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Updated: June 21, 2025
The partners, lips firmly set, nodded to each other and began to open their doors. Imperturbably the dark man came to meet them. Still other dark faces emerged from the door. A Scheme Is Described The hands of the two wayfarers into the stratosphere dropped to their weapons as the men came through that door which masked the inner mystery of the white globe. One of the men grinned.
"The rind can be shattered by vibration, and we've got to do it somehow." "And after that?" panted Eyer. "Our friends out there can then see the inner globe. They'll drop bombs. They'll smash in the globe and " "I know," said Eyer. "Its inhabitants, including us, will start off in all directions through the stratosphere, with great speed, and probably in many pieces." Jeter laughed.
The doomed space ship gyroscope still keeping the ray pointed Earthward describing an erratic course, was shooting farther upward into the stratosphere, propelled by the ghastly ray which, now no longer controlled by Wang Li, drove the space ship madly through the outer cold.
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.
Fliers had departed here for the lands of kings, to be received by them when their journeys were ended. Of course Lucian Jeter and Tema Eyer were disappointed that Franz Kress had beaten them out in the race to be first into the stratosphere above fifty-five thousand feet. There was a chance that Kress would fail, when it would be the turn of Jeter and Eyer.
Crushed, buffeted, they still retained consciousness. They sought through the spinning stratosphere for their rescuers. Thousands of feet below or was it above? they saw them. Yes, below, for they looked at the tops of the planes. Their upward flight had been dizzying. They waited until their upward flight ceased.
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?
It seemed strange to them indeed that Kress should have come back to land on the roof of the two who had promised to follow him into the stratosphere if he didn't return. Very strange indeed. He had returned, though, releasing Jeter and Eyer from their promise. Strangely enough that fact made them all the more determined to go.
It still lacked several hours of the time allowed in the ultimatum to Jeter and Eyer of Sitsumi and the Three, when the six planes leveled off within a couple of miles of the space ship. They knew about where the stratosphere had swallowed up Jeter and Eyer. Now they were casting about for a sign, like bloodhounds seeking the spoor of an enemy. Jeter and Eyer held their breaths as they watched.
Each capital city thought itself signally honored by the reappearance of the lone Mercutian over it. The plan was clever, the timing perfect. At a signal flashed through the ether, things started happening. The great diskoids, hovering high in the stratosphere, suddenly blazed into blinding light. To the dazzled onlookers below, a new sun seemed to have been born.
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