FIGHTING DEATH
Even the exertion of leaning forward, slight as it was, proved dangerous
in the abnormal condition the high air produced in the human system. In
that instant of stooping forward, Hal Dane lost consciousness and fell
with his plane, like a plummet, through the thin air.
The rarefied state of stratosphere was as dangerously violent against
the human-made air machine as it was to the human body. Despite oil
emulsions on the wings, up here in this terrible cold, ice formed with
deadly quickness on every part of the machine. In an instant, the plane
was covered all over in a frozen layer an inch thick. Ice formed
continually on the propeller, and was as quickly thrown off in terrible
vibrations that near tore the motor mechanisms asunder.
And young Dane, a modern Viking who had dared ride the uncharted
skyways, hung limp across his belt strap. The insidious treachery of the
upper air had taken him unawares and hurled him into unconsciousness in
the midst of his triumph of speed.
The life-giving oxygen was there in its tube, at his very lips, but here
in this dangerous light-air pressure, Hal had not been able to
assimilate all the oxygen that he needed. The human lungs, built to take
in the amount of air needed at ground levels, had balked at having to
take in five times the usual volume as was necessary in the heights of
the stratosphere. And all in an instant, the exhaustion of
air-starvation had claimed the flyer as its victim.
Down and down shot the plane, wallowing in the air troughs like some
dismasted ship in a sea wreck.
And now, choking, hanging limp and unconscious though he was, Hal Dane
began to faintly breathe in the blessed heavier air of the lower
altitudes he was hurtling into.
Back from the heights he slid, back into normal air pressures. He shot
ten thousand feet while the struggle for breath and for consciousness
held him. Longer and deeper breaths he drew at the tube, and the oxygen
gradually began to restore his strength.
As control of self came to him, he straightened back into position and
fought to bring his mad ship to an even keel.
Below him lashed the hungry, growling wastes of the Pacific. As he
plunged wildly downward it seemed that the ocean depths would swallow up
the twisting, turning plane before it could gain its equilibrium.
On he came, diving, stalling, slipping--flattening out at last in a long
lightning quick swoop above the waves.
With nerves in a forced steadiness and hands like steel gripped to their
task, Hal had checked the meteoric fall and had regained some measure of
control over his craft. Now when he dared relax, he found himself,
within his furred clothing, dripping wet in a horror sweat. In a brief
ten minutes of life he seemed to have tasted every extreme, heat, cold,
rising, speeding, falling.
In his fighting back to level out, he had dipped out of his course--his
earth inductor compass told him just how far a dip he had made, and he
traveled in a swing to the other side until the needle was again at
zero.
Riding the normal airpath above the ocean at an average clip of round
about a hundred and fifty miles the hour seemed safe and slow after that
life-and-death race high up in that stratosphere layer above the earth.
As the afternoon wore on, Hal twice again mounted high into thin air and
rode the winds for a brief space, each time coming down before
exhaustion could quite claim him. Risky as these performances were, they
were undertaken in no mere daredeviltry of spirit. Instead, it was for
experiment's sake that Hal Dane repeatedly dared the weird dangers of
the stratosphere's violence of wind and cold. He wanted to prove to
himself that his newfound, splendidly dangerous river of the wind flowed
always into the west. For already he was dreaming of a plane built to
more efficiently take advantage of this great aerial current.
For all its careful designing, his present Wind Bird could not steadily
ride this high, cold aerial river. There were certain necessary points
of construction that needs must be considered in flying craft for the
high, thin air strata. Hal Dane's heart leaped to the thrill of what he
was learning. Those great aerial currents had half battered the life out
of his body, but from his terrible contact with them, he had wrested
secrets to carry back to the builders of airplanes.
As Hal Dane skimmed the ocean surface at a steady, rhythmic gait, his
mind leaped ahead to future aircraft building that should utilize the
knowledge that he had gained by his stratosphere explorations. He had
found that the human body, fashioned to thrive in an air pressure of
something over fourteen pounds per square inch, could suffer intensely
when lifted to a rarefied air pressure of merely two and a half pounds
to the inch. But since man had been smart enough to lift himself on
wings above the clouds, why, now man must be smart enough to lift his
normal air pressure with him. This could be done, Hal believed, by
making the plane's cabin of metal, hermetically sealed, and equipped
with oxygen tanks to maintain the same air pressure as at ordinary
altitudes.
From long practice, Hal's hands mechanically shifted gear in the
speeding plane, to hold to an even flight, while his mind wrestled
continually with the many problems that even his brief taste of
stratosphere flying had opened up to him. On future "high flyers", the
sealed cabin would necessitate the working out of some method of
absorbing the gases given out by the breath. Then, too, the ordinary
systems of controls could not be used, as they would necessitate holes
in the "sealed cabin." Ah, he had it!--electric controls could be
devised to govern rudder, elevators, ailerons. This great power could be
used to fight the terrible high air cold, also, and electrical heating
would keep the deathly dangerous ice sheath from coating wings and--
With a startled gasp, Hal Dane swung from dream planning back into
reality, in bare time to hurl his ship upward out of a strange danger.
Beneath him, the ocean surface rolled into a monstrous heaving, and a
waterspout shot upward, barely missing his wing.