Nothing affected it.

The SKY TRAP

by FRANK BELKNAP LONG

[46]Lawton enjoyed a good fight.
He stood happily trading blows
with Slashaway Tommy, his
lean-fleshed torso gleaming with
sweat. He preferred to work the
pugnacity out of himself slowly, to
savor it as it ebbed.

"Better luck next time, Slashaway,"
he said, and unlimbered a left
hook that thudded against his opponent's
jaw with such violence that
the big, hairy ape crumpled to the
resin and rolled over on his back.

Lawton brushed a lock of rust-colored
hair back from his brow and
stared down at the limp figure lying
on the descending stratoship's
slightly tilted athletic deck.

"Good work, Slashaway," he said.
"You're primitive and beetle-browed,
but you've got what it takes."

Lawton flattered himself that he
[47]
was the opposite of primitive. High
in the sky he had predicted the
weather for eight days running, with
far more accuracy than he could have
put into a punch.

They'd flash his report all over
Earth in a couple of minutes now.
From New York to London to Singapore
and back. In half an hour he'd
be donning street clothes and stepping
out feeling darned good.

He had fulfilled his weekly obligation
to society by manipulating meteorological
instruments for forty-five
minutes, high in the warm, upper
stratosphere and worked off his pugnacity
by knocking down a professional
gym slugger. He would have
a full, glorious week now to work
off all his other drives.

The stratoship's commander, Captain
Forrester, had come up, and was
staring at him reproachfully. "Dave,
I don't hold with the reforming Johnnies
who want to re-make human
nature from the ground up. But
you've got to admit our generation
knows how to keep things humming
with a minimum of stress. We don't
have world wars now because we
work off our pugnacity by sailing into
gym sluggers eight or ten times a
week. And since our romantic emotions
can be taken care of by tactile
television we're not at the mercy of
every brainless bit of fluff's calculated
ankle appeal."

Lawton turned, and regarded him
quizzically. "Don't you suppose I realize
that? You'd think I just blew
in from Mars."

"All right. We have the outlets,
the safety valves. They are supposed
to keep us civilized. But you don't
derive any benefit from them."

"The heck I don't. I exchange
blows with Slashaway every time I
board the Perseus. And as for women—well,
there's just one woman in
the world for me, and I wouldn't exchange
her for all the Turkish images
in the tactile broadcasts from Stamboul."

"Yes, I know. But you work off
your primitive emotions with too
much gusto. Even a cast-iron gym
slugger can bruise. That last blow
was—brutal. Just because Slashaway
gets thumped and thudded all over
by the medical staff twice a week
doesn't mean he can take—"

The stratoship lurched suddenly.
The deck heaved up under Lawton's
feet, hurling him against Captain
Forrester and spinning both men
around so that they seemed to be
waltzing together across the ship.
The still limp gym slugger slid downward,
colliding with a corrugated
metal bulkhead and sloshing back
and forth like a wet mackerel.

A full minute passed before Lawton
could put a stop to that. Even
while careening he had been alive to
Slashaway's peril, and had tried to
leap to his aid. But the ship's steadily
increasing gyrations had hurled him
away from the skipper and against
a massive vaulting horse, barking
the flesh from his shins and spilling
him with violence onto the deck.

He crawled now toward the prone
gym slugger on his hands and knees,
his temples thudding. The gyrations
ceased an instant before he reached
Slashaway's side. With an effort he
lifted the big man up, propped him
against the bulkhead and shook him
until his teeth rattled. "Slashaway,"
he muttered. "Slashaway, old fellow."

Slashaway opened blurred eyes,
"Phew!" he muttered. "You sure
socked me hard, sir."

"You went out like a light," explained
Lawton gently. "A minute
before the ship lurched."

"The ship lurched, sir?"

"Something's very wrong, Slashaway.
The ship isn't moving. There
are no vibrations and—Slashaway,
are you hurt? Your skull thumped
against that bulkhead so hard I was
afraid—"

"Naw, I'm okay. Whatd'ya mean,
the ship ain't moving? How could it
stop?"

Lawton said. "I don't know, Slashaway."
[48]
Helping the gym slugger to
his feet he stared apprehensively
about him. Captain Forrester was
kneeling on the resin testing his hocks
for sprains with splayed fingers, his
features twitching.

