Chapter 9: A Scheme Is Described

The hands of the two wayfarers into the stratosphere dropped to their weapons as the men came through that door which masked the inner mystery of the white globe.

One of the men grinned. There was a threat in his grin--and a promise.

“I wouldn’t use my weapons if I were in your place, gentlemen,” he said. “Come this way, please. Sitsumi and The Three wish to see you at once.”

Jeter and Eyer exchanged glances. Would it do any good to start a fight with these people? They seemed to be unarmed, but there were many of them. And probably there were many more beyond that door. Certainly this strange globe was capable of holding a small army at least.

Jeter shrugged. Eyer answered it with an eloquent gesture--and the two fell in with those who had come to meet them.

“How about our plane?” said Jeter.

“You need concern yourself with it no longer,” replied one. “Its final disposal is in the hands of Sitsumi and The Three.”

A cold chill ran along Jeter’s spine. There was something too final about the guide’s calm reply. Both adventurers remembered again, most poignantly, the fate of Kress.

The leaders stepped through the door. A flight of steps led downward.

Several of the swarthy-skinned folk walked behind Jeter and Eyer. There was no gainsaying the fact that they were prisoners.

Jeter and Eyer gasped a little as they looked into the interior of the white globe. It was of unusual extent, Jeter estimated, a complete globe; but this one was bisected by a floor at its center, of some substance that might, for its apparent lightness, have been aluminum. Plainly it was the dwelling place of these strange conquerors of the stratosphere. It might have been a vast room designed as the dwelling place of people accustomed to all sorts of personal comforts.

On the “floor” were several buildings, of the same material as the floor. It remained to be seen what these buildings were for, but Jeter could guess, he believed, with fair accuracy. The large building in the center would be the central control room housing whatever apparatus of any kind was needed in the working of this space ship. There were smaller buildings, most of them conical, looking oddly like beehives, which doubtless housed the denizens of the globe.

The atmosphere was much like that of New York in early autumn. It was of equable temperature. There was no discomfort in walking, no difficulty in breathing. Jeter surmised that at least one of those buildings, perhaps the central one, housed some sort of oxygen renewer. Such a device at this height was naturally essential.

The stairs ended. The prisoners and their guards stopped at floor level.

Jeter paused to look about him. His scientific eyes were studying the construction of the globe. The idea of escape from the predicament into which he and Eyer were plunged would never be out of his head for moment.

“Come along, you!”

Jeter started, stung by the savagery which suddenly edged the voice of the man who had first greeted him. There was contempt in it--and an assumption of personal superiority which galled the independent Jeter.

He grinned a little, looked at Eyer.

“I wonder if we have to take it,” he said softly.

“It seems we might expect a little respect, at least,” Eyer grinned in answer.

The guard suddenly caught Jeter by the shoulder.

“I said to come along!”

If the man had been intending to provoke a fight he couldn’t have gone about it in any better way. Jeter suddenly, without a change of expression, sent a right fist crashing to the fellow’s jaw.

“Don’t use your gat, Eyer,” he called to his partner. “We may kill a key man who may be necessary to our well-being later on. But black eyes and broken noses should be no bar to efficiency.”

Without any fuss or hullabaloo, the dozen or so denizens of the globe who had met the partners closed on them. They came on with a rush. Jeter and Eyer stood back to back and slugged. They were young, with youthful joy in battle. They were trained to the minute. As fliers they took pride in their physical condition. They were out-numbered, but it was also a matter of pride with them to demand respect wherever they went. It was also a matter of pride to down as many of the attackers as possible before they themselves were downed.

It became plain that, though the denizens of the globe were armed with knives, they were not to be used. And it didn’t seem they would be needed. The fighters were all muscular, well-trained fighters. But for the most part they fought in the manner of Chinese ta chaen, or Japanese ju-jutsu men. They used holds that were bone-breaking and it taxed the pair to the utmost to keep from being maimed by their killing strength.

The swarthy men were men of courage, no doubt about that. They fought with silent ferocity. They blinked when struck, but came back to take yet other blows with the tenacity of so many bulldogs. There was no gainsaying them, it seemed. They were here for the purpose of subduing their visitors and nothing short of death would stop them.

It wasn’t courtesy, either, that failure to use knives, for Jeter saw murder looking out of more than one pair of eyes as their two pairs of fists landed on brown faces, smashed noses askew, and started eyes to closing.

“Their leader has them under absolute control--and that’s a point for the enemy,” Jeter panted to himself, as the strain of battle began to tell on him. “They’ve been instructed, no matter what we do, to bring us to their master or masters alive.”

For a moment he toyed with the idea of drawing his weapon and firing pointblank into the enemy. He knew they would be compelled to take lives to escape--and that the lives of all these people were forfeit anyway because of the havoc which had descended upon New York City.

But he didn’t make a move for his weapon. It would be sure death if he did, for the others were armed.

Brown men fell before the smashing of their fists. But the end of the fight was a foregone conclusion. Jeter had a bruised jaw. Eyer’s nose was bleeding and one eye was closed when the reception committee finally came to close quarters, smothered them by sheer weight of numbers, and made them prisoners. Jeter’s right wrist was manacled to Eyer’s left with a pair of ordinary steel handcuffs. Their weapons were taken away from them now.

The leader of the committee, panting, but apparently unconcerned over what had happened, motioned the two men to lead the way. He pointed to the large building in the center of the “floor.”

“That way,” he said, “and I hope Sitsumi and The Three give us permission to throw you out without parachutes or high altitude suits.”

“Pleasant cuss, aren’t you?” said Eyer. “I don’t think you like us.”

The man would have struck Eyer for his grinning levity; but at that moment a door opened in the side of the large building and a man in Oriental robes stood there.

“Bring then here at once, Naka!” he said.