Lords of the Stratosphere Page 8

  CHAPTER VIII

  _Cataclysmic Hunger_

  Eyer thrust out his hand to cut the motor. Jeter stayed it.

  "I've an idea," he said softly; "let it run. We'll learn something moreabout the sensitiveness of this material."

  The motor was cut to idling. The plane scarcely trembled now in the pullof the motor, so firmly was she held in the grip of the shadowy, vaguetentacles. A grim sort of silence had settled in the cabin. The faces ofthe two partners were dead white, but their eyes were fearless. They hadcome aloft to give their lives if need be. They wouldn't try to get themback now. Besides, what use was there?

  Jeter paused for a moment in thought.

  Then he began to examine some of their weapons. The only one by whichthey could fire outside the plane--due to the necessity of keeping thecabin closed to retain oxygen--was the rapid firer on the wing. Thiscould be depressed enough to fire downward at an angle of forty-fivedegrees. Jeter hesitated for a moment.

  He looked at Eyer. Eyer grinned. "It can't bring death to us anysooner," he said. "Let her go!"

  Jeter tripped the rapid firer and held it for half a minute, duringwhich time three hundred projectiles, eight inches long by two inches indiameter, were poured into the invisible surface. The bullets simplyaccomplished nothing. It was almost as though the field had simplyopened its mouth to catch thrown food. There was no movement of thefield, no jarring, no vibration. Nor did the plane itself tremble orshake. Jeter had to stop the rapid firer because its base, the plane,was now so firmly fixed that the recoil might kick the gun out of itsmount.

  Now the partners sat and looked out through the windows of unbreakableglass, watching the work of those tentacular fingers.

  "How does it feel, Tema, to be eaten alive?" asked Jeter.

  "Have you radiophoned Hadley about what's happening to us?"

  "No," replied Jeter. "It would frighten the world half out of its wits.Besides, what can we say has caught us? We don't know."

  "And what are we going to do about it?"

  * * * * *

  "We're going to wait. I've a theory about some of this. We know blamedwell that, except for the most miraculous luck, you couldn't have setthe plane down on this field without it slipping off again. Well there'sonly one answer to that: the rubbery resilience of the surface. It musthave given a little to hold the plane--and us when we walked on it. Whatdoes that mean? Simply that we were seen and the field made usable forus by some intelligence. That intelligence watches us now. It saved ourlives for some reason or other. It didn't destroy us when we wereafoot out there. It isn't destroying us now. It's swallowing uswhole--and for some reason. Why? That we'll have to discover. But Ithink we can rest easy on one thing. We're not to be killed by thisswallowing act, else we'd have been dead before now."

  "Have you any idea what this stuff is?"

  "Yes, but the idea is so wild and improbable that I'm reluctant to tellyou what I guess until I know more. However, if it develops that we areto die in this swallowing act, then I'll give you a tip--and it willprobably knock you off your pedestal. But the more I think of it themore certain I am that the whole things is at least a variation of myidea. And the brains behind it, if my guess proves even approximatelycorrect, will be too great for us to win mastery except by somemiraculous accident favoring us--and true miracles come but seldom inthese days."

  "No? What do you call this?"

  Jeter shrugged.

  With many ports all around the cabin, all fitted with unbreakable glass,it was possible for the partners to see out in all directions. Thetentacle fingers had now climbed up to a height sufficient to smotherboth windows. The fuselage was about half swallowed.

  "I can almost hear the stuff sigh inwardly with satisfaction as it takesus in," said Eyer.

  "I have the same feeling. There's a peculiar sound about it too; do youhear it?"

  They listened. The sound which came into the cabin was such a sound asmight have been heard by a man inside a cylinder lying on the bottom ofa still pond. A whisper that was less than a whisper--a _moving_whisper. In it were life and death, and grim terror.

  * * * * *

  And then--remembering that contact with the propeller would shatter it,Tema cut the switch--the propeller stopped, the motor died, and uttersilence, in the midst of an utter absence of vibration, possessed thecomfortable little cabin. It was hard to believe. The cabin was a breathof home. It was a home. And it was being swallowed by some substanceconcerning which Eyer had no ideas at all and Jeter but a growingsuspicion.

  The plane sank lower and lower. The surface of the field was now almostto the top of the cabin doors. Most of the windows had been erased, butit made no particular difference in the matter of light. Jeter had putout his hand to snap on the lights, but stayed it when he saw that lightcame through to them.

  Moment by moment the mystery of the swallowing deepened. It was likesinking into a snow bank. There was a sensation of smothering, though itwas not uncomfortable because the cabin itself was self-sufficient inall respects to maintain life for a long period of time.

