Argosy, Vol. 112, No. 2 — page 167: what you’re looking at

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

THE RACE OF THE GIANTS. and if anything happens to the dams our air pressure fails and then the lights.” ““Whar’s Station 20?” Grim asked. “Salt Lake City.” “ Whar ’d we chord?” “On the run. Tanks full?” “ Ready to bust.” “Then we'll shoot along,” Dillon said, seizing the levers. ‘“‘ There’s another thing,” he mentioned as they gathered speed. “A run like this sometimes breaks up a new man. Stop staring ahead. That’s my job. We can’t afford a case of tube trance on this run.” * Reckon I might wear blinders,” Grim suggested, grinning. ‘‘ What kind of a fel- ler *d it be that ’d keep his blinkers off of that?” he added, nodding at the tube ahead. “Aw! Don’t worry, I ain’t goin’ dead none!”’ Dillon shot him a glance and dropped the levers down to the stop. ‘‘ Have to beat the fliers,’ he growled. ‘‘ Can’t take any risks. Half past twelve now. I’ve turned her loose.” The big car trembled and flashed ahead at a speed that made their former rate seem a dog-trot. The air screeched about them, and the vibrating car shook until speech became difficult. All about them something roared and hissed, even the lights seemed to shriek a protest, and ahead the tube was but a comet’s tail of fire into which they rushed at three hundred and fifty miles an hour. “ Ho-aw _lo-ong?”’ clutching a stay. “Till things go blue!” Dillon grunted. “ Kansas City in forty-five minutes. that message!”’ The informer was clicking rapidly: Grim stammered, Condor and Northern Light relay at Kan- sas City. Nothing in sight. Westerly winds in lower lanes. Flood serious. Power-house No. 8 threatened, dams breaking. Dillon bit hard on a flexed lip. “ Thirty minutes more and we take our compression from Council Bluffs,” he said. “If No. 8 only holds!” Grim stared ahead without speaking. “No matter how familiar one might become with the latent power of those instruments on the Catch 3350 surface, or how well one might be trained in their use; this use of that power to drive under mountains and prairies; this experience of underground -flight was not only new and disconcerting, but, at the present speed, was appalling. His groping thought had clutched the idea. This was a race without a competitor in sight. There was nothing to see but the blazing tube ahead. There was no glimp- sing of flying-ships above, of specks in the sky shooting westward under the guidance of devil-brained pilots. Those ‘“ cloud-bus- ters,” as Dillon had called them, might be anywhere above them, leading, chasing; the specks in the sky and the subway car might be running neck and neck; he couldn’t see the race, and the reports from the informer were as dry and unsatisfactory as the an- nouncements from a megaphone. ‘““Whar ’d yo’ reckon they be now?” he asked, striving to steady his voice. ‘Behind or busted!” Dillon shouted. ‘No flying cart could make this speed and hold together. We’re—ch!” Without an instant’s warning the tube lights went out and left them shooting into the tube ahead, into blackness so dense, so unexpected, so overpowering that for a mo- ment they appeared helpless, paralyzed. “The crisis lights!” Dillon yelled. ‘Turn on the lights!” To Grim it seemed he never would find the valves, but in a few seconds the big - drums sent out their beams and they saw the glare shearing the gloom from the tube walls far ahead. ‘No. 8 is gone!” Dillon gritted. ‘‘ Drums will light us for twenty minutes. After that we catch the solars from Council Bluffs.” They rushed on without a check, the crisis lights flaring ahead, Dillon grasping the levers, Grim bending over the informer listening for the click that foretold a mes- sage. ‘ Qught to hear something,” Dillon said, uneasiness in his tone as he glanced at the depth gage. ‘‘ We dip pretty soon for the river. There she goes!” The informer had begun, and Grim was taking the message: All clear at Kansas City. Northern Light and Condor relay here. Shooting Star and Gomicbooks: