The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sky Trap, by Frank Belknap Long
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Title: The Sky Trap
Author: Frank Belknap Long
Release Date: January 3, 2008 [EBook #24151]
Language: English
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[Illustration: _Nothing affected it._]
The SKY TRAP
by FRANK BELKNAP LONG
Lawton enjoyed a good fight. He stood happily trading blows with
Slashaway Tommy, his lean-fleshed torso gleaming with sweat. He
preferred to work the pugnacity out of himself slowly, to savor it as
it ebbed.
"Better luck next time, Slashaway," he said, and unlimbered a left hook
that thudded against his opponent's jaw with such violence that the big,
hairy ape crumpled to the resin and rolled over on his back.
Lawton brushed a lock of rust-colored hair back from his brow and stared
down at the limp figure lying on the descending stratoship's slightly
tilted athletic deck.
"Good work, Slashaway," he said. "You're primitive and beetle-browed,
but you've got what it takes."
Lawton flattered himself that he was the opposite of primitive. High in
the sky he had predicted the weather for eight days running, with far
more accuracy than he could have put into a punch.
They'd flash his report all over Earth in a couple of minutes now. From
New York to London to Singapore and back. In half an hour he'd be
donning street clothes and stepping out feeling darned good.
He had fulfilled his weekly obligation to society by manipulating
meteorological instruments for forty-five minutes, high in the warm,
upper stratosphere and worked off his pugnacity by knocking down a
professional gym slugger. He would have a full, glorious week now to
work off all his other drives.
The stratoship's commander, Captain Forrester, had come up, and was
staring at him reproachfully. "Dave, I don't hold with the reforming
Johnnies who want to re-make human nature from the ground up. But you've
got to admit our generation knows how to keep things humming with a
minimum of stress. We don't have world wars now because we work off our
pugnacity by sailing into gym sluggers eight or ten times a week. And
since our romantic emotions can be taken care of by tactile television
we're not at the mercy of every brainless bit of fluff's calculated
ankle appeal."
Lawton turned, and regarded him quizzically. "Don't you suppose I
realize that? You'd think I just blew in from Mars."
"All right. We have the outlets, the safety valves. They are supposed to
keep us civilized. But you don't derive any benefit from them."
"The heck I don't. I exchange blows with Slashaway every time I board
the Perseus. And as for women--well, there's just one woman in the world
for me, and I wouldn't exchange her for all the Turkish images in the
tactile broadcasts from Stamboul."
"Yes, I know. But you work off your primitive emotions with too much
gusto. Even a cast-iron gym slugger can bruise. That last blow
was--brutal. Just because Slashaway gets thumped and thudded all over by
the medical staff twice a week doesn't mean he can take--"
The stratoship lurched suddenly. The deck heaved up under Lawton's feet,
hurling him against Captain Forrester and spinning both men around so
that they seemed to be waltzing together across the ship. The still limp
gym slugger slid downward, colliding with a corrugated metal bulkhead
and sloshing back and forth like a wet mackerel.
A full minute passed before Lawton could put a stop to that. Even while
careening he had been alive to Slashaway's peril, and had tried to leap
to his aid. But the ship's steadily increasing gyrations had hurled him
away from the skipper and against a massive vaulting horse, barking the
flesh from his shins and spilling him with violence onto the deck.
He crawled now toward the prone gym slugger on his hands and knees, his
temples thudding. The gyrations ceased an instant before he reached
Slashaway's side. With an effort he lifted the big man up, propped him
against the bulkhead and shook him until his teeth rattled. "Slashaway,"
he muttered. "Slashaway, old fellow."
Slashaway opened blurred eyes, "Phew!" he muttered. "You sure socked me
hard, sir."
"You went out like a light," explained Lawton gently. "A minute before
the ship lurched."
"The ship _lurched_, sir?"
"Something's very wrong, Slashaway. The ship isn't moving. There are no
vibrations and--Slashaway, are you hurt? Your skull thumped against that
bulkhead so hard I was afraid--"
"Naw, I'm okay. Whatd'ya mean, the ship ain't moving? How could it
stop?"
Lawton said. "I don't know, Slashaway." Helping the gym slugger to his
feet he stared apprehensively about him. Captain Forrester was kneeling
on the resin testing his hocks for sprains with splayed fingers, his
features twitching.
"Hurt badly, sir?"
The Commander shook his head. "I don't think so. Dave, we are twenty
thousand feet up, so how in hell could we be stationary in space?"
"It's all yours, skipper."
"I must say you're helpful."
Forrester got painfully to his feet and limped toward the athletic
compartment's single quartz port--a small circle of radiance on a level
with his eyes. As the port sloped downward at an angle of nearly sixty
degrees all he could see was a diffuse glimmer until he wedged his brow
in the observation visor and stared downward.
Lawton heard him suck in his breath sharply. "Well, sir?"
"There are thin cirrus clouds directly beneath us. They're not moving."
Lawton gasped, the sense of being in an impossible situation swelling to
nightmare proportions within him. What could have happened?
* * * * *
Directly behind him, close to a bulkhead chronometer, which was clicking
out the seconds with unabashed regularity, was a misty blue visiplate
that merely had to be switched on to bring the pilots into view.
The Commander hobbled toward it, and manipulated a rheostat. The two
pilots appeared side by side on the screen, sitting amidst a spidery
network of dully gleaming pipe lines and nichrome humidification units.
They had unbuttoned their high-altitude coats and their stratosphere
helmets were resting on their knees. The Jablochoff candle light which
flooded the pilot room accentuated the haggardness of their features,
which were a sickly cadaverous hue.
The captain spoke directly into the visiplate. "What's wrong with the
ship?" he demanded. "Why aren't we descending? Dawson, you do the
talking!"
One of the pilots leaned tensely forward, his shoulders jerking. "We
don't know, sir. The rotaries went dead when the ship started gyrating.
We can't work the emergency torps and the temperature is rising."
"But--it defies all logic," Forrester muttered. "How could a metal ship
weighing tons be suspended in the air like a balloon? It is stationary,
but it is not buoyant. We seem in all respects to be _frozen in_."
"The explanation may be simpler than you dream," Lawton said. "When
we've found the key."
The Captain swung toward him. "Could _you_ find the key, Dave?"
"I should like to try. It may be hidden somewhere on the ship, and then
again, it may not be. But I should like to go over the ship with a
fine-tooth comb, and then I should like to go over _outside_,
thoroughly. Suppose you make me an emergency mate and give me a carte
blanche, sir."
Lawton got his carte blanche. For two hours he did nothing spectacular,
but he went over every inch of the ship. He also lined up the crew and
pumped them. The men were as completely in the dark as the pilots and
the now completely recovered Slashaway, who was following Lawton about
like a doting seal.
"You're a right guy, sir. Another two or three cracks and my noggin
would've split wide open."
"But not like an eggshell, Slashaway. Pig iron develops fissures under
terrific pounding but your cranium seems to be more like tempered steel.
Slashaway, you won't understand this, but I've got to talk to somebody
and the Captain is too busy to listen.
"I went over the entire ship because I thought there might be a hidden
source of buoyancy somewhere. It would take a lot of air bubbles to
turn this ship into a balloon, but there are large vacuum chambers under
the multiple series condensers in the engine room which conceivably
could have sucked in a helium leakage from the carbon pile valves. And
there are bulkhead porosities which could have clogged."
"Yeah," muttered Slashaway, scratching his head. "I see what you mean,
sir."
"It was no soap. There's nothing _inside_ the ship that could possibly
keep us up. Therefore there must be something outside that isn't air. We
know there _is_ air outside. We've stuck our heads out and sniffed it.
And we've found out a curious thing.
"Along with the oxygen there is water vapor, but it isn't H2O. It's HO.
A molecular arrangement like that occurs in the upper Solar atmosphere,
but nowhere on Earth. And there's a thin sprinkling of hydrocarbon
molecules out there too. Hydrocarbon appears ordinarily as methane gas,
but out there it rings up as CH. Methane is CH4. And there are also
scandium oxide molecules making unfamiliar faces at us. And oxide of
boron--with an equational limp."
"Gee," muttered Slashaway. "We're up against it, eh?"
