It flashed by, and the youngster thought they were going to lose it--it was going so much faster than they; but as the thought crossed his mind, and he saw the two churning glowing openings in its rear, a burning blast of energy struck him. A multitude of glowing, charged particles crackled around him, streamed against him. His fields shifted to reach out and capture them; the spin of stored energy within spun faster, absorbing the new energy into its drive, its life-pulse rising to a deep hum, and he felt strong, stronger than he had ever felt before in his life. They were flying faster now, accelerating faster than he had ever flown, and it was easy. They drew up closer to the dark thing, matching it speed for speed, laving in the glowing cloud of energy-particles that roared backward from its jets. The youngster was astounded and exhilarated at the tremendous, effortless speed with which they were driving forward. This was the first time he had ever had so much power. It was ten times more than any aurora borealis with its pale wash of energy waves. Drunken in his new found strength, he pulled ahead closer to the roaring jets. * * * * * At the peak of the arc of climb of the New York-Istanbul stratoliner, high in the ionosphere where the Earth was merely a giant globe far below, the pilot of the stratoliner boredly cut the jets for the fuel-saving glide that turned their nose toward Earth again. The radar was clanging its usual senseless warning of imminent collision with some solid objects, which had approached closer than the automatic relays considered safe. It had been clanging for several minutes. The pilot glanced in annoyance at the radar screen, where several hundred globes--from two to seven feet in diameter--showed vividly, trailing the ship in a fan-shaped cluster. "Some day I'm going to take a hammer to that thing." The co-pilot, looking back from the control blister's rear window, saw nothing, as usual, except a few of the shining globes, which showed themselves transiently in a brief flash of blue light as they carelessly overloaded and discharged--and one, smaller than the rest, who blinked on and off rapidly in brilliant flashes of blue. As he watched, it ran suddenly down the color-scale to red and began to lag behind, a glowing red globe, sinking. "I wonder what the hell they think they're doing?" he grumbled. * * * * *