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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Stories March 1933.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
The Table of Contents is not part of the original magazine.
Lords of the Stratosphere
_A Complete Novelette_
By Arthur J. Burks
* * * * *
Contents
I The Take-off
II The Ghostly Columns
III Strange Levitation
IV Frantic Scheming
V Into the Void
VI Stratosphere Currents
VII Invisible Globe
VIII Cataclysmic Hunger
IX A Scheme Is Described
X How It Came About
XI To the Rescue
* * * * *
[Sidenote: High into air are the great New York buildings lifted by a
ray whose source no telescope can find.]
CHAPTER I
_The Take-off_
It seemed only fitting and proper that the greatest of all leaps into
space should start from Roosevelt Field, where so many great flights had
begun and ended. Fliers whose names had rung--for a space--around the
world, had landed here and been received by New York with all the pomp
of visiting kings. Fliers had departed here for the lands of kings, to
be received by them when their journeys were ended.
Of course Lucian Jeter and Tema Eyer were disappointed that Franz Kress
had beaten them out in the race to be first into the stratosphere above
fifty-five thousand feet. There was a chance that Kress would fail, when
it would be the turn of Jeter and Eyer. They didn't wish for his
failure, of course. They were sports-men as well as scientists; but
they were just human enough to anticipate the plaudits of the world
which would be showered without stint upon the fliers who succeeded.
[Illustration: _The warship simply vanished into the night sky._]
"At least, Tema," said Jeter quietly, "we can look his ship over and see
if there is anything about it that will suggest something to us. Of
course, whether he succeeds or fails, we shall make the attempt as soon
as we are ready."
"Indeed, yes," replied Eyer. "For no man will ever fly so high that
another may not fly even higher. Once planes are constructed of
unlimited flying radius ... well, the universe is large and there should
be no end of space fights for a long time."
Eyer, the elder of the two partner scientists, was given sometimes to
quiet biting sarcasm that almost took the hide off. Jeter never minded
greatly, for he knew Eyer thoroughly and liked him immensely. Besides
they were complements to each other. The brain of each received from the
other exactly that which he needed to supplement his own knowledge of
science.
They had one other thing in common. They had been "child prodigies," but
contrary to the usual rule, they had both fulfilled their early promise.
Their early precocious wisdom had not vanished with the passing of
childhood. Each possessed a name with which to conjure in the world of
science. And each possessed that name by right of having made it famous.
And yet--they were under forty.
Jeter was a slender athletic chap with deep blue eyes and brown hair.
His forehead was high and unnaturally white. There was always a still
sort of tenseness about him when his mind was working with some idea
that set him apart from the rest of the world. You felt then that you
couldn't have broken his preoccupation in any manner at all--but that if
by some miracle you did, he would wither you with his wrath.
Tema Eyer was the good nature of the partnership, with a brain no less
agile and profound. He was a swart fellow, straight as an arrow, black
of eyes--the sort which caused both men and women to turn and look after
him on the street. Children took to both men on sight.
The crowd which had come out to watch the take-off of Franz Kress was a
huge one--huge and restless. There had been much publicity attendant on
this flight, none of it welcome to Kress. Oh, later, if he succeeded, he
would welcome publicity, but publicity in advance rather nettled him.
Jeter and Eyer went across to him as he was saying his last words into
the microphone before stepping into his sealed cabin for the flight.
Kress saw them coming and his face lighted up.
"Lord," he said, "I'm glad to see you two. I've something I must ask
you."
"Anything you ask will be answered," said Jeter, "if Tema and I can
answer it. Or granted--if it's a favor you wish."
Kress motioned people back in order to speak more or less privately with
his brother scientists. His face became unusually grave.
"You've probably wondered--everybody has--why I insist on making this
flight alone," he said, speaking just loudly enough to be heard above
the purring of the mighty, but almost silent motor behind him. "I'll
tell you, partly. I've had a feeling for the last month that ... well,
that things may not turn out exactly as everybody hopes. Of course I'll
blaze the way to new discoveries; yes, and I'll climb to a height of
around a hundred thousand feet ... and ... and...."
