 THE SKYTRAP by Frank Belknap Long Lawton enjoyed a good fight. He stood happily, trading blows with Slashaway Tommy, his lean, fresh 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 it 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 figures lying on the descending strato-ship'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 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 45 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 strato-ship's commander, Captain Forrester, had come up and was staring at him reproachfully. Dave, I don't hold with the reforming Johnny's who want to remake 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. Lotten 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 slash away 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 Stambul. 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 slash away gets thumped and thotted all over by the medical staff twice a week, doesn't mean he can take the stratoship lurched suddenly. The deck heaved up under Lotten'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 forward, colliding with a corrugated metal bulkhead and sloshing back and forth like a wet mackerel. A full minute passed before Lotten could put a stop to that. Even while careening, he had been alive to slash away his 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 massive vaulting horse, barking the flesh from his shins and spilling him with violence onto the deck. He crawled now toward the prone gym slugger on his hands and knees, his temples thudding. The gyrations ceased an instant before he reached slash away's side. With an effort, he lifted the big man up, propped him against the bulkhead, and shook him until his teeth rattled. Slash away, he muttered. Slash away, old fellow. Slash away opened his blurred eyes. Phew! he muttered. You sure socked me hard, sir. You went out like a light, explained Lotten gently, a minute before the ship lurched. The ship lurched, sir? Something's very wrong, slash away. The ship isn't moving. There are no vibrations, and, slash away, are you hurt? Your skull thumped against that bulkhead so hard I was afraid. No, I'm okay. What do you mean the ship ain't moving? How could it stop? Lotten said, I don't know, slash away. Helping the gym slugger to his feet, he stared apprehensively about him. Captain Forester was kneeling on the resin, testing his hawks 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 hell could we be stationary in space? It's all yours, Skipper. I must say you're helpful. Forester 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. Lotten heard him suck in his breath sharply. Well, sir? There are thin, surrus clouds directly beneath us. They're not moving. Lotten 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 the spidery network of dully gleaming pipelines and nichrome humidification units. They had unbuttoned their high altitude coats, and their stratosphere helmets were resting on their knees. The jabbo-choff candlelight, 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 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 slash away, who was following Lawton about like a doting seal. You're a right guy, sir. Another two or three cracks in my noggin would have split wide open. But now, like an eggshell slash away, pig iron develops fissures under terrific pounding, but your cranium seems to be more like tempered steel. Slash away? 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 porocytes, which could have been clogged. Yeah, muttered slash away, 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. A molecular arrangement like that occurs in the upper solar atmosphere, but nowhere on earth. And there's a thin sprinkling of hydrocarbon molecules out there, too. Hydrocarbon appears ordinarily as methane gas, but out there, it rings up as CH, methane is CH4. And there are also scandium oxide molecules making unfamiliar faces at us. And oxide of boron with an equational limp. Gee, muttered slash away. We're up against it, eh? Lawton was squatting on his hands beside an emergency chute, opening on the back of the penguin's weather observatory. He was letting down a spliced beryllium plum line, his gaze riveted on the slowly turning horizontal drum of a windlass which contained more than 200 feet of gleaming metal cordage. Suddenly, as he stared, the drum stopped revolving. Lawton stiffened, a startled expression coming onto his face. He had been playing a hunch that had seemed as insane, rationally considered, as his wild idea about the bulkhead porosites. For a moment he was stunned, unable to believe that he had struck paydirt. The winch indicator stood at 103 feet, giving him a rich, fruity yield of startlement. 100 feet below, the plummet rested on something solid that sustained it in space. Scarcely breathing, Lawton leaned over the windlass and stared downward. There was nothing visible beneath the ship, and the fleecy clouds far below except a tiny black dot resting on vacancy, and a thin beryllium plum line ascending like an interrogation point from the dot to the chute opening. You see something down there? Slashaway asked. Lawton moved back from the windlass, his brain whirling. Slashaway, there's a solid surface directly beneath us, but it's completely invisible. You mean it's like a frozen cloud, sir? No, Slashaway. It doesn't shimmer or deflect light. Congealed water vapor would sink instantly to earth. You think it's all around us, sir? Lawton stared at Slashaway aghast. In his crude fumblings, the gym slugger had ripped a hidden fear right out of his subconsciousness into the light. I don't know, Slashaway, he muttered. I'll get at that next. A half hour later, Lawton sat behind the captain's desk in the control room, his face drained of all color. He kept his gaze averted as he talked. A man who succeeds too well with an unpleasant task may develop a subconscious sense of guilt. Sir, we're suspended inside a hollow sphere which resembles a huge floating soap bubble. Before we ripped through it, it must have had a plastic surface, but now the tear has apparently healed over, and the shell all around us is as resistant as steel. We're completely bottled up, sir. I shot rocket leads in all directions to make certain. The expression on Forester's face sold mere amazement down the river. He could not have looked more startled if the nearer planets had yielded their secrets chillingly, and a superrace had appeared suddenly on earth. Good God, Dave, do you suppose something has happened to space? Lawton raised his eyes with a shutter. Not necessarily, sir. Something has happened to us. We're floating through the sky in a huge invisible bubble of some sort, but we don't know whether it has anything to do with space. It may be a meteorological phenomenon. You say we're floating? We're floating slowly westward. The clouds beneath us have been receding for 15 or 20 minutes now. Phew, muttered Forester. That means we've got to. He broke off abruptly. The Perseus's radio operator was standing in the doorway, distressed and indecisioned in his gaze. Our reception is extremely sporadic, sir, he announced. We can pick up a few of the stronger broadcasts, but our emergency signals haven't been answered. Keep trying, Forester ordered. Aye, aye, sir. The captain moved to Lawton. Suppose we call it a bubble. Why are we suspended like this immovably? Your rocket leads shot up and the plumb line dropped 100 feet. Why should the ship itself remain stationary? Lawton said, the bubble must possess sufficient internal equilibrium to keep a big, heavy body suspended at its core. In other words, we must be suspended at the hub of converging energy lines. You mean we're surrounded by an electromagnetic field? Lawton frowned. Not necessarily, sir. I'm simply pointing out that there must be an energy tug of some sort involved. Otherwise the ship would be resting on the inner surface of the bubble. Forester nodded grimly. We should be thankful, I suppose, that we can move about inside the ship. Dave, do you think a man could descend to the inner surface? I have no doubt that a man could, sir. Shall I let myself down? Absolutely not. Damn it, Dave, I need your energies inside the ship. I could wish for a less impulsive first officer, but a man in my predicament can't be choosy. Then what are your orders, sir? Orders? Do I have to order you to think? Is working something out for yourself such a strain? We're drifting straight toward the Atlantic Ocean. What do you propose to do about that? I expect you'll have to do my best, sir. Lawton's best conflicted dynamically with the captain's orders. Ten minutes later he was descending hand over hand on a swaying emergency ladder. Tough Fiber Davy goes down to look around, he grumbled. He was conscious that he was flirting with danger. The air outside was breathable, but would the diffuse, unorthodox gases injure his lungs? He didn't know, couldn't be sure. But he had to admit that he felt all right so far. He was seventy feet below the ship and not at all dizzy. When he looked down he could see the purple domed summits of mountains between gaps in the fleecy cloud blanket. He couldn't see the Atlantic Ocean yet. He descended the last thirty feet with mounting confidence. At the end of the ladder he brazed himself and let go. He fell about six feet, landing on his rump on a spongy surface that bounced him back and forth. He was vaguely incredulous when he found himself sitting in the sky, staring through his spread legs at mountains and clouds. He took a deep breath. It struck him that the sensation of falling could be present without movement downward through space. He was beginning to experience such a sensation. His stomach twisted and his brain spun. He was suddenly sorry he had tried this. It was so damnably unnerving he was afraid of losing all emotional control. He stared up, his eyes squinting against the sun. Far above him the gleaning wedge-shaped bulk of the Perseus loomed colossally, blocking out a fifth of the sky. Lowering his right hand he ran his fingers over the invisible surface beneath him. The surface felt rubbery, moist. He got swangly to his feet and made a perilous attempt to walk through the sky. Beneath his feet the mysterious surface crackled. The little sparks flew up about his legs. Abruptly he sat down again, his face ashen. From the emergency chute opening far above a massive head appeared. You all right, sir, slash away called, his voice vibrant with concern. Well, I, you'd better come right up, sir, captain's orders. All right, Lauten shouted. Let the latter down another ten feet. Lauten ascended rapidly, resentment smoldering within him. What right had the skipper to