Cragley's face bore a troubled look. He stepped to the side of his subordinate for a hasty inspection of the radio sender.
"The receiver plate doesn't light up, either," said Quentin. "Looks to me as though someone has been tampering with this."
In their spiral of seats, the passengers looked silently and gravely upon the cylinder base where Cragley and his staff were gathered over the apparatus. A dull glow of cloudy light coming in through the transparent interstices of the descending cylinder softened and counteracted the glow of the radium lights. An intangible feeling of depression hung in the air.
"Elevation, five hundred feet!" announced one of the crew from his position at the altitude dial.
"Make a landing," ordered Cragley. "We can't be very far from where the C-49 fell. If there's enough of the ship left, we may be able to discover the cause of this accident."
Down through the lush vegetation, the cylinder felt its way, dropping very slowly. Finally it came to rest on a knoll.
"How far are we from the ship?" queried the captain.
"About seventeen hundred feet south of it, I'd say."
"We'll go outside and get organized. We've got to get that platinum shipment off the C-49 and get into communication with headquarters at Deliphon somehow. The proximity detector tells us we're over two hundred miles from there."
One of the passengers spoke up with a suggestion. "Can't we go the rest of the way in this? You can send back for what's left of the ship. I've an important reason for arriving in Deliphon quickly. If—"