Lawton was squatting on his hams beside an emergency 'chute opening on the deck of the Penguin's weather observatory. He was letting down a spliced beryllium plumb line, his gaze riveted on the slowly turning horizontal drum of a windlass which contained more than two hundred feet of gleaming metal cordage.
Suddenly as he stared the drum stopped revolving. Lawton stiffened, a startled expression coming into his face. He had been playing a hunch that had seemed as insane, rationally considered, as his wild idea about the bulkhead porosities. For a moment he was stunned, unable to believe that he had struck pay dirt. The winch indicator stood at one hundred and three feet, giving him a rich, fruity yield of startlement.
One hundred feet below him 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 between the ship and the fleecy clouds far below except a tiny black dot resting on vacancy and a thin beryllium plumb 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."