interfere? He had passed the buck, hadn't he? Lauten got another bad jolt the instant he emerged through the chute opening. Captain Forester was leaning against a parachute rack, gasping for breath, his face a livid hue. Slash away looked equally bad. His jaw muscles were twitching and he was tugging at the collar of his gym suit. Forester gasped. Dave, I tried to move the ship. I didn't know you were outside. Good God, you didn't know the rotaries backfired and used up all the oxygen in the engine room. Worse, there's been a carbonic oxide seepage. The air is contaminated throughout the ship. We'll have to open the ventilation valves immediately. I've been waiting to see if you could breathe down there. You're all right, aren't you? The air is breathable? Lauten's face was dark with fury. I was an experimental rat in the sky, eh? Look, Dave, we're all in danger. Don't stand there glaring at me. Naturally I waited. I have my crew to think of. Well, think of them. Get those valves open before we all have convulsions. A half hour later, charcoal gas was mingling with oxygen outside the ship, and the crew was breathing it in again, gratefully. Thinly dispersed, and mixed with oxygen, it seemed all right, but Lauten had misgivings. No matter how attenuated a lethal gas is, it is never entirely harmless. To make matters worse, they were over the Atlantic Ocean. Far beneath them was an emerald turbulence, half obscured by eastward moving cloud masses. The bubble was holding, but the morale of the crew was beginning to sag. Lauten paced the control room. Deep within him, unsuspected energies surged. We'll last until the oxygen is breathed up, he exclaimed. We'll have four or five days at most, but we seem to be traveling faster than an ocean liner. With luck, we'll be in Europe before we become carbon dioxide breathers. Will that help matters, Dave, said the captain warily? If we can blast their way out, it will. The captain's sagging body jackknife direct. Blast our way out! What do you mean, Dave? I've clamped expulsor disks on the cosmic ray absorbers and trained them downward. A thin stream of accidental neutrons directed against the bottom of the bubble may disrupt its energies, wear it thin. It's a long gamble, but worth taking. We're staking nothing, remember? Foresters sputtered, nothing but our lives. If you blast a hole in the bubble, you'll destroy its energy balance. Did that occur to you? Inside a lopsided bubble, we may careen dangerously or fall into the sea before we can get the rotary started. I thought of that. The pilots are standing by to start the rotaries the instant we lurch. If we succeed in making a rent in the bubble, we'll break out the helicoptic veins and descend vertically. The rotaries won't backfire again. I've had their burnt-out cylinder heads replaced. An agitated voice came from the visit plate on the captain's desk. Tuning in, sir. Lawton stopped pacing abruptly. He swung about and grasped the desk edge with both hands, his head touching foresters as the two men stared down at the horizontal face of petty officer James Caldwell. Caldwell wasn't more than twenty-two or three, but the screen's opalescence silvered his hair and misted the outlines of his jaw, giving him an aspect of senility. Well, young man, forester growled, what is it? What do you want? The irritation in the captain's voice seemed to increase Caldwell's agitation. Lawton had to say, all right, lad, let's have it, before the information which he had seemed bursting to impart could be wrenched out of him. It came in erratic spurts. The bubble is all blooming, sir, all around inside their big yellow and purple groats. It started up above and spread around. First, there was just a clouding over the sky, sir, and then stocks shot out. For a moment, Lawton felt as though all sanity had been squeezed from his brain. Twice he started to ask a question and thought better of it. Pumpings were superfluous when he could confirm Caldwell's statement in half a minute for himself. If Caldwell had cracked up, Caldwell hadn't cracked. When Lawton walked to the quartz port and stared down, all the blood drained from his face. The vegetation was luxuriant and unearthly. Floating in the sky were serpentine tendrils as thick as a man's wrist, purplish flowers, and ropey fungus growths. They twisted and writhe and shot out in all directions, creating a tangle immediately beneath him and curving up toward the ship amidst the welter of seed pods. He could see the seeds dropping, dropping from pods which reminded him of the darkly-horned skate-egg sheaths which he had collected in his boy-head from sea beaches at Ebb Tide. It was the unwholesomeness of the vegetation which chiefly unnerved him. It looked dank, malarial. There were decaying patches on the fungus growths, and a miasmal mist was descending from it toward the ship. The control room was completely still when he turned from the quartz port to meet foresters startled gaze. Dave, what does it mean? The question burst explosively from the captain's lips. It means, life has appeared and evolved and grown rotten ripe inside the bubble, sir, all in a space of an hour or so. But that's impossible, Lawton shook his head. It isn't at all, sir. We've had it drummed into us that evolution proceeds at a snalish pace. But what proof have we that it can't mutate with lightning-like