Jeter and Eyer looked at each other. It wasn't like Kress to be gloomy
just before doing something that no man had ever done before. He should
have been smiling and happy--at least for the movietone cameras--but he
wasn't even that. Certainly it must be something unusual to so concern
him.
"Tell us, Kress," said Eyer.
Kress looked at them both for several moments.
"Just this," he said at last: "work on your own high altitude plane with
all possible speed. If I don't come back ... take off and follow me into
the stratosphere at once."
Had Kress, possessor of one of the keenest scientific minds in the
world, taken leave of his senses? "If I don't come back," he had said.
What did he expect to do? Fly off the earth utterly? That was silly.
But when the partners looked again at Kress they both had the same
feeling. It probably wasn't as silly as it sounded. Did Kress know
something he wasn't telling them? Did he really think he might ... well,
might fly off the earth entirely, away beyond her atmosphere, and never
return? How utterly absurd! And yet....
"Of course we'll do it," said Jeter. "We'd do it anyway, without word
from you. We haven't stopped our own work because of your swiftly
approaching conquest of the greater heights. But why shouldn't you come
back?"
* * * * *
For a moment there was a look of positive dread upon Kress' face.
Then he spoke again very quietly:
"You know all the stuff that's been written about my flight," he said.
"Most of it has been nonsense. How could laymen newspaper reporters have
any conception of what I may encounter aloft? They've tried to make
something of the recent passage of the Earth through an area of
so-called shooting stars. They've speculated until they're black in the
face as to the true nature of the recent bombardment of meteorites.
They've pictured me as a hero in advance, doomed to death by direct
attack from what they are pleased to call--after having invented
them--denizens of the stratosphere."
"Yes?" said Jeter, when Kress paused.
Kress took a deep breath.
"They've come nearer than they hoped for in some guesses," he said. "Of
course I don't know it, but I've had a feeling for some time. You know
what sometimes happens when a man gets a sudden revolutionary idea? He
concentrates on it like all get-out. Then somebody else bursts into the
newspapers with the same identical idea, which in turn brings out hordes
of claims to the same idea by countless other people. It's no new thing
to writers and such-like gentry. They know that when they get such an
idea they must act on it at once or somebody else will, because their
thoughts on the subject have gone forth and impinged upon the mental
receiving sets of others. Well, that's a rough idea, anyway. This idea
of denizens of the stratosphere has attacked the popular imagination.
You'll remember it broke in the papers _simultaneously_, in thirty
countries of the world!"
A cold chill ran down the spine of Tema Eyer. He saw, in a flash,
whither Kress' thoughts were tending--and when he saw that, it thrilled
him, too, for it seemed to be proof of the very thing Kress was saying.
"You mean," he said hoarsely, "that you too think there may be something
up there, something ... well, sensate? Some great composite thought
which inspires the general dread of stratosphere denizens?"
Kress shrugged. He wouldn't commit himself, being too careful a
scientist, but he hadn't hesitated to plant the idea. Jeter and Eyer
both understood the thoughts which were teeming in Kress' brain.
"We'll do our part Kress," said Eyer. Lucian Jeter nodded agreement.
Kress gripped their hands tightly--almost desperately, Jeter thought.
Jeter was usually the leader where Eyer and himself were concerned and
he thought already that he foresaw cataclysmic events.
* * * * *
Kress climbed into his plane. The vast crowd murmured. They knew he was
adjusting everything inside for the days-long endurance test ahead of
him. Kress had forgotten nothing. There was even a specially made
cylinder, comparable to the globe which Picard had used in his historic
balloon ascensions in Europe. This was attached to a parachute which, if
the emergency arose, could be dropped. Kress, in the ball, could pass
through the sub-arctic cold of the stratosphere if necessity demanded.
