And the strange metal structure was settling lower and lower. People ran screaming from its path. A policeman had drawn his revolver, was pointing it upward threateningly. The beehive was trapped in the canon of city streets. The wind held it against the north side of the street, plastered it against the buildings.
Click jumped to the metal table. There was a lever and a slide button in a metal groove. He didn’t understand the function of the lever, but he saw on the grooved slide the figures which had been etched into the metal.
Gravitation Gauge: +64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 0, -2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128
Click noticed the button. It was almost at a point marked with a zero, but it was not quite on the line. He pushed on the button, gingerly shoved it until it was exactly on the etched line opposite the zero.
“Father’s in bad shape. Too much strain, too much shock. We’ve got to get him to bed,” said the girl.
And then, as Click moved to help her, she picked up the unconscious form by the simple expedient of pinching her thumb and forefinger in the waistband of his trousers.
For a moment Click could not believe his eyes. Then he remembered the sliding indicator with the button set at “Gravitation zero.”
“May I help?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I can manage all right. You keep your eyes on that fellow on the floor. You can’t take any chances with him.”
The inner door slammed.
Chapter 4
A Good Newspaper Man
Apparently the girl had failed to notice that they were drifting down the main street of Centerberry, creating a veritable panic of interest.
Click thrilled to the opportunity. Busy with her father, nursing him, getting him safely in bed, seeing that the bandaged shoulder was made comfortable, the girl wouldn’t notice the motions of the shell. It was a chance for Click to experiment.
He glanced once more at the figure on the floor, then suddenly awoke to his original mission. The shell was holding its elevation now, rising very slightly on the warm currents of air that shimmered against the sides of the office buildings.
But the offices of the Centerberry Bugle were only a block down the street, and the wind was drifting the metal shell against the buildings, almost directly in line with the newspaper offices.
There was paper and pencil in his pocket, and Click fell to scribbling rapid notes, printing the letters large so the notes could be held against a window and read.
Kidnaped. Thugs attack professor and daughter. Stowaway held captive. Gravitation overcome by some theory of neutralizing etheric vibrations. Trip to planets planned. Professor and self wounded, but not seriously. Have ascended over twenty miles above earth.
He looked out. The Bugle offices were but a matter of windows away. Click rushed to the round loopholes.
The wind brushed the shell against the building. It bumped, bounced, rolled and bumped again. Then the windows of the Bugle loomed before him. He looked squarely into the eyes of the city editor. That individual’s face ran a gamut of emotions. He yelled an order over his shoulder.
The shell drifted lightly by the window, came to the next. Here were men, packed to the frame, gawking outward. There was a rustle of motion and the men cleared from the window as though by magic. Click held the message against the three-inch plate glass. Would they copy it? What was the matter?
A round lens was thrust up against the office window frame. He could see a photographer focusing his camera upon the message.
It was a clever idea. They’d photograph the message, it would be quicker than copying. Click wished he’d said more.
But there was no time. The photographer nodded, jerked out a plate holder, ran to the next window, tried again, nodded.
Click crossed to the metal table, pulled the button over to “-2.”
There was a lurch, a scraping of the building against the metal of the shell, and then the windows of the structure shot past with the smooth velocity of an express elevator.
Click realized that the shell went upward with an accelerating velocity, equal to the acceleration of a falling body.
A hundred, five hundred, a thousand feet up shot the metal container. Click moved the sliding button to zero. The ball continued to go up. Then Click realized that the momentum of the shell was taking them on up. It would be necessary to overcome that momentum.
Click pulled the button over to plus two.
Instantly things happened.
There was a peculiar sensation of arrested motion. His heart gave a few panicky beats, but there was no sliding toward the roof as he had expected. Instead, everything remained as before, save for that peculiar sensation of arrested motion.
He looked about him, rubbed his eyes.
Then it dawned upon him. Gravitation had taken hold of everything alike. But weight had returned to his body. His blood weighed twice as much. The strain of lifting it was that much more of a burden on his heart; but only for a few beats. Then the new gravitation had compensated itself.
Had the shell been stationary, his body would weigh twice as much, but the shell was floating in the air. If it fell, his body fell equally fast. It was only when the motion was checked that gravity had a chance to tell.
Of a sudden Click remembered the trouble Professor Wagner had encountered in stopping the falling shell. He looked out. Not only had their upward motion ceased, but they were falling.
He moved the control.
The door slammed open from behind him.
“What are you doing?” snapped Dot Wagner. “Is this any time to experiment?”
“We were drifting down into the street,” he explained, but did not bother to tell her of how he had taken advantage of that fact to get the greatest scoop of the century to his newspaper.
She grunted. “Get over and tie that man up. I’ll try the controls.”
She tossed him a bit of rope, and Click tapped his toes upon the floor, propelling himself toward the stowaway.
“Who is this fellow?”
She shook her head. “Ask Father.”
Click tried another question. “Where are we going?”
She pointed upward. “The sky’s the limit.”
“Let’s go.”
She sighed. “Do you know, I’m commencing to like you. You’ve got adaptability, and—”
“Yes,” prompted Click, “and what?”
“And nerve,” she snapped. “Got that man tied up?”
“After a fashion. It’ll hold him from doing anything rash.”
The girl looked about her, touched the lever.
The cage whirled, wobbled back and forth in a swing, for all the world like a compass needle swinging toward the magnetic north. Then, when it had steadied, she pushed a button.
Instantly the ground below began slipping by, not at a very rapid rate of speed, but at a smooth motion that was constantly accelerated.
She moved the gravitation control to negative two, watched the ground below for a second or two, then slipped the button back to zero. The ground drifted and dropped until the shell was over two thousand feet. Then the girl eased over the button so gradually that the shell swung smoothly along at a constant elevation.
She smiled up at Click’s puzzled frown.
“Magnetism,” she said. “You might as well know something about it. Magnetism is the least known force in the world, and the most universal. The world’s a magnet. Even living organisms are magnetic. Also remember that all electricity is, is a force induced by cutting magnetic fields with a wire. We multiply that force by wire that’s in fine coils rotating rapidly. But you can imagine what would happen if a properly energized, properly constructed apparatus suddenly cut the magnetic lines of force about the earth.”