aited.

A siren yelled briefly. Black night turned blinding white as the
harnessed energies of the atom were released. For five and six-tenths
seconds the sharp, hard, beryllium-bronze leading edge of the
back-sweeping V sliced its way through ever-thinning air.

The vessel seemed to pause momentarily; paused and bucked viciously. She
shuddered and shivered, tried to tear herself into shreds and chunks;
but Phryges in his tank was unconcerned. Earlier, weaker ships went to
pieces against the solid-seeming wall of atmospheric incompressibility
at the velocity of sound; but this one was built solidly enough, and
powered to hit that wall hard enough, to go through unharmed.

The hellish vibration ceased; the fantastic violence of the drive
subsided to a mere shove; Phryges knew that the vessel had leveled off
at its cruising speed of two thousand miles per hour. He emerged,
spilling the least possible amount of water upon the polished steel
floor. He took off his coverall and stuffed it back through the valve
into the tank. He mopped and polished the floor with towels, which
likewise went into the tank.

He drew on a pair of soft gloves and, by manual control, jettisoned the
acceleration tank and all the apparatus which had made that unloading
possible. This junk would fall into the ocean; would sink; would never
be found. He examined the compartment and the hatch minutely. No
scratches, no scars, no mars; no tell-tale marks or prints of any kind.
Let the Norskies search. So far, so good.

Back toward the trailing edge then, to a small escape-hatch beside which
was fastened a dull black ball. The anchoring devices went out first. He
gasped as the air rushed out into near-vacuum, but he had been trained
to take sudden and violent fluctuations in pressure. He rolled the ball
out upon the hatch, where he opened it; two hinged hemispheres, each
heavily padded with molded composition resembling sponge rubber. It
seemed incredible that a man as big as Phryges, especially when wearing
a parachute, could be crammed into a space so small; but that lining had
been molded to fit.

This ball _had_ to be small. The ship, even though it was on a
regularly-scheduled commercial flight, would be scanned intensively and
continuously from the moment of entering Norheiman radar range. Since
the ball would be invisible on any radar screen, no suspicion would be
aroused; particularly since--as far as Atlantean Intelligence had been
able