Lawton was squatting on his hams beside an emergency 'chute opening on
the deck of the Penguin's weather observatory. He was letting down a
spliced beryllium plumb line, his gaze riveted on the slowly turning
horizontal drum of a windlass which contained more than two hundred feet
of gleaming metal cordage.
Suddenly as he stared the drum stopped revolving. Lawton stiffened, a
startled expression coming into his face. He had been playing a hunch
that had seemed as insane, rationally considered, as his wild idea about
the bulkhead porosities. For a moment he was stunned, unable to believe
that he had struck pay dirt. The winch indicator stood at one hundred
and three feet, giving him a rich, fruity yield of startlement.
One hundred feet below him the plummet rested on something solid that
sustained it in space. Scarcely breathing, Lawton leaned over the
windlass and stared downward. There was nothing visible between the ship
and the fleecy clouds far below except a tiny black dot resting on
vacancy and a thin beryllium plumb line ascending like an interrogation
point from the dot to the 'chute opening.
"You see something down there?" Slashaway asked.
Lawton moved back from the windlass, his brain whirling. "Slashaway
there's a solid surface directly beneath us, but it's completely
invisible."
"You mean it's like a frozen cloud, sir?"
"No, Slashaway. It doesn't shimmer, or deflect light. Congealed water
vapor would sink instantly to earth."
"You think it's all around us, sir?"
Lawton stared at Slashaway aghast. In his crude fumblings the gym
slugger had ripped a hidden fear right out of his subconsciousness into
the light.
"I don't know, Slashaway," he muttered. "I'll get at that next."
* * * * *
A half hour later Lawton sat beside the captain's desk in the control
room, his face drained of all color. He kept his gaze averted as he
talked. A man who succeeds too well with an unpleasant task may develop
a subconscious sense of guilt.
"Sir, we're suspended inside a hollow sphere which resembles a huge,
floating soap bubble. Before we ripped through it it must have had a
plastic surface. But now the tear has apparently healed over, and the
shell all around us is as resistant as steel. We're completely bottled
up, sir. I shot rocket leads in all directions to make certain."
The expression on Forrester's face sold mere amazement down the river.
He could not have looked more startled if the nearer planets had
yielded their secrets chillingly, and a super-race had appeared suddenly
on Earth.
"Good God, Dave. Do you suppose something has happened to space?"
Lawton raised his eyes with a shudder. "Not necessarily, sir. Something
has happened to _us_. We're floating through the sky in a huge,
invisible bubble of some sort, but we don't know whether it has anything
to do with space. It may be a meteorological phenomenon."
"You say we're floating?"
"We're floating slowly westward. The clouds beneath us have been
receding for fifteen or twenty minutes now."
"Phew!" muttered Forrester. "That means we've got to--"
He broke off abruptly. The Perseus' radio operator was standing in the
doorway, distress and indecision in his gaze. "Our reception is
extremely sporadic, sir," he announced. "We can pick up a few of the
stronger broadcasts, but our emergency signals haven't been answered."
"Keep trying," Forrester ordered.
"Aye, aye, sir."
The captain turned to Lawton. "Suppose we call it a bubble. Why are we
suspended like this, immovably? Your rocket leads shot up, and the plumb
line dropped one hundred feet. Why should the ship itself remain
stationary?"
Lawton said: "The bubble must possess sufficient internal equilibrium to
keep a big, heavy body suspended at its core. In other words, we must be
suspended at the hub of converging energy lines."
"You mean we're surrounded by an electromagnetic field?"
Lawton frowned. "Not necessarily, sir. I'm simply pointing out that
there must be an energy tug of _some_ sort involved. Otherwise the ship
would be resting on the inner surface of the bubble."
Forrester nodded grimly. "We should be thankful, I suppose, that we can
move about inside the ship. Dave, do you think a man could descend to
the inner surface?"
"I've no doubt that a man could, sir. Shall I let myself down?"
"Absolutely not. Damn it, Dave, I need your energies inside the ship. I
could wish for a less impulsive first officer, but a man in my
predicament can't be choosy."
"Then what _are_ your orders, sir?"
"Orders? Do I have to order you to think? Is working something out for
yourself such a strain? We're drifting straight toward the Atlantic
Ocean. What do you propose to do about that?"
