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It was well after nightfall when the just-before-the-last-minute preparations for Spindrift's flight were finished. Overhead, above the airport, a transcontinental plane boomed in leisurely fashion across the sky. Down where the jets and prop planes took on passengers, there were many very bright lights. Steerable truck trains carrying luggage out for loading trundled busily here and there. A 50-passenger jet shrieked shrilly as something inside an engine pod caught. The engine went up to full power and then slowed while the rest of the engines were tested. Nearby, a smaller prop plane for local traffic was having its fuel tanks topped off. Away out on the tarmac, a newly landed plane came bumbling slowly and clumsily toward the airport buildings, making a quite unnecessary amount of noise on the way. The control tower swept a searchlight beam round and round the horizon, and shadowy radar baskets revolved sedately, monitoring the skies. Everywhere there was activity.
But not where the Spindrift was practically ready to lift off. She would be Flight 703, Los Angeles to London nonstop at a hundred thousand feet, and forty-one minutes ground to ground. There was no sign of haste here. Steve Burton, her pilot, came out of the gate by the coffee shop and moved unhurriedly toward the Spindrift's rounded hull. Somebody came out of a passenger gate and caught up to him. He handed Steve a small clipboard and went away.
Steve moved toward a spot where a floodlight bounced off the Spindrift's hullplates and on to the ground. He glanced through the papers. The tops sheets were last-second information about atmospheric conditions probably causing turbulence up to twenty thousand feet. The northern jet stream stated at thirty. Such items would only have meeting if something went wrong in the flight. Properly, the Spindrift would fly above most of the atmosphere and all of the weather. She was one of those inbetween suborbital ships that were neither satellites nor wing-supported aircraft. She flew at the very edge of space. In flight, she had an appreciable fraction of orbital velocity. It continued part of her lift. At her designed speed and height, she actually drew less power from her power units than at lesser heights and lower speeds.
Steve flipped the weather sheets under. He looked at the tinted special-order page. Usually, such sheets said, "No special orders," and that was that. But this time there were instructions. Steve's lips pursed into a soundless whistle. He read the pink sheet for the second time.
Dan Erickson, a black man, came down the landing stair. He saw Steve and what he was about. He came over.
"Weather forecast?" he asked humorously. It was a sort of joke, not a good one at all. The Spindrift flew at a hundred thousand feet. There was no weather there!
"Not exactly weather," said Steve drily, "but there's one of the freak new phenomena they call space warps flourishing somewhere upstairs out of the atmosphere. "They've just been discovered these past few months, and nobody understands them, so they're blamed for everything from heat waves to floods. We've got special instructions now that another one's been discovered."
Dan read the tinted slip, frowning. The orders were at the least unnecessary. The Spindrift was to keep in constant voice communication with the ground. She might deviate from her great-circle course if any oddity in flight conditions should develop. At all times they could change course if they thought it wise. She would make the routine run from Los Angeles to London with extreme caution.
The special-order slip commanded that Dan and Steve make their suborbital journey exactly as usual. They always flew with extreme caution. At all times they were free to change course if they thought it necessary. Once aloft they were in command of the ship. They were free to do anything they considered desirable during flight. The special orders simply told them to do what they always did.
Dan handed back the clipboard.
"We're urgently instructed to do what we'd do anyhow," he said blankly. "Why? What's happened?
"A space warp," said Steve, as drily as before. "I've been poring over the latest images from the Carson Peak Observatory, and they're downright extraordinary. Some of the star maps are warped—constellations twisted, as if the very fabric of space is bending and distorting where it shouldn't be. And get this: several artificial satellites that we rely on for communications have either just vanished or, quite strangely, seemed to evaporate into nothingness. The science boys, those dedicated lab geeks, started putting two and two together and concluded that they were witnessing something unprecedented—a phenomenon they're calling space warps. We don't really understand what space warps are, but that's the term they've settled on. There's one upstairs tonight, and we're going under it. So we're to be very, very careful!"
Dan scowled.
Steve stuffed the clipboard into his pocket. He moved toward the Spindrift's exit port from which Dan had just emerged. He didn't ask if Dan was disturbed. He knew better. As pilot and co-pilot they'd been a team for a long while, ever since they moved up from jets to suborbital ships like the Spindrift. They knew what the Spindrift could do. Neither of them could imagine anything really menacing that sturdy ship. The term "space warp" was a pair of words referring to something not yet describable. Yet it didn't seem likely that anything could overpower their Spindrift.
Other ships, to be sure, had reported disturbing difficulties of control, but none had disappeared without a trace in recent months, and for that, at least, they could be grateful. They were momentary difficulties only and only at very high altitudes, though still well below those at which suborbital ships flew. But no possible attempt had duplicated the reported difficulties. There was no known reason for them---unless the reason were a space warp.
