Islands in the Air

Islands in the Air
by Lowell Howard Morrow

"Somehow the momentum of the islands could not be checked. Edge to edge they met. The detonation was deafening... Blue, green and yellow fire enmeshed them for a moment before the great mass rushed down."
HERE is one of the most extraordinary air stories that we have read in a long while. It is sure to arouse your wonder and excitement.
One of the important and most revolutionary inventions, which is sure to come about sooner or later, is the control of gravitation. When we have conquered gravitation, man will be set free in earnest.
The slavery of weight, which chains us to this planet and to the ground, is far more serious than we appreciate, simply because we have always been "earthbound". But, sooner or later, it will be possible to bring about such conditions as our author describes so vividly in this excellent short story. When it does, aviation will be helped tremendously, and indeed the conditions of our entire world will be revolutionized literally.
CHAPTER I
An Astounding Plan
"WE CAN control the laws of gravitation and perform new miracles."
My good friend, Professor Gustave Steiner, was speaking, and for that reason I pondered his remarkable words.
"Such an attainment would overshadow all else in the realms of science," I observed casually.
"Already the problem has been mastered," asserted the professor solemnly.
I gave him a startled look. He gazed back with calm assurance, stroking his pointed beard as was his way when discussing a serious subject. Had his astounding declaration come from any other source I would have treated it as the idle mutterings of a diseased mind.
"Has been mastered?" I repeated incredulously.
The professor nonchalantly lit a cigar, puffed silently a moment and eyed me speculatively.
"Absolutely mastered," he answered finally. I stared. "But it will take capital to perfect the system," he added timidly.
I understood the professor. He reversed the time-honored maxim by having more brains than money. Still I could not help reasoning that this time his mighty intellect had slipped a cog. How could one upset the basic law of the universe? It was impossible, absurd. However, the savants of two continents did obeisance to Professor Steiner. The furore caused by his lecture on cosmic energy, delivered at Heidelberg, was still fresh in mind.
"I see, my boy, that you doubt my claim," he went on presently.
"It is so astonishing."
The professor smiled tolerantly. "It is not astonishing when you know how to harness the forces of nature, my boy." He rubbed his hands together gleefully. "A few known principles well chosen, an opportunity--and there you have it."
"And you have overcome the gravitational pull of mother earth?"
"Nothing of the kind my dear boy; I have but neutralized it."
"Why, man alive," I cried, "such a thing would send this old globe wobbling through space like a drunken man--leaderless and beyond control."
"Precisely. But I propose to control gravitation locally."
Again I stared. Was the professor going crazy? Was he breaking under the strain of overwork? I recalled his sister Greta's remark to me that she feared some day he would lose his mind, inasmuch as both his father and his grandfather had ended their days in a mad house. But as I gazed steadily into his calm blue eyes I read no sign of insanity there. Nothing but steadfast confidence.
"Locally," I echoed at last, staring at him blankly. "And for what purpose?"
"To build islands in the sky."
"Islands!" I gasped.
"To be sure, my boy. Do you not realize the need of such things? Airplanes are creatures of the air--are they not? Therefore they should fuel in the air, and the beacons set to guide their course should shine in the element through which they pass."
"That is true," I assented, catching a faint glimmering of his stupendous scheme. "But what is to hold your islands in place and keep them from blowing away? And will they not become a serious menace to air travel rather than an aid?"
"By no means," he replied confidently. "I will not only control gravitation, I will also use its force as a repellent."
"A repellent?"
"Exactly." The professor drew his chair nearer and leaned toward me with shining eyes, his hands spread out comprehensively. "Instead of attracting objects to its center the earth must be made to repel them," he continued in a low voice, glancing furtively about the brilliantly lighted room, then at the open windows where the breeze stirred the curtains lazily. "I have invented what I call a gravity repeller, which causes the gravitation lines of force to bend through 180deg. and lift an object away from the earth with the same force that it would ordinarily be attracted."
"I understand," I said doubtfully.
"Well, then we have only to perfect my device and operate it on a large scale."
"But that would throw the world out of balance and destroy all