The Sky Trap Part 1

The Sky Trap.

by Frank Belknap Long.

Lawton enjoyed a good fight. He stood happily trading blows with Slashaway Tommy, his lean-fleshed torso gleaming with sweat. He preferred to work the pugnacity out of himself slowly, to savor it as it ebbed.

"Better luck next time, Slashaway," he said, and unlimbered a left hook that thudded against his opponent's jaw with such violence that the big, hairy ape crumpled to the resin and rolled over on his back.

Lawton brushed a lock of rust-colored hair back from his brow and stared down at the limp figure lying on the descending stratoship's slightly tilted athletic deck.

"Good work, Slashaway," he said. "You're primitive and beetle-browed, but you've got what it takes."

Lawton flattered himself that he was the opposite of primitive. High in the sky he had predicted the weather for eight days running, with far more accuracy than he could have put into a punch.

They'd flash his report all over Earth in a couple of minutes now. From New York to London to Singapore and back. In half an hour he'd be donning street clothes and stepping out feeling darned good.

He had fulfilled his weekly obligation to society by manipulating meteorological instruments for forty-five minutes, high in the warm, upper stratosphere and worked off his pugnacity by knocking down a professional gym slugger. He would have a full, glorious week now to work off all his other drives.

The stratoship's commander, Captain Forrester, had come up, and was staring at him reproachfully. "Dave, I don't hold with the reforming Johnnies who want to re-make human nature from the ground up. But you've got to admit our generation knows how to keep things humming with a minimum of stress. We don't have world wars now because we work off our pugnacity by sailing into gym sluggers eight or ten times a week. And since our romantic emotions can be taken care of by tactile television we're not at the mercy of every brainless bit of fluff's calculated ankle appeal."

Lawton turned, and regarded him quizzically. "Don't you suppose I realize that? You'd think I just blew in from Mars."

"All right. We have the outlets, the safety valves. They are supposed to keep us civilized. But you don't derive any benefit from them."

"The heck I don't. I exchange blows with Slashaway every time I board the Perseus. And as for women--well, there's just one woman in the world for me, and I wouldn't exchange her for all the Turkish images in the tactile broadcasts from Stamboul."

"Yes, I know. But you work off your primitive emotions with too much gusto. Even a cast-iron gym slugger can bruise. That last blow was--brutal. Just because Slashaway gets thumped and thudded all over by the medical staff twice a week doesn't mean he can take--"

The stratoship lurched suddenly. The deck heaved up under Lawton's feet, hurling him against Captain Forrester and spinning both men around so that they seemed to be waltzing together across the ship. The still limp gym slugger slid downward, colliding with a corrugated metal bulkhead and sloshing back and forth like a wet mackerel.

A full minute pa.s.sed before Lawton could put a stop to that. Even while careening he had been alive to Slashaway's peril, and had tried to leap to his aid. But the ship's steadily increasing gyrations had hurled him away from the skipper and against a ma.s.sive vaulting horse, barking the flesh from his shins and spilling him with violence onto the deck.

He crawled now toward the p.r.o.ne gym slugger on his hands and knees, his temples thudding. The gyrations ceased an instant before he reached Slashaway's side. With an effort he lifted the big man up, propped him against the bulkhead and shook him until his teeth rattled. "Slashaway,"

he muttered. "Slashaway, old fellow."

Slashaway opened blurred eyes, "Phew!" he muttered. "You sure socked me hard, sir."

"You went out like a light," explained Lawton gently. "A minute before the ship lurched."

"The ship _lurched_, sir?"

"Something's very wrong, Slashaway. The ship isn't moving. There are no vibrations and--Slashaway, are you hurt? Your skull thumped against that bulkhead so hard I was afraid--"

"Naw, I'm okay. Whatd'ya mean, the ship ain't moving? How could it stop?"

Lawton said. "I don't know, Slashaway." Helping the gym slugger to his feet he stared apprehensively about him. Captain Forrester was kneeling on the resin testing his hocks for sprains with splayed fingers, his features twitching.

"Hurt badly, sir?"

The Commander shook his head. "I don't think so. Dave, we are twenty thousand feet up, so how in h.e.l.l could we be stationary in s.p.a.ce?"

"It's all yours, skipper."

"I must say you're helpful."

Forrester got painfully to his feet and limped toward the athletic compartment's single quartz port--a small circle of radiance on a level with his eyes. As the port sloped downward at an angle of nearly sixty degrees all he could see was a diffuse glimmer until he wedged his brow in the observation visor and stared downward.

Lawton heard him suck in his breath sharply. "Well, sir?"

"There are thin cirrus clouds directly beneath us. They're not moving."

Lawton gasped, the sense of being in an impossible situation swelling to nightmare proportions within him. What could have happened?

Directly behind him, close to a bulkhead chronometer, which was clicking out the seconds with unabashed regularity, was a misty blue visiplate that merely had to be switched on to bring the pilots into view.

The Commander hobbled toward it, and manipulated a rheostat. The two pilots appeared side by side on the screen, sitting amidst a spidery network of dully gleaming pipe lines and nichrome humidification units.

They had unb.u.t.toned their high-alt.i.tude coats and their stratosphere helmets were resting on their knees. The Jablochoff candle light which flooded the pilot room accentuated the haggardness of their features, which were a sickly cadaverous hue.

The captain spoke directly into the visiplate. "What's wrong with the ship?" he demanded. "Why aren't we descending? Dawson, you do the talking!"

One of the pilots leaned tensely forward, his shoulders jerking. "We don't know, sir. The rotaries went dead when the ship started gyrating.

We can't work the emergency torps and the temperature is rising."

"But--it defies all logic," Forrester muttered. "How could a metal ship weighing tons be suspended in the air like a balloon? It is stationary, but it is not buoyant. We seem in all respects to be _frozen in_."

"The explanation may be simpler than you dream," Lawton said. "When we've found the key."

The Captain swung toward him. "Could _you_ find the key, Dave?"

"I should like to try. It may be hidden somewhere on the ship, and then again, it may not be. But I should like to go over the ship with a fine-tooth comb, and then I should like to go over _outside_, thoroughly. Suppose you make me an emergency mate and give me a carte blanche, sir."

Lawton got his carte blanche. For two hours he did nothing spectacular, but he went over every inch of the ship. He also lined up the crew and pumped them. The men were as completely in the dark as the pilots and the now completely recovered Slashaway, who was following Lawton about like a doting seal.

"You're a right guy, sir. Another two or three cracks and my noggin would've split wide open."

"But not like an eggsh.e.l.l, Slashaway. Pig iron develops fissures under terrific pounding but your cranium seems to be more like tempered steel.

Slashaway, you won't understand this, but I've got to talk to somebody and the Captain is too busy to listen.

"I went over the entire ship because I thought there might be a hidden source of buoyancy somewhere. It would take a lot of air bubbles to turn this ship into a balloon, but there are large vacuum chambers under the multiple series condensers in the engine room which conceivably could have sucked in a helium leakage from the carbon pile valves. And there are bulkhead porosities which could have clogged."

"Yeah," muttered Slashaway, scratching his head. "I see what you mean, sir."

"It was no soap. There's nothing _inside_ the ship that could possibly keep us up. Therefore there must be something outside that isn't air. We know there _is_ air outside. We've stuck our heads out and sniffed it.

And we've found out a curious thing.

"Along with the oxygen there is water vapor, but it isn't H2O. It's HO.