Steve swung up the landing stair and into the Spindrift. Dan followed. They went past the passenger-compartment door and turned into the pilot's cabin. Steve barely glanced at the passengers already in their seats, but he saw a boy, perhaps 14 years old. There was a girl, too--perhaps twenty or thereabouts---with a bored expression and a makeup job that was the ultimate in sophistication. There was a youngish man with spectacles. There was another man fidgeting in his seat. He didn't look up. There were no other passengers. Betty Hamilton, the stewardess, nodded and followed them into the control cabin.
"We did have a full passenger list," she observed, "but when the newscast talked about the space warps, they cancelled in a hurry! Nobody knows what a space warp is, but nobody's anxious to find out."
Steve put the clipboard in its place. Dan sat down in the co-pilot's seat and began to throw switches. The monitor lights glowed in their places to say that such-and-such instruments were working or were ready to do so. A green lamp came on as a loudspeaker in the ceiling made an indefinite noise that said it was operating, though no message came from it.
Betty grimaced a little. A plane stewardess has her own viewpoint about passengers. Male ones try to be fascinating. Women tend to be jittery. Children demand an infinite amount of attention.
"We've only four passengers," she commented. "There's a boy named Barry. He's excited about the space warp. He asked if we'd try to fly through it. I said no. He's being shipped to London alone for some family reason. He was brought to the airport and left to get aboard by himself. Apparently, nobody thought about cancelling his reservation. Nice boy."
Steve inspected the innumerable dials of the instrument panel. Betty added: "One of the men passengers is all wrought up. He told me that if he could get his luggage off the ship he'd cancel, too. But he's escorting---of all things!---the mirror for an astronomical telescope. It's being loaned for some precision measurements on Principe. They're going to re-measure the stars that shifted to prove Einstein's theories. He considers that telescope mirror more important than anything else in the world."
"Maybe it is," said Dan. He made an adjustment.
"But that girl," said Betty vexedly, "she so sophisticated that she's painful! She asked me in a superior tone if we were likely to run into the space warp. 'It'd be a thrill if we were,' she said."
Steve said absently, "Two minutes, Betty."
She shrugged and went out, closing the pilot-cabin door behind her. Steve and Dan began the standard, final pre-takeoff check of the ship's readiness for flight. There was a memoboard, very much like a housewife's shopping reminder, with words and sliding taps. Pushed to the left, the tabs were invisible. To the right, they were memos of things to be verified. Steve said:
"Power-unit charge."
"Topped and cut off," said Dan. He moved a second marker.
"Groundbrakes...."
"Off...."
It was very quiet in the pilot's cabin, except for Steve and Dan's matter-of-fact voices checking each of the 40-odd items that have to be verified before a ship like the Spindrift should lift off. Everything was perfectly normal. Everything was proper for the takeoff and climb to a hundred thousand feet and the streaking rush through the night for London, half a world away but reached in 41 minutes flight time.
The placidness and the commonplaceness of the Spindrift's world was incredible. All of Earth was tied together by shortwaves and microwave tower systems, so that anybody on Earth could reach almost anybody else just be pushing buttons on a telephone instrument. Communications were perfect. They involved investments of thousands of millions of dollars, and they were maintained by hundreds of thousands of men. The result was that birthday greetings and business conversations were transmitted across seas and continents with a find precision. Nothing could happen.
The same precise arrangement of events was displayed by the transportation systems of the world. Everything was prepared for. All undesirable events were foreseen and prevented. Almost.
People directly involved were definitely jumpy, but the great mass of humanity listened without concern to news broadcasts saying that a space warp existed in the neighborhood of Earth. So far nobody knew what a space warp was. But everyone was confident that eventually some canny scientist would figure it out. Then somebody else would make an industry out of it, and the new industry would pay taxes. Meanwhile, who cared?
So people watched television and telephoned to each other, and furnaces and air-conditioners worked as always. Street and houselights functioned. Stoves cooked and cars ran and refrigerators refrigerated. The world wagged on with absolutely ordinary and even tedious matter-of-factness. Nobody expected anything particularly novel to take place anywhere.
In the Spidrift's pilot's cabin Steve said:
Spindrift to control tower. Ready to lift. Over."
"You're timed to the second," said the speaker. "Okay to lift."
Steve pushed the button that would lift the ship's bow to aim at the stars. Her forepart rose, and the look of things outside became highly improbable. Everything seemed to lie on its side. The ship's nose came to point straight up. There was a misty nothingness overhead---the light of stars was blurred by the airport's lighting system.
"Spindrift taking off," said Steve.
He waited the regulation 3 seconds and pushed the drive button. The Spindrift, as seen from outside, seemed to fall skyward. There was no roaring, there was no noise. The ship simply plummeted straight upward and dwindled just like any falling object. Her navigation lights diminished in size and brightness. Then, to the world of the airport, she was gone.