"Hurt badly, sir?"

The Commander shook his head.
"I don't think so. Dave, we are twenty
thousand feet up, so how in hell could
we be stationary in space?"

"It's all yours, skipper."

"I must say you're helpful."

Forrester got painfully to his feet
and limped toward the athletic compartment's
single quartz port—a
small circle of radiance on a level
with his eyes. As the port sloped
downward at an angle of nearly sixty
degrees all he could see was a diffuse
glimmer until he wedged his
brow in the observation visor and
stared downward.

Lawton heard him suck in his
breath sharply. "Well, sir?"

"There are thin cirrus clouds directly
beneath us. They're not moving."

Lawton gasped, the sense of being
in an impossible situation swelling
to nightmare proportions within him.
What could have happened?

Directly behind him, close to a
bulkhead chronometer, which was
clicking out the seconds with unabashed
regularity, was a misty blue
visiplate that merely had to be
switched on to bring the pilots into
view.

The Commander hobbled toward it,
and manipulated a rheostat. The two
pilots appeared side by side on the
screen, sitting amidst a spidery network
of dully gleaming pipe lines
and nichrome humidification units.
They had unbuttoned their high-altitude
coats and their stratosphere
helmets were resting on their knees.
The Jablochoff candle light which
flooded the pilot room accentuated
the haggardness of their features,
which were a sickly cadaverous hue.

The captain spoke directly into the
visiplate. "What's wrong with the
ship?" he demanded. "Why aren't we
descending? Dawson, you do the
talking!"

One of the pilots leaned tensely
forward, his shoulders jerking. "We
don't know, sir. The rotaries went
dead when the ship started gyrating.
We can't work the emergency torps
and the temperature is rising."

"But—it defies all logic," Forrester
muttered. "How could a metal ship
weighing tons be suspended in the
air like a balloon? It is stationary,
but it is not buoyant. We seem in all
respects to be frozen in."

"The explanation may be simpler
than you dream," Lawton said.
"When we've found the key."

The Captain swung toward him.
"Could you find the key, Dave?"

"I should like to try. It may be
hidden somewhere on the ship, and
then again, it may not be. But I
should like to go over the ship with
a fine-tooth comb, and then I should
like to go over outside, thoroughly.
Suppose you make me an emergency
mate and give me a carte blanche,
sir."

Lawton got his carte blanche. For
two hours he did nothing spectacular,
but he went over every inch of the
ship. He also lined up the crew and
pumped them. The men were as completely
in the dark as the pilots and
the now completely recovered Slashaway,
who was following Lawton
about like a doting seal.

"You're a right guy, sir. Another
two or three cracks and my noggin
would've split wide open."

"But not like an eggshell, Slashaway.
Pig iron develops fissures under
terrific pounding but your cranium
seems to be more like tempered
steel. Slashaway, you won't understand
this, but I've got to talk to
somebody and the Captain is too busy
to listen.

"I went over the entire ship because
I thought there might be a
hidden source of buoyancy somewhere.
It would take a lot of air
[49]
bubbles to turn this ship into a balloon,
but there are large vacuum
chambers under the multiple series
condensers in the engine room which
conceivably could have sucked in a
helium leakage from the carbon pile
valves. And there are bulkhead porosities
which could have clogged."

"Yeah," muttered Slashaway,
scratching his head. "I see what you
mean, sir."

"It was no soap. There's nothing
inside the ship that could possibly
keep us up. Therefore there must be
something outside that isn't air. We
know there is air outside. We've
stuck our heads out and sniffed it.
And we've found out a curious thing.

"Along with the oxygen there is
water vapor, but it isn't H2O. It's
HO. A molecular arrangement like
that occurs in the upper Solar atmosphere,
but nowhere on Earth.
And there's a thin sprinkling of hydrocarbon
molecules out there too.
Hydrocarbon appears ordinarily as
methane gas, but out there it rings
up as CH. Methane is CH4. And
there are also scandium oxide molecules
making unfamiliar faces at us.
And oxide of boron—with an equational
limp."

"Gee," muttered Slashaway. "We're
up against it, eh?"

Lawton was squatting on his hams
beside an emergency 'chute opening
on the deck of the Penguin's weather
observatory. He was letting down a
spliced beryllium plumb line, his
gaze riveted on the slowly turning
horizontal drum of a windlass which
contained more than two hundred
feet of gleaming metal cordage.

Suddenly as he stared the drum
stopped revolving. Lawton stiffened,
a startled expression coming into his
face. He had been playing a hunch
that had seemed as insane, rationally
considered, as his wild idea about the
bulkhead porosities. For a moment
he was stunned, unable to believe
that he had struck pay dirt. The
winch indicator stood at one hundred
and three feet, giving him a
rich, fruity yield of startlement.

One hundred feet below him the
plummet rested on something solid
that sustained it in space. Scarcely
breathing, Lawton leaned over the
windlass and stared downward. There
was nothing visible between the ship
and the fleecy clouds far below except
a tiny black dot resting on vacancy
and a thin beryllium plumb line
ascending like an interrogation point
from the dot to the 'chute opening.

"You see something down there?"
Slashaway asked.

Lawton moved back from the windlass,
his brain whirling. "Slashaway
there's a solid surface directly beneath
us, but it's completely invisible."

"You mean it's like a frozen cloud,
sir?"

"No, Slashaway. It doesn't shimmer,
or deflect light. Congealed water
vapor would sink instantly to earth."

"You think it's all around us, sir?"

Lawton stared at Slashaway aghast.
In his crude fumblings the gym slugger
had ripped a hidden fear right out
of his subconsciousness into the light.

"I don't know, Slashaway," he muttered.
"I'll get at that next."

A half hour later Lawton sat beside
the captain's desk in the control
room, his face drained of all
color. He kept his gaze averted as he
talked. A man who succeeds too well
with an unpleasant task may develop
a subconscious sense of guilt.

"Sir, we're suspended inside a hollow
sphere which resembles a huge,
floating soap bubble. Before we
ripped through it it must have had
a plastic surface. But now the tear
has apparently healed over, and the
shell all around us is as resistant as
steel. We're completely bottled up, sir.
I shot rocket leads in all directions to
make certain."

The expression on Forrester's face
sold mere amazement down the river.
He could not have looked more
startled if the nearer planets had
[50]
yielded their secrets chillingly, and
a super-race had appeared suddenly
on Earth.

"Good God, Dave. Do you suppose
something has happened to space?"

Lawton raised his eyes with a shudder.
"Not necessarily, sir. Something
has happened to us. We're floating
through the sky in a huge, invisible
bubble of some sort, but we don't
know whether it has anything to do
with space. It may be a meteorological
phenomenon."

"You say we're floating?"

"We're floating slowly westward.
The clouds beneath us have been receding
for fifteen or twenty minutes
now."

"Phew!" muttered Forrester. "That
means we've got to—"

He broke off abruptly. The Perseus'
radio operator was standing in the
doorway, distress and indecision in
his gaze. "Our reception is extremely
sporadic, sir," he announced. "We can
pick up a few of the stronger broadcasts,
but our emergency signals
haven't been answered."

"Keep trying," Forrester ordered.

"Aye, aye, sir."

The captain turned to Lawton.
"Suppose we call it a bubble. Why are
we suspended like this, immovably?
Your rocket leads shot up, and the
plumb line dropped one hundred feet.
Why should the ship itself remain
stationary?"

Lawton said: "The bubble must
possess sufficient internal equilibrium
to keep a big, heavy body suspended
at its core. In other words, we must
be suspended at the hub of converging
energy lines."

"You mean we're surrounded by an
electromagnetic field?"

Lawton frowned. "Not necessarily,
sir. I'm simply pointing out that
there must be an energy tug of some
sort involved. Otherwise the ship
would be resting on the inner surface
of the bubble."

Forrester nodded grimly. "We
should be thankful, I suppose, that we
can move about inside the ship. Dave,
do you think a man could descend to
the inner surface?"

"I've no doubt that a man could, sir.
Shall I let myself down?"

"Absolutely not. Damn it, Dave, I
need your energies inside the ship. I
could wish for a less impulsive first
officer, but a man in my predicament
can't be choosy."

"Then what are your orders, sir?"

"Orders? Do I have to order you to
think? Is working something out for
yourself such a strain? We're drifting
straight toward the Atlantic
Ocean. What do you propose to do
about that?"