  It was like sinking slowly into the depths of the sea.

  The last port on the sides of the plane was erased. Now the two sat intheir chairs and stared up at the ceiling, and at the glass-protectedports there. It was grim business. They almost held their breath as theywaited.

  At last those blurred tentacles began to creep across the lowest of theceiling ports. Faster they came, and faster. In a few minutes every portwas covered with a film of the weird stuff.

  "It may be a foot deep above us," said Jeter. "I don't think we'll beable to tell how thick any bit of the stuff is. The surface of the fieldmay be ten feet above our heads right now. Well, Tema, old son, we'reprisoners as surely as though we were locked in a chrome steel vault athousand feet underground. We can't go anywhere, or come back if we gothere. We're prisoners, that's all--and all we can do is wait."

  Eyer grinned.

  Jeter began nonchalantly to slip off his helmet and goggles. He doffedhis flying coat. In a short time the two might have been sitting overliquor and cigars in their own library at Mineola.

  "Expecting company?" asked Eyer.

  "Most emphatically," replied Jeter. "Company that is an unknownquantity. Company that will be wholly and entirely interesting."

  So they waited. They could now feel themselves sinking faster into thesubstance. They settled on an even keel, however, but more rapidly thanbefore, as though the directing intelligence behind all these had tiredof showing them his wonders and was eager to get on with the business ofthe day.

  Eyer happened to look down at one of the ports in the floor of thecabin.

  "Good God!" he yelled, "Lucian!"

  * * * * *

  He was pointing. His face had gone white again. His eyes were bulging.Jeter stared down into the floor ports--and gasped.

  "I expected it, but it's a shock just the same, Tema," he said softly."Get hold of yourself. You'll need all your faculties in a minute ortwo."

  Through the ports they found themselves staring down all of twenty feetupon a milky white globe, set inside the greater, softer globe throughwhich they were passing, like a kernel in a shell.

  The plane was oozing through the "rind" which protected the strangeglobe below against the cold and discomfort of the stratosphere.

  "They'd scarcely bring us this far to drop us, would they?" asked Eyer.

  He was making a distinct effort to regain control of himself. His voicewas normal, his breathing regular--and he had spoken thus to show Jeterthat this was so.

  "Whether we're to be dropped or lowered is all one to us," he said,"since we can do nothing in either case. Twenty feet of fall wouldn'tsmash us up much."

  "Let's keep our eyes on the ceiling ports and see how this swallowingjob is really done."

  They alternately looked through the floor ports and the ceiling ports.

/>   Under them the gray mass was crawling backward off the floor ports,leaving them clear. Now all of them were clear. Now the gray stuff beganto vanish from the lower ports on either side of the cabin.

  "I feel as though we were being digested and cast forth," said Jeter.

  The action of the stuff was something like that. It had swallowed themin their entirety and now was disgorging them.

  They watched the stuff move off the ports one by one, on either side.The lower ones were free. Then those next above, the gray substanceretreating with what seemed to be pouting reluctance. Finally even thetopmost ports were clear.

  "The drop comes soon," said Eyer.

  "Wait, maybe not."

  * * * * *

  They concentrated on the ceiling ports for a moment, but the clingingstuff did not vanish from them. They turned back to look through thefloor ports. Right under them was the milky globe whose surface couldeasily accommodate their plane. If they had needed further proof of someguiding intelligence behind all this, that cleared space was it. Theywere being deliberately lowered to a landing place through a portion ofthe "rind" made soft in some mechanical way to allow the weight of theirplane to sink through it.

  They looked up again. Great masses of the gray substance still clung tothe top of their cabin, like sticky tar. The substance was rubbery andlifelike in its resiliency, its tenacious grasp upon the Jeter-Eyerplane. By this means the plane was lowered to the "ground." Jeter andEyer watched, fascinated, as the stuff slipped and lost its grip, andslowly retracted to become part of the dome above.

  The plane had come through this white roof, bearing its two passengers,and now above them there was no slightest mark to show where they hadcome forth.

  They rested on even keel atop the inner globe which they now could seewas attached to the outer globe in countless places.

  "I wonder if we dare risk getting out," said Eyer.

  "I think so," said Jeter. "Look there!"

  A trapdoor, shaped something like the profile of an ordinary milkbottle, was opening in the white globe just outside their plane. Framedin the door was a face. It was a dark face, but it was a human one--andthe man's body below that face was dressed as simply, and in almost thesame fashion, as were Jeter and Eyer themselves. He wore no oxygen tanksor clothing to keep out the cold.

  The partners, lips firmly set, nodded to each other and began to opentheir doors. Imperturbably the dark man came to meet them.

  Still other dark faces emerged from the door.