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Updated: June 15, 2025
The Vandercook building, the twelve-story building whose lights Jeter had seen moving, was rising bodily, straight out of the well which had been built around it. From the building came shrieks and cries of mortal terror. Even as the conference froze to horrified immobility, many men and women stepped to the ledges of those darkened windows and plunged out in their fear. "God!" said Hadley.
However, a motorcycle squad was ready to lead the way through the press for Eyer and Jeter two grim-faced men now, who dared not look at each other, because each feared to show his abysmal fear to the other. Automobiles raced past on either side of them driven by crazy men and hysterical women. "Queensboro Bridge will be packed tight as a drum," said Eyer quietly. Jeter didn't seem to hear.
"You mean," he said hoarsely, "that you too think there may be something up there, something ... well, sensate? Some great composite thought which inspires the general dread of stratosphere denizens?" Kress shrugged. He wouldn't commit himself, being too careful a scientist, but he hadn't hesitated to plant the idea. Jeter and Eyer both understood the thoughts which were teeming in Kress' brain.
There was no discomfort in walking, no difficulty in breathing. Jeter surmised that at least one of those buildings, perhaps the central one, housed some sort of oxygen renewer. Such a device at this height was naturally essential. The stairs ended. The prisoners and their guards stopped at floor level. Jeter paused to look about him.
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.
It wasn't courtesy, either, that failure to use knives, for Jeter saw murder looking out of more than one pair of eyes as their two pairs of fists landed on brown faces, smashed noses askew, and started eyes to closing. "Their leader has them under absolute control and that's a point for the enemy," Jeter panted to himself, as the strain of battle began to tell on him.
Jeter tripped the rapid firer and held it for half a minute, during which time three hundred projectiles, eight inches long by two inches in diameter, were poured into the invisible surface. The bullets simply accomplished nothing. It was almost as though the field had simply opened its mouth to catch thrown food. There was no movement of the field, no jarring, no vibration.
Besides, he had stated that the thickness of the columns of light seemed to be the same from the ground as far as his eyes could follow them upward. Everybody knew that a searchlight's beams spread out a bit. "I wonder," thought Jeter, "why the kid didn't say he saw those five columns move like a five-legged animal, walking."
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.
I don't think they'll kill our motor. If whoever or whatever controls the light column decides to us prisoners.... Well, we'll hope to have better luck combating them than Kress had." And so begin that hours-long vigil of quartering the stratosphere over the unmarked area which Jeter had set as a limit. Now and again Hadley spoke to Jeter. Yes, the demolitions were still continuing in Manhattan.
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