all the world seemed shrinking about them.

Now they were at a tremendous height; over twenty miles they had risen
into the atmosphere; the air about them was so thin that the sky seemed
black, the stars blazed out in cold, unwinking glory, while the great
fires of the sun seemed reaching out into space like mighty arms seeking
to draw back to the parent body the masses of the wheeling planets.
About it, in far flung streamers of cold fire shone the mighty zodiacal
light, an Aurora on a titanic scale. For a moment they hung there, while
they made readings of the meters.

Arcot was the first to speak and there was awe in his voice. "I never
began to let out the power of this thing! What a ship! When these are
made commercially, we'll have to use about one horsepower generators in
them, or people will kill themselves trying to see how fast they can
go."

Methodically the machine was tried out at this height, testing various
settings of the instruments. It was definitely proven that the values
that Arcot and Morey had assigned from purely theoretical calculations
were correct to within one-tenth of one percent. The power absorbed by
the machine they knew and had calculated, but the terrific power of the
driving units was far beyond their expectations.

"Well, now we're off for some horizontal maneuvers," Arcot announced.
"I'm sure we agree the machine can climb and can hold itself in the air.
The air pressure controls seem to be working perfectly. Now we'll test
her speed."

Suddenly the seats swung beneath them; then as the ship shot forward
with ever greater speed, ever greater acceleration, it seemed that it
turned and headed upward, although they knew that the main stabilizing
gyroscopes were holding it level. In a moment the ship was headed out
over the Atlantic at a speed no rifle bullet had ever known. The radio
speedometer needle pushed farther and farther over as the speed
increased to unheard of values. Before they left the North American
shoreline they were traveling faster than a mile a second. They were in
the middle of the Atlantic before Arcot gradually shut off the
acceleration, letting the seats drop back into position.

A hubbub of excited comments rose from the four men. Momentarily, with
the full realization of the historical importance of this flight, no one
paid any attention to anyone else. Finally a question of the Air
Inspector reached Arcot's ears.

"What speed did we attain, Dr. Arcot? L