The Silver Menace

by Murray Leinster

  III.

  Nita sat in the seat beside Davis' control chair, pointing to theinstruments one by one.

  "And that's the inclinometer," she repeated, "to tell you the angle atwhich the plane is climbing or descending. That's the barometer, whichreads--let me see--seventy-four hundred feet. We're over a mile high,aren't we?"

  "We are," said Davis, "though by the looks of things we are tenthousand miles from anywhere."

  The silver sea was still beneath them, and they still seemed to befloating in a universe of air. Nita paid no attention.

  "And that's the compass dial, and that----What did you call it?"

  "An anenometer," said Davis again, smiling. "It's the speedometer ofthe air--or the patent log, whichever you like to call it."

  "You only have to learn one syllable," said Nita. "They all end inometer. It's convenient that they're named like that."

  Davis smiled.

  "I never thought of that before, but it is convenient."

  "But how do you balance the plane?" Nita demanded.

  "In straightaway flight it balances itself," Davis explained. "It's oneof the new inherently stable designs. For turning, the wing tips workautomatically. We've a gyroscopic affair that attends to them."

  Nita subsided for a moment, then demanded further information.

  "What's that lever for? To change speeds?"

  Davis laughed.

  "Well, no. We haven't but one speed forward and no reverse----"

  "You're making fun of me!"

  "That's the joy stick," said Davis, chuckling. "We dive and climb withit. Pull it back and we go up. Push it forward and we dive."

  "Mmmmm," said Nita interestedly.

  Her father took his cigar out of his mouth long enough to join inDavis' chuckle at Nita's absorbed air.

  "Don't talk to the motorman, Nita," he said. "He may run past a switch."

  Nita turned around and smiled at him. The car was rather crowded withseven people in it. Gerrod was looking curiously at a bit of thesilvery jelly, with which he had filled several pails before leavingthe yacht. He took a bit of it between his thumb and forefinger androlled it back and forth speculatively.

  It seemed faintly granular to the touch, but at the slightest pressureunderwent a change that felt like crumbling, and was nothing butwatery liquid.

  "I'll bet anything you care to name," he said thoughtfully, "that thisis just a mass of little animalcules with little silvery shells. Thesilvery shells would account for the reflection we see."

  "The captain of my yacht," observed Morrison, "said that he thought itwas like a milk sea. That's a mass of little animals that glow likephosphorus in the dark."

  "Perhaps," said Gerrod meditatively. "I'd like to look at this stuffunder a microscope."

  "Oh some of it will go to the government chemists," said Morrison witha large air, "and they'll figure out a way to kill the little beasts.There's a cure for everything."

  "Perhaps," said Gerrod.

  The plane flew on steadily, Davis finding some amusement in gratifyingNita's suddenly aroused curiosity about every part of the seaplane.When her curiosity about the plane was satisfied, however, and shebegan to make inquiries about himself, Davis was much less comfortable.

  He tried to be evasive, but she pinned him down, and was filled withexcitement when she found that he was the same man who, as LieutenantDavis, had flown the two-seated flying machine that had destroyed theBlack Flyer and with it Varrhus' menace to the liberty of the world.

  She tried very hard indeed to get him to tell her the story of thatfight, but he blushed and said there was nothing to tell. It wouldbe hard to say to what lengths she would have gone had not somethingoutside the plane caught her attention.

  "There's the horizon!" she exclaimed. "We've come to the edge of thesilver sea, and from here on it's just the plain, good, old-fashionedocean."

  The line that marked the point where sea and sky joined was indeedvisible, and a gradually widening bank of darker blue showed that thesilver sea had indeed come to an end.

  As the seaplane flew onward the darker, wave-tossed ocean came towardthem and passed below, but blended so gradually with the jellied oceanthat it was impossible to tell where the silver sea ended and bluewater began. It was evident that the silver sea was still growing.

  Then, for a long time, the seaplane sped onward over the blue waters,while Nita tried ingeniously to extract from Davis the details of thefight with the Black Flyer.

  Davis was acutely uncomfortable, but nevertheless he felt strangelydisappointed when the dim line of the coast appeared ahead. He hovereda moment to get his bearings, and then sped northward toward theaviation station to which he was attached.

  Nita, too, seemed disappointed. She had enjoyed tormenting Davis, andhe impressed her very favorably. After the plane had swooped downwardand come to rest on the water a scant two hundred yards from the hangarin which it was kept, she turned to Davis.

  "Well," she announced, "since I haven't been able to make you tell mewhat I want to know this time I warn you I shall make you tell me nexttime."

