“Well, here goes!” he muttered, diving straight for that dazzling citadel, one hand on the stick, the other gripping the trigger of his automatic camera. “This’ll make a picture for the Old Man, all right!”
Off to the east the dawn was breaking, and he saw, as he swept down, its pearly pastel shades blending weirdly with that blinding orange glare.
Pressing the trigger now, he drove his screaming plane on with throttle wide—and yes, it was glass!—glass of some sort, that crazy nightmare down there.
“Whew!” gasped Carter as waves of dazing heat rose about him. “Boy, but it’s hot! I can’t stand much of this. Better get out while the getting’s good.”
But he clenched his teeth, and dove on down to see what those fiery demons looked like. Funny they didn’t make any effort to attack. Surely they must see him now.
“Take that, my beauties!—and that!” he gasped, pressing the trigger of his camera furiously.
Then, at a scant two thousand feet, he levelled off, his wings blistering with the heat, and zoomed up again—when to his horror, his engine faltered; died.
In that agonizing moment it came to Jim that this perhaps was why neither the Television News nor the War Department pilots had been able to get pictures of the hell below.
Had something about that daring heat killed their motors, too, as it had his? Had they plunged like fluttering, sizzling moths into that inferno of orange flame?