"I expect I'll have to do my best, sir."
Lawton's "best" conflicted dynamically with the captain's orders. Ten
minutes later he was descending, hand over hand, on a swaying emergency
ladder.
"Tough-fibered Davie goes down to look around," he grumbled.
He was conscious that he was flirting with danger. The air outside was
breathable, but would the diffuse, unorthodox gases injure his lungs? He
didn't know, couldn't be sure. But he had to admit that he felt all
right _so far_. He was seventy feet below the ship and not at all dizzy.
When he looked down he could see the purple domed summits of mountains
between gaps in the fleecy cloud blanket.
He couldn't see the Atlantic Ocean--yet. He descended the last thirty
feet with mounting confidence. At the end of the ladder he braced
himself and let go.
He fell about six feet, landing on his rump on a spongy surface that
bounced him back and forth. He was vaguely incredulous when he found
himself sitting in the sky staring through his spread legs at clouds and
mountains.
He took a deep breath. It struck him that the sensation of falling could
be present without movement downward through space. He was beginning to
experience such a sensation. His stomach twisted and his brain spun.
He was suddenly sorry he had tried this. It was so damnably unnerving he
was afraid of losing all emotional control. He stared up, his eyes
squinting against the sun. Far above him the gleaming, wedge-shaped bulk
of the Perseus loomed colossally, blocking out a fifth of the sky.
Lowering his right hand he ran his fingers over the invisible surface
beneath him. The surface felt rubbery, moist.
He got swayingly to his feet and made a perilous attempt to walk through
the sky. Beneath his feet the mysterious surface crackled, and little
sparks flew up about his legs. Abruptly he sat down again, his face
ashen.
From the emergency 'chute opening far above a massive head appeared.
"You all right, sir," Slashaway called, his voice vibrant with concern.
"Well, I--"
"You'd better come right up, sir. Captain's orders."
"All right," Lawton shouted. "Let the ladder down another ten feet."
Lawton ascended rapidly, resentment smouldering within him. What right
had the skipper to interfere? He had passed the buck, hadn't he?
* * * * *
Lawton got another bad jolt the instant he emerged through the 'chute
opening. Captain Forrester was leaning against a parachute rack gasping
for breath, his face a livid hue.
Slashaway looked equally bad. His jaw muscles were twitching and he was
tugging at the collar of his gym suit.
Forrester gasped: "Dave, I tried to move the ship. I didn't know you
were outside."
"Good God, you didn't know--"
"The rotaries backfired and used up all the oxygen in the engine room.
Worse, there's been a carbonic oxide seepage. The air is contaminated
throughout the ship. We'll have to open the ventilation valves
immediately. I've been waiting to see if--if you could breathe down
there. You're all right, aren't you? The air _is_ breathable?"
Lawton's face was dark with fury. "I was an experimental rat in the sky,
eh?"
"Look, Dave, we're all in danger. Don't stand there glaring at me.
Naturally I waited. I have my crew to think of."
"Well, think of them. Get those valves open before we all have
convulsions."
A half hour later charcoal gas was mingling with oxygen outside the
ship, and the crew was breathing it in again gratefully. Thinly
dispersed, and mixed with oxygen it seemed all right. But Lawton had
misgivings. No matter how attenuated a lethal gas is it is never
entirely harmless. To make matters worse, they were over the Atlantic
Ocean.
Far beneath them was an emerald turbulence, half obscured by eastward
moving cloud masses. The bubble was holding, but the morale of the crew
was beginning to sag.
Lawton paced the control room. Deep within him unsuspected energies
surged. "We'll last until the oxygen is breathed up," he exclaimed.
"We'll have four or five days, at most. But we seem to be traveling
faster than an ocean liner. With luck, we'll be in Europe before we
become carbon dioxide breathers."
"Will that help matters, Dave?" said the captain wearily.
"If we can blast our way out, it will."
The Captain's sagging body jackknifed erect. "Blast our way out? What do
you mean, Dave?"
"I've clamped expulsor disks on the cosmic ray absorbers and trained
them downward. A thin stream of accidental neutrons directed against the
bottom of the bubble may disrupt its energies--wear it thin. It's a
long gamble, but worth taking. We're staking nothing, remember?"
Forrester sputtered: "Nothing but our lives! If you blast a hole in the
bubble you'll destroy its energy balance. Did that occur to you? Inside
a lopsided bubble we may careen dangerously or fall into the sea before
we can get the rotaries started."
"I thought of that. The pilots are standing by to start the rotaries the
instant we lurch. If we succeed in making a rent in the bubble we'll
break out the helicoptic vanes and descend vertically. The rotaries
won't backfire again. I've had their burnt-out cylinder heads replaced."
An agitated voice came from the visiplate on the captain's desk: "Tuning
in, sir."
Lawton stopped pacing abruptly. He swung about and grasped the desk edge
with both hands, his head touching Forrester's as the two men stared
down at the horizontal face of petty officer James Caldwell.
Caldwell wasn't more than twenty-two or three, but the screen's
opalescence silvered his hair and misted the outlines of his jaw, giving
him an aspect of senility.
"Well, young man," Forrester growled. "What is it? What do you want?"
The irritation in the captain's voice seemed to increase Caldwell's
agitation. Lawton had to say: "All right, lad, let's have it," before
the information which he had seemed bursting to impart could be wrenched
out of him.
It came in erratic spurts. "The bubble is all blooming, sir. All around
inside there are big yellow and purple growths. It started up above,
and--and spread around. First there was just a clouding over of the sky,
sir, and then--stalks shot out."
For a moment Lawton felt as though all sanity had been squeezed from his
brain. Twice he started to ask a question and thought better of it.
Pumpings were superfluous when he could confirm Caldwell's statement in
half a minute for himself. If Caldwell had cracked up--
Caldwell hadn't cracked. When Lawton walked to the quartz port and
stared down all the blood drained from his face.
The vegetation was luxuriant, and unearthly. Floating in the sky were
serpentine tendrils as thick as a man's wrist, purplish flowers and ropy
fungus growths. They twisted and writhed and shot out in all directions,
creating a tangle immediately beneath him and curving up toward the ship
amidst a welter of seed pods.
He could see the seeds dropping--dropping from pods which reminded him
of the darkly horned skate egg sheaths which he had collected in his
boyhood from sea beaches at ebb tide.
It was the _unwholesomeness_ of the vegetation which chiefly unnerved
him. It looked dank, malarial. There were decaying patches on the fungus
growths and a miasmal mist was descending from it toward the ship.
The control room was completely still when he turned from the quartz
port to meet Forrester's startled gaze.
"Dave, what does it mean?" The question burst explosively from the
captain's lips.
"It means--life has appeared and evolved and grown rotten ripe inside
the bubble, sir. All in the space of an hour or so."
"But that's--_impossible_."
Lawton shook his head. "It isn't at all, sir. We've had it drummed into
us that evolution proceeds at a snailish pace, but what proof have we
that it can't mutate with lightning-like rapidity? I've told you there
are gases outside we can't even make in a chemical laboratory, molecular
arrangements that are alien to earth."
"But plants derive nourishment from the soil," interpolated Forrester.
"I know. But if there are alien gases in the air the surface of the
bubble must be reeking with unheard of chemicals. There may be compounds
inside the bubble which have so sped up organic processes that a
hundred million year cycle of mutations has been telescoped into an
hour."
Lawton was pacing the floor again. "It would be simpler to assume that
seeds of existing plants became somehow caught up and imprisoned in the
bubble. But the plants around us never existed on earth. I'm no
botanist, but I know what the Congo has on tap, and the great rain
forests of the Amazon."
"Dave, if the growth continues it will fill the bubble. It will choke
off all our air."
"Don't you suppose I realize that? We've got to destroy that growth
before it destroys us."
* * * * *
It was pitiful to watch the crew's morale sag. The miasmal taint of the
ominously proliferating vegetation was soon pervading the ship,
spreading demoralization everywhere.
It was particularly awful straight down. Above a ropy tangle of livid
vines and creepers a kingly stench weed towered, purplish and bloated
and weighted down with seed pods.
It seemed sentient, somehow. It was growing so fast that the evil odor
which poured from it could be correlated with the increase of tension
inside the ship. From that particular plant, minute by slow minute,
there surged a continuously mounting offensiveness, like nothing Lawton
had ever smelt before.
