came a great pillar of flame to lay waste
and terrorize the Earth.]

For some minutes I sat as in a daze, wishing merely that the journey was
over, and that I was on my own front porch out in Rutherford. After
awhile I stirred and looked around. Seeing none of my acquaintances in
the car, I finally opened the newspaper and was considerably startled by
the screaming headlines that confronted me from its usually conservative
first page:

SECOND COAST TRANSPORT
PLANE LOST!

Disaster Like First in Air-Level
Six!

No wonder the newsboys had been crying an extra on Broadway! I had given
no heed to the import of their shoutings, but this was real news and
well worthy of an extra edition. Since the mysterious loss of the SP-61,
only four days previously, the facilities of the several air
transportation systems were seriously handicapped on account of the
shaken confidence of the general public. It was not surprising that
there was widespread reluctance at trusting human lives and valuable
merchandise to the mercies of the inexplicable power which had
apparently wiped out of existence the SF-61, together with its
twenty-eight passengers and the consignment of one-half million dollars
in gold. And now the NY-18 had gone the way of the other!

Details were meager. Both ships had failed to reply to the regular
ten-minute radio calls from headquarters and had not since been seen or
heard from. In both cases the last call had been answered when the ship
was proceeding at full speed on its regular course in air-level six. The
SF-61 last reported from a position over Mora in New Mexico, and four
days of intensive search by thousands of planes had failed to locate
ship or passengers. To-day, in the early hours of the morning, the NY-18
reported over Colorado Springs, on the northern route, and then, like
the SF-61, dropped out of existence insofar as any attempts at
communicating with or locating her were concerned. She, too, carried a
heavy consignment of specie, though only eleven passengers had risked
the westward journey.

* * * * *

Someone had dropped into a seat at my side, and I looked up from my
reading to meet the solemn eyes of Hartley Jones, a young friend whom I
had not seen for several months.

"Why, hello, Hart," I greeted him. "Glad to see you, old man. Where in
Sam Hill have you been keeping yourself?"

"Glad to see you, too, Jack," he returned warmly. "Been spending m