Hadley paused again.

"Go on, man!" said Jeter hoarsely.

"Twenty minutes later the _Hueber_ was lowered back into the water,
practically unharmed. It had all happened so swiftly that the sailors
aboard scarcely realized anything had happened. The skipper of the
warship radios that the sensation was like a sudden attack of dizziness.
One man died of heart failure. He was the only casualty."

Jeter's eyes began to blaze with excitement, as he spoke.

"Now you can tell the world that the thing which causes the havoc
Manhattan is experiencing is not supernatural. It is human--and our
people have no fear of human enemies."

"But why was not the warship dropped somewhere, as the buildings have
been?" asked Hadley.

"Did you ever," replied Jeter, "hear what is described in the best
fiction as a burst of ironic laughter? Well, that what the _Hueber_, as
it now stands, or floats, is! But the enemy made a foolish move and
will live to regret it bitterly."

"I wish I could share your sudden confidence," said Hadley. "Conditions
here, where public morale is concerned, have become more frightful
minute by minute since you left."

Jeter severed the connection.

* * * * *

The altimeter said thirty-five thousand feet. They were still spiraling
upward. Again Jeter surveyed the sky aloft.

The earth below was a blur, save through the telescopes. The two had
reached a height less than a third of what they hoped to attain.

Still they could see nothing up above them. They were almost over the
"shaft" of atmosphere through which the _Hueber_ must have been lifted
and lowered. Suppose, Jeter thought, they had accidentally flown into
that shaft at exactly the wrong moment? It brought a shudder. Still,
Jeter's mind went on, if that had happened they would now, in all
likelihood, have been right among the enemy--for gravity in that shaft
would not have existed for them, either.

But would they have been lowered back to safety as the _Hueber_ and her
crew had been?

Believing as he did that the enemy knew everything that transpired
within its sphere of influence, Jeter doubted that Eyer and himself
would have been so humanely treated.

He had but to remember Kress to feel sure of this.

The altimeter said fifty thousand feet.

CHAPTER VI

_Stratosphere Currents_

Now the partner-scientists concentrated on the tremendous task of
climbing higher than man had ever flown before. Nob