_Frantic Scheming_
There was no mistaking the meaning of that whistling shriek. Whatever
agency had held the Vandercook building aloft had now released its
uncanny grip on the building, and thousands of tons of brick and mortar,
of stone and steel, were plunging down in a mass from five thousand feet
above the Hudson. The same force had also released the ill-fated men and
women who had been carried aloft with the building. And there must have
been hundreds of people inside side the building.
It fell as one piece, that great building. It didn't topple until it had
almost reached the river and its shrieking plunge became meteor-like,
the sound of its fall monstrous beyond imagining. The conference above
the Hadley building fancied they could feel the outward rush of air
displaced by the falling monster--and drew back in fear from the edge of
the roof.
The Vandercook struck the surface of the Hudson and an uprush of
geysering water for a few seconds blotted the great building from view.
Then all Manhattan seemed to shudder. Most of it was perhaps fancy, but
thousands of frightened Manhattanites saw that fall, heard the
whistling, and felt the trembling of immovable Manhattan.
The great columns of water fell back into the turbulent Hudson which had
received the plunging building. Not so much as a wooden desk showed
above the surface as far as any one could see from shore. Not a soul had
been saved. Shrieks of the doomed had never stopped from the moment the
Vandercook building had started its mad journey aloft.
Jeter whirled on Hadley.
"Will you see that all my suggestions are carried out, Hadley?" he
demanded.
Hadley, face gray as ashes, nodded.
From Manhattan rose the long abysmal wailing of a populace just finding
its voice of fear after a stunning, numbing catastrophe.
"I'll do whatever you say, Jeter," said Hadley. "We all agreed before
the arrival of Eyer and yourself that your advice would be followed if
you chose to give any."
"Then listen," said Jeter, while Eyer stood quietly at his elbow,
missing nothing. "Advise the people of New York to quit the city as
quietly and in as orderly a manner as possible. Let the police
commissioner look after that. Then get word to the leading aviation
authorities, promoters, and fliers and have them get to our Mineola
laboratory as fast as possible. We've kept much of the detail of
construction of our space-ship secret, for obvious reasons. But the time
has come to forget personal aggrandizement and the world must know all
we have learned by our labor and research. Then see that every
manufacturing agency, capable of even a little of what it will take for
the program, is drafted to the work--by Federal statute if
necessary--and turn out copies of our plane as quickly as God will let
you."
* * * * *
Hadley's eyes were bulging. So were those of the others who had crowded
close to listen. They seemed to think Jeter had taken leave of his
senses, and yet--all had seen the Vandercook building perform the
utterly impossible.
Hadley nodded.
"What do you want with the filers and others at your laboratory?"
"To listen to the details of construction of our space ship. Eyer will
hold a couple of classes to explain everything. Then, when we've made
things as clear as possible, Eyer and I will take off and get up to do
our best to counteract the--whatever it is--that seems to be ruling the
stratosphere. We'll do everything possible to hold the influences in
check until you can send up other space ships to our assistance."
Hadley stared.
"You speak as though you expected to be up for a long time. Planes like
yours aren't made overnight."
"Planes like ours must be made almost overnight--and have you forgotten
that Kress was gone for three weeks, and yet had been dead but
seventy-two hours when he landed on our roof? Incidentally, Hadley, that
fall of his was guided by something or someone. He didn't fall on our
roof by chance. He was dropped there, as a challenge to us!"
"That means?" said Hadley hoarsely.
"That everything we do is known to the intelligence of the stratosphere!
That every move we make is watched!"
"God!" said Hadley.
Then Hadley straightened. His jaws became firm, his eyes lost their
fear. He was like a good soldier receiving orders.
"All the power of the press will be massed to get the country to back
your suggestions, Jeter. They seem good to me. Now get back to your ship
and leave everything to me. Suppose you do encounter some intelligence
in the stratosphere? How will you combat it, especially if it proves
inimical--which to-night's horror would seem to prove?"
Jeter shrugged.
"We'll take such armament as we have. We have several drums of a deadly
volatile gas. We have guns of great power, hurling projectiles of great
velocity; but I feel all of that will be more or less useless. The
intelligence up there--well, it knows everything we know and far more
besides, for do any of us know how to strike at the earth from the
stratosphere? Therefore our only weapons must be our own
intelligence--at least that will be the program for Eyer and me. Later,
when your planes which are yet to be built follow us up the sky, perhaps
they will be better armed. I hope to be able to communicate information
somehow, relative to whatever we find."
Hadley thrust out his hand.
