_Invisible Globe_
The buzzer of their radiophone was sounding, but so intent were they on
this phenomenon they were facing, they paid it no heed. Their eyes were
alight, their lips in firm straight lines of resolve, as they dived down
upon the invisible obstruction--whatever it was--from whose surface the
telltale updraft came.
It was Eyer who made the suggestion:
"Let's measure it to see what its plane extent is."
"How?" asked Jeter.
"Measure it by following the wind disturbance. We travel in one
direction until we lose it. There is one extremity. In a few minutes we
can discover exactly how big the thing is. What do you think it is?"
Jeter shook his head. There was no way of telling.
Jeter nodded agreement to Eyer. Then he spoke into the radiophone,
telling Hadley what they had found, to which he could give no name.
"The world awaits in fear and trembling what you will have to report,
Jeter," said Hadley. "What if you become unable to report, as Kress
did?"
"Don't worry. We will or we won't. If we succeed we'll be back. If we
fail, send up the other.... No, perhaps you hadn't better send up the
new planes. But I think Eyer and I have a chance to discover the nature
of this strange--whatever-it-is. If you can't contact us, delay
twenty-four hours before doing anything. I--well, I scarcely know what
to tell you to do. We'll just be shooting in the dark until we know what
we're in for. You'll have to contain yourself in patience. What did you
want with me?"
"Only to tell you of another strange news dispatch. It gives no details.
It merely tells of strange activity around Lake Baikal, beyond the Gobi
Desert. Queer noises at night, mysterious cordons of Eurasians to keep
all investigators back, strange losses of livestock, foodstuffs...."
Jeter severed connection. There was little need to listen further to
something which he couldn't explain yet, in any case.
Eyer, at the controls, banked the plane at right angles and flew on. In
shortly less than a minute he banked again.
* * * * *
In five minutes he turned to Jeter with a queer expression on his face.
"Well," he said, "what's to do about it? What is it? It seems to be some
solid substance approximately a quarter mile square. But it can't be
true! A solid substance just hanging in the air at ninety thousand feet!
It's beyond all imagining!"
"What man can imagine, man can do," replied Jeter. "A great newspaper
editor said that, and we're going to discover now just how true it is."
"What's our next move?"
For a long time the partners, stared into each other's eyes. Each knew
exactly what the other thought, exactly what he would propose as a
course of action. Jeter heaved a sigh and nodded his head.
"We're as much in the power of the enemy here as we would be there, or
anywhere else. We can't discover anything from here. Set the wheels
down!"
"We can't tell anything about the condition of the surface of that
stuff. We may crack up."
Jeter had to grin.
"Sounds strange, cracking up at ninety thousand feet, doesn't it? Well,
hoist your helicopter vanes and drift down as straight as you can--but
be sure and keep your motor idling."
Again they exchanged long looks.
"O.K.," said Eyer, as quietly as he would have answered the same order
at Roosevelt Field. "Here we go!"
He pressed a button and the helicopters, set into the surface of the
single sturdy wing, snapped up their shafts and began to spin,
effectually slowing the forward motion of the plane. Eyer fish-tailed
her with his rudder to help cut down speed.
"We can't see the surface of the thing at all, Lucian," said Eyer. "I'll
simply have to feel for it."
"Well, you've done that before, too. We can manage all right."
Down they dropped. The updraft was now a cushion directly under them.
And then their wheels struck something solid. The plane moved forward a
few feet--with a strange sickening motion. It was as though the surface
of this substance were globular. First one wheel rose, then dipped as
the other rose. The plane came to rest on fairly even keel, and the
partners, while the motor idled, stared at each other.
"Well?" said Eyer, a trace of a grin on his face.
"If it'll hold the plane it will hold us. Let's slide into our
stratosphere suits and climb out. We have to get close to this thing to
see what it is."
"Parachutes?" said Eyer.
Jeter nodded.
"It would simplify matters if the thing happened to tilt over and spill
us off, I think," said Jeter, matching Eyer's grin with one of his own.
"I can't think with any degree of equanimity of plunging ninety thousand
feet without a parachute."
"I'm not sure I'd care for it with one," said Eyer.
* * * * *
They were soon in the tight-fitting suits which were customarily used by
fliers who climbed above the air levels at which it was impossible for a
human being to breathe without a supply of oxygen in a container. Their
suits were sealed against cold. Set in their backs were oxygen tanks
capable of holding enough oxygen for several hours. Over all this they
fastened their parachutes.
Then, using a series of doors in order to conserve the warmth and oxygen
inside their cabin, they let themselves out, closing each successive
door behind them, until at last they faced the last door--and the grim
unknown. They glanced at each other briefly, and Jeter's hand went forth
to grasp the mechanism of the last door. Eyer stood at his side. Their
eyes met. The door swung open.
They stepped down. The surface of this stratosphere substance was
slippery smooth. Now that they stood on its surface they could sense
something of its profile. Movement in any direction suggested walking on
a huge ball. The queer thing was that they could feel but could not see.
It was like walking on air. Their plane appeared to be suspended in
midair.
For a moment Jeter had an overpowering desire to grab Eyer, jerk him
back to the plane, and take off at top speed. But they couldn't do that,
not when the world depended upon them. Had Kress encountered this thing?
Perhaps. How must he have felt? He had been alone. These two were moral
support for each other. But both were acutely remembering how Kress had
come back.
And his plane? They'd perhaps discover what had happened to that too.
