_Strange Levitation_
"In two days we'll be ready, Tema," said Lucian Jeter quietly. "And make
no mistake about it; when we take off for the stratosphere we're going
to encounter strange things. Nobody can tell me that Kress' plane
actually flew three weeks! And where did it come down? Why didn't Kress
use the parachute ball? Where is it? I'll wager we'll find answers to
plenty 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 what
happened to him?"
"Sure."
"Why should we be immune? I tell you, Eyer, we're on the eve of
something colossal, awe-inspiring--perhaps catastrophic."
Eyer grinned. Jeter grinned back at him. If they knew they flew
inescapably to death they still would have grinned. They had plenty of
courage.
"We'd better go into town for a meeting with newspaper people," went on
Jeter. "You know how things go in the news; there are probably plenty of
stories which for one reason or another have not been published. Maybe
the law has clamped down on some of them. I've a feeling that if
everything were told, the whole world would be frightened stiff. And you
notice how quickly the papers finished with the Kress' thing."
Eyer knew, all right. The papers had broken the story of the return in
flaming scareheads. Then the thing had come to a full stop. It was
significant that no real satisfactory explanation had been offered by
any one. The papers had, on their own initiative, tried to communicate
with Sitsumi, and the three Chinese scientists, and had failed all
around. Sitsumi did not answer, denied himself to representatives of the
American press in Japan, and crawled into an impenetrable Oriental
shell. The three Chinese could not answer, according to advices from
Peking, 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, "for
I was on the point of calling you and Eyer and inviting you to a
conference 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 to
all interviewers on the eve of your flight into the stratosphere."
Jeter hesitated, realizing that the publisher did not wish to tell
everything over the telephone.
"We'll be right along, sir," he said.
* * * * *
It took an hour for them to reach the publisher's office. Wires had
plainly been pulled, too, for a motorcycle escort joined them at the
Queensboro Bridge and led them, sirens screaming, to their meeting with
George Hadley, the publisher.
They looked at each other in surprise when they were admitted to the
meeting.
Hadley's huge offices were packed. The mayor was there, the police
commissioner, the assistant to the head of Federal Secret Service. The
State Governor had sent a representative. All the newspapers had their
most famous men sitting in. Right in this one big room was represented
almost the entire public opinion of the United States. American
representatives of foreign newspapers were there. And there wasn't a
smile on a single face.
It was beginning to be borne in upon everybody that the Western
Hemisphere 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 he
indicated.
Hadley cleared his throat and spoke.
"We have here people who represent the press of the world," he said. "We
have men who control billions in money. I don't know how many of you
have thought along the same lines as I have, but I feel that after I
have finished speaking most of you will. First, there are certain news
stories which, for reasons of policy, never reach the pages of our
papers. I shall now tell you some of them...."
The whole crowd shifted slightly in its chairs. There was a strained
leaning forward. Grave faces went whiter as they anticipated gripping
announcements.
"All the strange things have not been happening in the United States,
gentlemen," said Hadley. "That young fellow who reported seeing the
columns 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't
only in Arizona that it has been seen--those columns I mean. Only there
is just one column--not five. It has since been reported in Nepal and
Bhutan, in Egypt and Morocco and a dozen other places. But in the cases
of such stories emanating from foreign countries, a congress of
publishers has withheld the facts, not because of their strangeness but
because of the effect they might have on the public sanity. In Nepal,
for example, the column of light rested for a moment on an ancient
temple, and when the light vanished the temple also had vanished, with
everybody in it at the time for worship! Rumor had it that some of the
worshipers were later found and identified. They appear to have been
scattered over half of Nepal--and every last one was smashed almost to a
pulp, as though the body had been dropped from an enormous height."
A concerted gasp raced around the assemblage. Then silence again, while
the pale-faced Hadley went on with his unbelievable story.
* * * * *
"A mad story comes from the heart of the _terai_, in India. I don't know
what importance to give this story since the only witnesses to the
phenomenon were ignorant natives. But the column of light played into
the _terai_--and tigers, huge snakes, buffalo and even elephants rose
bodily over the treetops and vanished. They started up slowly--then
disappeared 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, every
fearful eye, also turned toward Jeter.
And Hadley nodded.
"It's too much to be coincidence," he said. "The crushed and broken
bodies in Nepal and India--of course they aren't so far apart but that
natives in either place might have heard the story from the other--but I
am inclined to believe in the inner truth of the stories in each case."
Hadley turned to the two scientists. There were other scientists
present, but the fact that Jeter and Eyer, who were so soon to follow
Kress into the stratosphere--and eternity?--held the places of honor
near the desk of the spokesman, was significant.
"What do you gentlemen think?" asked Hadley quietly.
"There is undoubtedly some connection between the two happenings," said
Jeter. "I think Eyer and myself will be able to make some report on the
matter soon. We will, take off for the stratosphere day after
to-morrow."
"Then you think the same thing I do?" said Hadley. "If that is so, can't
you start to-morrow? God knows what may happen if we delay
longer--though what two of you can do against something which appears to
blanket 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 it
again, 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 see
their 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 there
was a twelve-story building, and its lighted windows were moving--not to
right or left, but straight up! The movement gave the same impression
which passing windows give to one in an elevator. Either that other
building was rising straight into the air, or the Hadley building was
sinking 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 went
out. Jeter knew then that it was the other building that was moving--and
that electrical connection with the earth had been severed.
Hadley led the way to the roof, four stories above. Fortunately this was
an old building and they didn't have to wait to travel a hundred floors
or so. The whole conference followed at the heels of Hadley, Jeter and
Eyer.
They reached the roof at top speed.
They were first conscious of the cries of despair, of disbelief, of
horror which rose from the street canyons below them. But they forgot
these the next instant at what they saw.
The Vandercook building, the twelve-story building whose lights Jeter
had seen moving, was rising bodily, straight out of the well which had
been built around it. From the building came shrieks and cries of mortal
terror. Even as the conference froze to horrified immobility, many men
and women stepped to the ledges of those darkened windows and plunged
out in their fear.
"God!" said Hadley.
"It's just as well," said Jeter in a far-away voice, "they haven't a
chance 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 are
helpless."
The Vandercook building continued to rise. It did not totter; it simply
rose in its entirety, leaving the gaping hole into which, decades ago,
it had been built. It rose straight into the sky, apparently of its own
volition. No rays of light, no supernatural agencies could be seen or
fancied. 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 level
with 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 from
the lips of the doomed who had been working late in the Vandercook
building--for, horror piled upon horror, those who had sought to escape
calamity did not fall to Earth at all, but, at the same speed of the
rising building, traveled skyward with it, human flies outside those
leering dark windows.
Then, free of New York's skyline, the flying building was gone with a
rush. A thousand feet above New York's tallest building, the Vandercook
changed direction and moved directly into the west.
The conference watched it go....
"Commissioner," Jeter yelled at the police chief of Manhattan, "get word
out at once for all lights to be put out in the city! Hurry! Radio would
be fastest."
In ten minutes Manhattan was a darkened, silent city ... and now the
conference could see why Jeter had asked for all lights to be
extinguished.
Five thousand feet aloft, directly over the Hudson River, the Vandercook
building now hung motionless--and all eyes saw the thin column of light.
It came down from the dark skies from a vast distance, widening to
encompass the top of the Vandercook building.
The Vandercook building might almost have been a mouse caught in the
talons of some unbelievable night-hawk.
As though some intellect had just realized the significance of New
York's sudden darkness; as though that intellect had realized that the
column was ordinarily invisible because of Manhattan's brilliant
incandescents, and now was visible in the darkness--the column of light
snapped 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 the
great composite prayer.
A whistling shriek, growing second by second into enormous proportions,
came out of the west, above the Hudson.