The machine banked again, then shot upward, stalled, and slipped on again.
"Straighten out!" said Davis sharply. "Up with the joy stick!"
"I don't know what's what," said the white-faced pilot desperately, obeying as he spoke. "Great God! What's happening now?"
The plane seemed to be standing on its tail, and the three men standing in the car slid toward the rear. Davis seized a seat and clambered toward the controls. As he made his way toward the instruments the plane seemed to go mad.
It twisted, turned, stood upon its head and darted forward, and then seemed to be wallowing in the air. Davis seized the controls, and with his eye solely on the inclinometer worked madly for a moment. The plane stopped its antics and drove on steadily.
"It's like driving in a fog," he said over his shoulder. "All right back there now?"
"Yes." Gerrod was answering. "What happened?"
"With nothing to tell which was up and which down, we lost our level and couldn't find it again. I've flown upside down for five minutes, going through a cloud, and didn't know it until my barometer dropped upward. We're all right, but what's happened to the earth?"
Gerrod cautiously made his way to a point beside Davis, who was driving with his eyes glued to the instruments. That incredible vastness into which the machine seemed to be boring was appalling. They seemed to be speeding madly from nothingness into nothingness, with nothing below them and nothing above.
They were alone in a universe of air. Gerrod stared ahead at the cloud bank behind which the sun seemed to be hiding.