Lords of the Stratosphere Page 3

  CHAPTER III

  _Strange Levitation_

  "In two days we'll be ready, Tema," said Lucian Jeter quietly. "And makeno mistake about it; when we take off for the stratosphere we're goingto encounter strange things. Nobody can tell me that Kress' planeactually flew three weeks! And where did it come down? Why didn't Kressuse the parachute ball? Where is it? I'll wager we'll find answers toplenty of those questions--if we live!"

  "If we live?" repeated Eyer. "You mean--?"

  "You know what happened to Kress? Or rather you know the result of whathappened to him?"

  "Sure."

  "Why should we be immune? I tell you, Eyer, we're on the eve ofsomething colossal, awe-inspiring--perhaps catastrophic."

  Eyer grinned. Jeter grinned back at him. If they knew they flewinescapably to death they still would have grinned. They had plenty ofcourage.

  "We'd better go into town for a meeting with newspaper people," went onJeter. "You know how things go in the news; there are probably plenty ofstories which for one reason or another have not been published. Maybethe law has clamped down on some of them. I've a feeling that ifeverything were told, the whole world would be frightened stiff. And younotice how quickly the papers finished with the Kress' thing."

  Eyer knew, all right. The papers had broken the story of the return inflaming scareheads. Then the thing had come to a full stop. It wassignificant that no real satisfactory explanation had been offered byany one. The papers had, on their own initiative, tried to communicatewith Sitsumi, and the three Chinese scientists, and had failed allaround. Sitsumi did not answer, denied himself to representatives of theAmerican press in Japan, and crawled into an impenetrable Orientalshell. The three Chinese could not answer, according to advices fromPeking, because they could not be located.

  Jeter called the publisher of the leading newspaper for a conference.

  "Strange that you should have called just now," said the publisher, "forI was on the point of calling you and Eyer and inviting you to aconference to be held this evening at my office in Manhattan."

  "What's the purpose of your conference? Who will attend?"

  "I--I--well, let us say I had hoped to make you and Eyer available toall interviewers on the eve of your flight into the stratosphere."

  Jeter hesitated, realizing that the publisher did not wish to telleverything over the telephone.

  "We'll be right along, sir," he said.

  * * * * *

  It took an hour for them to reach the publisher's office. Wires hadplainly been pulled, too, for a motorcycle escort joined them at theQueensboro Bridge and led them, sirens screaming, to their meeting withGeorge Hadley, the publisher.

  They looked at each other in surprise when they were admitted to themeeting.

  Hadley's huge offices were packed. The mayor was there, the policecommissioner, the assistant to the head of Federal Secret Service. TheState Governor had sent a representative. All the newspapers had theirmost famous men sitting in. Right in this one big room was representedalmost the entire public opinion of the United States. Americanrepresentatives of foreign newspapers were there. And there wasn't asmile on a single face.

  It was beginning to be borne in upon everybody that the WesternHemisphere was in the grip of a strange unearthly malady--almost an_other_-earthly malady, but what was it?

  Hadley nodded to the two scientists and they took the seats heindicated.

  Hadley cleared his throat and spoke.

  "We have here people who represent the press of the world," he said. "Wehave men who control billions in money. I don't know how many of youhave thought along the same lines as I have, but I feel that after Ihave finished speaking most of you will. First, there are certain newsstories which, for reasons of policy, never reach the pages of ourpapers. I shall now tell you some of them...."

  The whole crowd shifted slightly in its chairs. There was a strainedleaning forward. Grave faces went whiter as they anticipated grippingannouncements.

  "All the strange things have not been happening in the United States,gentlemen," said Hadley. "That young fellow who reported seeing thecolumns of light in Arizona--you remember?--"

  There was a chorus of nods.

  "He probably told the exact truth, as far as he knew it. But it isn'tonly in Arizona that it has been seen--those columns I mean. Only thereis just one column--not five. It has since been reported in Nepal andBhutan, in Egypt and Morocco and a dozen other places. But in the casesof such stories emanating from foreign countries, a congress ofpublishers has withheld the facts, not because of their strangeness butbecause of the effect they might have on the public sanity. In Nepal,for example, the column of light rested for a moment on an ancienttemple, and when the light vanished the temple also had vanished, witheverybody in it at the time for worship! Rumor had it that some of theworshipers were later found and identified. They appear to have beenscattered over half of Nepal--and every last one was smashed almost to apulp, as though the body had been dropped from an enormous height."

  A concerted gasp raced around the assemblage. Then silence again, whilethe pale-faced Hadley went on with his unbelievable story.

  * * * * *

  "A mad story comes from the heart of the _terai_, in India. I don't knowwhat importance to give this story since the only witnesses to thephenomenon were ignorant natives. But the column of light played intothe _terai_--and tigers, huge snakes, buffalo and even elephants rosebodily over the treetops and vanished. They started up slowly--thendisappeared with the speed of light."

  "Were crushed animals later found in the jungle?" asked Jeter quietly.

  Hadley turned his somber eyes on the questioner. Every white face, everyfearful eye, also turned toward Jeter.

  And Hadley nodded.

  "It's too much to be coincidence," he said. "The crushed and brokenbodies in Nepal and India--of course they aren't so far apart but thatnatives in either place might have heard the story from the other--but Iam inclined to believe in the inner truth of the stories in each case."

  Hadley turned to the two scientists. There were other scientistspresent, but the fact that Jeter and Eyer, who were so soon to followKress into the stratosphere--and eternity?--held the places of honornear the desk of the spokesman, was significant.

  "What do you gentlemen think?" asked Hadley quietly.

  "There is undoubtedly some connection between the two happenings," saidJeter. "I think Eyer and myself will be able to make some report on thematter soon. We will, take off for the stratosphere day afterto-morrow."

  "Then you think the same thing I do?" said Hadley. "If that is so, can'tyou start to-morrow? God knows what may happen if we delaylonger--though what two of you can do against something which appears toblanket the earth, and strikes from the heavens, I don't know. And yet,the fate of your country may be in your hands."

  "We realize that," said Jeter, while Eyer nodded.

  Hadley opened his mouth to make some other observation, then closed itagain, tightly, as a horrible thing happened.

  The conference was being held on the tenth floor of the Hadley building.And just as Hadley started to speak the whole building began to shake,to tremble as with the ague. Jeter turned his eyes on the others, to seetheir faces blurred by the vibration of the entire building.

  Swiftly then he looked toward the windows of the big room.

  Outside the south windows he witnessed an unbelievable thing. Out therewas a twelve-story building, and its lighted windows were moving--not toright or left, but straight up! The movement gave the same impressionwhich passing windows give to one in an elevator. Either that otherbuilding was rising straight into the air, or the Hadley building wassinking into the Earth.

  * * * * *

  "Quick, Hadley!" yelled Jeter. "To the roof the fastest way possible!"

  Even as Jeter spoke every last light in the building across the way wentout. Jeter knew then that it was the o
ther building that was moving--andthat electrical connection with the earth had been severed.

  Hadley led the way to the roof, four stories above. Fortunately this wasan old building and they didn't have to wait to travel a hundred floorsor so. The whole conference followed at the heels of Hadley, Jeter andEyer.

  They reached the roof at top speed.

  They were first conscious of the cries of despair, of disbelief, ofhorror which rose from the street canyons below them. But they forgotthese the next instant at what they saw.

  The Vandercook building, the twelve-story building whose lights Jeterhad seen moving, was rising bodily, straight out of the well which hadbeen built around it. From the building came shrieks and cries of mortalterror. Even as the conference froze to horrified immobility, many menand women stepped to the ledges of those darkened windows and plungedout in their fear.

  "God!" said Hadley.

  "It's just as well," said Jeter in a far-away voice, "they haven't achance anyway!"

  "I know," replied Hadley. "God, Jeter, isn't there something we can do?"

  "I hope to find something," said Jeter. "But just now I'm afraid we arehelpless."

  The Vandercook building continued to rise. It did not totter; it simplyrose in its entirety, leaving the gaping hole into which, decades ago,it had been built. It rose straight into the sky, apparently of its ownvolition. No rays of light, no supernatural agencies could be seen orfancied. The utterly impossible was happening. A building was a-wing.

  Jeter and Eyer looked at each other with protruding eyes.

  * * * * *

  Then they looked back at the Vandercook, whose base now was on a levelwith the roof of the Hadley building.

  "See?" said Hadley. "Not so much as a brick falls from the foundation.It's--it's--ghastly."

  Jeter would never forget the screams of mortal terror which came fromthe lips of the doomed who had been working late in the Vandercookbuilding--for, horror piled upon horror, those who had sought to escapecalamity did not fall to Earth at all, but, at the same speed of therising building, traveled skyward with it, human flies outside thoseleering dark windows.

  Then, free of New York's skyline, the flying building was gone with arush. A thousand feet above New York's tallest building, the Vandercookchanged direction and moved directly into the west.

  The conference watched it go....

  "Commissioner," Jeter yelled at the police chief of Manhattan, "get wordout at once for all lights to be put out in the city! Hurry! Radio wouldbe fastest."

  In ten minutes Manhattan was a darkened, silent city ... and now theconference could see why Jeter had asked for all lights to beextinguished.

  Five thousand feet aloft, directly over the Hudson River, the Vandercookbuilding now hung motionless--and all eyes saw the thin column of light.It came down from the dark skies from a vast distance, widening toencompass the top of the Vandercook building.

  The Vandercook building might almost have been a mouse caught in thetalons of some unbelievable night-hawk.

  As though some intellect had just realized the significance of NewYork's sudden darkness; as though that intellect had realized that thecolumn was ordinarily invisible because of Manhattan's brilliantincandescents, and now was visible in the darkness--the column of lightsnapped out....

  "God Almighty! May the Lord of Hosts save the world from destruction!"

  From New York's canyons, from the roof of the Hadley building, came thegreat composite prayer.

  A whistling shriek, growing second by second into enormous proportions,came out of the west, above the Hudson.