Danny followed where his companion led into great buildings and a place of offices where excited officials stood in knots about news-casting cones; then they were in a quiet room, in the presence of a lean-bodied man whose hawklike face turned flinty at some request the Infant made. "What the lad wants, I don't know," said Danny to himself, "but whatever it is he won't be gettin' it from old Gimlet-eyes." * * * * * But he saw the Infant write something on a card and he heard him say, as he handed it to the official: "Send that to the President--_at once_!" And though the words were hardly audible they had a quality that brought an instant response; while the written words brought a portly man who shook the Infant's hand fervently and inquired what service a great electric company could render. Danny heard Gimlet-eyes protesting; heard broken bits of sentences: "... the great Sorenson tube ... he knows of our disintegrator ... insists upon our furnishing ... preposterous...." The portly man cut him short. "You will give Mr. Morgan whatever he wishes," he ordered crisply. Then Danny saw him clutch at a desk for support as still another man appeared at the open door to shout: "New York! My God! New York's gone! Burning! The Empire State Building melted! Crashed!... The whole city is being destroyed!" And in the moment of numbness that seized Danny O'Rourke he heard the Infant say: "How soon can we have it? I want it in our ship--up above--an hour? We'll be there." But Danny had no further interest in the Infant's arrangements for obtaining some unknown equipment; he was plunging through the doorway and running at full speed toward the ramp where they had descended. He knew dimly that the younger man had followed and was crowding into the cabin after him. Danny, as he locked the port and lifted his red ship off her guides, was fully conscious of only one fact: that a hundred miles south a city was being destroyed and that somewhere in the vast heights above the city he would find the destroyer. * * * * * The Hudson that had been a thread of silver was no longer bright as they approached the city at its mouth; burnished now with its reflection of black smoke clouds and red tongues of flame, it vanished at last under a mountain of black that heaped itself in turbulent piles and whirling masses until the winds swept the smoke out over the sea. And high above it all--so high that all clouds were below it--there hung in a lucent sky one tiny, silvery speck. There was a delicate steering sight on Danny's ship; he could direct the red craft as if it were in very fact a projectile that could be controlled in flight. And under the cross hairs of that sight swung a silvery speck, while the man who looked along the telescopic tube cursed steadily and methodically as if in some way his hate might span the gap and reach that distant foe.