CHAPTER II

The Terror Strikes

It was as Dunbar had remarked. For nearly a month, unexampled meteorological disturbances had been occurring throughout the earth. Not only in the northern hemisphere had a record heat blanketed every land; in regions far below the Equator, the accustomed mid-winter chill had disappeared; indeed, an almost tropical calm had been reported as far south as Cape Horn. Everywhere on the earth's surface, normal wind currents had been retarded or halted; everywhere dust and mist had accumulated; everywhere--even in the usually thunderless coastal regions of California--electrical storms of unparalleled violence had been of almost daily occurrence. But scientists, having no plausible explanation, had for the most part looked on in mute bewilderment.

There were, however, some who professed to believe that the shattered remnants of a comet had entered the earth's atmosphere; and supported their theory by pointing out that quantities of some gaseous foreign substance, which as yet they had been unable to analyze, had been detected in the stratosphere; while scores of high-flying airplanes had recently been slowed down or wrecked by unexplained impediments.

Few persons as yet saw any connection between the extraordinary weather and the reports of astronomers that dozens of minute bodies had been detected through telescopes, revolving as satellites about the earth just beyond its atmospheric limits. For lack of a better theory, it was assumed that they were asteroids or "minor planets" which had ventured too close to the earth and had been caught by its gravitational power; although no one could say why so many of them should have been discovered almost simultaneously. Besides, it was hard to account for the peculiar glassy appearance of these so-called Crystal Planetoids--an appearance which did not at all indicate the nickel or iron composition that might have been expected.

* * * * *

Not all these facts were in the minds of the three observers on the roof as they made their disconcerting discovery. But there were certain things which they did realize clearly enough.

"By glory," exclaimed Gates, his big eyes as wide with surprise as though he had seen the dead. "By glory! I just can't believe those great spidery devils are real--"

"Real or not, I--I've got a feeling we shouldn't stay here," Eleanor muttered, her face still white, as she started toward the door. "I--I--something tells me it isn't safe!"

"What in tarnation do you think can happen to us here more than down below?" demanded Gates. And then, with a shrug, "I'm going to take another peep through that glass!"

"Sure, go ahead! Might as well all wait, and die together!" Dunbar growled. "D'ye know, I've got an idea Eleanor's right. If we've a spark of sense left in our hides--"

Gates cast him a scornful glance, noting what an abject figure he seemed to be, as, with terror convulsing his lean, moustached face, he went slouching away.

"Hope I'll fall dead before I get so soft!" reflected the inventor.

Yet, despite himself, his pulses were throbbing as he returned to the Infra-Red Ray and observed the ominous, ruddy glow that, within the last minute, had come across the heavens. Was not the atmosphere thicker, hotter, heavier than ever? Why did it seem to bear down on him like a stony weight? Why within him that impulse which he sternly repressed--that impulse to race for shelter?

For a few seconds, after he had re-adjusted the instrument, he saw only what he had observed before: the prodigious spidery webs, with the huge octopus-limbed creatures swinging across them.

But almost immediately he made another observation. And, as he did so, a cry came to his lips. It was a cry of horror, issuing from some vast instinctive depth--a cry such as one might utter if one saw a man-eating tiger springing toward one with wide-open jaws. "For God's sake! Quick! Run--for your lives!"

Even as he uttered this plea, Gates dropped the instrument and started away. Dunbar was already in the doorway, into which he was disappearing with the violence of panic; while just behind him Eleanor was scampering like a frightened wild thing.

But they were just a second too late. There came a rushing as of a great wind. There came a moment as of immense shadows, sweeping down with lightning velocity. There came a glimpse of tenuous shapes in rapid motion, a little like the spokes of a furiously turning wheel. At the same time, in a nightmarish, unbelievable fashion, Gates saw Dunbar and Eleanor arrested in mid-flight. Something vague and gray, which looked like a gigantic claw, seemed to be woven about them both. But it all happened too quickly for him to be sure. In the same instant, he beheld them both jerked into air; then whirled skyward at rocket speed, while their cries rang in his ears.

[Illustration: The girl's scream rang out as the tentacles reached down and enfolded them in steel mesh.]

At the same instant also, as he stared at his companions, stunned and gasping, he felt something soft but powerful seizing him about the middle--something wriggling, and snake-like, and icy chill of touch. He was never to know whether he screamed in the extremity of his terror; all that he was aware of was that there came a mighty jerk, and that, helpless as a hare in an eagle's talons, he rose into air with a speed that almost beat out his breath; and saw the roofs of the city fading beneath him amid the reddish haze.

* * * * *

For several minutes, beneath the clubbing rapidity of the flight, the captive's senses deserted him. And when, feeling dazed and drugged, he revived, it was to find himself amid a universe of fog in which the earth had receded from sight. He had, however, the distinct sensation of still rising--rising at tremendous speed. And he noticed--and this, to his mind, was the most incredible thing of all--that he was surrounded by an egg-shaped jelly-like transparent envelope about fifteen feet long. Not until much later did he realize that this envelope enclosed oxygen enough for him to breathe, and maintained it at a temperature and pressure without which life at his great elevation would have been impossible.

