Lords of the Stratosphere Read online

  CHAPTER X

  _How It Came About_

  "You will have twenty-four hours in which to decide whether to join us,"was Sitsumi's ultimatum. "We would not allow you five minutes were itnot that our cause would be benefited by the addition of your scientificknowledge."

  Sitsumi did not repeat the alternative. Remembering Kress, Jeter andEyer did not need to ask him. There was but one alternative--death--aparticularly horrible one. That Sitsumi and the Three would not hesitatewas amply proved. Already they were guilty of the death of thousands.They were in deadly earnest with their scheme for a world government.

  Jeter and Eyer were kept shackled together, and were, in addition,chained to the floor of the main room of the white globe with leg irons.Their keys were in the hands of Naka, whose hatred of Jeter for hittinghim on the jaw was so malevolent it fairly glowed from his eyes likesparks shot forth.

  Food was brought them when asked for. It wasn't easy to partake of it,because their manacled hands had to be moved together, which made itextremely awkward.

  Jeter and Eyer set themselves the task of trying to figure some way outin the twenty-four hours of life still left them if they failed. ThatHadley, down in New York City, and all the best minds who werecooperating with Jeter and Eyer in their mad effort to avert worldcatastrophe, would make every effort to come to their assistance bysending up the planes which must even now be nearing completion, theyhadn't the slightest doubt.

  Would they arrive in time? Even if they did, was there anything theycould possibly do to save themselves? Surely this space ship must bevulnerable. Else why did it climb so high into the stratosphere? It wasfar beyond the reach of ordinary planes. High trajectory projectiles hadslight chance of hitting it, even if it were visible. What then was itsvulnerability, which this hiding seemed to indicate? They must knowwithin twenty-four hours.

  So they sat side by side, watching events unfold. The Three talkedmandarin. Eyer, for all his levity, was a man of unusual attainments. Heunderstood mandarin, for one thing--a fact which even Jeter did not knowat first. The Chinese never seemed even to consider that either of themmight know the tongue. Chinese seldom found foreigners who didcomprehend them. In only so much were The Three in the least bitcareless.

  Eyer strained his ears to hear everything which passed between Sitsumiand the Three. Both men listened to any chance words in English orFrench on the part of all hands within the globe which might give them ahint.

  And in those twenty-four hours the sky-scientists learned much.

  * * * * *

  They conversed together, when they spoke of important matters which theywished hidden from their captors, out of the corners of their mouthsafter the method of criminals. They used it with elaborate unconcern.They might have seemed to be simply staring into space at such moments,dreading approaching death perhaps, and simply twiddling their fingers.But by each other every word was clearly heard.

  "That last outburst of Sitsumi's explains a lot of the reported activityin the Lake Baikal region, beyond the Gobi," swiftly dropped fromJeter's lips. "The materials which Sitsumi uses in the preparation ofhis light-ray-bending substance are found near there somehow. And thatmeans that the Japanese guards--which may be Eurasian guards, after whatSitsumi told us--and employees of this unholy crowd, are easily engagedin the preparation of other space ships."

  "Does this thing seem to have any armament?" asked Eyer.

  Jeter signified negation with a swift movement of his head.

  "Their one weapon seems to be the apparatus which causes that ray. Youknow, the ray which lifts buildings, pulling them up by the roots."

  "Have you any idea what it is?"

  "Yes. That last stuff of the Three which you translated for me gives mea clue. At first I thought that they had perfected some substance,perhaps with unknown electrical properties, which nullified gravity. Butthat won't prove out. If the ray simply nullified gravity, the buildingsdown there, while weightless, would not rise as they did. They mightsway if somebody breathed against them. A midget might lift one with hisfinger; but they wouldn't fly skyward as they did--and do!"

  For a moment the partners ceased their whispering and talked togethernaturally to disarm suspicion. The fact that the space ship and itsruthless denizens still engaged in the awful work of devastation wasamply being proved. In the main room it was possible, through the use oftelescopes and audiphones--set into the walls so that they wereinvisible, yet enabled any one in the room to see everything, and heareverything that transpired on the far earth below--to keep close watchon the work of the destroyers. Anything close enough could be seen withthe naked eye through the walls of the globe.

  * * * * *

  Now the space ship was systematically destroying buildings the lengthand breadth of Manhattan Island. The river-front buildings weredestroyed in a single sweep, from north to south, of the ghastly ray.Farther back from the Hudson, however, after the water-front buildingshad been reduced to mere piles of rubble, the most beautiful, mostmodern buildings were left standing.

  "Can't you just imagine those beautiful structures filled with themonsters created by the genius of Sitsumi and the Three--and their asyet unknown lieutenants back at Lake Baikal?"

  Eyer gritted his teeth. His hands closed atop the table at which theywere seated. The knuckles went white with the strain. The lips of bothmen were white. They realized to the full the dreadful responsibilitywhich they had assumed. They knew how abysmally hopeless was theirchance of accomplishing anything. And without some gigantic effort beingmade, the world as they knew it would be destroyed. In its place wouldbe a race of strange beings, of vengeful hybrids endowed from birthwith the will to conquer, or destroy utterly.

