Skylark Three | Page 5

are going to do out
here, this kind of weather?"
* * * * *
As she spoke, the two men stepped out of the "testing shed"--the huge
structure that housed their Osnomian-built space-cruiser, "Skylark II."
Seaton waddled clumsily, wearing as he did a Crane vacuum-suit
which, built of fur, canvas, metal and transparent silica, braced by steel
netting and equipped with air-tanks and heaters, rendered its wearer
independent of outside conditions of temperature and pressure. Outside
this suit he wore a heavy harness of leather, buckled about his body,
shoulders, and legs, attached to which were numerous knobs, switches,
dials, bakelite cases, and other pieces of apparatus. Carried by a strong
aluminum framework in turn supported by the harness, the universal
bearing of a small power-bar rose directly above his grotesque-looking
helmet.
"What do you think you're going to do in that thing, Dickie?" Dorothy
called. Then, knowing that he could not hear her voice, she turned to
Crane. "What are you letting that precious husband of mine do now,
Martin? He looks as though he were up to something."
While she was speaking, Seaton had snapped the release of his face
plate.
"Nothing much, Dottie. Just going to show you-all the zone of force.
Mart wouldn't let me turn it on, unless I got all cocked and primed for a
year's journey into space."
"Dot, what is that zone of force, anyway?" asked Margaret.

"Oh, it's something Dick got into his head during that awful fight they
had on Osnome. He hasn't thought of anything else since we got back.
You know how the attractors and repellers work? Well, he found out
something funny about the way everything acted while the
Mardonalians were bombarding them with a certain kind of a
wave-length. He finally figured out the exact ray that did it, and found
out that if it is made strongly enough, it acts as if a repeller and
attractor were working together--only so much stronger that nothing
can get through the boundary, either way--in fact, it's so strong that it
cuts anything in two that's in the way. And the funny thing is that
there's nothing there at all, really; but Dick says that the forces meeting
there, or something, make it act as though something really important
were there. See?"
"Uh-huh," assented Margaret, doubtfully, just as Crane finished the
final adjustments and moved toward them. A safe distance away from
Seaton, he turned and waved his hand.
Instantly Seaton disappeared from view, and around the place where he
had stood there appeared a shimmering globe some twenty feet in
diameter--a globe apparently a perfect spherical mirror, which darted
upward and toward the south. After a moment the globe disappeared
and Seaton was again seen. He was now standing upon a hemispherical
mass of earth. He darted back toward the group upon the ground, while
the mass of earth fell with a crash a quarter of a mile away. High above
their heads the mirror again encompassed Seaton, and again shot
upward and southward. Five times this maneuver was repeated before
Seaton came down, landing easily in front of them and opening his
helmet.
"It's just what we thought it was, only worse," he reported tersely.
"Can't do a thing with it. Gravitation won't work through it--bars
won't--nothing will. And dark? Dark! Folks, you ain't never seen no
darkness, nor heard no silence. It scared me stiff!"
"Poor little boy--afraid of the dark!" exclaimed Dorothy. "We saw
absolute blackness in space."

"Not like this, you didn't. I just saw absolute darkness and heard
absolute silence for the first time in my life. I never imagined anything
like it--come on up with me and I'll show it to you."
"No you won't!" his wife shrieked as she retreated toward Crane.
"Some other time, perhaps."
Seaton removed the harness and glanced at the spot from which he had
taken off, where now appeared a hemispherical hole in the ground.
"Let's see what kind of tracks I left, Mart," and the two men bent over
the depression. They saw with astonishment that the cut surface was
perfectly smooth, with not even the slightest roughness or irregularity
visible. Even the smallest loose grains of sand had been sheared in two
along a mathematically exact hemispherical surface by the
inconceivable force of the disintegrating copper bar.
"Well, that sure wins the----"
An alarm bell sounded. Without a glance around, Seaton seized
Dorothy and leaped into the testing shed. Dropping her
unceremoniously to the floor he stared through the telescope sight of an
enormous ray-generator which had automatically aligned itself upon
the distant point of liberation of intra-atomic energy which had caused
the alarm to sound. One hand upon the switch, his face was hard and
merciless as he waited to make sure of the