The airport was just as he had remembered it on the first day of his awakening--it now seemed uncountable ages in the past. The little sports plane still stood on the platform, its torn wing dangling. The hangars were all locked; he was an inefficient burglar and spent an hour or two breaking one open and when he did, found nothing but a tri-motored monster quite beyond his powers to get out, and a rocket-plane requiring special fuel that he did not have. The next hangar yielded an autogiro and a training machine. He had no watch, but was sure that the night was passing fast, and not wishing to be abroad by daylight with an airplane, decided to chance it on the autogiro. Luckily she was full of fuel, and everything seemed tight. With some labor he removed the chocks and managed to wheel the machine out. Not till he had it in the air did the thought of what direction he was to take occur to him. Boston--New York--Philadelphia--Chicago, he canvassed the possibilities. What was it Marta Lami had said--something about one of the fighting machines heading south? And he remembered how the astronomers had predicted that the comet would fall, probably, somewhere in New York State. If there were a borderline along which Lassans were meeting humans in any kind of conflict it was most likely to lie southward. With this thought in mind, he turned his plane to the south, and keeping the white line of foam along the coast beneath him as a guide, began to let her out. The ceiling was low; between clouds and fitful squalls of rain flying was difficult and the weight of Sherman's mechanical body seemed to make the machine move loggily. It must have been all of an hour and three quarters later that he saw beneath him the tossing whitecaps of Great Bay, with the ribbon of Wading River running back into the distance. Just beyond, he knew, lay Atlantic City. He was debating with himself whether to land on the beach there or hop across to the Philadelphia airport when, sharp and clear from somewhere ahead and below him, came the sound of gunfire. He tried for altitude, but only ran into clouds. Nevertheless the sound was unmistakable, and as he approached it became clearer and more pronounced, a long intermittent beat, heavy guns and light, mingled together, off to the right. There was fighting going on! Exulting in his escape from the Lassans and in the fact that he could take their opponents information that would be of value, he swung the autogiro toward the sounds that became clearer every minute. He was getting right over them now, he thought; he could see red flashes along the horizon. Down there they were locked in battle--men and Lassans, his own people and the invaders from far-away Rigel.