The ball, if it struck the ocean, would preserve him for a great length
of time. It was even equipped with rockets.
This plane was revolutionary. It was, to begin with, carrying a vast
load. Kress was taking every conceivable kind of instrument he fancied
he might need. There was food as for a long siege.
Jeter shuddered. Why had he thought of the word "siege"?
The great load would be carried without difficulty, however, for this
plane was little short of a miracle. Among other things, Kress would be
able, in case of fatigue, to set his controls--as at sea a pilot may
sometimes lash his wheel--and sleep while his plane mounted on up, and
up, in great spirals.
Up beyond fifty-five thousand he hoped to attain a thousand miles an
hour velocity. That meant, say, breakfast in New York, lunch in London,
tea in Novo-Sibirsk, dinner in Yokohama--as soon as the myriad planes
which would follow this one in design and capabilities took off on the
trail Kress was blazing.
Jeter sighed at the thought. For several years he had explored
little-known sections of the world. He had visited every country. He had
entered every port that could be reached from the ocean--and all the
time he had felt the Earth shrinking before the gods of speed. The time
would soon come when everything on Earth would be commonplace. Then
man's urge to go places he hadn't seen before would take him away from
the Earth entirely--when he would begin the task of making even the
universe shrink to appease the gods of speed. Somehow the thought was a
melancholy one.
Now the crowd gave back as Kress speeded up his motor, indicating that
he would soon take off. Jeter and Eyer studied the outward outline of
Kress' craft. It looked exactly like a black beetle which has just
alighted after flight, but has not yet quite hidden its wings. It was
black, probably because it was believed a black object could be followed
easier from the Earth.
There would be many anxious eyes watching that spiraling ship as it grew
smaller and smaller, climbing upward.
With a rush, and a spinning of dust in the slipstream, the ship was
away. It lifted as easily as a bird and mounted with great speed. It was
capable of climbing in wide spirals at a hundred and fifty miles an
hour.
A great sigh burst from the thousands who had come to watch history
made. For solid hours now they would watch the plane climb, growing
smaller, becoming a speck, vanishing. Many curious ones would stay right
here until Kress returned, fearful of being cheated of a great thrill.
For Kress was to land right here when, and if, he had conquered the
stratosphere.
* * * * *
Jeter and Eyer wormed their way through the crowd to the road and found
their car in a jam of other cars. Without a word they climbed in and
drove themselves to their dwelling--combined home and laboratory--in
Mineola. There they fell to on their own ship, which was being built
piece by piece in their laboratory.
Every half hour or so one or the other would go to the lawn and gaze
aloft, seeking Kress.
"He's out of eyesight," said Eyer, the last to go. "Is the telescope set
up?"
"Yes, and arranged to cover all the area of sky through which Kress is
likely to climb."
At intervals through the night, long after they had ceased work, the
partners rose from bed and sought their fellow scientist among the
stars. They alternated at this task.
"According to my calculations," said Jeter, when the eastern sky was
just paling into dawn, "Kress has now reached a point higher than man
has ever flown before, higher than any living--"
Jeter stopped on the word. Both men remembered Kress' last words. Kress,
upset or not, properly or improperly, had hinted of living things in the
stratosphere--perhaps utterly malignant entities.
It was just here, in the dawning of the first day after Kress'
departure, that the dread began to grow on Jeter and Eyer. And during
the day they labored like Trojans at their work, as though to forget it.
The world had begun its grim wait for the return of Kress.
They waited all that day ... and the next ... and the next!
Then telegraph and radio, at the suggestion of Jeter, instructed the
entire civilized world to turn its eyes skyward to watch for the return
of Kress.
The world obeyed _that_ day ... and the next ... _and the next_!
But Kress did not return; nor, so far as the world knew, did any or all
of his great airplane.
The world itself began to have a feeling of dread--that grew.