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Updated: May 15, 2025
A trapdoor, shaped something like the profile of an ordinary milk bottle, was opening in the white globe just outside their plane. Framed in the door was a face. It was a dark face, but it was a human one and the man's body below that face was dressed as simply, and in almost the same fashion, as were Jeter and Eyer themselves. He wore no oxygen tanks or clothing to keep out the cold.
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.
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.
"They won't be able to," said Jeter, "for that motor is pulling against the wheels and holding them so tight against the side of that door that a hundred men couldn't budge the plane. But we can't take chances." Quickly the partners slipped into their suits, adjusted their oxygen tanks and parachutes. Then Jeter slipped back the elastic sleeve of his suit and motioned Eyer to do the same.
And while the newspaper reporters went wild over Kress' return, the partners started making additional plans. 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?
Even as the two men reached the stairs and started up, another of the dauntless rescuers paid with his life for his courage. Several bombs exploded as his plane struck the space ship, but they caused no damage whatever. The hard outer rind seemed to be impervious to the explosions. Obviously no explosive could destroy the space ship. "Quickly, Tema," said Jeter.
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.
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.
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.
At the same instant the plane itself, propeller still spinning, rose swiftly up through the hole in the rind. The air inside the globe was going out in a great rush. The partners looked at each other. At that moment the four planes swooped over the space ship.... Jeter and Eyer knew that the inner globe had at last become visible, for from the bellies of the four planes dropped bomb after bomb.
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