  Davis smiled.

  "May I hope there will be a next time?"

  Nita smiled at him.

  "I shall be angry if there isn't," she said demurely.

  The launch came up to tow them ashore, and Davis was busy for a fewmoments, but before Nita and her father climbed into the motor carthey had commandeered to take them to the city he found time to make amore definite arrangement and learned he was expected to call at theMorrison mansion "very, very soon."

  The description of the silver sea aroused but little attention in thenewspapers. A particularly pathetic murder trial was filling the publicmind, and small paragraphs in obscure corners, describing the plight ofthe yacht, contained all that the public learned.

  Every one seemed to dismiss the matter as a natural curiosity whichwould probably disappear in a little while. An aggregation of tinyanimalcules which had clustered together until they formed a jellylikemass did not promise much in the way of drama, and our newspapers areessentially purveyors of drama.

  Obscure notices in the shipping news, however, told of the growth ofthe silvery patch, and at last there was a ripple of interest causedby the news that the crew of the yacht claimed that the jellylikecreatures were clambering up the sides of the ship and threatening tooverwhelm the vessel.

  Seaplanes put out from shore and took the crew off, and then publicinterest lapsed again. An almost uneventful accident to the yacht of asteamship magnate was good material for society news, but not for thepages devoted to items of general interest.

  To Davis, however, anything pertaining to Nita had become of surpassinginterest. He practically haunted her house, and Nita seemed not atall unwilling to have him there. Her father was as cordial as Nitaat first, but later began to watch Davis' frequent appearances withsomething of disquiet.

  Davis was sufficiently well known from his Black Flyer episode tobe considered socially eligible anywhere, but he was far from rich.He had consistently refused the numerous offers from motion-picturecompanies and book publishers to enact or relate his exploits, thoughthe acceptance of any of those offers would have meant a small fortune.

  Davis was instinctively unwilling to commercialize his reputation.Morrison could find no fault with him personally, but he could notquite believe that Davis' increasingly evident infatuation for Nita wasreal--that he was actually more than a fortune hunter.

  The shipping news continued to give sparsely phrased notice of thelocation and size of the silver sea. Two naval vessels were assigned toobserve it, reporting regularly to the meteorological bureau.

  It must be recorded to the credit of that much-maligned department ofweather forecasts and maritime information that it was probably thefirst body to see the possibilities of evil that lay in the silver sea.

  It had quantities of the silvery mass of animalcules brought to itfor study, and set its scientists to work to try and find a means ofdestroyin
g them. Fish would not eat them. They seemed to possess somerepulsive taste that led all the carnivorous fishes to avoid themat all costs. Placed in an aquarium with a huge sea bass that wasexceptional for its voracity, the sea bass avoided the tiny, jellylikemass as it would the plague.

  The silver globule of jelly multiplied in size, and still the sea bassavoided it, retreating to the farthest corners of its tank to keep fromcoming in contact with the little animalcules. At last the aquarium wasa shimmering mass of silvery, sticky jelly, and the bass was unable toretreat farther. It was found gasping out its life outside the tank,having leaped from the water to escape from the omnipresent silvermenace.

  The silver sea grew in size. It began to figure in the news again, whenpassengers on the transatlantic liners noticed that the steamers weretaking a route much farther to the north than was customary. It wasadmitted at the steamship offices that the detour was made for thepurpose of avoiding, the now vast silver sea.

  Late in March people along the eastern coast of the United States beganto remark upon a musklike, slimy smell that was faintly discernible inthe sea breeze. A steamer, going from New York to Bermuda, reportedseeing a patch of the silvery jelly only three hundred miles fromthe eastern coast. The disagreeable, musklike smell was strong andnoticeable.

  The newspapers woke to the possibilities of the silver sea. Ships couldnot navigate in its jellied waters, nor fish swim. It covered thousandsof square miles now, and was growing with an ominous steadiness thatforeboded ill.

  The seaside resorts along the Atlantic coast were practicallyabandoned. Tourists would not stay where that foul, slimy, musklikescent was borne to them constantly on the sea breeze. The patches thatwere the forerunners of the silver sea itself appeared along the coast.At last the horizon disappeared.

  The silver sea had come close, indeed, to the shore. Then everynewspaper burst into huge headlines. For the different papers they werephrased differently, but the burden of each, displayed in the largestpossible type, was

  COASTAL NAVIGATION STOPPED!

  America's Communication With the World Cut Off By Silver Sea.--Harbor Blocked from Maine to Georgia.--Authorities Helpless to Fight Silver Menace.

  Then the world began to be afraid.