"I expect I'll have to do my best,
sir."

Lawton's "best" conflicted dynamically
with the captain's orders. Ten
minutes later he was descending,
hand over hand, on a swaying emergency
ladder.

"Tough-fibered Davie goes down to
look around," he grumbled.

He was conscious that he was flirting
with danger. The air outside was
breathable, but would the diffuse, unorthodox
gases injure his lungs? He
didn't know, couldn't be sure. But he
had to admit that he felt all right so
far. He was seventy feet below the
ship and not at all dizzy. When he
looked down he could see the purple
domed summits of mountains between
gaps in the fleecy cloud blanket.

He couldn't see the Atlantic Ocean—yet.
He descended the last thirty
feet with mounting confidence. At the
end of the ladder he braced himself
and let go.

He fell about six feet, landing on
his rump on a spongy surface that
bounced him back and forth. He was
vaguely incredulous when he found
himself sitting in the sky staring
through his spread legs at clouds and
mountains.

He took a deep breath. It struck
him that the sensation of falling could
be present without movement downward
through space. He was beginning
to experience such a sensation.
[51]
His stomach twisted and his brain
spun.

He was suddenly sorry he had tried
this. It was so damnably unnerving he
was afraid of losing all emotional control.
He stared up, his eyes squinting
against the sun. Far above him the
gleaming, wedge-shaped bulk of the
Perseus loomed colossally, blocking
out a fifth of the sky.

Lowering his right hand he ran his
fingers over the invisible surface beneath
him. The surface felt rubbery,
moist.

He got swayingly to his feet and
made a perilous attempt to walk
through the sky. Beneath his feet the
mysterious surface crackled, and
little sparks flew up about his legs.
Abruptly he sat down again, his face
ashen.

From the emergency 'chute opening
far above a massive head appeared.
"You all right, sir," Slashaway
called, his voice vibrant with
concern.

"Well, I—"

"You'd better come right up, sir.
Captain's orders."

"All right," Lawton shouted. "Let
the ladder down another ten feet."

Lawton ascended rapidly, resentment
smouldering within him. What
right had the skipper to interfere? He
had passed the buck, hadn't he?

Lawton got another bad jolt the
instant he emerged through the
'chute opening. Captain Forrester
was leaning against a parachute rack
gasping for breath, his face a livid
hue.

Slashaway looked equally bad. His
jaw muscles were twitching and he
was tugging at the collar of his gym
suit.

Forrester gasped: "Dave, I tried
to move the ship. I didn't know you
were outside."

"Good God, you didn't know—"

"The rotaries backfired and used
up all the oxygen in the engine room.
Worse, there's been a carbonic oxide
seepage. The air is contaminated
throughout the ship. We'll have to
open the ventilation valves immediately.
I've been waiting to see if—if
you could breathe down there. You're
all right, aren't you? The air is
breathable?"

Lawton's face was dark with fury.
"I was an experimental rat in the sky,
eh?"

"Look, Dave, we're all in danger.
Don't stand there glaring at me.
Naturally I waited. I have my crew to
think of."

"Well, think of them. Get those
valves open before we all have convulsions."

A half hour later charcoal gas was
mingling with oxygen outside the
ship, and the crew was breathing it
in again gratefully. Thinly dispersed,
and mixed with oxygen it seemed all
right. But Lawton had misgivings. No
matter how attenuated a lethal gas is
it is never entirely harmless. To make
matters worse, they were over the Atlantic
Ocean.

Far beneath them was an emerald
turbulence, half obscured by eastward
moving cloud masses. The bubble
was holding, but the morale of the
crew was beginning to sag.

Lawton paced the control room.
Deep within him unsuspected energies
surged. "We'll last until the oxygen
is breathed up," he exclaimed.
"We'll have four or five days, at most.
But we seem to be traveling faster
than an ocean liner. With luck, we'll
be in Europe before we become carbon
dioxide breathers."

"Will that help matters, Dave?"
said the captain wearily.

"If we can blast our way out, it
will."

The Captain's sagging body jackknifed
erect. "Blast our way out?
What do you mean, Dave?"

"I've clamped expulsor disks on the
cosmic ray absorbers and trained
them downward. A thin stream of
accidental neutrons directed against
the bottom of the bubble may disrupt
its energies—wear it thin. It's a long
[52]
gamble, but worth taking. We're staking
nothing, remember?"

Forrester sputtered: "Nothing but
our lives! If you blast a hole in the
bubble you'll destroy its energy balance.
Did that occur to you? Inside a
lopsided bubble we may careen dangerously
or fall into the sea before we
can get the rotaries started."

"I thought of that. The pilots are
standing by to start the rotaries the
instant we lurch. If we succeed in
making a rent in the bubble we'll
break out the helicoptic vanes and
descend vertically. The rotaries won't
backfire again. I've had their burnt-out
cylinder heads replaced."

An agitated voice came from the
visiplate on the captain's desk: "Tuning
in, sir."

Lawton stopped pacing abruptly.
He swung about and grasped the desk
edge with both hands, his head touching
Forrester's as the two men stared
down at the horizontal face of petty
officer James Caldwell.

Caldwell wasn't more than twenty-two
or three, but the screen's opalescence
silvered his hair and misted
the outlines of his jaw, giving him an
aspect of senility.

"Well, young man," Forrester
growled. "What is it? What do you
want?"

The irritation in the captain's voice
seemed to increase Caldwell's agitation.
Lawton had to say: "All right,
lad, let's have it," before the information
which he had seemed bursting to
impart could be wrenched out of him.

It came in erratic spurts. "The
bubble is all blooming, sir. All around
inside there are big yellow and purple
growths. It started up above, and—and
spread around. First there was
just a clouding over of the sky, sir,
and then—stalks shot out."

For a moment Lawton felt as
though all sanity had been squeezed
from his brain. Twice he started to
ask a question and thought better
of it.

Pumpings were superfluous when
he could confirm Caldwell's statement
in half a minute for himself. If Caldwell
had cracked up—

Caldwell hadn't cracked. When
Lawton walked to the quartz port and
stared down all the blood drained
from his face.

The vegetation was luxuriant, and
unearthly. Floating in the sky were
serpentine tendrils as thick as a man's
wrist, purplish flowers and ropy fungus
growths. They twisted and
writhed and shot out in all directions,
creating a tangle immediately beneath
him and curving up toward the
ship amidst a welter of seed pods.

He could see the seeds dropping—dropping
from pods which reminded
him of the darkly horned skate egg
sheaths which he had collected in his
boyhood from sea beaches at ebb tide.

It was the unwholesomeness of the
vegetation which chiefly unnerved
him. It looked dank, malarial. There
were decaying patches on the fungus
growths and a miasmal mist was descending
from it toward the ship.

The control room was completely
still when he turned from the quartz
port to meet Forrester's startled gaze.

"Dave, what does it mean?" The
question burst explosively from the
captain's lips.

"It means—life has appeared and
evolved and grown rotten ripe inside
the bubble, sir. All in the space of an
hour or so."

"But that's—impossible."

Lawton shook his head. "It isn't at
all, sir. We've had it drummed into
us that evolution proceeds at a snailish
pace, but what proof have we that
it can't mutate with lightning-like rapidity?
I've told you there are gases
outside we can't even make in a
chemical laboratory, molecular arrangements
that are alien to earth."

"But plants derive nourishment
from the soil," interpolated Forrester.

"I know. But if there are alien
gases in the air the surface of the
bubble must be reeking with unheard
of chemicals. There may be compounds
inside the bubble which have
[53]
so sped up organic processes that a
hundred million year cycle of mutations
has been telescoped into an
hour."

Lawton was pacing the floor again.
"It would be simpler to assume that
seeds of existing plants became somehow
caught up and imprisoned in the
bubble. But the plants around us
never existed on earth. I'm no botanist,
but I know what the Congo has
on tap, and the great rain forests of
the Amazon."

"Dave, if the growth continues it
will fill the bubble. It will choke off all
our air."

"Don't you suppose I realize that?
We've got to destroy that growth before
it destroys us."

It was pitiful to watch the crew's
morale sag. The miasmal taint of the
ominously proliferating vegetation
was soon pervading the ship, spreading
demoralization everywhere.

It was particularly awful straight
down. Above a ropy tangle of livid
vines and creepers a kingly stench
weed towered, purplish and bloated
and weighted down with seed pods.

