The _Monitor_ turned again, speeding back toward the remaining Lassan ships; with a startling shock of surprise, Gloria noticed that there were only two. Down below them one of the last three American rocket-cruisers had spread her wings and was gliding gently toward the earth. Like the _Monitor's_, her crew had evidently found the lightning flash worthless at the enormous altitude and was abandoning the battle till conditions became more favorable. The other rocket remained faithful; turned as they turned and charged up with them toward the last of the Lassans. It was a weird scene. They had climbed so far that the earth was now perceptibly round beneath them; a vague line marked the westward progress of the sunset and beyond it the sun, an immense yellow ball, set with a crown of vividly red flames, hung in the inky-black heavens. On the opposite side, the stars, more brilliant and greater in number than any ever before viewed by the eye of man, made the sky a carpet of light across which the green globes moved like shadows, their undersides illumined by the sun. As the _Monitor_ approached, the nearest globe seemed to be turning on its axis. Suddenly, out of the side that faced them, came the quick, stabbing beam of the light-ray, like the flicker of a sword. It struck the _Monitor_ full on the prow. There was a burning rain of sparks past the windows; the rocket-ship leaped and quivered, and those within felt, rather than saw, something give. Then, with a tremendous explosion, all the more horrible because utterly without sound, the great globe that had thrown the ray, burst into fragments. And at the same moment the _Monitor_ began to fall. Down, down, down went the rocket-cruiser with the round ball of the earth rising to meet them at a speed incredible. The sun went out; they were swallowed in a purple twilight as they plunged. The earth changed from a ball to a dish, from a dish to a plane, from a plane to a dark mass without form, and in the mass vague lights and glimmerings of water came out, and still their course was unchecked, still Sherman fought frantically with the useless controls. Desperately Murray pressed the firing keys of the stern-rockets; unchecked she drove on, almost straight down, plunging to certain destruction. The earth loomed nearer, nearer, the end seemed inevitable--. Then Gloria saved them. In some moment of inspiration, she threw on the searchlight; and the automatic connection fired the gravity-beam. There was a shattering report; the course of the _Monitor_ was halted, and bruised and broken, she tumbled over and over to the ground, safe but ruined. "Suffering Lassans!" said Ben Ruby, as they picked themselves out of the wreckage, "but that was a jar. What hit us, anyway?" Sherman pointed to Gloria, breathlessly. "Give the little girl a hand," he ejaculated. "She sure pulled us out of the fire that time."