantly. Then he turned resolutely. "It's the only thing for a man to do, Mona! As for you--turn about and go as fast as you canl You've got just time enough. Good-by!" And with Mona unable to utter a single word, able only to watch and to feel, the athlete leaned to one side so as to clear the wing, pulled his cap down tightly, and jumped into space. XVIII THE SILVER HEART Mona leaped to the controls. She turned the craft about automatically and started toward Hafen. Then she glanced over the side. What she saw brought her heart to her throat. About a mile below, and under Fort as he sank through the air, was another flying machine which neither had noticed before. In it was the figure of a man standing; he was maneuvering his craft so as to intercept the falling aviator. And the clear air of the high altitudes carried the sound of his voice faintly but surely to Mona's ears. "Thought you'd get away, did you, Fort?" in heavy, insolent tones. "Well, you get--left, my boy!" "Eklan Norbith!" cried Fort at the same instant. Next second he had landed on the deputy's machine. "Norbith!" thought Mona, immediately recalling her patient at the hospital. She hesitated only an instant, then dove in a steep spiral down toward the two. Fort had fouled his parachute on a stanchion, in landing. Breathless, he lay in a tangle heap, looking up at the towering bulk of the deputy. "You're not going to get clear this time, Fort, like you did that night with the Cobulus and Ernol's gang!" Norbith was saying savagely, gloating over the man at his feet. "Thought the lad killed me, I suppose. I was barely stunned. And I've been on your tail--ever since." His eyes glowed with anger. Mona watched him in silence as she circled nearer. Norbith! The commission's deputy in Calastia; he represented all that was evil and cruel in the government. It was he who did the nasty work, the things which Powart himself was too much of a gentleman to do. Norbith--the strong, cruel right arm on an unjust law! "Well"--Fort had regained his breath somewhat--"now that you've got me, Norbith, what do you intend to do about it?"