They had no sooner started to descend than the light in the elevator went off, and then the elevator itself stopped.
“Hey, what’s going on!” Garry exclaimed.
“The power’s off!” Patch said.
Presently, the light came on again, and the boys felt a lot better.
“Whew, for a minute I was scared!” Patch said.
“Me too. Hey, we’re still not moving, though!” Garry pressed harder on the button, but the elevator refused to move.
“We’re stuck here, Garry!” Patch burst out.
Garry started banging furiously on the walls of the elevator. “We’ve just got to make ourselves heard, Patch!” he cried.
The din was very loud in the cramped compartment, as both boys hammered on the wall.
No one came to their rescue, but then a voice spoke over the public-address speaker in the ceiling of the elevator: “Don’t be alarmed, folks. A short circuit in the fuel-pump relay caused us to lose electric power momentarily. But everything has been restored to normalcy. Warning: Three minutes to blast-off.”