_How It Came About_
"You will have twenty-four hours in which to decide whether to join us,"
was Sitsumi's ultimatum. "We would not allow you five minutes were it
not that our cause would be benefited by the addition of your scientific
knowledge."
Sitsumi did not repeat the alternative. Remembering Kress, Jeter and
Eyer did not need to ask him. There was but one alternative--death--a
particularly horrible one. That Sitsumi and the Three would not hesitate
was amply proved. Already they were guilty of the death of thousands.
They were in deadly earnest with their scheme for a world government.
Jeter and Eyer were kept shackled together, and were, in addition,
chained to the floor of the main room of the white globe with leg irons.
Their keys were in the hands of Naka, whose hatred of Jeter for hitting
him on the jaw was so malevolent it fairly glowed from his eyes like
sparks shot forth.
Food was brought them when asked for. It wasn't easy to partake of it,
because their manacled hands had to be moved together, which made it
extremely awkward.
Jeter and Eyer set themselves the task of trying to figure some way out
in the twenty-four hours of life still left them if they failed. That
Hadley, down in New York City, and all the best minds who were
cooperating with Jeter and Eyer in their mad effort to avert world
catastrophe, would make every effort to come to their assistance by
sending up the planes which must even now be nearing completion, they
hadn't the slightest doubt.
Would they arrive in time? Even if they did, was there anything they
could possibly do to save themselves? Surely this space ship must be
vulnerable. Else why did it climb so high into the stratosphere? It was
far beyond the reach of ordinary planes. High trajectory projectiles had
slight chance of hitting it, even if it were visible. What then was its
vulnerability, which this hiding seemed to indicate? They must know
within twenty-four hours.
So they sat side by side, watching events unfold. The Three talked
mandarin. Eyer, for all his levity, was a man of unusual attainments. He
understood mandarin, for one thing--a fact which even Jeter did not know
at first. The Chinese never seemed even to consider that either of them
might know the tongue. Chinese seldom found foreigners who did
comprehend them. In only so much were The Three in the least bit
careless.
Eyer strained his ears to hear everything which passed between Sitsumi
and the Three. Both men listened to any chance words in English or
French on the part of all hands within the globe which might give them a
hint.
And in those twenty-four hours the sky-scientists learned much.
* * * * *
They conversed together, when they spoke of important matters which they
wished hidden from their captors, out of the corners of their mouths
after the method of criminals. They used it with elaborate unconcern.
They might have seemed to be simply staring into space at such moments,
dreading approaching death perhaps, and simply twiddling their fingers.
But by each other every word was clearly heard.
"That last outburst of Sitsumi's explains a lot of the reported activity
in the Lake Baikal region, beyond the Gobi," swiftly dropped from
Jeter's lips. "The materials which Sitsumi uses in the preparation of
his light-ray-bending substance are found near there somehow. And that
means that the Japanese guards--which may be Eurasian guards, after what
Sitsumi told us--and employees of this unholy crowd, are easily engaged
in the preparation of other space ships."
"Does this thing seem to have any armament?" asked Eyer.
Jeter signified negation with a swift movement of his head.
"Their one weapon seems to be the apparatus which causes that ray. You
know, the ray which lifts buildings, pulling them up by the roots."
"Have you any idea what it is?"
"Yes. That last stuff of the Three which you translated for me gives me
a clue. At first I thought that they had perfected some substance,
perhaps with unknown electrical properties, which nullified gravity. But
that won't prove out. If the ray simply nullified gravity, the buildings
down there, while weightless, would not rise as they did. They might
sway if somebody breathed against them. A midget might lift one with his
finger; but they wouldn't fly skyward as they did--and do!"
For a moment the partners ceased their whispering and talked together
naturally to disarm suspicion. The fact that the space ship and its
ruthless denizens still engaged in the awful work of devastation was
amply being proved. In the main room it was possible, through the use of
telescopes and audiphones--set into the walls so that they were
invisible, yet enabled any one in the room to see everything, and hear
everything that transpired on the far earth below--to keep close watch
on the work of the destroyers. Anything close enough could be seen with
the naked eye through the walls of the globe.
* * * * *
Now the space ship was systematically destroying buildings the length
and breadth of Manhattan Island. The river-front buildings were
destroyed in a single sweep, from north to south, of the ghastly ray.
Farther back from the Hudson, however, after the water-front buildings
had been reduced to mere piles of rubble, the most beautiful, most
modern buildings were left standing.
"Can't you just imagine those beautiful structures filled with the
monsters created by the genius of Sitsumi and the Three--and their as
yet unknown lieutenants back at Lake Baikal?"
Eyer gritted his teeth. His hands closed atop the table at which they
were seated. The knuckles went white with the strain. The lips of both
men were white. They realized to the full the dreadful responsibility
which they had assumed. They knew how abysmally hopeless was their
chance of accomplishing anything. And without some gigantic effort being
made, the world as they knew it would be destroyed. In its place would
be a race of strange beings, of vengeful hybrids endowed from birth
with the will to conquer, or destroy utterly.
