The wind continued to carry the balloon at a great speed, and soon they were over the mountains and into the dense, angry masses of clouds. Then they were buffeted by cross winds and freak air currents, falling, to be lifted up once again and tossed around like a leaf.
Roaring crashes of thunder threatened to split the sky apart, and great blades of lightning stabbed through the clouds. The storm grew worse, and the machine men entangled themselves in the hawsers holding the metal ball to the basket, to keep from being tossed out by the storm's fury. The basket was threatening to part from the metal globe that supported it.
The winds wrenched and tore at them, hurling gusts of rain like spray—fine and hard. Lightning flashed dangerously near, and the farther they were swept into the storm area, the blacker it grew. Had it not been for the lightning which played almost constantly, it would have seemed like night.
The four machine men lost all sense of direction as they were whirled and thrown viciously about. The basket finally broke away from the ball of helium, leaving them clinging to the strong wire hawsers hanging from the globe.
Here they swung and clashed against each other and against the metal ball, slowly gathering the slack in the hawsers about their metal bodies and creeping closer to the globe which was whirled and tossed more freely since it had lost its restraining basket.
To the machine men, it seemed that the storm raged for hours. The first intimation of its cessation came with a lessening of the gloom and fewer shafts of lightning.
"I am near a valve," 29G-75 reported. "Shall we release some of our helium and come down?"
"As soon as we see where we are."
"We shall soon come down whether we choose or not," said 12W-62. "There is a slow leak in the globe not far from me."
When the clouds lifted, the machine men found themselves on the other side of the mountain. More mountains loomed in the distance. Below them stretched a level plain. They were descending slowly. As more helium escaped, their descent became faster, yet they landed safely.