CHAPTER VI
Returning to the others, Marlin found DuChane holding forth in a profane diatribe which included not only McGruder, Link, and Sally, but all their antecedents.
"There's nothing to get excited over," Marlin interposed, calmly. "What difference does it make?"
"Difference?" DuChane roared. "Has it occurred to you that we've no possible way to get out of here? That ooze must have filled up the opening solidly by now."
"But the pipe is still projecting from the outside. Our sheriff friend will probably have gumption enough to force it in, just as we did. He'll be plenty mad by the time he finishes the job, but as far as I can see this merely delays our coming-out party for a few hours."
"And makes it tougher," growled DuChane. Marlin's words, nevertheless, seemed to have a quieting effect on his anger. His mood changed.
"We're in for it, but they can't pin anything on me. I served the rap for my little accident with a gun. Slinky here is likely to go up for a stretch, just on general principles. McGruder—now that baby has a bad conscience or he wouldn't have been so anxious to close the entrance. It wouldn't surprise me if—"
"Mind your own business!" snarled the detective. "Loud-mouthed blabbers like you is like to wake up with a knife in their ribs."
"So! A killer! One of the breed that sticks a knife in your back! What say, Dave—shall I teach him a lesson?"
There was a scuffle in the dark. "You lemme go!" roared McGruder. "I'll—" The words ended in a jolting gasp as two bodies struck the floor.
The thrashing limbs and bodies flailed for a moment, eliciting a wholehearted round of abuse from Sally as they almost knocked her feet from under. After a minute, DuChane arose.
"No weapons," he reported. "Bad boys shouldn't make threats unless they've got something to back 'em up with. Next time," he added ominously, "I'll cave your teeth in."
There was a faintly muttered response as McGruder retired to a safer distance.
"Where's Eli?" again demanded Marlin.
"He left us here," DuChane replied, "saying he was going down to the control room. Wonder if he has any way of lighting this—Oh, hello!"
A sudden radiance engulfed them. Blinking, they stared at each other—at their surroundings.
The tilted surface on which they stood was apparently nothing more than a scaffolding in the unfinished portion of the sphere. The boxes and crates they had loaded were distributed around the closed entrance-hole. Peering upward, they looked into a network of girders, bracing the huge expanse, weirdly lighted here and there with single bulbs—evidently a temporary lighting arrangement for the workmen.
Below the level of their vision, also on a slant, was a partly enclosed portion of three or four levels, resembling a ship's superstructure. The humming noise of a dynamo accompanied the establishment of light service. Thornboldt emerged from a doorway and stood with head tilted back, surveying the bleak interior.
"Close the opening," he called out, catching sight of the group on the platform.
An involuntary laugh greeted the order.
Annoyed at the failure of his command to produce activity, the scientist worked his way up to the platform, emerging between the end-shafts of a ladder. At the point in the hull where the pipe had penetrated, a bulging mass of the lava-like substance was slowly hardening.
He grunted. "Temporarily that will do. Later it must be covered with metal."
DuChane winked at Sally. "Anchors aweigh!" he sang. "Heave ho and a bottle of rum! Stand by for the good ship Thornboldt. But look here, Eli, what about the eight?"
"Eh?"
"Seems to me Pearl predicted we'd make our start when there were four men, four gals, beside yourself. According to my reckoning, it doesn't count out."
"You ask me to take stock in such superstition? Am I a scientist or a Hottentot?"
Another lurch caused them all to grasp at near objects for support.
"What makes it do that?" demanded Sally, nervously. "Ever since we climbed in it's been acting like a horse with the heaves."
"It's the sphere turning and settling," DuChane informed her. His arm encircled her waist and she struggled—though not too violently, Marlin thought—to break away. "Notice the floor's tilting? Won't be long before it stands straight up."
"Four and four," muttered the Dane into his beard. "There should be eight instead of seven. Where is that girl?"
Catching a glimpse of Pearl in the tool enclosure, he strode toward it.
"Oh no—he isn't superstitious!" commented DuChane.
"If we could rig up a periscope—push it through the soft part inside of the pipe—we might stand a chance of observing what goes on outside," Marlin suggested.
Without enthusiasm, DuChane agreed that it was a good idea. Releasing his hold on Sally, he followed Marlin down the ladder and they began an investigation of the more nearly finished section of the interior.
Some of the machinery they found understandable, much of it was strange. All loose objects had been tumbled into corners-probably had rolled around the circumference of whatever confined space they happened to be in, as the sphere slowly accomplished its rotation. But the supplies for the most part had been packed in anticipation of severe jolts. There was a really enormous supply of canned goods and other food items in sealed containers, but as yet no bunks had been erected in the doorless staterooms.
In one compartment they found a disarray of packing cases heaped together along one side-wall. One box had been crushed, revealing a gleaming cylinder.
"What are you doing there?" demanded Thornboldt from the doorway.
"If these happen to be instruments, perhaps you can tell us if there's a periscope in the lot," returned DuChane.
Eli fell to examining the boxes. "Try this one," he suggested. "Yes, that's a good idea. Very good." He hurried away, leaving them wondering at his unusual good spirits.
The instrument they unearthed was all that could be desired. "I believe," Marlin commented, "we can get this through by encasing it in a protective sheath."
"How'll we get the sheath off?"
"It can be done. We need a tube large enough to admit passage of the instrument. It can be just a rolled strip of sheet iron. We'll streamline it by welding the end to a point. When we've worked it through the mass far enough to project beyond the large pipe, we'll slide in the periscope. Last of all, we take a good solid rod, attach it to the rear projection of our sheath, and shove. When the sheath has cleared the top, it'll drop off, leaving the periscope head exposed."
