The idea did not satisfy me. Vaguely I was feeling, with nothing yet approaching mental realization, that there was something far more strange than that.
The effigy flew on lines parallel to my course, offering no attack and coming no closer. Again it ignored me. Now, of course, I comprehended this phenomenon. The effigy could not see me; the eyes, which piloted it, peered from the cockpit of a control airplane.
At the origin of the attack upon me, the control airplane must have circled above the ceiling with its slave; after the control had dispatched the slave and after it had engaged me, the control must have descended below the clouds to have both me and its slave in view. When I had climbed through the ceiling, the control airplane had sent the effigy up after me but the operating pilot was behind and below. He lost sight of me and of his automaton. Therefore, the effigy had flown beside me and past me, paying no attention to me until the control machine cut through the clouds and caught sight of us again.
Evidently, at the present moment, I was
