“But it’s coming right toward us!” cried Stanton.
“What makes it move, I wonder?” asked Dirk. “And how in the world is it controlled?”
“It surely is not of this world,” said Fragoni quietly. “That gigantic thing has come to us from somewhere out of the infinite and terrible depths of space.”
Another minute elapsed while they watched it, speechless with wonder.
“Do you know,” Lazarre then said calmly, “I believe that it is going to land in the waters of the Sound. It appears so to me, anyway.”
It was nearly opposite them by this time, and not more than a thousand feet above the water. A few planes which, very apparently, were being flown by intrepid and fearless flyers, were hovering close around it.
Then finally it came to rest, as Lazarre had predicted, in the water some two miles off shore, and it was obscured by a great cloud of vapor for several minutes.
“Steam,” asserted Steinholt. “That trip around the world, which it made in a few minutes, generated considerable frictional heat in the shell.”
“Come,” said Fragoni, “we’ll fly out and look the thing over.”