"You were speaking of the levitating ray," prompted Eyer with swift
change to the sidewise whispering.
"From what you heard I'm sure it is something invented by Liao Wu, Yung
Chan and Wang Li. In so much they have an advantage over Sitsumi. I
doubt if there is any love lost among them, beyond the fact that they
need one another. Sitsumi is master of the substance which bends light
rays--and thus is rendered invisible, while the Three are masters of the
ray which not only propels this space ship, but is the agency by which
buildings are torn up, dropped and destroyed. It's plain to me that this
room is the control room of the space ship. The ray is--well, it's as
difficult to explain as electricity, and perhaps as simple in its
operation. The ray does more than nullify gravity--can be made to
reverse gravity! Let's call the ray the gravity inverter for want of a
better name. It makes anything it touches literally _fall away from the
Earth_, toward the point whence the ray emanates!"
"And if we were to obtain control of the apparatus which harnesses the
ray?"
"We lack the knowledge of the Three for its operation. No, we've got to
find some simpler solution in the brief time we have."
* * * * *
At this point the partners had been within the white globe about ten
hours and they had learned much about it. The inner globe, for example,
maintained an even keel, no matter how the space ship as a whole moved
on its rays that seemed like table legs. The gyroscopic principle was
used. The inner globe was movable within the outer globe, or rind. If
for any reason the space ship listed in one direction or the other, the
inner globe, while it rose and fell naturally, remained upright, its
floor always level so that, the gyroscope controlling the whole, the
central, levitating, ray would always, must always, as it proved, point
downward.
Try as they might, the partners could not see how the Three manipulated
the ray. They guessed that there were many buttons on the table at which
they sat. The table itself was not an ordinary table. What might have
been called a fifth leg, squarely under the center of the table, was
about three feet square. Through this, Jeter guessed, ran the wires by
which they controlled all their activities, machinery to operate which
had been installed under the floor in the unseen lower half of the inner
globe.
They knew that must remain forever a secret from them.
There was a sudden stir among the Three. Jeter and Eyer turned aside for
a moment to peer down upon New York City. They held their breath with
horror as they saw the smoking devastation which must have buried
thousands of people. The wrecking had been all but complete. Only the
finest buildings still stood. Jeter wondered why the falling back of the
shattered buildings had not shaken down those which the Sitsumi crowd
had not wished to destroy. The repeated shocks must almost have shaken
Manhattan Island on its foundations.
They saw what had caused the sudden stiffening of the Three. Sitsumi,
busily engaged at something else nearby, quietly approached the Three.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Rescue planes," said Wang Li. "New York City sends six fliers to rescue
Jeter and Eyer. New planes. They'll reach us, Sitsumi. We should have
thought to destroy all dangerous air ports. A fatal oversight!"
Sitsumi's eyes were grave. He looked at each of the Three in turn.
"God!" said Jeter's whispering lips. "If we could read their minds! If
only we could guess what it is they fear, we'd have the secret by which
we might destroy them."
"They're vulnerable," said Eyer, "but how?"
"Watch!" said Jeter. "Listen! And here's to those six unknowns coming up
to, maybe, get the same dose we're due for! We were closely watched. New
York City knows exactly where we vanished in the sky. Those six planes
are aiming at us--at a spot in the stratosphere they can't see. And yet,
why should Sitsumi and the Three be so fearful? All they have to do is
move a half mile in any direction and they'll never find them."
"But to move will interfere with their plans," said Eyer. "Lucian, look
at the expressions on their faces! Something tells me they are
vulnerable in ways we haven't guessed at. If we knew the secret maybe we
could destroy them. We've got to discover their weak spot."
* * * * *
There was a long pause while Jeter and Eyer watched the rescue ships
come climbing up the endless stairways of the sky. Then Jeter whispered
again, guardedly as usual.
"There seems to be nothing we can do. If our friends are able, by some
miracle, to do something, you know what that means to us?"
"It means we're as good as dead no matter what happens," replied Eyer.
"But we're only two--and there must be a million buried under the debris
in New York City alone. If we can do anything at all...."
There he left it. The partners looked at each other. Each read the right
answer in the other's eyes. When the showdown came they'd die as
cheerfully as they knew how, hoping to the last to do something for the
people who must still hope that, somehow, they would cause this bitter
cup of catastrophe to pass from them. And there were thousands upon
thousands whose blood cried out for vengeance.
The hours sped as the six planes fled upward. To the ears of the
partners, through the audiphones, came the stern roaring of their
motors. In their eyes they bulked larger and larger as the time fled
away.
The sand in the hour glass was running out. When it was all gone, and
the time had come, what could the helpless Jeter and Eyer hope to
accomplish?
For an hour they studied the concerned faces of Sitsumi and the Three.
They were fearful of something.
What?