with the other eight ships for the last hour. Now he began to bark orders:
"Take positions at the twenty-thou- sand foot level! Continue to drop at the rate of one hundred feet per second, levelling off at two thousand feet."
The Ionian battle craft swung into the circular formation that had been so successful before. They were in a tight circle, dropping swiftly through the clouds, when the first roaring Earth-ships attacked them. Instantly, the Orsis was rocking and lurching as bombs exploded with a hundred feet of her already damaged shell.
East Bayard's host came at them like a swarm of black hornets. They choked the sky. They were everywhere. There was not a spot the raking disrupter beams touched that was not filled with a plane. Through the flagship's insulated shell, their roaring came as a steady blast of thunder. It was unnerving, terrifying.
Dane watched hundreds of ships go down as mosquitoes might drop when a blow-torch flame cuts through clouds of them. But for every combat-craft that crashed into the crowded city streets, another zoomed in from nowhere.
Dane groaned as he saw the Jovian, one of their own ships, lurch violently and slide Earthward. Immediately a hundred dive-bombers were after her. Dane closed his eyes tightly as the warship burst into flame.
But there was no time for regrets. The circle was drawn tighter to close the gap. Gunners stabbed more viciously at their triggers. If they lost eight ships in defeating The Hundred, there would still be one to take over.
At ten thousand feet, Dane turned hurriedly to Vanz.
"There seems to be no wind. I think we can start now. Will you notify the other ships?"
Vanz nodded. Dane rushed from the room as he began to call the other commanders. He lurched from one wall of the corridor to the other with the incessant plunging of the ship. Reaching the elevator, he dropped swiftly to the bilge deck, bottom-most level. Here, in stuffy, hot quarters, he groped to the air lock through which waste was shot into space. A dozen big tanks of compressed gas lay beside it in a rack. Dane laboriously deposited three of them in the tube. Then he slammed the lid down and yanked the release lever.
The tanks hurled toward the city. A hundred feet from the ship they passed through a disruptor-beam and exploded. Sparkling, amber gas blossomed in a great, woolly mass. From other ships, tanks began to drop and explode. Dane raised three more tanks and dropped them into the disposal-tube. Again he yanked at the release lever.
The first result came when several of the combat ships wavered, slipped away, and spiralled earthward. Drawing their air supply through filters in the shells of their ships, the pilots had breathed deeply of the Ionian gas. It was the same gas that had put Dane Cabot to sleep on his voyage to Io. And it was sinking in thick, sweetish layers all over New York City!
LOREN BAYARD had been right. His strategy had matched that of the attackers. Had East listened to him, The Hundred would have been safe somewhere on the mainland now. But they were not. They were in Government House, directing the repulse of the invaders.
With the last of his tanks cast overboard, Dane stood at a port looking down. Elation gleamed in his eyes. Yet, tempering that gladness, was deep regret.
