The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lords of the Stratosphere, by Arthur J. Burks

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Title: Lords of the Stratosphere

Author: Arthur J. Burks

Release Date: July 20, 2009 [EBook #29466]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LORDS OF THE STRATOSPHERE ***

Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Astounding Stories March 1933.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

The Table of Contents is not part of the original magazine.

Lords of the Stratosphere

_A Complete Novelette_

By Arthur J. Burks

* * * * *

Contents

I The Take-off
II The Ghostly Columns
III Strange Levitation
IV Frantic Scheming
V Into the Void
VI Stratosphere Currents
VII Invisible Globe
VIII Cataclysmic Hunger
IX A Scheme Is Described
X How It Came About
XI To the Rescue

* * * * *

[Sidenote: High into air are the great New York buildings lifted by a
ray whose source no telescope can find.]

CHAPTER I

_The Take-off_

It seemed only fitting and proper that the greatest of all leaps into
space should start from Roosevelt Field, where so many great flights had
begun and ended. Fliers whose names had rung--for a space--around the
world, had landed here and been received by New York with all the pomp
of visiting kings. Fliers had departed here for the lands of kings, to
be received by them when their journeys were ended.

Of course Lucian Jeter and Tema Eyer were disappointed that Franz Kress
had beaten them out in the race to be first into the stratosphere above
fifty-five thousand feet. There was a chance that Kress would fail, when
it would be the turn of Jeter and Eyer. They didn't wish for his
failure, of course. They were s