ll," said Jeter in a far-away voice, "they haven't a
chance anyway!"

"I know," replied Hadley. "God, Jeter, isn't there something we can do?"

"I hope to find something," said Jeter. "But just now I'm afraid we are
helpless."

The Vandercook building continued to rise. It did not totter; it simply
rose in its entirety, leaving the gaping hole into which, decades ago,
it had been built. It rose straight into the sky, apparently of its own
volition. No rays of light, no supernatural agencies could be seen or
fancied. The utterly impossible was happening. A building was a-wing.

Jeter and Eyer looked at each other with protruding eyes.

* * * * *

Then they looked back at the Vandercook, whose base now was on a level
with the roof of the Hadley building.

"See?" said Hadley. "Not so much as a brick falls from the foundation.
It's--it's--ghastly."

Jeter would never forget the screams of mortal terror which came from
the lips of the doomed who had been working late in the Vandercook
building--for, horror piled upon horror, those who had sought to escape
calamity did not fall to Earth at all, but, at the same speed of the
rising building, traveled skyward with it, human flies outside those
leering dark windows.

Then, free of New York's skyline, the flying building was gone with a
rush. A thousand feet above New York's tallest building, the Vandercook
changed direction and moved directly into the west.

The conference watched it go....

"Commissioner," Jeter yelled at the police chief of Manhattan, "get word
out at once for all lights to be put out in the city! Hurry! Radio would
be fastest."

In ten minutes Manhattan was a darkened, silent city ... and now the
conference could see why Jeter had asked for all lights to be
extinguished.

Five thousand feet aloft, directly over the Hudson River, the Vandercook
building now hung motionless--and all eyes saw the thin column of light.
It came down from the dark skies from a vast distance, widening to
encompass the top of the Vandercook building.

The Vandercook building might almost have been a mouse caught in the
talons of some unbelievable night-hawk.

As though some intellect had just realized the significance of New
York's sudden darkness; as though that intellect had realized that the
column was ordinarily invisible because of Manhattan's brilliant
incandescents, and now was visible in the darkness--the column of light
snap