"Good luck," he said simply.
* * * * *
Then he was gone and Jeter and Eyer were dropping swiftly down in the
elevator to the street--to find that the streets of Manhattan had gone
mad. The ban on electric lights had been lifted, and the faces of
fear-ridden men and women were ghastly in the brilliance of thousands of
lights. Traffic accidents were happening on every corner, at every
intersection, and there were all too few police to manage traffic.
However, a motorcycle squad was ready to lead the way through the press
for Eyer and Jeter--two grim-faced men now, who dared not look at each
other, because each feared to show his abysmal fear to the other.
Automobiles raced past on either side of them driven by crazy men and
hysterical women.
"Queensboro Bridge will be packed tight as a drum," said Eyer quietly.
Jeter didn't seem to hear. Eyer talked on softly, unbothered by Jeter's
silence, knowing that Jeter wouldn't hear a word, that his partner had
drawn into himself and was even now, perhaps, visualizing what they
might encounter in the stratosphere. Eyer talked to give shape to his
own thoughts.
A world gone mad, a world that fled from the menace which hung over
Manhattan.... Jeter hoped that the calm brains of men like Hadley would
at least be able to quiet the populace somewhat, else many of them would
be self-destroyed, as men and women destroy one another in rushes for
the exits during great theater fire alarms.
Fast as they traveled, some of the foremost airmen of the adjoining
country had reached Mineola ahead of them. They understood that many of
them had arrived by plane in obedience to word broadcast by Hadley.
Hadley was doing his bit with a vengeance.
The partners reached their laboratory.
Their head servant met them at the door.
"A Mr. Hadley frantically telephoning, sir," he said to Jeter.
Jeter listened to Hadley's words--which were not so frantic now, as
though Hadley had been numbed by the awful happenings.
"The new bridge between Manhattan and Jersey," said Hadley, "has just
been lifted by whatever the unearthly force is. It was pulled up from
its very foundations. It was crowded with cars as people fled from New
York--and cars and people were lifted with the bridge. Awful irony was
in the rest of the event. The great bridge was simply turned, along its
entire length--which remained intact during the miracle--until it was
parallel with the river and directly above midstream. Then it was
dropped into the water."
"No telling how many lives were lost?" asked Jeter.
"No, and hundreds and thousands of lives are being lost every moment
now. Frantic thousands are swamping boats of all sizes in their craze to
get away. Dozens of overloaded vessels have capsized and the surface of
the river is alive with doomed people, fighting the water and one
another...."
* * * * *
Jeter clicked up the receiver on the horror, knowing there was nothing
he could do. There would be no end to the loss of life until some
measure of sanity had been argued into crazed humanity.
All the time he kept wondering.
What was doing all this awful business? He surmised that some
anti-gravitational agency was responsible for the levitation of the
Vandercook building, but what sort of intelligence was directing it? Was
the intelligence human? Bestial? Maniacal? Or was it something from
Outside? Jeter did not think the latter could be considered. He didn't
believe that any planet, possibly inhabited, was close enough to make a
visit possible. At any rate, he felt that there should be some sort of
warning. He held to the belief that the whole thing was caused by human,
and earthly, intelligence.
But why? The world was at peace. And yet....
Thousands of lives had been snuffed out, a twelve-story building had
leaped five thousand feet into the air, and the world's biggest bridge
had turned upstream as though turning its back against the mad traffic
it had at last been called upon to bear.
Eyer was going over their plane with the visitors, men of intellect who
were taking notes at top speed, men who knew planes and were quick to
grasp new appliances.
"Have any of you got the whole story now?" Eyer asked.
A half dozen men nodded.
"Then pass your knowledge on to the others. Jeter and I must get ready
to be off. Every minute we delay costs untold numbers of lives."
Willing hands rolled their ship out to their own private runway, while
Jeter and Eyer made last minute preparations. There was the matter of
food, of oxygen necessary so far above the Earth, of clothing. All had
been provided for and their last duties were largely those of checking
and rechecking, to make sure no fatal errors in judgment had been made.
Eyer was to fly the ship in the beginning.
A small crowd watched as the partners, white of face now in the last
minutes of their stay on Earth--which they might never touch again in
life--climbed into their cabin, which was capable of being sealed
against the cold of the heights and the lack of breathable oxygen.
Nobody smiled at them, for the world had stopped smiling.
Nobody waved at them, for a wave would have been frivolous.
Nobody cheered or even shouted--but the two knew that the best wishes,
the very hopes for life, of all the land, went with them into the
ghastly unknown.