  "You were speaking of the levitating ray," prompted Eyer with swiftchange to the sidewise whispering.

  "From what you heard I'm sure it is something invented by Liao Wu, YungChan and Wang Li. In so much they have an advantage over Sitsumi. Idoubt if there is any love lost among them, beyond the fact that theyneed one another. Sitsumi is master of the substance which bends lightrays--and thus is rendered invisible, while the Three are masters of theray which not only propels this space ship, but is the agency by whichbuildings are torn up, dropped and destroyed. It's plain to me that thisroom is the control room of the space ship. The ray is--well, it's asdifficult to explain as electricity, and perhaps as simple in itsoperation. The ray does more than nullify gravity--can be made toreverse gravity! Let's call the ray the gravity inverter for want of abetter name. It makes anything it touches literally _fall away from theEarth_, toward the point whence the ray emanates!"

  "And if we were to obtain control of the apparatus which harnesses theray?"

  "We lack the knowledge of the Three for its operation. No, we've got tofind some simpler solution in the brief time we have."

  * * * * *

  At this point the partners had been within the white globe about tenhours and they had learned much about it. The inner globe, for example,maintained an even keel, no matter how the space ship as a whole movedon its rays that seemed like table legs. The gyroscopic principle wasused. The inner globe was movable within the outer globe, or rind. Iffor any reason the space ship listed in one direction or the other, theinner globe, while it rose and fell naturally, remained upright, itsfloor always level so that, the gyroscope controlling the whole, thecentral, levitating, ray would always, must always, as it proved, pointdownward.

  Try as they might, the partners could not see how the Three manipulatedthe ray. They guessed that there were many buttons on the table at whichthey sat. The table itself was not an ordinary table. What might havebeen called a fifth leg, squarely under the center of the table, wasabout three feet square. Through this, Jeter guessed, ran the wires bywhich they controlled all their activities, machinery to operate whichhad been installed under the floor in the unseen lower half of the innerglobe.

  They knew that
must remain forever a secret from them.

  There was a sudden stir among the Three. Jeter and Eyer turned aside fora moment to peer down upon New York City. They held their breath withhorror as they saw the smoking devastation which must have buriedthousands of people. The wrecking had been all but complete. Only thefinest buildings still stood. Jeter wondered why the falling back of theshattered buildings had not shaken down those which the Sitsumi crowdhad not wished to destroy. The repeated shocks must almost have shakenManhattan Island on its foundations.

  They saw what had caused the sudden stiffening of the Three. Sitsumi,busily engaged at something else nearby, quietly approached the Three.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  "Rescue planes," said Wang Li. "New York City sends six fliers to rescueJeter and Eyer. New planes. They'll reach us, Sitsumi. We should havethought to destroy all dangerous air ports. A fatal oversight!"

  Sitsumi's eyes were grave. He looked at each of the Three in turn.

  "God!" said Jeter's whispering lips. "If we could read their minds! Ifonly we could guess what it is they fear, we'd have the secret by whichwe might destroy them."

  "They're vulnerable," said Eyer, "but how?"

  "Watch!" said Jeter. "Listen! And here's to those six unknowns coming upto, maybe, get the same dose we're due for! We were closely watched. NewYork City knows exactly where we vanished in the sky. Those six planesare aiming at us--at a spot in the stratosphere they can't see. And yet,why should Sitsumi and the Three be so fearful? All they have to do ismove a half mile in any direction and they'll never find them."

  "But to move will interfere with their plans," said Eyer. "Lucian, lookat the expressions on their faces! Something tells me they arevulnerable in ways we haven't guessed at. If we knew the secret maybe wecould destroy them. We've got to discover their weak spot."

  * * * * *

  There was a long pause while Jeter and Eyer watched the rescue shipscome climbing up the endless stairways of the sky. Then Jeter whisperedagain, guardedly as usual.

  "There seems to be nothing we can do. If our friends are able, by somemiracle, to do something, you know what that means to us?"

  "It means we're as good as dead no matter what happens," replied Eyer."But we're only two--and there must be a million buried under the debrisin New York City alone. If we can do anything at all...."

  There he left it. The partners looked at each other. Each read the rightanswer in the other's eyes. When the showdown came they'd die ascheerfully as they knew how, hoping to the last to do something for thepeople who must still hope that, somehow, they would cause this bittercup of catastrophe to pass from them. And there were thousands uponthousands whose blood cried out for vengeance.

  The hours sped as the six planes fled upward. To the ears of thepartners, through the audiphones, came the stern roaring of theirmotors. In their eyes they bulked larger and larger as the time fledaway.

  The sand in the hour glass was running out. When it was all gone, andthe time had come, what could the helpless Jeter and Eyer hope toaccomplish?

  For an hour they studied the concerned faces of Sitsumi and the Three.

  They were fearful of something.

  What?