The sight of that spark was enough for the pursuer. He flung every erg his generators could handle into a drive straight away from the planet, at the same time pouring the rest of his body into the control room to serve as a gelatinous cushion to protect the perit from the savage deceleration; and he saw instantly that it would not be sufficient. He had just tune to wonder that the creature ahead of him should be willing to risk ship and host in what would certainly be a nasty crash before the outer fringes of the world's air envelope added their resistance to his plunging flight and set the metal plates of his hull glowing a brilliant orange from heat.

Since the ships had dived straight down the shadow cone, they were going to strike on the night side, of course; and once the hulls cooled, the fugitive would again be invisible. With an effort, therefore, the Hunter kept his eyes glued to the instruments that would betray the other's whereabouts as long as he was in range; and it was well that he did so, for the glowing cylinder vanished abruptly from sight into a vast cloud of water vapor that veiled the planet's dark surface. A split second later the Hunter's ship plunged into the same mass, and as it did so there was a twisting lurch, and the right-line deceleration changed to a sickening spinning motion. The pilot knew that one of the drive plates had gone, probably cracked off by undistributed heat but there was simply no time to do a thing about it. The other vessel, he noted, had stopped as though it had run into a brick wall; now it was settling again, but far more slowly, and he realized that he himself could only be split seconds from the same obstacle, assuming it to be horizontal.

It was. The Hunter's ship, still spinning wildly although he had shut off the remaining drive plates at the last moment, struck almost flat on water and at the impact split open from end to end along both sides as though it had been an eggshell stepped on by a giant. Almost all its kinetic energy was absorbed by that blow, but it did not stop altogether. It continued to settle, comparatively gently now, with a motion like a falling leaf, and the Hunter felt its shattered hull come to a rest on what he realized must be the bottom of a lake or sea a few seconds later.