more than a hundred comrades plunge--still ventured closing to grips,
the Master watched.

The air-wasp was already swerving, making a spiral glide, coming up
astern with obvious intentions. As the two men watched--and as a score
of other eyes, from other galleries and ports likewise observed--the
lean wasp carried out her driver's plan. With a sudden, plunging
swoop, she dived at the Eagle of the Sky for all the world like a hawk
stooping at quarry.

A moment she kept pace with the air-liner's whirring rush. She
hovered, dropped with a wondrous precision that proved her rider's
consummate skill, made a perfect landing on the long take-off that
stretched from rudders to wing observation galleries, atop the liner.

Forward on _Nissr_ the wasp ran on her small, cushioned wheels. She
stopped, with jammed-on brakes, and came to rest not forty feet abaft
the Eagle's beak.

Quite at once, without delay, the little door of the pilot-pit in the
wasp's head swung wide, and a heavily-swaddled figure clambered out.
This figure stood a moment, peering about through goggles. Then with a
free, quick stride, he started forward toward the gallery where he had
seen Bohannan and the Master.

The two awaited him. Confidently he came into the wind-shielded
gallery on top of _Nissr's_ port plane. He advanced to within
about six feet, stopped, gave the military salute--which they both
returned--and in a throaty French that marked him as from Paris,
demanded: