The Sky Trap

: The Sky Trap

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 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." 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 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

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. 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 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 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 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 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.



I'm a tough, true-hearted skyman,

Careless and all that, d'ye see?

Never at fate a railer,

What is time or tide to me?



All must die when fate shall will it,

I can never die but once,

I'm a tough, true-hearted skyman;

He who fears death is a dunce.



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.



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