Inside the ship there was no particular sensation. At the instant of liftoff, the world seemed to drop away behind. The long lines of lane lights shrank in size, and other lights came rushing to take their places. That was all.
Then a multitude of stars appeared, ranging from the tiniest pinpricks of light to blazing Sirius and Rigel, and the planets Jupiter and Mars that outshone even them. The heavens were magnificent. But Earth was a vast blackness, with occasional twinklings just barely to be seen in steady motion astern. They were cities as viewed from many miles high and between strictly local clouds.
The Spindrift had made the most ordinary and commonplace of liftoffs.
Now she drove through nineteen-twentieths of a vacuum. Time passed. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. Dan read off instrument indicators into a microphone, obeying the special orders to maintain continuous communication with the ground. There was no noise or tumult of any kind.
Twenty minutes. She now flew beneath a canopy of stars. The overhead loudspeaker said metallically: "Tower to Spindrift. You are approaching the area where space-warp effects are believed to be at a maximum. Have you observed any unnatural phenomenon? Keep talking in any case. We're monitoring your signal strength."
Steve said humorously, "What'll I talk about? I've ready you all the instruments twice over! All I observe is that there are a lot of stars, and the world looks big, down below. Nothing odd in that!"
The speaker said: "Keep talking!"
Dan said, "How'd you like some poetry? Shall I recite?"
Steve reached his hand forward. He pointed to an instrument. It read the vertical component of the Earth's magnetic field. It wasn't important usually, but now it gave a freak reading.
"Steve just pointed out," said Dan in a changed tone, "that magnetic-field strength is up to point eight-seven gauss. No. Now it's dropping back again...."
He stopped, staring out the forward ports and up.
"Keep talking!"
"There's something queer overhead," Steve interposed. "The stars don't seem to be standing still. They're wobbling. They can't be doing it actually, of course. It's as if I saw them reflected in a pool of water, with ripples making them seem to move."
The loudspeaker said in a somewhat satisfied tone: That's a space warp, all right! We'll check with observatories to see if their telescopes see the same thing. If they do see the same thing, it's a long way off. If they don't, it's a local phenomenon."
Dan said, "I won't mind if it's a long way off! I like my stars standing still, thank you very much!"
The Spindrift drove on. The radar altimeter read ninety-eight thousand feet of altitude for the suborbital ship. Starshine glowed faintly on cloud masses below. But overhead there was novelty. Now one part of the heavens looked perfectly normal while another part stirred like seething ink. Then the place of the disturbance moved. If the index of refraction of space could change from place to place and moment to moment, it would produce an appearance like this.
"It doesn't look natural," said Dan uneasily. "I don't like it a bit! Stars oughtn't to act like this!"
"Magnetic-field strength, Dan," said Steve curtly.
Dan blinked at the instrument. It had read point eight-seven and dropped back to a normal point forty-nine gauss. Now it said one point six. Dan protested.
"One point six? I don't believe it!"
"A magnetic field can affect light," said Steve eventually. "It can rotate polarized light, anyway. That ties in with whatever a warp may be. Starlight shifting and magnetic fields changing crazily seem to fit together---but I don't know how."
The loudspeaker said heavily: "Your signal strength is dropping."
The Spindrift continued to drive. Her polished hull plates glittered, but faintly, in the light of stars, some of which incredibly writhed and twisted. She was alone in immensity. The vaguely reflecting clouds below seemed mere vapors rather than the cloud masses of a solid world. The Spindrift was actually alone as only suborbital ships manage to be these days. The radar altimeter said the ship was exactly a hundred thousand feet high. That was normal. The magnetic-field meter again said point five, which was close to normal. But it suddenly went down farther. That was, at the least, eccentric. The area of the sky in which the stars wavered and swirled came closer to straight overhead.
"I don't like this!" repeated Dan.
Without waiting for further discussion, Captain Burton reached for the microphone and keyed the transmitter. “LA Control, this is the Spindrift—do you copy?” he announced, his voice echoing slightly in the tense silence that followed. "I don't like the look of things. I'll feel better lower down. Are there any other ships reporting oddities? Is this craziness local, or is it far away in space?"
Silence. No answer. It seemed like minutes before the loudspeaker made a sound. Then it said faintly:
"Your signal is very weak. Repeat your message."
"Spindrift to LA Control," said Steve more loudly, "I want to know if what's bending the light from part of the stars is local, or is it actually away out in emptiness? Do observatories see the stars shiver? How far away....."
There was a crash of static, and all the stars dimmed. All of them. They became faint, as if a dark mist had formed overhead and suddenly partly blotted them out. There was a tumult of crazy, repeated crashing sounds from the loudspeaker.