The bubble had become a blooming horror sailing slowly westward above
the storm-tossed Atlantic. And all the chemical agents which Lawton
sprayed through the ventilation valves failed to impede the growth or
destroy a single seed pod.
It was difficult to kill plant life with chemicals which were not
harmful to man. Lawton took dangerous risks, increasing the
unwholesomeness of their rapidly dwindling air supply by spraying out a
thin diffusion of problematically poisonous acids.
It was no sale. The growths increased by leaps and bounds, as though
determined to show their resentment of the measures taken against them
by marshalling all their forces in a demoralizing plantkrieg.
Thwarted, desperate, Lawton played his last card. He sent five members
of the crew, equipped with blow guns. They returned screaming. Lawton
had to fortify himself with a double whiskey soda before he could face
the look of reproach in their eyes long enough to get all of the
prickles out of them.
From then on pandemonium reigned. Blue funk seized the petty officers
while some of the crew ran amuck. One member of the engine watch
attacked four of his companions with a wrench; another went into the
ship's kitchen and slashed himself with a paring knife. The assistant
engineer leapt through a 'chute opening, after avowing that he preferred
impalement to suffocation.
He _was_ impaled. It was horrible. Looking down Lawton could see his
twisted body dangling on a crimson-stippled thornlike growth forty feet
in height.
Slashaway was standing at his elbow in that Waterloo moment, his
rough-hewn features twitching. "I can't stand it, sir. It's driving me
squirrelly."
"I know, Slashaway. There's something worse than marijuana weed down
there."
Slashaway swallowed hard. "That poor guy down there did the wise thing."
Lawton husked: "Stamp on that idea, Slashaway--kill it. We're stronger
than he was. There isn't an ounce of weakness in us. We've got what it
takes."
"A guy can stand just so much."
"Bosh. There's no limit to what a man can stand."
From the visiplate behind them came an urgent voice: "Radio room tuning
in, sir."
Lawton swung about. On the flickering screen the foggy outlines of a
face appeared and coalesced into sharpness.
The Perseus radio operator was breathless with excitement. "Our
reception is improving, sir. European short waves are coming in strong.
The static is terrific, but we're getting every station on the
continent, and most of the American stations."
Lawton's eyes narrowed to exultant slits. He spat on the deck, a slow
tremor shaking him.
"Slashaway, did you hear that? _We've done it._ We've won against hell
and high water."
"We done what, sir?"
"The bubble, you ape--it must be wearing thin. Hell's bells, do you have
to stand there gaping like a moronic ninepin? I tell you, we've got it
licked."
"I can't stand it, sir. I'm going nuts."
"No you're not. You're slugging the thing inside you that wants to quit.
Slashaway, I'm going to give the crew a first-class pep talk. There'll
be no stampeding while I'm in command here."
He turned to the radio operator. "Tune in the control room. Tell the
captain I want every member of the crew lined up on this screen
immediately."
The face in the visiplate paled. "I can't do that, sir. Ship's
regulations--"
Lawton transfixed the operator with an irate stare. "The captain told
you to report directly to me, didn't he?"
"Yes sir, but--"
"If you don't want to be cashiered, _snap into it_."
"Yes--yessir."
The captain's startled face preceded the duty-muster visiview by a full
minute, seeming to project outward from the screen. The veins on his
neck were thick blue cords.
"Dave," he croaked. "Are you out of your mind? What good will talking do
_now_?"
"Are the men lined up?" Lawton rapped, impatiently.
Forrester nodded. "They're all in the engine room, Dave."
"Good. Block them in."
The captain's face receded, and a scene of tragic horror filled the
opalescent visiplate. The men were not standing at attention at all.
They were slumping against the Perseus' central charging plant in
attitudes of abject despair.
* * * * *
Madness burned in the eyes of three or four of them. Others had torn
open their shirts, and raked their flesh with their nails. Petty officer
Caldwell was standing as straight as a totem pole, clenching and
unclenching his hands. The second assistant engineer was sticking out
his tongue. His face was deadpan, which made what was obviously a terror
reflex look like an idiot's grimace.
