Amazing Stories August 1948 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NewBook, Science Fiction
Publisher: Amazing Stories
Published: 1948-08-11T05:00:00+00:00

PART 2

Crabtree stepped off the rope ladder onto a small platform inside the huge sphere. His darting eyes took in the immensity of space above him and the details of the ship as revealed by a uniform dim glow that pervaded the very atmosphere, as it seemed.

Fifteen hundred feet above was a smaller sphere. It looked like the bloated belly of a huge spider sitting in the center of its web, with the huge coil springs radiating out from it in all directions to the outer shell.

Beside the platform upon which he stood was a large elevator. A fragile, quarter-inch strand of woven metal went up from its roof to become a faint line that disappeared within a hundred yards because of smallness and lack of lustre.

Evidently they were expected to travel in this elevator into the upper sections of the sphere.

Curious as to how the elevator was designed, Irwin stepped into it. A pipe ran from the roof to the floor in the exact center of the elevator. Obviously the thin strand of wire rope up which the elevator was to ride must pass through this pipe and be anchored to the shell of the sphere. In some way the elevator gained traction as well as support from that single strand.

He motioned for the two police to follow him. The instant all three were safely in the door closed and the elevator started to rise. Was this due to automatic mechanism built into the elevator? Or did some person or being above start it as soon as he saw they were in? Why had they not been met?

Irwin shoved these questions into the back of his mind. They would be answered eventually, and speculation about them now was fruitless.

The elevator rose steadily with a faint hum coming from the center pipe. The flatness of the shell below rapidly assumed a concave appearance, and the ship core gradually lost its appearance of being a living thing crouching in a web far above, and began to look like what it was—the actual space ship, of which the three thousand foot outer sphere was just a protective shield and gatherer of cosmic particles for fuel for the propulsion mechanism.

The elevator was slow. After the first few minutes the novelty of the thing wore off. The two policemen introduced themselves. They were George Hanson and Fred Brown.

“If you will pardon me for saying so, sir,” George said respectfully after their introductions, “I’ve noticed that you seem to know more about this ship than if you had never heard of it before.”

“That’s right,” Irwin said. “There’s an account of a ship just like this being built on the Earth. I got the account just today from the Archives. Either this is the same ship, or else there is only one way to build a successful space ship, so that anyone who went from some other solar system to this one would have to build one like it to succeed. I don’t know which is the case, but we should find out soon.

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