Part 1 (2/2)

”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 unb.u.t.toned their high-alt.i.tude 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 s.h.i.+p?” 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p, and then again, it may not be. But I should like to go over the s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p. 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 eggsh.e.l.l, 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 s.h.i.+p because I thought there might be a hidden source of buoyancy somewhere. It would take a lot of air bubbles to turn this s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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.

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