by Joan Clark
CHAPTER XXIII
FIGHTING DEATH
Even the exertion of leaning forward, slight as it was, proved dangerousin the abnormal condition the high air produced in the human system. Inthat instant of stooping forward, Hal Dane lost consciousness and fellwith his plane, like a plummet, through the thin air.
The rarefied state of stratosphere was as dangerously violent againstthe human-made air machine as it was to the human body. Despite oilemulsions on the wings, up here in this terrible cold, ice formed withdeadly quickness on every part of the machine. In an instant, the planewas covered all over in a frozen layer an inch thick. Ice formedcontinually on the propeller, and was as quickly thrown off in terriblevibrations that near tore the motor mechanisms asunder.
And young Dane, a modern Viking who had dared ride the unchartedskyways, hung limp across his belt strap. The insidious treachery of theupper air had taken him unawares and hurled him into unconsciousness inthe midst of his triumph of speed.
The life-giving oxygen was there in its tube, at his very lips, but herein this dangerous light-air pressure, Hal had not been able toassimilate all the oxygen that he needed. The human lungs, built to takein the amount of air needed at ground levels, had balked at having totake in five times the usual volume as was necessary in the heights ofthe stratosphere. And all in an instant, the exhaustion ofair-starvation had claimed the flyer as its victim.
Down and down shot the plane, wallowing in the air troughs like somedismasted ship in a sea wreck.
And now, choking, hanging limp and unconscious though he was, Hal Danebegan to faintly breathe in the blessed heavier air of the loweraltitudes he was hurtling into.
Back from the heights he slid, back into normal air pressures. He shotten thousand feet while the struggle for breath and for consciousnessheld him. Longer and deeper breaths he drew at the tube, and the oxygengradually began to restore his strength.
As control of self came to him, he straightened back into position andfought to bring his mad ship to an even keel.
Below him lashed the hungry, growling wastes of the Pacific. As heplunged wildly downward it seemed that the ocean depths would swallow upthe twisting, turning plane before it could gain its equilibrium.
On he came, diving, stalling, slipping--flattening out at last in a longlightning quick swoop above the waves.
With nerves in a forced steadiness and hands like steel gripped to theirtask, Hal had checked the meteoric fall and had regained some measure ofcontrol over his craft. Now when he dared relax, he found himself,within his furred clothing, dripping wet in a horror sweat. In a brieften minutes of life he seemed to have tasted every extreme, heat, cold,rising, speeding, falling.
In his fighting back to level out, he had dipped out of his course--hisearth inductor compass told him just how far a dip he had made, and hetraveled in a swing to the other side until the needle was again atzero.
Riding the normal airpath above the ocean at an average clip of roundabout a hundred and fifty miles the hour seemed safe and slow after thatlife-and-death race high up in that stratosphere layer above the earth.
As the afternoon wore on, Hal twice again mounted high into thin air androde the winds for a brief space, each time coming down beforeexhaustion could quite claim him. Risky as these performances were, theywere undertaken in no mere daredeviltry of spirit. Instead, it was forexperiment's sake that Hal Dane repeatedly dared the weird dangers ofthe stratosphere's violence of wind and cold. He wanted to prove tohimself that his newfound, splendidly dangerous river of the wind flowedalways into the west. For already he was dreaming of a plane built tomore efficiently take advantage of this great aerial current.
For all its careful designing, his present Wind Bird could not steadilyride this high, cold aerial river. There were certain necessary pointsof construction that needs must be considered in flying craft for thehigh, thin air strata. Hal Dane's heart leaped to the thrill of what hewas learning. Those great aerial currents had half battered the life outof his body, but from his terrible contact with them, he had wrestedsecrets to carry back to the builders of airplanes.
As Hal Dane skimmed the ocean surface at a steady, rhythmic gait, hismind leaped ahead to future aircraft building that should utilize theknowledge that he had gained by his stratosphere explorations. He hadfound that the human body, fashioned to thrive in an air pressure ofsomething over fourteen pounds per square inch, could suffer intenselywhen lifted to a rarefied air pressure of merely two and a half poundsto the inch. But since man had been smart enough to lift himself onwings above the clouds, why, now man must be smart enough to lift hisnormal air pressure with him. This could be done, Hal believed, bymaking the plane's cabin of metal, hermetically sealed, and equippedwith oxygen tanks to maintain the same air pressure as at ordinaryaltitudes.
From long practice, Hal's hands mechanically shifted gear in thespeeding plane, to hold to an even flight, while his mind wrestledcontinually with the many problems that even his brief taste ofstratosphere flying had opened up to him. On future "high flyers", thesealed cabin would necessitate the working out of some method ofabsorbing the gases given out by the breath. Then, too, the ordinarysystems of controls could not be used, as they would necessitate holesin the "sealed cabin." Ah, he had it!--electric controls could bedevised to govern rudder, elevators, ailerons. This great power could beused to fight the terrible high air cold, also, and electrical heatingwould keep the deathly dangerous ice sheath from coating wings and--
With a startled gasp, Hal Dane swung from dream planning back intoreality, in bare time to hurl his ship upward out of a strange danger.Beneath him, the ocean surface rolled into a monstrous heaving, and awaterspout shot upward, barely missing his wing.