"Might work," DuChane acknowledged. "You've an ingenious mind. But we'd better wait until dark. Less chance of being observed by the august forces of law and order."
"It'll be well along in the night before we've finished," returned Marlin. He caught hold of a door post as the sphere gave another shuddering lurch.
In their quest for material, they came upon Eli in the lower level of the superstructure. He was making adjustments throughout a bank of coils which seemed to constitute the major element of his apparatus. Pausing curiously, DuChane demanded:
"What's that for?"
Eli grunted, but the pride of an inventor won out over disdain.
"You could not understand," he informed them ungraciously. "Locked in these coils is a power that will make the name of Elias Thornboldt outstanding in history. A magnetic field in which occurs such a stress as the atom has never known causes polarization of the repulsion plates below this floor which is—how can I express it—the opposite of magnetism, of attraction, of the force of gravity."
"In other words," retorted DuChane, "anti-gravity." He nudged Marlin. "Professor Lamberton says your conclusions are unsound—that it would be impossible to build up a sufficiently strong magnetic field to accomplish the results you claim."
"That nincompoop!" exploded the scientist. "That stuffed piece of shirt! What does he know about atomic stress? Nothing! Yet he presumes—" Eli paused suspiciously. "Who told you about Lamberton?"
"Oh, we get around!"
The bearded scientist snorted. "Why bandy words? To show up Lamberton in all his stupidity, I have only to do this—"
With a dramatic gesture, he thrust home the prongs of a huge switch which occupied the central panel of a control board in front of the coils. Involuntarily, Marlin braced himself for a shock. Nothing happened. Nothing, at least, beyond a faint hum which emanated from the towering apparatus.
"Well?" queried DuChane impudently.
Eli shook his beard impatiently. "What did you expect? First it is necessary to build up a magnetic potential. Then, with this lever, I release the current through the repulsion plates." He caressed the device but refrained from demonstrating. "Naturally, I will make the first tests with utmost caution. The lever acts as a rheostat, by which the power is applied in any degree required, governing the acceleration. If I should move it to the extreme limit we would be hurled away from the earth with such violence as to crush every bone."
"How about steering?" queried Marlin. "Wouldn't you be condemned to travel in a straight line from any object which the plates happened to be facing at the start?"
"Do you take me for a numskull? Naturally the plates are segmented. They can be turned like a—like a—"
"Like the sections of a Venetian blind," interposed DuChane. "I get you. And—er—when do you start?"
Eli frowned. "I shall not delay long. All essentials are in place—the storage batteries, fully charged to furnish current for at least seven months, the dynamos, the conversion coils. First comes the trial flight. It will be brief—but sufficient to astonish the world. Then, when I have enjoyed the sight of Lamberton and those imbecile financiers groveling in the dust, I shall finish the sphere—without their assistance—and go—who knows where? To the moon, the planets—"
His grandiloquent vision was interrupted by another of the periodic lurches, which caused them all to grasp for support. Overhead, the girders groaned as they accommodated themselves to a new stress. Somewhere, a heavy object fell.
DuChane suddenly doubled up with mirth.
"Look!" he chortled. "Oh, this is good!"
Marlin followed the direction of his pointing finger. Involuntarily, he smiled.
"By rights," he commented grimly, "our bones ought to be crushed to powder. Well, that settles that."
Thornboldt stared blankly at the rheostat lever. His body, flung against it by the upheaval of the sphere, had pushed it to the extreme limit which he had warned would produce dire results.
"It means nothing!" he protested hollowly. "One faulty connection could make the whole thing a failure. Besides, how can you expect a lifting power that was intended for a hollow sphere to lift hundreds of tons of mud? Leave me alone. How can I work with such imbecile interruptions?"
They withdrew, leaving him staring with frowning contemplation at the ineffective starting lever.
"The old coot had me wondering at that," Marlin confided, as he and DuChane set about their task of installing the periscope. "I'm glad to have it settled."
They worked steadily into the night, pausing only to take part in a meal concocted from the ship's stores.
The outlaw had been made as comfortable as possible in one of the doorless staterooms, but was tossing in semi-delirium. He had been struck by at least six bullets, as reported by Sally. "Hmm!" grunted Marlin, busy with his welding torch. "Not much chance of his pulling through."
"Pearl says he will," returned Sally. She spoke with an air of amusement—almost of mystery. "Know what that girl had us do? She insisted on our puncturing the blister over that opening in the shell and drawing off about a quart of that gummy stuff for poultices. Since the idea came from Pearl, Maw thinks it must be the berries."
"Sounds unsanitary, to say the least."
"Oh, I don't know," DuChane disagreed. "Certain clays are used medicinally for drawing out inflammation. Come to think of it, this stuff resembles antiphlogistin as much as anything."
"If it works," observed Marlin, "we might put the goo on the market and make our fortunes."
The others had all turned in when Marlin and DuChane finished their task. As nearly as they could judge, the panoramic sight would be a success, although little could be discerned through it in the darkness except the outline which separated the blackness below the crater rim from the somewhat brighter hue of the sky.
"Frankly, now that we've accomplished the job, I don't know what good it's going to do," DuChane grumbled, as they turned to seek out their sleeping pallets. "If the sheriff starts to dig his way in, or if he chooses to do it just for meanness—he can snap the head off in a second."
Marlin grunted. The same thought had occurred to him, but he had kept it to himself. It had seemed better for the morale of the group to offer a show of activity.
As it was, their example had inspired even McGruder and Link to chip in toward opening packing cases, distributing the bedding, and otherwise providing temporary living quarters. All were sufficiently tired to sleep. Marlin dropped off almost instantly from exhaustion when he rolled himself in his blankets.