It seemed sentient, somehow. It
was growing so fast that the evil odor
which poured from it could be correlated
with the increase of tension inside
the ship. From that particular
plant, minute by slow minute, there
surged a continuously mounting offensiveness,
like nothing Lawton had
ever smelt before.

The bubble had become a blooming
horror sailing slowly westward above
the storm-tossed Atlantic. And all the
chemical agents which Lawton
sprayed through the ventilation
valves failed to impede the growth or
destroy a single seed pod.

It was difficult to kill plant life
with chemicals which were not harmful
to man. Lawton took dangerous
risks, increasing the unwholesomeness
of their rapidly dwindling air
supply by spraying out a thin diffusion
of problematically poisonous
acids.

It was no sale. The growths increased
by leaps and bounds, as
though determined to show their resentment
of the measures taken
against them by marshalling all their
forces in a demoralizing plantkrieg.

Thwarted, desperate, Lawton
played his last card. He sent five
members of the crew, equipped with
blow guns. They returned screaming.
Lawton had to fortify himself with a
double whiskey soda before he could
face the look of reproach in their eyes
long enough to get all of the prickles
out of them.

From then on pandemonium
reigned. Blue funk seized the petty
officers while some of the crew ran
amuck. One member of the engine
watch attacked four of his companions
with a wrench; another went
into the ship's kitchen and slashed
himself with a paring knife. The assistant
engineer leapt through a
'chute opening, after avowing that he
preferred impalement to suffocation.

He was impaled. It was horrible.
Looking down Lawton could see his
twisted body dangling on a crimson-stippled
thornlike growth forty feet
in height.

Slashaway was standing at his elbow
in that Waterloo moment, his
rough-hewn features twitching. "I
can't stand it, sir. It's driving me
squirrelly."

"I know, Slashaway. There's something
worse than marijuana weed
down there."

Slashaway swallowed hard. "That
poor guy down there did the wise
thing."

Lawton husked: "Stamp on that
idea, Slashaway—kill it. We're
stronger than he was. There isn't an
ounce of weakness in us. We've got
what it takes."

"A guy can stand just so much."

"Bosh. There's no limit to what a
man can stand."

From the visiplate behind them
came an urgent voice: "Radio room
tuning in, sir."

Lawton swung about. On the flickering
[54]
screen the foggy outlines of a
face appeared and coalesced into
sharpness.

The Perseus radio operator was
breathless with excitement. "Our reception
is improving, sir. European
short waves are coming in strong.
The static is terrific, but we're getting
every station on the continent,
and most of the American stations."

Lawton's eyes narrowed to exultant
slits. He spat on the deck, a slow tremor
shaking him.

"Slashaway, did you hear that?
We've done it. We've won against
hell and high water."

"We done what, sir?"

"The bubble, you ape—it must be
wearing thin. Hell's bells, do you
have to stand there gaping like a moronic
ninepin? I tell you, we've got
it licked."

"I can't stand it, sir. I'm going
nuts."

"No you're not. You're slugging the
thing inside you that wants to quit.
Slashaway, I'm going to give the crew
a first-class pep talk. There'll be no
stampeding while I'm in command
here."

He turned to the radio operator.
"Tune in the control room. Tell the
captain I want every member of the
crew lined up on this screen immediately."

The face in the visiplate paled. "I
can't do that, sir. Ship's regulations—"

Lawton transfixed the operator
with an irate stare. "The captain told
you to report directly to me, didn't
he?"

"Yes sir, but—"

"If you don't want to be cashiered,
snap into it."

"Yes—yessir."

The captain's startled face preceded
the duty-muster visiview by a full
minute, seeming to project outward
from the screen. The veins on his neck
were thick blue cords.

"Dave," he croaked. "Are you out
of your mind? What good will talking
do now?"

"Are the men lined up?" Lawton
rapped, impatiently.

Forrester nodded. "They're all in
the engine room, Dave."

"Good. Block them in."

The captain's face receded, and a
scene of tragic horror filled the opalescent
visiplate. The men were not
standing at attention at all. They
were slumping against the Perseus'
central charging plant in attitudes of
abject despair.

Madness burned in the eyes of
three or four of them. Others had torn
open their shirts, and raked their
flesh with their nails. Petty officer
Caldwell was standing as straight
as a totem pole, clenching and unclenching
his hands. The second assistant
engineer was sticking out his
tongue. His face was deadpan, which
made what was obviously a terror reflex
look like an idiot's grimace.

Lawton moistened his lips. "Men,
listen to me. There is some sort of
plant outside that is giving off deliriant
fumes. A few of us seem to be
immune to it.

"I'm not immune, but I'm fighting
it, and all of you boys can fight it too.
I want you to fight it to the top of
your courage. You can fight anything
when you know that just around the
corner is freedom from a beastliness
that deserves to be licked—even if it's
only a plant.

"Men, we're blasting our way free.
The bubble's wearing thin. Any minute
now the plants beneath us may
fall with a soggy plop into the Atlantic
Ocean.

"I want every man jack aboard this
ship to stand at his post and obey orders.
Right this minute you look like
something the cat dragged in. But
most men who cover themselves with
glory start off looking even worse
than you do."

He smiled wryly.

"I guess that's all. I've never had
to make a speech in my life, and I'd
hate like hell to start now."

It was petty officer Caldwell who
[55]
started the chant. He started it, and
the men took it up until it was coming
from all of them in a full-throated
roar.

Lawton squared his shoulders.
With a crew like that nothing could
stop him! Ah, his energies were surging
high. The deliriant weed held no
terrors for him now. They were stout-hearted
lads and he'd go to hell with
them cheerfully, if need be.

It wasn't easy to wait. The next
half hour was filled with a steadily
mounting tension as Lawton moved
like a young tornado about the ship,
issuing orders and seeing that each
man was at his post.

"Steady, Jimmy. The way to fight a
deliriant is to keep your mind on a
set task. Keep sweating, lad."

"Harry, that winch needs tightening.
We can't afford to miss a trick."

"Yeah, it will come suddenly. We've
got to get the rotaries started the instant
the bottom drops out."

He was with the captain and Slashaway
in the control room when it
came. There was a sudden, grinding
jolt, and the captain's desk started
moving toward the quartz port, carrying
Lawton with it.

"Holy Jiminy cricket," exclaimed
Slashaway.

The deck tilted sharply; then righted
itself. A sudden gush of clear, cold
air came through the ventilation
valves as the triple rotaries started
up with a roar.

Lawton and the captain reached the
quartz port simultaneously. Shoulder
to shoulder they stood staring down
at the storm-tossed Atlantic, electrified
by what they saw.

Floating on the waves far beneath
them was an undulating mass of vegetation,
its surface flecked with glinting
foam. As it rose and fell in waning
sunlight a tainted seepage spread
about it, defiling the clean surface of
the sea.

But it wasn't the floating mass
which drew a gasp from Forrester,
and caused Lawton's scalp to prickle.
Crawling slowly across that Sargasso-like
island of noxious vegetation
was a huge, elongated shape which
bore a nauseous resemblance to a
mottled garden slug.

Forrester was trembling visibly
when he turned from the quartz port.

"God, Dave, that would have been
the last straw. Animal life. Dave, I—I
can't realize we're actually out of
it."

"We're out, all right," Lawton said,
hoarsely. "Just in time, too. Skipper,
you'd better issue grog all around.
The men will be needing it. I'm taking
mine straight. You've accused me of
being primitive. Wait till you see me
an hour from now."

Dr. Stephen Halday stood in the
door of his Appalachian mountain
laboratory staring out into the pine-scented
dusk, a worried expression
on his bland, small-featured face. It
had happened again. A portion of his
experiment had soared skyward, in a
very loose group of highly energized
wavicles. He wondered if it wouldn't
form a sort of sub-electronic macrocosm
high in the stratosphere, altering
even the air and dust particles
which had spurted up with it, its uncharged
atomic particles combining
with hydrogen and creating new
molecular arrangements.

If such were the case there would
be eight of them now. His bubbles,
floating through the sky. They
couldn't possibly harm anything—way
up there in the stratosphere. But
he felt a little uneasy about it all the
same. He'd have to be more careful
in the future, he told himself. Much
more careful. He didn't want the
Controllers to turn back the clock of
civilization a century by stopping all
atom-smashing experiments.

Transcriber's Note:

This e-text was produced from Comet July 1941. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.