The altimeter said thirty-five thousand feet. They were still spiraling upward. Again Jeter surveyed the sky aloft.
The earth below was a blur, save through the telescopes. The two had reached a height less than a third of what they hoped to attain.
Still they could see nothing up above them. They were almost over the "shaft" of atmosphere through which the Hueber must have been lifted and lowered. Suppose, Jeter thought, they had accidentally flown into that shaft at exactly the wrong moment? It brought a shudder. Still, Jeter's mind went on, if that had happened they would now, in all likelihood, have been right among the enemy—for gravity in that shaft would not have existed for them, either.
But would they have been lowered back to safety as the Hueber and her crew had been?
Believing as he did that the enemy knew everything that transpired within its sphere of influence, Jeter doubted that Eyer and himself would have been so humanely treated.
He had but to remember Kress to feel sure of this.
The altimeter said fifty thousand feet.