e vast crowd murmured. They knew he was
adjusting everything inside for the days-long endurance test ahead of
him. Kress had forgotten nothing. There was even a specially made
cylinder, comparable to the globe which Picard had used in his historic
balloon ascensions in Europe. This was attached to a parachute which, if
the emergency arose, could be dropped. Kress, in the ball, could pass
through the sub-arctic cold of the stratosphere if necessity demanded.
The ball, if it struck the ocean, would preserve him for a great length
of time. It was even equipped with rockets.

This plane was revolutionary. It was, to begin with, carrying a vast
load. Kress was taking every conceivable kind of instrument he fancied
he might need. There was food as for a long siege.

Jeter shuddered. Why had he thought of the word "siege"?

The great load would be carried without difficulty, however, for this
plane was little short of a miracle. Among other things, Kress would be
able, in case of fatigue, to set his controls--as at sea a pilot may
sometimes lash his wheel--and sleep while his plane mounted on up, and
up, in great spirals.

Up beyond fifty-five thousand he hoped to attain a thousand miles an
hour velocity. That meant, say, breakfast in New York, lunch in London,
tea in Novo-Sibirsk, dinner in Yokohama--as soon as the myriad planes
which would follow this one in design and capabilities took off on the
trail Kress was blazing.

Jeter sighed at the thought. For several years he had explored
little-known sections of the world. He had visited every country. He had
entered every port that could be reached from the ocean--and all the
time he had felt the Earth shrinking before the gods of speed. The time
would soon come when everything on Earth would be commonplace. Then
man's urge to go places he hadn't seen before would take him away from
the Earth entirely--when he would begin the task of making even the
universe shrink to appease the gods of speed. Somehow the thought was a
melancholy one.

Now the crowd gave back as Kress speeded up his motor, indicating that
he would soon take off. Jeter and Eyer studied the outward outline of
Kress' craft. It looked exactly like a black beetle which has just
alighted after flight, but has not yet quite hidden its wings. It was
black, probably because it was believed a black object could be followed
easier from the Earth.

There would be many anxious eyes watching that spiraling ship as