Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 113: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

experience. The cosmos had seemed to them to whirl dizzily in an expanding spiral. Then their stomachs turned over, twice. The ship’s overdrive had come on again. The passengers who’d seemed nearest to madness from terror and despair, now seemed closest to going out of their minds with joy. The Delilah was again moving through space in overdrive! They did not realize that there was a great difference between this overdrive and the one that had been cut off. Vil THE MESSAGE went In on a very tight beam, and it was a double-transmission. It could be received only on a very Special instrument. An answer went out. It would take time to reach its destination in emptiness. The answer was similarly complex in its transmission, but its meaning was quite simple. No, there were no ships due from anywhere. No. There was no reason for aspace fleet not to come in. Yes. The apparatus on the ground was quite ready. Then, on the ice cap, a huge framework began to come up out of what seemed a crevasse in a glacier. It rose and rose and rose. There was a square metal frame. It heaved up smoothly until it reared two hundred feet high in a waste of frozen snow and ice. It was two hundred feet across. It was filled in, absolutely, by a shimmering silvery film which had the curious optical quality of an absolutely perfect reflector. It waited. Presently there were humming sounds in the sky. A wire- basket transmitter pointed skyward, sending a guiding beam. A dark shape appeared. It descended swiftly. It moved toward the square frame with the shimmering silvery film. It moved into that film. It vanished. It did not come out on the far side of the framework. It went into the film and ceased to be. Another dark shape CORniclooo SS CO