ce I could see still other seas of clouds at lower
levels.

CHAPTER VII

Captured!

Certainly my situation was no less desperate. Unless I could find some
method of compensating for my lost ballast, the inverse gravity of my
inertron ship would hurl me continuously upward until I shot forth from
the last air layer into space. I thought of jumping, and floating down
on my inertron belt, but I was already too high for this. The air was
too rarefied to permit breathing outside, though my little air
compressors were automatically maintaining the proper density within the
shell. If I could compress a sufficiently large quantity of air inside
the craft, I would add to its weight. But there seemed little chance
that I would myself be able to withstand sufficient compression.

I thought of releasing my inertron belt, but doubted whether this would
be enough. Besides I might need the belt badly if I did find some method
of bringing the little ship down, and it came too fast.

At last a plan came into my half-numbed brain that had some promise of
success, though it was desperate enough. Cutting one of the hose pipes
on my air compressor, and grasping it between my lips, I set to work to
saw off the heads of the rivets that held the entire nose section of the
swooper (inertron plates had to be grooved and riveted together, since
the substance was impervious to heat and could not be welded).
Desperately I sawed, hammered and chiseled, until at last with a wrench
and a snap, the plate broke away.

The released nose of the ship shot upward. The rest began to drop with
me. How fast I dropped I do not know, for my instruments went with the
nose. Half fainting, I grimly clenched the rubber hose between my teeth,
while the little compressor "carried on" nobly, despite the wrecked
condition of the ship, giving me just enough air to keep my lungs from
collapsing.

* * * * *

At last I shot through a cloud layer, and a long time afterward, it
seemed, another. From the way in which they flashed up to meet me and to
appear away above me, I must have been dropping like a stone.

At last I tried the rocket motor, very gently, to check my fall. The
swooper was, of course, dropping tail first, and I had to be careful
lest it turn over with a sharp blast from the motor, and dump me out.

Passing through the third layer of clouds I saw the earth beneath me.
Then I jumped, pulling myself up through