Lawton moistened his lips. "Men, listen to me. There is some sort of
plant outside that is giving off deliriant fumes. A few of us seem to be
immune to it.
"I'm not immune, but I'm fighting it, and all of you boys can fight it
too. I want you to fight it to the top of your courage. You can fight
_anything_ when you know that just around the corner is freedom from a
beastliness that deserves to be licked--even if it's only a plant.
"Men, we're blasting our way free. The bubble's wearing thin. Any minute
now the plants beneath us may fall with a soggy plop into the Atlantic
Ocean.
"I want every man jack aboard this ship to stand at his post and obey
orders. Right this minute you look like something the cat dragged in.
But most men who cover themselves with glory start off looking even
worse than you do."
He smiled wryly.
"I guess that's all. I've never had to make a speech in my life, and I'd
hate like hell to start now."
It was petty officer Caldwell who started the chant. He started it, and
the men took it up until it was coming from all of them in a
full-throated roar.
I'm a tough, true-hearted skyman,
Careless and all that, d'ye see?
Never at fate a railer,
What is time or tide to me?
All must die when fate shall will it,
I can never die but once,
I'm a tough, true-hearted skyman;
He who fears death is a dunce.
Lawton squared his shoulders. With a crew like that nothing could stop
him! Ah, his energies were surging high. The deliriant weed held no
terrors for him now. They were stout-hearted lads and he'd go to hell
with them cheerfully, if need be.
It wasn't easy to wait. The next half hour was filled with a steadily
mounting tension as Lawton moved like a young tornado about the ship,
issuing orders and seeing that each man was at his post.
"Steady, Jimmy. The way to fight a deliriant is to keep your mind on a
set task. Keep sweating, lad."
"Harry, that winch needs tightening. We can't afford to miss a trick."
"Yeah, it will come suddenly. We've got to get the rotaries started the
instant the bottom drops out."
He was with the captain and Slashaway in the control room when it came.
There was a sudden, grinding jolt, and the captain's desk started moving
toward the quartz port, carrying Lawton with it.
"Holy Jiminy cricket," exclaimed Slashaway.
The deck tilted sharply; then righted itself. A sudden gush of clear,
cold air came through the ventilation valves as the triple rotaries
started up with a roar.
Lawton and the captain reached the quartz port simultaneously. Shoulder
to shoulder they stood staring down at the storm-tossed Atlantic,
electrified by what they saw.
Floating on the waves far beneath them was an undulating mass of
vegetation, its surface flecked with glinting foam. As it rose and fell
in waning sunlight a tainted seepage spread about it, defiling the clean
surface of the sea.
But it wasn't the floating mass which drew a gasp from Forrester, and
caused Lawton's scalp to prickle. Crawling slowly across that
Sargasso-like island of noxious vegetation was a huge, elongated shape
which bore a nauseous resemblance to a mottled garden slug.
Forrester was trembling visibly when he turned from the quartz port.
"God, Dave, that would have been the _last straw_. Animal life. Dave,
I--I can't realize we're actually out of it."
"We're out, all right," Lawton said, hoarsely. "Just in time, too.
Skipper, you'd better issue grog all around. The men will be needing it.
I'm taking mine straight. You've accused me of being primitive. Wait
till you see me an hour from now."
Dr. Stephen Halday stood in the door of his Appalachian mountain
laboratory staring out into the pine-scented dusk, a worried expression
on his bland, small-featured face. It had happened again. A portion of
his experiment had soared skyward, in a very loose group of highly
energized wavicles. He wondered if it wouldn't form a sort of
sub-electronic macrocosm high in the stratosphere, altering even the air
and dust particles which had spurted up with it, its uncharged atomic
particles combining with hydrogen and creating new molecular
arrangements.
If such were the case there would be eight of them now. _His_ bubbles,
floating through the sky. They couldn't possibly harm anything--way up
there in the stratosphere. But he felt a little uneasy about it all the
same. He'd have to be more careful in the future, he told himself. Much
more careful. He didn't want the Controllers to turn back the clock of
civilization a century by stopping all atom-smashing experiments.
Transcriber's Note:
This e-text was produced from Comet July 1941. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.
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