rapidity? I've told you there are gases outside we can't even make in a chemical laboratory, molecular arrangements that are alien to earth. But plants derive nourishment from the soil, interpreted forester. I know, but if there are alien gases in the air, the surface of the bubble must be reeking with unheard of chemicals. There may be compounds inside the bubble, which have so sped up organic processes that a hundred million years cycle of mutations has been telescoped into an hour. Lawton was pacing the floor again. It would be simpler to assume that seeds of existing plants became somehow caught up and imprisoned in the bubble. But the plants around us never existed on earth. I'm no botanist, but I know what the Congo has on tap and the great rainforests of the Amazon. Dave, if the growth continues, it will fill the bubble. It will choke off all our air. Don't you suppose I realize that? We've got to destroy that growth before it destroys us. It was pitiful to watch the cruise morale sag. The miasma taint of the ominously proliferating vegetation was soon pervading the ship, spreading demoralization everywhere. It was particularly awful straight down. Above a ropey tangle of livid vines and creepers, a kingly stenchweed towered, purplish and bloated, and weighing down with seed pods. It seemed sentient somehow. It was growing so fast that the evil odor which poured from it could be correlated with the increase of tension inside the ship. From that particular plant, minute by slow minute, there surged a continuously mounting offensiveness, like nothing Lawton had ever smelled before. The bubble had become a blooming horror sailing slowly westward above the storm-tossed Atlantic, and all the chemical agents which Lawton sprayed through the ventilation valves failed to impede the growth or destroy a single seed pod. It was difficult to kill plant life with chemicals which were not harmful to man. Lawton took dangerous risks, increasing the unwholesomeness of their rapidly dwindling air supply by spraying out a thin diffusion of problematically poisonous acids. It was no sale. The growths increased by leaps and bounds, as though determined to show their resentment of the measures taken against them by marshalling all their forces in a demoralizing plant creak. Thwarted, desperate, Lawton played his last card. He sent five members of the crew equipped with blowguns. They returned screaming. Lawton had to fortify himself with a double whiskey soda before he could face the look of reproach in their eyes, long enough to get all the prickles out of them. From then on, pandemonium rained. Blue funk seized the petty officers, while some of the crew ran amuck. One member of the engine watch attacked four of his companions with a wrench. Another went into the ship's kitchen and slashed himself with a paring knife. The assistant engineer leapt through a shoot opening after avowing that he preferred impalement to suffocation. He was impaled. It was horrible. Looking down, Lawton could see his twisted body dangling on a crimson, stippled, thorn-like growth forty feet in height. Slashaway was standing at his elbow in that Waterloo moment. His rough-hewn feature is twitching. I can't stand it, sir. It's driving me squirrely. I know, Slashaway. There's something worse than marijuana weed down there. Slashaway swallowed hard. That poor guy down there did the wise thing. Lawton husked. Stamp on that idea, Slashaway. Kill it. We're stronger than he was. There isn't an ounce of weakness in us. We've got what it takes. A guy can stand just so much. Bosh. There's no limits to what a man can stand. From the visit plate behind them came an urgent voice. Radio room tuning in, sir. Lawton swung about. On the flickering screen, the foggy outlines of a face appeared and coalesced into sharpness. The perseus radio operator was breathless with excitement. Our reception is improving, sir. European shortwaves are coming in strong. The static is terrific, but we're getting every station on the continent, and most of the American stations. Lawton's eyes narrowed to exultant slits. He spat on the deck, a slow tremor shaking him. Slashaway, did you hear that? We've done it. We've won against hell and high water. We've done what, sir? The bubble, you ape. It must be wearing thin. Hell's bells. Do you have to stand there gaping like a moronic nine-pin? I tell you we've got it licked. I can't stand it, sir. I'm going nuts. No, you're not. You're slugging the thing inside you that wants to quit. Slashaway, I'm going to give the crew a first-class pep talk. There'll be no stampeding while I'm in command here. He turned to the radio operator. Tune in the control room. Tell the captain I want every member of the crew lined up on this screen immediately. The face in the visa plate paled. I can't do that, sir. Ship's regulation. Lawton transfixed the operator with an irate stare. The captain told you to report directly to me, didn't he? Yes, sir, but if you don't want to be cashiered, snap into it. Yes, yes, sir. The captain startled face, preceded the duty muster vis-a-view by a full minute, seeming to project outward from the screen. The veins on his neck were thick blue cords. Dave, he croaked. Are you out of your mind? What good will talking do now? Are the men lined up, Lawton wrapped impatiently? Forester nodded. They're