Beyond the Vanishing Point | Page 6

cluster of lights which marked Polter's property.
"Fly over it once, George," Alan said. "Low--we can chance it. And
find a place to land near the walls."
We presently had it under us. I held the plane at five hundred feet, and
cut our speed to the minimum of twenty miles an hour facing the gale,
though it was sixty or seventy when we turned. There were a score or
two of hooded ground lights. But there was little reflection aloft, and in
the murk of the snowfall I felt we could escape notice.
We crossed, turned and went back in an arc following Polter's curved
outer wall. We had a good view of it. A weird enough looking place,
here on its lonely hilltop. No wonder the wealthy "Frank Rascor" had
attained local prominence!
The whole property was irregularly circular, perhaps a mile in diameter
covering the almost flat dome of the hilltop. Around it, completely
enclosing it, Polter had built a stone and brick wall. A miniature of the
Great Wall in China! We could see that it was fully thirty feet high with
what evidently were naked high-voltage wires protecting its top. There
were half a dozen little gates, securely barred, with doubtless a guard at
each of them.
Within the walls there were several buildings: a few small stone houses
suggesting workmen's dwellings; an oblong stone structure with smoke
funnels which looked like a smelter; a huge domelike spread of
translucent glass over what might have been the top of a mineshaft. It
looked more like the dome of an observatory--an inverted bowl fully a
hundred feet wide and equally as high, set upon the ground. What did it

cover?
And there was Polter's residence--a castlelike brick and stone building
with a tower not unlike a miniature of the Chateau Frontenac. We saw a
stone corridor on the ground connecting the lower floor of the castle
with the dome, which lay about a hundred feet to one side.
Could we chance landing inside the wall? There was a dark, level
expanse of snow where we could have done it, but our descending
plane doubtless would have been discovered. But the mile-wide inner
area was dark in many places. Spots of light were at the little wall-gates.
There was a glow all along the top of the wall. Lights were on in
Polter's house; they slanted out in yellow shafts to the nearby white
ground. But for the rest, the whole place was dark, save a dim glow
from under the dome.
I shook my head at Alan's suggestion that we land inside the walls. We
had circled back and were a mile or so off toward the river. "The
trees--and you saw guards down there. But that low stretch outside the
gate on this side...."
A plan was coming to me. Heaven knows it was desperate enough, but
we had no alternative. We would land and accost one of the gate guards.
Force our way in. Once inside the wall, on foot in the darkness of this
blizzard, we could hide; slip up to that dome. Beyond that my
imagination could not go.
We landed in the snow a quarter of a mile from one of the gates. We
left the plane and plunged into the darkness.
It was a steady upward slope. A packed snowfield was underfoot, firm
enough to hold our weight, with a foot or so of loose, soft snow on its
top. The falling flakes whirled around us. The darkness was solid. Our
helmeted leather-furred flying suits were soon shapeless with a
gathering white shroud. We carried our Essens in our gloved hands.
The night was cold, around zero I imagine, though with that biting
wind it felt far colder.

From the gloom a tiny spot of light loomed up.
"There it is, Alan. Easy now! Let me go first." The wind tore away my
words. We could see the narrow rectangle of bars at the gate, with a
glow of light behind them.
"Hide your gun, Alan." I gripped him. "Do you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Let me go first. I'll do the talking. When he opens the gate, let me
handle him. You--if there are two of them--you take the other."
We emerged from the darkness, into the glow of light by the gate. I had
the horrible feeling that a shot would greet us. A challenge came, at
first in French and then in English.
"Stop! What do you want?"
"To see Mr. Rascor."
We were up to the bars now, shapeless hooded bundles of snow and
frost. A man stood in the doorway of a lighted little cubby behind the
bars. A black muzzle in his hand was leveled at us.
"He sees no one. Who are you?"
Alan was pressing