Mission of Gravity

„What is it, Barl?” Lackland called instantly.

„I don’t know,” the captain replied. „I thought for an instant it might be your rocket down looking for the islands to guide us better, but it’s smaller and very different in shape.”

„But it’s something flying?”

Tes. It does not make any noise like your rocket, however. I’d say it was being blown by the wind, except that it’s moving too smoothly and regularly and in the wrong direction. I don’t know how to describe it; it’s wider than it is long, and a little bit Wee a mast set cross wise on a spar. I can’t get closer than that.”

„Could you angle one of the vision sets upward so we could get a look at it?”

„We’ll try.” Lackland immediately put through a call on the station telephone for one of the biologists.

„Lance, it looks as though Barle

„I’ll be right with you.” The biologist’s voice faded toward the end of the sentence; he was evidently already on his way out of the room. He arrived before the sailors had the vision set propped up, but dropped into a chair without asking questions. Barle

„It’s passing back and forth over the ship, sometimes in straight lines and sometimes in circles. Whenever it turns it tips, but nothing else about it changes. It seems to have a little body where the two sticks meet. ” He went on with his description, but the object was evidently too far outside his normal experience for him to find adequate similes in a strange language.

„If it does come into view, be prepared to squint,” the voice of one of the technicians cut in. „I’m covering that screen with a high-speed camera, and will have to jump the brightness a good deal in order to get a decent exposure.”

„. there are smaller sticks set across the long one, and what looks like a very thin sail stretched between them. It’s swinging back toward us again, very low now — I think it may come in front of your eye this time….”

The watchers stiffened, and the hand of the photographer tightened on a double-pole switch whose closing would activate his camera and step up the gain on the screen. Ready as he was, the object.was well into the field before he reacted, and everyone in the room got a good glimpse before the suddenly bright light made their eyes close involuntarily. They all saw enough.

No one spoke while the cameraman energized the develop-ing-frequency generator, rewound his film through its poles, swung the mounted camera toward the blank wall of the room, and snapped over the projection switch. Everyone had thoughts enough to occupy him for the fifteen seconds the operation required.

The projection was slowed down by a factor of fifty, and everyone could look as long as he pleased. There was no reason for surprise that Barle

The object was not an animal. It had a body — fuselage, as the men thought of it — some three feet long, half the length of the canoe Barle

„What drives it?” asked one of the watchers suddenly. „There’s no propeller or visible jet, and Barle

„It’s a sailplane.” One of the meteorological staff spoke up. „A glider operated by someone who has all the skill of a terrestrial sea gull at making use of the updrafts from the front side of a wave. It could easily hold a couple of people Barle

The Breeds crew were becoming a trifle nervous. The complete silence of the flying machine, their inability to see who or what was in it, bothered them; no one likes to be watched constantly by someone he can’t see. The glider made no hostile move, but their experience of aerial assault was still fresh enough to leave them uneasy about its presence. One or two had expressed a desire to practice their newly acquired art of throwing, using any hard objects they could find about the deck, but Barle

The days passed without reappearance of the glider, and eventually only the official lookouts kept their eyes turned upward in expectation of its return. The high haze thickened and darkened, however, and presently turned to clouds which lowered until they hung a scant fifty feet above the sea. Barle

The first of the islands to come into view was fairly high, its ground rising quickly from sea level to disappear into the clouds. It lay downwind from the point where they first sighted it; and Barle

This island appeared to be high also; not only did its hilltops reach the clouds, but the wind was in large measure cut off as the Bree passed into its lee. The shore line was cut by frequent fiords; Barle

There was plenty of time to secure both vessel and contents, as it happened; the clouds belonged to the second of the two „normal” cyclones the meteorologist had mentioned, rather than to the major storm. Within a few days of the Bree’s arrival in the harbor the weather cleared once more, though the wind continued high. Barle