all in the engine room, Dave. Good. Block them in. The captain's face receded, and a scene of tragic horror filled the Appalachian visa plate. The men were not standing in attention at all. They were slumping against the Perseus's central charging plant in attitudes of abject despair. Madness burned in the eyes of three or four of them. Others had torn open their shirts and raked their flesh with their nails. Petty officer Caldwell was standing as straight as a totem pole, clenching and unclenching his hands. The second assistant engineer was sticking out his tongue. His face was deadpan, which made what was obviously a terror reflex look like an idiot's grimace. Lawton moistened his lips. Men, listen to me. There is some sort of plant outside that is giving off deliriant fumes. A few of us seem to be immune to it. I'm not immune, but I'm fighting it, and all of you boys can fight it too. I want you to fight it to the top of your courage. You can fight anything when you know that just around the corner is freedom from a beastliness that deserves to be licked, even if it's only a plant. Men, we're blasting our way free. The bubble's wearing thin. Any minute now, the plants beneath us may fall with a soggy plop into the Atlantic Ocean. I want every man, Jack, aboard this ship to stand at his post and obey orders. Right this minute, you look like something the cat dragged in. But most men who cover themselves with glory start off looking even worse than you do. He smiled riley. I guess that's all. I've never had to make a speech in my life, and I'd hate like hell to start now. It was petty officer Caldwell who started the chant. He started it, and the men took it up until it was coming from all of them in a full-throated roar. I'm a tough, true-hearted skyman, careless and all that, do you see? Never had a fate a-railer. What is time or tide to me? All must die when fate shall will it. I can never die but once. I'm a tough, true-hearted skyman who fears death is a dunce. Lawton squared his shoulders. With a crew like that, nothing could stop him. His energies were surging high. The deliriant weed held no terrors for him now. They were start-hearted lads, and he'd go to hell with them cheerfully if need be. It wasn't easy to wait. The next half-hour was filled with a steadily mounting tension, as Lawton moved like a young tornado about the ship, issuing orders and seeing that each man was at his post. Steady, Jimmy. The way to fight a deliriant is to keep your mind on a set task. Keep sweating, lad. Harry, that winch needs tightening. We can't afford to miss a trick. Yeah, we'll come suddenly. We've got to get the rotary started the instant the bottom drops out. He was with the captain and slashed away in the control room when it came. There was a sudden grinding jolt, and the captain's desk started moving toward the courtsport, carrying Lawton with it. Holy Jiminy Cricket! exclaimed Slashaway. The deck tilted sharply, then righted itself. A sudden gush of clear, cold air came through the ventilation valves as the triple rotary started up with a roar. Lawton and the captain reached the courtsport simultaneously. Shoulder to shoulder, they stood staring down at the storm-tossed Atlantic, electrified by what they saw. Floating on the waves far beneath them was an undulating mass of vegetation. Its surface flecked with glinting foam. As it rose and fell in waning sunlight, a tainted seepage spread about it defiling the clean surface of the sea. But it wasn't the floating mass which drew a gasp from Forester and caused Lawton's scalped prickle. Crawling slowly across that Sargasso-like island of noxious vegetation was a huge, elongated shape which bore a nauseous resemblance to a mottled garden slug. Forester was trembling visibly when he turned from the courtsport. God, Dave, that would have been the last straw, animal life. Dave, I can't realize we're actually out of it. We're out all right, Lawton said hoarsely. Just in time, too, Skipper. You'd better issue Grog all around, then men will be needing it. I'm taking mine straight. You've accused me of being primitive. Wait till you see me an hour from now. Dr. Stephen Hallday stood in the door of his Appalachian mountain laboratory staring out into the pine-scented dusk, a worried expression on his bland, small featured face. It had happened again. A portion of his experiment had soared skyward in a very loose group of highly energized waveacles. He wondered if it wouldn't form a sort of sub-electronic macrocosm high in the stratosphere, altering even the air and dusk particles which had spurred it up with it, its uncharged atomic particles combining with oxygen and creating new molecular arrangements. If such were the case, there would be eight of them now, his bubbles floating through the sky. They couldn't possibly harm anything way up there in the stratosphere, but he felt a little uneasy about it all the same. He'd have to be far more careful in the future, he told himself, much more careful. He didn't want the controllers to turn back the clock of civilization a century by stopping all atom-smashing experiments. End of The Skytrap. Recorded by Billy Deschand, St. Louis, Missouri. Test Rocket. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Todd Ritchie. Test Rocket by Jack Douglas. Captain Baird stood at the window of the laboratory with a thousand parts of the strange rocket laced through in careful order. Small groups worked slowly over the dismantled parts. The captain wanted to ask but something stopped him. Behind him, Dr. Johansson sat at his desk. His narrowed old hand tied about a whiskey bottle. The bottle the doctor always had in his desk but never brought out except for when he was alone and waited for Captain Baird to ask his question. Captain Baird turned at last. They are our markings, Captain Baird asked. It was not the question. Captain Baird knew the markings of the rocket testing station as well as the doctor did. Yes, the doctor said. They are our markings. Identical, but not our paint. Captain Baird turned back to the window. Six months ago it had happened. Ten minutes after launching the giant test rocket had been only a speck on the observation screen. Captain Baird had turned away and discussed. A mouse, the captain had said. Unfortunately, a mouse can't observe, build, report. My men are getting restless, Johansson. When we are ready, Captain, the doctor had said. It was twelve hours before the urgent call from central control brought the captain running back to the laboratory. The doctor was there before him. Professor Schultz wasted no time. He pointed at the instrument panel. A sudden shift, see for yourself. We'll miss Mars by a million and a quarter at least. Two hours later the shift in course of the test rocket was apparent to all of them and so was their disappointment. According to the instruments, the steering shifted a quarter of an inch. No reason shows up, Professor Schultz said. Flaw in the metal, Dr. Johansson asked. How far can it go? Captain Baird asked. Professor Schultz shrugged. Until the fuel runs out, which is probably as good as never, or until the landing mechanism is activated by a planet-sized body. Of course. Did you plot it? The doctor asked. Of course I did, Professor Schultz said. As close as I can calculate it's headed to Alpha Centauri. Captain Baird turned away. The doctor watched him. Perhaps you will not be so hasty with your men's lives in the future, Captain, the doctor said. Professor Schultz was spinning dials. No contact, the professor said. No contact at all. That had been six months ago. Three more test rockets had been fired successfully before the urgent report came through from Alaskan observation post number four. A rocket was coming across the pole. The strange rocket was tracked and escorted by an atomic armed fighters all the way to rocket testing station where it cut its own motors and gently landed. And the center of a division of atomic armed infantry, the captain, the doctor, and everyone else waited impatiently. There was an air of uneasiness. You sure it's not ours? Captain Baird asked. The doctor laughed. Identical yes, but three times the size of ours. Perhaps one of the Asian ones. No. It's our design, but too large. Much too large. Professor Schultz put their thoughts into words. Looks like someone copied ours. Someone, somewhere. It's hard to imagine, but true nevertheless. They waited two weeks. Nothing happened. Then a radiation shielded team went in to examine the rocket. Two more weeks the strange rocket was dismantled and spread over the field for the testing station. The rocket was dismantled and the station began to talk to itself and whispers and look at the sky. Captain Baird stood now at the window and looked out of the dismantled rocket. He looked, but his mind was not on the parts of the rocket he could see from the window. The materials. They're not ours, the captain asked. Unknown here, the doctor said. The captain nodded. Those were our instruments? Yes, the doctor still had the whiskey bottle on his tight grip. They sent them back, the captain said. The doctor crashed the bottle hard against the desktop. Asked, Captain, for God's sake. The captain turned to face the doctor directly. It was a man, a full grown man. The doctor sighed as if letting the pent-up steam of his heart escape. Yes, it is a man. It breathes, it eats, it has all the attributes of a man, but is none of our planet. It's speech, the captain began. That isn't speech, Captain. The doctor broke in, breaking in sharply. It's only sound. The doctor stopped. He examined the label of his bottle of whiskey very carefully. A good brand of whiskey. He seems quite happy in the storeroom. You know, Captain, what puzzled me at first? He can't read. He can't read anything. Not even the instruments in that ship. In fact, he shows no interest in his rocket at all now. The captain sat down now. He's had his desk and face the doctor. At least they had the courage to send a man, not a mouse. Doctor, a man. The doctor stared at the captain, has hands squeezing and unsqueezing the whiskey bottle. A man who can't read his own instruments, the doctor laughed. Perhaps you too have failed to see the point. Like that stupid general who sits out there waiting for his men to find somewhere to invade? Don't you think it's a possibility? The doctor nodded. A very good possibility, Captain. But they will not be men. The doctor seemed to pause and lean forward. That rocket, Captain, is a test rocket. A test rocket just like ours. When the doctor picked up the whiskey bottle and poured two glasses. Perhaps a drink, Captain. The captain was watching the sky outside the window. End of test.