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Authors: Eric Frank Russell
Tags: Science-Fiction
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grinned ruefully. “I’m not immortal, either—but I’ll do my best.”
Snatching his hat, he was gone, bound for Battery Park, the 10:30 strat-plane and the worst disaster in the history of the New World.
Chapter 5
THE NEW YORK-BOISE-SEATTLE STRATOSPHERE EXPRESS dived down from the atmosphere’s upper reaches, cut its oxygen from its pressurized cabin, levelled with a thunderous burst of rockets, swept beneath the undersides of fleecy clouds.
With the little town of Oakley nestling on its banks, Goose Creek rolled under the fleet vessel’s bow. Far to port and well to stern gleamed the northern fringes of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. About a hundred and fifty miles to go—a mere ten minutes’ run!
A cigarette that Graham had lit over Oakley was still only half consumed when the strat-plane banked away from the valley of the Snake and curved toward Boise. The turn brought Silver City on the port side where it was easily perceivable in the dry, dustless atmosphere of the locality. Its white and cream-colored buildings glowed in the sunlight. Bobbin-shaped chemical reservoirs of the National Camera plant, slung on huge towers, stood out clearly on the city skyline.
Thrusting his feet at the footrests to resist body-surge caused by the ship’s rapid deceleration, Graham took two more drags at his cigarette, cast another glance at the far vista of Silver City. For a moment, it was still there, sharp and clear in detail upon the horizon; the next moment it had gone in a mighty cloud of heaving vapor.
Crushing his cigarette between unnerved fingers, he rose partway in his seat, his eyes staring incredulously at the faraway spectacle. The cloud bloomed hugely, swelled with the primal vigor of an oncoming dust-storm, its bloated crests curling angrily as they gained altitude. Small black specks soared above this upper edge, hung momentarily in mid-air, dropped back into the swirling chaos.
“God in heaven!” breathed Graham. His eyes strained unbelievingly. He knew that for the strange specks to be visible from such a distance they must be big, very big—as large as buildings. In those tense seconds it was as if he were endowed with a front seat at the dropping of a bigger and better atom-bomb—with people in the back seats watching seismographs a thousand miles away.
The strat-plane’s tail swung round, concealed the distant drama. Unaware that anything abnormal was taking place, its pilot brought the vessel down in a long, dexterous curve that dropped Silver City behind intervening spurs of the Rockies. Making a perfect landing, the great machine rushed over the concrete, its rockets blasting spasmodically. With a final swerve, it stopped alongside a tower-topped building that bore in large white letters the word: BOISE.
Graham was first out. Descending the portable steps in a manner that startled its handlers, he hit the concrete, made to run around the ship’s tail, but stopped, appalled.
About a hundred civilians and officials were scattered over the stratosphere station’s areaway, but none advanced to greet the arrival. They stood stock still at various points around the space, their faces turned to the south, their eyes narrowed as they strove to bring a long range into focus.
In that direction, sixty miles away, yet thrusting high above minor sprawls of the Rockies, was the cloud. It was not mushroom-shaped as other ominous clouds had been. It was twisted and dark and still growing. It had become an awful pillar that reached to the very floors of heaven and sought to thrust through like a gaseous fungus rooted in hell; a great, ghastly erection of swirling, flowing, sullen clouds poised like a visible column of earthly woe and lamentations.
The noise! The noise of that far phenomenon was infinitely terrible even though muted by distance; a sound of tortured, disrupted air; a sound as if something insane and gargantuan were running amok through the cosmos, ripping, tearing, rending everything on
Snatching his hat, he was gone, bound for Battery Park, the 10:30 strat-plane and the worst disaster in the history of the New World.
Chapter 5
THE NEW YORK-BOISE-SEATTLE STRATOSPHERE EXPRESS dived down from the atmosphere’s upper reaches, cut its oxygen from its pressurized cabin, levelled with a thunderous burst of rockets, swept beneath the undersides of fleecy clouds.
With the little town of Oakley nestling on its banks, Goose Creek rolled under the fleet vessel’s bow. Far to port and well to stern gleamed the northern fringes of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. About a hundred and fifty miles to go—a mere ten minutes’ run!
A cigarette that Graham had lit over Oakley was still only half consumed when the strat-plane banked away from the valley of the Snake and curved toward Boise. The turn brought Silver City on the port side where it was easily perceivable in the dry, dustless atmosphere of the locality. Its white and cream-colored buildings glowed in the sunlight. Bobbin-shaped chemical reservoirs of the National Camera plant, slung on huge towers, stood out clearly on the city skyline.
Thrusting his feet at the footrests to resist body-surge caused by the ship’s rapid deceleration, Graham took two more drags at his cigarette, cast another glance at the far vista of Silver City. For a moment, it was still there, sharp and clear in detail upon the horizon; the next moment it had gone in a mighty cloud of heaving vapor.
Crushing his cigarette between unnerved fingers, he rose partway in his seat, his eyes staring incredulously at the faraway spectacle. The cloud bloomed hugely, swelled with the primal vigor of an oncoming dust-storm, its bloated crests curling angrily as they gained altitude. Small black specks soared above this upper edge, hung momentarily in mid-air, dropped back into the swirling chaos.
“God in heaven!” breathed Graham. His eyes strained unbelievingly. He knew that for the strange specks to be visible from such a distance they must be big, very big—as large as buildings. In those tense seconds it was as if he were endowed with a front seat at the dropping of a bigger and better atom-bomb—with people in the back seats watching seismographs a thousand miles away.
The strat-plane’s tail swung round, concealed the distant drama. Unaware that anything abnormal was taking place, its pilot brought the vessel down in a long, dexterous curve that dropped Silver City behind intervening spurs of the Rockies. Making a perfect landing, the great machine rushed over the concrete, its rockets blasting spasmodically. With a final swerve, it stopped alongside a tower-topped building that bore in large white letters the word: BOISE.
Graham was first out. Descending the portable steps in a manner that startled its handlers, he hit the concrete, made to run around the ship’s tail, but stopped, appalled.
About a hundred civilians and officials were scattered over the stratosphere station’s areaway, but none advanced to greet the arrival. They stood stock still at various points around the space, their faces turned to the south, their eyes narrowed as they strove to bring a long range into focus.
In that direction, sixty miles away, yet thrusting high above minor sprawls of the Rockies, was the cloud. It was not mushroom-shaped as other ominous clouds had been. It was twisted and dark and still growing. It had become an awful pillar that reached to the very floors of heaven and sought to thrust through like a gaseous fungus rooted in hell; a great, ghastly erection of swirling, flowing, sullen clouds poised like a visible column of earthly woe and lamentations.
The noise! The noise of that far phenomenon was infinitely terrible even though muted by distance; a sound of tortured, disrupted air; a sound as if something insane and gargantuan were running amok through the cosmos, ripping, tearing, rending everything on
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