He had no way of knowing how much time went by in that nightmarish flight. He did, however, feel sure that many minutes had passed before at length he found himself above the mists. Blanketed in vapor, the earth rolled beneath him, shadowy and featureless; while, in a crepuscular dimness, he saw the stars glittering from the purple-gray void. But what particularly held his attention was the sight of several monstrous creatures--long and spidery, and with dangling octopus limbs--which drifted ghost-like through the vagueness just outside the egg-shaped envelope, with malevolently glowing three-cornered reddish eyes.

As he still rose, past what might have been the upper limits of the stratosphere, he saw a silvery globe sparkling above him in the moonlight. At first he thought it to be a mere speck; but its disk rapidly widened, until it appeared as large as the sun, then as great as several suns, then seemed to fill the entire heavens with its pale glassy form, which shed a tintless cold light that made Gates shudder.

Actually, the sphere was not more than a few hundred yards across; but to the bewildered victim it seemed enormous as some prodigy of nature. His confusion was only increased by the fact that he saw the stars moving rapidly past it, with a westward drift, showing that it was swinging swiftly to the east on an orbit of its own. So dazed was the captive that it took him minutes to identify it as one of the Crystal Planetoids.

By this time, they had reached the surface of the sphere, which he could see to be composed of a jelly-like substance with the appearance of milky glass. As they drew near, their speed rapidly diminished, until they came to a halt almost in contact with the great globe. Then, as if at its own volition, part of the surface billowed back, like a paper flap blown by the wind; and Gates, with the sensation of one entering a prison in a strange land, found himself drifting inside the sphere.

As suddenly as if it had evaporated, the egg-shaped envelope had disappeared, and he caught a whiff of hot, heavy, foul-smelling air, reminding him of a breeze straight from a menagerie. He coughed and gasped, and, as he did so, became aware of an unimaginably horrifying scene.

* * * * *

He stood inside the sphere at its lowest part, and gazed up into a circular space that, to his startled senses, seemed of stupendous magnitude. Woven about this vastness at all heights and angles was an intricacy of webs; webs built in concentric circles; webs composed of long parallel cables crisscrossed by shorter cables; webs ascending as sharply as the riggings of sailing vessels; and webs spun into hammock-like floating platforms. All the strands were thinner than a man's small finger, and shimmered strangely in the many-hued fluorescence of great light-patches on the ceiling; and somehow their iridescence, their shifting rainbow hues, their purples, ambers, aqua-marines, scarlets and turquoise blues, made them seem all the stranger and more sinister.

But most sinister of all were the great beings sprinting along the webs or dangling spider-like from a thread. Now for the first time Gates saw his captors clearly; for now--as he was later to learn--they had brushed off the powder that made them virtually invisible to human eyes, and stood forth in their full grotesqueness.

Their outlines were what he had already seen: gigantic, spidery, with octopus limbs ending in many tentacle-like curling fingers. He had not known, however, that the monsters were encased in a scaly armor, which glittered with every peacock hue in the unearthly light, changing chameleon-like from ruby to emerald, and from gold and violet to bronze, jade and sulphur-yellow. He had not known that they had wide pouting greenish-gray lips, from which at times a faint smoke issued. He had not realized that they were equipped with long whips of tails, each ending in a horny dart, with which they could strike an enemy with appalling effect. He had not anticipated that they would talk with a peculiar whirr, a little like the grating of a buzz-saw; nor had he expected to see the pouches beneath their lower ribs, in which some of them, kangaroo-fashion, carried their young.

Scarcely had Gates been deposited in the Planetoid when he made still another discovery.

"Great heavens, look at Ronald!" he heard a familiar feminine voice. And, wheeling about, he found himself staring at Dunbar and Eleanor, who gaped at him not half a dozen yards away.

Both were, literally, as white as ghosts--wide-eyed as persons who have looked on unmentionable horror. Gates noticed that Dunbar's hair, usually so sleekly glossed, straggled in wild disorder; that his tie was a rag, and his coat buttons torn off as if in a struggle; while Eleanor's clothes were in rumpled disorder. Yet he noted with relief that neither captive, apparently, had been hurt.

"Thank God!" the girl explained. "You're whole and sound!"

"Even if a little mussed up," Dunbar forced out, with a wry grimace. "Good Lord! Why, his shirt is in ribbons! And his collar--"

But he was not to finish the sentence. For Gates suddenly cried out, with a sensation as if a boa constrictor had seized him about the chest. One of the monsters, its red eyes glaring balefully, had reached down and grasped him in its tentacles; and, with the manner of a master reprimanding a disobedient puppy, had begun to carry him away.