ted.

At last those blurred tentacles began to creep across the lowest of the
ceiling ports. Faster they came, and faster. In a few minutes every port
was covered with a film of the weird stuff.

"It may be a foot deep above us," said Jeter. "I don't think we'll be
able to tell how thick any bit of the stuff is. The surface of the field
may be ten feet above our heads right now. Well, Tema, old son, we're
prisoners as surely as though we were locked in a chrome steel vault a
thousand feet underground. We can't go anywhere, or come back if we go
there. We're prisoners, that's all--and all we can do is wait."

Eyer grinned.

Jeter began nonchalantly to slip off his helmet and goggles. He doffed
his flying coat. In a short time the two might have been sitting over
liquor and cigars in their own library at Mineola.

"Expecting company?" asked Eyer.

"Most emphatically," replied Jeter. "Company that is an unknown
quantity. Company that will be wholly and entirely interesting."

So they waited. They could now feel themselves sinking faster into the
substance. They settled on an even keel, however, but more rapidly than
before, as though the directing intelligence behind all these had tired
of showing them his wonders and was eager to get on with the business of
the day.

Eyer happened to look down at one of the ports in the floor of the
cabin.

"Good God!" he yelled, "Lucian!"

* * * * *

He was pointing. His face had gone white again. His eyes were bulging.
Jeter stared down into the floor ports--and gasped.

"I expected it, but it's a shock just the same, Tema," he said softly.
"Get hold of yourself. You'll need all your faculties in a minute or
two."

Through the ports they found themselves staring down all of twenty feet
upon a milky white globe, set inside the greater, softer globe through
which they were passing, like a kernel in a shell.

The plane was oozing through the "rind" which protected the strange
globe below against the cold and discomfort of the stratosphere.

"They'd scarcely bring us this far to drop us, would they?" asked Eyer.

He was making a distinct effort to regain control of himself. His voice
was normal, his breathing regular--and he had spoken thus to show Jeter
that this was so.

"Whether we're to be dropped or lowered is all one to us," he said,
"since we can do nothing in either case. Twenty feet of fall wouldn't
smash us up much."

"Let's k