Eyer suddenly slipped and fell, as though he had been walking on a
carpet which had been jerked from under his feet. From his almost prone
position he looked up at Jeter. Jeter dropped to his knees beside him.
Their covered hands played over the surface of their discovery, to find
it smooth as glass. As though with one thought they placed their heads
against it, right ears down, to listen. But the whole vast field seemed
to be dead, lifeless. And yet--a solid it was, floating here in
space--or just hanging. It seemed to be utterly motionless.
"There should be a way of discovering what this is, and why, and how it
is controlled if an intelligence is behind it." Jeter spelled out the
words in the sign language they had both learned as boys.
Eyer nodded.
* * * * *
They walked more warily when they had, traveling slowly and hesitantly,
gone more than a hundred feet from their plane. They kept it in sight by
constantly turning to look back. It was now several feet above them. No
telling what might happen to them at any moment, and the plane was an
avenue of escape.
They didn't wish to take a chance on stepping off into the
stratosphere--and eternity.
"It's like an iceberg of space," said the fingers of Jeter. "But let's
go back and look it over to the other side of the plane. We have to keep
the plane in sight and work from it as a base. And say, what sort of
sensations have you had about this surface we're standing on?"
Jeter could see Eyer's shudder as he asked the question. Slowly the
fingers of his partner spelled out the answer.
"I've a feeling of eyes boring into my back. I sense that the substance
under us is malignant, inimical. I have the same feeling with every step
I take, as though the unseen surface were endowed with arms capable of
reaching out and grabbing me."
"I feel it, too," said Jeter's fingers. "But I'm not afraid of fingers
in the usual sense. I don't think of hands strangling us, or ripping us
to shreds, but of questing--well, call them tentacles, which may clasp
us with gentleness even, and absorb us, and annihilate us!"
Now the two faced each other squarely. Now they did not try to hide that
their fear was an abysmal feeling, horrible and devastating.
"Let's get back to the plane and take off. We haven't a chance."
They clasped hands again and started running back, their plane their
goal. Before they reached it they would change their minds, for they
were not ordinarily lacking in courage--but so long as they ran both had
the feeling of being pursued by malignant entities which were always
just a step behind, but gaining.
They slipped on the smooth surface face and fell sprawling. Each felt,
when he fell, that he must rise at once, with all his speed, lest
something grasp him and hold him down forever. It was a horrible trapped
feeling, and yet....
They had but to look at each other to see that they were free. Nothing
gripped their feet to hold them back. Of course the way was slippery,
but no more so than an icy surface which one essays in ordinary shoes.
What then caused their fear?
* * * * *
The plane, so plainly visible there ahead and above, was like a haven of
refuge to them. They panted inside their helmets and their breath misted
the glass of their masks. But they stumbled on, making the best speed
they could under the circumstances.
Perhaps if they took, off, and regained their courage, returned to
normal in surroundings they knew and understood, they could come back
and try again, after having heard each other's voices. The silence, the
sign manual, the odd, awesome sensations, all combined to rob them of
courage. They must get it back if they were to succeed. And they had
been away from the plane for almost an hour. Hadley would be waiting for
some news.
The plane was twenty yards away--and almost at the same time Eyer and
Jeter saw something queer about it. At first it was hard to say just
what it was.
They rushed on. They were within ten yards of the plane when a wail of
anguish was born--and died--in two soundproof helmets. There was no
questioning the fact that the plane had settled into the surface of the
field.
The plane was invisible below the tops of the landing wheels, as though
the plane were sinking into invisibility, slowly dissolving from the
bottom.
"Understand?" Jeter's fingers almost shouted. "Understand why we felt
the desire to keep moving? This field is alive, Eyer, and if we stand
still it will swallow us just as it is swallowing our plane! Let's get
in fast; maybe we can still pull free from the stuff and take off."
They were racing against time and in the heart of each was the feeling
that whatever they did, their efforts would be hopeless. Still, the
spinning propeller of their plane gave them strength to hope.
They went through the succession of doors as rapidly as they dared. Once
in the comfort of their cabin they doffed their stratosphere suits with
all possible speed. Jeter was the first free. He jumped to the controls
and speeded up the motor. In a matter of seconds it was revving up to a
speed which, had it been free, would have pulled the plane along at
seven hundred miles an hour at the height at which they were.
But the plane did not move!
* * * * *
Jeter slowed the motor, then started racing it fast, trying to jerk the
fuselage free of the imbedded wheels, but they would not be released.
Both men realized that the wheels had sunk from sight while they had
been delayed coming through the succession of doors--that the plane had
sunk until the invisible surface gripped the floor of the fuselage.
Perspiration beaded the faces of both men. Eyer managed a ghastly grin.
Jeter's brow was furrowed with frantic thought as he tried to imagine a
way out.
"If we could somehow cut our landing gear free," began Jeter, "but--"
"But it's too late, Lucian," said Eyer quietly. "Look at the window."
They both looked.
Countless fingers of shadowy gray substance were undulating up the
surface of the window, like pale angleworms or white serpents of many
sizes, trying to climb up a pane of glass.
"Well," said Jeter, "here we are! You see? Outside we can see nothing.
Inside we begin to see a little, and what good will it do us?"
Eyer grinned. It was as though he lighted a cigarette and nonchalantly
blew smoke rings at the ceiling, save that they dared not use up any of
their precious oxygen by smoking.
Their fear had left them utterly when it would have been natural for
them to be stunned by it.