Science Fiction - Daily Short Stories
The Sky Trap - Frank Belknap Long
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- 27 Aug 2024
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See site for details. The Sky Trap. A short story by Frank Belknap Long. Lawton enjoyed a good fight. He stood happily trading blows with Slash away Tommy, his lean, fresh torso gleaming with sweat. He preferred to work the prognacity out of himself slowly, to savor it as it ebbed. Better luck next time Slash away, he said, and unlimbered a left hook that dudded 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 figures lying on the descending stratoships slightly tilted athletic deck. "Good work, Slash away," 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 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 me in the urological instruments for forty-five minutes, high in the warm upper stratosphere, and worked off his prognacity by knocking down a professional gym slugger. He would have a full, glorious week now to work off all his other drives. The stratoships commander, Captain Forester, had come up and was staring at him reproachfully. "Dave, I don't hold with the reforming Johnny's who want to remake 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 prognacity 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 slash away every time I bore 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 Stambool. 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 slash away gets thumped and flooded all over by the medical staff twice a week doesn't mean he can take the strataship lurch 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 forward 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 slash away'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 slash away's side. With an effort he lifted the big man up, propped him against the bulkhead and shook him until his teeth rattled. Slash away he muttered, slash away old fellow. Slash away opened his blurred eyes. "Fhew!" he muttered. "You sure sucked 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, slash away. The ship isn't moving. There are no vibrations and slash away. Are you hurt?" "Your skull thumped against that bulkhead so hard I was afraid." "Nah, I'm okay." "What do you mean the ship ain't moving? How could it stop?" Lawton said, "I don't know, slash away." Helping the jimm's-lugger to his feet, he stared apprehensively about him. Captain Forrester was kneeling on the resin, testing his hawks for sprains with splayed fingers, his features twitching. "Hurt badly, sir?" The commander shook his head. "I don't think so. Dave, we are 20,000 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?" "They're thin, sir, as 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 pipelines and nichrome humidification units. They had unbuttoned their high-altitude coats, and their stratosphere helmets were resting on their knees. The jabbo-choff 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 intensely 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, forester 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 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 slash away, who was following Lawton about like a doting seal. "You are right, guy, sir. Another two or three cracks in my noggin would have split wide open. But not like an eggshell slash away. Pig iron develops fissures under terrific pounding, but your cranium seems to be more like tempered steel. Slash away? 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, and conceivably could have sucked in a helium leakage from the carbon pile valves. And there are bulkhead porocytes which could have been clogged. Yeah, muttered slash away, 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." As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. Plus, look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free-checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases, and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. 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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, Margaret Slashway. More up against it, eh? Lawton was squatting on his hands beside an emergency chute, opening on the back of the penguins' 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 200 feet of gleaming metal cordage. Suddenly, as he stared, the drum stopped revolving. Lawton stiffened, a startled expression coming onto his face. He had been playing a hunch that had seemed as insane, rationally considered, as his wild idea about the bulkhead poreocytes. For a moment, he was stunned, unable to believe that he had struck paterte. The winch indicator stood at 103 feet, giving him a rich, fruity yield of startlingment. 100 feet below, 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 beneath 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?" Slashway asked. Lawton moved back from the windlass, his brain whirling. Slashway, there's a solid surface, directly beneath us, but it's completely invisible. "You mean it's like a frozen cloud, sir?" No, Slashway. 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 Slashway, 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, Slashway," he muttered. "I'll get at that next." A half hour later, Lawton sat behind 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 Forester'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 Forester. 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," Forester ordered. "I.I, sir." The captain moved 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. Forester 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?" "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-fiber Davey goes down to look around," he grumbled. He was conscious that he was flirting with danger. The air outside was breathable, but with the diffuse, unorthodox gases injured his lungs, he didn't know, couldn't be sure. But he had to admit that he felt alright so far. He was 70 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 30 feet with mounting confidence. At the end of the ladder, he braised 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 mountains and clouds. 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. The little sparks flew up about his legs. Abruptly, he sat down again, his face ashen. From the emergency shoot opening far above, a massive head appeared. You all right, sir, slash away called, his voice vibrant with concern. Well, I, you'd better come right up, sir. Captain's orders. All right, Loughton shouted. Let the ladder down another ten feet. Loughton ascended rapidly, resentment smoldering within him. What right had the skipper to interfere? He had passed the buck, hadn't he? Loughton got another bad jolt. The instant he emerged through the shoot opening. Captain Forrester was leaning against a parachute rack, gasping for breath. His face a livid hue. Slash away 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 rotary's backfired and used up all the oxygen in the engine room. As a United Explorer card member, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles. 