The stars went out entirely. The Spindrift flew in absolute blackness. With nothing to be seen outside, there was no feeling of up or down. The dark vast bulk which had been Earth could now have ceased to exist. The Spindrift flew through the blackness of Hell. There seemed to be no way if she flew level---but what was level flight?---or if she dived. But what was there to dive toward? There was an eerie sensation, as if everything outside the ship had ceased to exist. Everything was gone, stars and planets and Milky Way, even the universe itself.
The pilot-cabin door slid aside, and Betty Hamilton came in. She was trembling a little. The instrument lights were the only things that gave off light. The continuous rattle and crackling of static kept on.
“Steve! Dan! What the devil is going on?” she demanded, her voice tight with fear. “The passengers are scared out of their minds! One minute everything was fine, and the next—it’s like we flew straight into a nightmare!”
Steve’s grip tightened on the controls, his knuckles white. His jaw was set, but there was no certainty in his expression—only grim resolve. He glanced at Betty, then back at the swirling chaos beyond the windshield. "I don't have the answers," he admitted, his voice edged with frustration. “Betty, get to the passenger cabin immediately—secure everyone, fasten their seatbelts, and...."
Without warning, the static diminished. The stars reappeared. They came back one by one, the brightest ones first.
"Well, it looks," said Steve, "like things are coming back to normal. Tell 'em it's all over. We went under something overhead and everything went dark. That's all."
The loudspeaker: "Tower to Spindrift! Tower to Spindrift! Do you copy, Spindrift?"
"We copy, Control," said Steve harshly. "We went through something that cut off all light. All our instruments stopped registering, all but the altimeter. There was terrific static. Then the stars came back. I have no idea what happened."
Static scratched and crashed. The stars dimmed and then went out. There was no sky. There was no Earth.
"We're rising," said Steve.
The radar altimeter said a hundred and ten thousand feet. The clock on the instrument board said that the Spindrift had been in flight for something over twenty minutes. She should be above the Atlantic somewhere. She should be flying at a hundred thousand feet even. She was ten thousand feet higher than she should have been. Steve adjusted her flight controls for a gradual descent.
The altimeter said a hundred and fifteen thousand feet.
He put the Spindrift into a dive. Not a steep one, but definitely a downward path. The altimeter said a hundred twenty thousand feet.
"We're not climbing," said Steve grimly, "but we're rising. I think I'd better take measures. The trouble must be nearby. So..."
He wrenched at a control. The Spindrift could be felt to turn in midemptiness and point her nose straight down. Steve gave her more power. There was still total darkness. The loudspeaker made a horrible "white" noise, of every possible tone and volume mixed together. The Spindrift didn't descent. There was neither a feeling of increased weight nor of falling. The Spindrift simply did not dive, though aimed downward.
"Do you---see that?" demanded Dan. "We're still rising!"
"I noticed," said Steve grimly. "Hold on!"
He gave the drive full emergency power. It was enough to give the Spindrift three gees---three gravities---of acceleration. The ship was pointed straight down in the direction of Earth, if there was any Earth. There was an effective weight of four times the Spindrift's actual mass pulling at the ship to make it descend; the ship's own weight and three gees of drive. There was suddenly a feeling of something happening. Swirling forces played about the ship. It spun, in darkness. It wavered.
A faint, unfamiliar voice crackled through the loudspeaker in the Spindrift's pilot cabin, its imperious tone sending an unsettling chill down their spines.
"Identify yourselves immediately! This is the Celestial Vanguard speaking—your ship is nothing but an antique relic from a bygone era. State your designation at once!"
There was a flicker of light outside the ship. There was no explanation for it.
Dan shot Steve a questioning look. “Are you really going to respond to that?” he asked, his tone laced with urgency. “We need to report what’s happening out there—underneath that chaotic spot in the sky where the stars are moving like mad.”
Steve shook his head firmly, his voice resolute. “No,” he declared. “For the sake of my sanity, I’m not answering that.”
There was an unbelievable crash of static, loud enough to burn out the speaker itself. It filled the small cabin with dizzying sound. Then the Spindrift spun and tumbled end-over-end in total and abysmal blackness. Steve flung the emergency power off and then on again, because it felt as if the drive didn't respond. There seemed to be no effect of three times the usual drive power needed for liftoff. The power meters responded, yes. The drive drew power at the extravagant rate of emergency thrust. But it made no difference at all. Whatever had the Spindrift in its clutches seemed to have infinite strength. It could've crushed or shattered the ship without recognizing resistance.
Then the violent motion of the ship ceased. There were long seconds in which it seemed to swing vaguely in three directions. Then....nothing.
The Spindrift's motions became slower and somehow heavier. If her mass had been gradually increasing, something like such a feeling might have been noted. Presently the Spindrift was still. It was the absolute immobility of something buried in the heart of a mountain. It couldn't be stirred. The static scratching and rasping diminished and ceased.
Then, quite suddenly, gravity ceased to be. There was no weight.
The sensation was appalling.
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