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Far below the partners many things were falling: broken furnishings of mad dreamers' stratosphere laboratories, parts of strange machines, whirling, somersaulting things that had once been men. The partners looked at each other.

Brunt's account of the preparation for the ascent into the orb of the moon is almost as careful as a modern account of an ascent into the stratosphere. His bird flyers lay their plans deliberately and upon the basis of the most recent scientific discoveries. There is nothing fortuitous about their final ascent.

A week later, The Eggnog braked down through the troposphere, skidded to a piddling two-thousand miles, an hour through the stratosphere, automatically sprouted gliding wing stubs in the atmosphere and planed down to a spraying halt in the Pacific Ocean, fifty miles west of Ensenada in Baja, California. Aboard were man's first views of the red planet. The world went mad with jubilation.

Satellite III dropped swiftly to concavity, as the Sandra was expertly jockeyed through the rare outer layer of the stratosphere, became a true globe again. The Negro reported: "Through the atmosphere, suh. Orders?" "Full acceleration. Continue visually for the present. I'll work out the true course in a few minutes." "Yes, suh!" The hum of the generators deepened.

Miss Francis startled me with a laugh resembling the burst of machinegun fire. "Someone's been pulling your leg, poor terrified Maecenas. Or else youre befuddled with too many Thrilling Wonder Scientifictions. Pipes into the stratosphere! Watersupply piped in through concrete walls! Doesnt your mad inventor know the seeds would find these apertures in an instant?"

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.

With all the confidence in the world, I attacked the Long Beach Incident, which I'd had to drop to go to Lubbock, Texas. But if saucers could laugh, they were probably zipping through the stratosphere chuckling to themselves, because there was no neat solution to this one.

"But why," Grim interrupted, "didn't you have sense enough to come back here, instead of scaring everybody to death?" Wat turned on him indignantly. "Sure," he squeaked, "and bring all the Mercutians along with me? No sir, I shot straight up into the stratosphere, and headed for the Canadian woods. Felt we'd be safe there." Hilary looked at him.

Believing as he did that the enemy knew everything that transpired within its sphere of influence, Jeter doubted that Eyer and himself would have been so humanely treated. He had but to remember Kress to feel sure of this. The altimeter said fifty thousand feet. Stratosphere Currents Now the partner-scientists concentrated on the tremendous task of climbing higher than man had ever flown before.

Jeter and Eyer could imagine the minions of Sitsumi and the Three, below the floor of the white globe, standing-to on platforms about the unseen engines which gave life and movability to this ship of the stratosphere. How many there were of them there was no way of knowing. They had guessed two hundred. There might have been a thousand. It scarcely mattered. Sitsumi's face was set in a firm mask.