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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 you could breathe down there. You're alright, 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 is breathing it in again gratefully. Thinly dispersed, and mixed with oxygen, it seemed alright. 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 energy 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 Warily. "If we can blast their way out, it will." The Captain's sagging body jacked knife direct. "Blast our way out. What do you mean, Dave?" I've clamped expulsor discs 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? Forester 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 helicopter veins and descend vertically. The rotaries won't backfire again. I've had their burnt-out cylinder heads replaced. An agitated voice came from the visit plate 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 foresters 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, Forester 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 groats. It started up above and spread around. First there was just a clouding over the sky, sir, and then stock 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 ropey 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 boy head, from sea beaches at Ebbtide. It was the unhulsomeness of the vegetation which chiefly unnerved him. It looked dank, malaria. There were decaying patches on the fungus growths, and a measmal mist was descending from it toward the ship. The control room was completely still when he turned from the quartz port to meet foresters 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 droned 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 interpreted forester. I know, but if there are alien gases in the air, the surface of the bubble must be wreaking with unheard of chemicals. There may be compounds inside the bubble which have so sped up organic processes that 100 million years 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 rainforests 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 cruise morale sag. The measmal taint of the ominously proliferating vegetation was soon pervading the ship, spreading de-moralization everywhere. It was particularly awful, straight down. Above a ropey tangle of livid vines and creepers, a kingly stenchweed towered, purplish and bloated and weighing 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 Loughton 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 Loughton 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. Loughton 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 plant craig. Forted, desperate, Loughton played his last card. He sent five members of the crew, equipped with blow guns. They returned screaming. Loughton had to fortify himself with a double whiskey soda before he could face the look of approach in their eyes long enough to get all the prickles out of them. From then on, pandemonium rained. 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 shoot opening after a vowing and he preferred impalement to suffocation. He was impaled. It was horrible. Looking down, Loughton could see his twisted body dangling on a crimson, stippled, thorn-like growth, 40 feet in height. Slash away was standing at his elbow in that Waterloo moment. His rough-hewn feature is twitching. I can't stand it, sir. It's driving me squirrely. I know, Slash away. There's something worse than marijuana weed down there. Slash away swallowed hard. That poor guy down there did the wise thing. Loughton husked. Stamp on that idea, Slash away. 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. Bosch. There's no limits of what a man can stand. From the visit plate behind them came an urgent voice. Radio room tuning in, sir. Loughton 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. Loughton's eyes narrowed to exultant slits. He spat on the deck. A slow tremor shaking him. Slash away. Did you hear that? We've done it. We've won against Hell in 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 nine-pin? 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. Slash away, 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 visit plate paled. I can't do that, sir. Ship's regulation. Loughton transfix 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 cash-eared, snap into it. Yes, yes, sir. The captain's startled face preceded the duty-master visit view 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, loughton wrapped impatiently? Forest are 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 visit plate. The men were not standing in attention at all. They were slumping against the Perseus's 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 its 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 looked like an idiot's grimace. Loughton 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 were blasting our way free, the bubbles 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 in a bay 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 rily. 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, do you see? Never had a 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, who fears death is a dunce. Lawton squared his shoulders. With a crew like that, nothing could stop him. His energies were surging high. The deliriant weed held no terrors for him now. They were start-hotted 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 rotary start of the instant the bottom drops out. He was with the captain in Slash away in the control room when it came. There was a sudden, grinding jolt, and the captain's desk started moving toward the courtsport, carrying Lawton with it. "Holy Jiminy Cricket!" exclaimed Slash away. The deck tilted sharply, then righted itself. A sudden gush of clear, cold air came through the ventilation valves as the triple rotary started up with a roar. Lawton and the captain reached the courtsport 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 Forester and caused Lawton's scalped 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. Forester was trembling visibly when he turned from the courtsport. "God Dave, that would have been the last straw, animal life. Dave, 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 dusk particles which had spurred it up with it. It's uncharged atomic particles combining with oxygen 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 far more careful in the future, he told himself. Much more careful. 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