ane.

The world itself began to have a feeling of dread--that grew.

CHAPTER II

_The Ghostly Columns_

Franz Kress had been gone a week, when all the world knew that he
couldn't possibly have stayed aloft that length of time. Yet no word was
received from him, no report received from any part of the world that he
had returned. Various islands which he might have reached were scoured
for traces of him. The lighter vessels of most of the navies of the
world joined in the search to no avail. Kress had merely mounted into
the sky and vanished.

The world's last word from him had been a few words on the
radio-telephone:

"Have reached sixty thousand feet and--"

There the message had ended, as though the speaker, eleven miles above
the earth, had been strangled. Yet he didn't drop, as far as anybody in
the world knew.

Lucian Jeter and Tema Eyer worked harder than ever, remembering the
promise they had made Kress at his take-off. Whatever had happened to
him, he seemingly in part had anticipated. And now the partners would
go up, too, seeking information--perhaps to vanish as Kress had
vanished. They were not afraid. They shared the world's feeling of
dread, but they were not afraid. Of course death would end their labors,
but there were many scientists in the world to take up where they might
leave off.

There were, for example, Sitsumi of Japan, rumored discoverer of a
substance capable of bending light rays about itself to render itself
invisible; Wang Li, Liao Wu, Yung Chan, of China--three who had degrees
from the world's greatest universities and had added miraculously to the
store of knowledge by their own inspired research. These three were
patriotically eager to bring China back to her rightful place as the
leader in scientific research--a place she had not held for a thousand
years. It was generally agreed among scientists that the three would
shortly outstrip all their contemporaries.

As Jeter thought of these four men, Orientals all, it suddenly occurred
to him to communicate with them. He talked it over with Eyer and decided
to send carefully worded cables to all four.

In a few hours he received answers to them:

From Japan: "Sitsumi does not care to communicate." There was a world of
cold hostility in the words, Jeter thought, and Eyer agreed with him.

From China came the strangest message of all:

"Wang, Liao and Yung have been cut off from world for past four months,
conducting