Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) by The Runaway Skyscraper Read Free Book Online

brightly-lighted windows of the offices within glittered
like jewels set into the shining shaft.
    From his position on the ground he looked into the dimness of the
forest on all sides. Black obscurity had gathered beneath the dark
masses of moonlit foliage. The tiny birch-bark teepees of the now
deserted Indian village glowed palely. Above, the stars looked
calmly down at the accusing finger of the tower pointing upward,
as if in reproach at their indifference to the savagery that reigned
over the whole earth.
    Like a fairy tower of jewels the building rose. Alone among a
wilderness of trees and streams it towered in a strange beauty:
moonlit to silver, lighted from within to a mass of brilliant gems,
it stood serenely still.
    Arthur, carrying his futile lantern about its base, felt his own
insignificance as never before. He wondered what the Indians must
think. He knew there must be hundreds of eyes fixed upon the strange
sight—fixed in awe-stricken terror or superstitious reverence upon
this unearthly visitor to their hunting grounds.
    A tiny figure, dwarfed by the building whose base he skirted,
Arthur moved slowly about the vast pile. The earth seemed not to
have been affected by the vast weight of the tower.
    Arthur knew, however, that long concrete piles reached far down to
bedrock. It was these piles that had sunk into the Fourth Dimension,
carrying the building with them.
    Arthur had followed the plans with great interest when the
Metropolitan was constructed. It was an engineering feat, and in
the engineering periodicals, whose study was a part of Arthur's
business, great space had been given to the building and the methods
of its construction.
    While examining the earth carefully he went over his theory of the
cause for the catastrophe. The whole structure must have sunk at
the same time, or it, too, would have disintegrated, as the other
buildings had appeared to disintegrate. Mentally, Arthur likened
the submergence of the tower in the oceans of time to an elevator
sinking past the different floors of an office building. All about
the building the other sky-scrapers of New York had seemed to
vanish. In an elevator, the floors one passes seem to rise upward.
    Carrying out the analogy to its logical end, Arthur reasoned that the
building itself had no more cause to disintegrate, as the buildings
it passed seemed to disintegrate, than the elevator in the office
building would have cause to rise because its surroundings seemed
to rise.
    Within the building, he knew, there were strange stirrings of
emotions. Queer currents of panic were running about, throwing
the people to and fro as leaves are thrown about by a current of
wind. Yet, underneath all those undercurrents of fear, was a rapidly
growing resolution, strengthened by an increasing knowledge of the
need to work.
    Men were busy even then shifting all possible comfortable furniture
to a single story for the women in the building to occupy. The
men would sleep on the floor for the present. Beds of boughs could
be improvised on the morrow. At sunrise on the following morning
many men would go to the streams to fish, guarded by other men. All
would be frightened, no doubt, but there would be a grim resolution
underneath the fear. Other men would wander about to hunt.
    There was little likelihood of Indians approaching for some days, at
least, but when they did come Arthur meant to avoid hostilities by
all possible means. The Indians would be fearful of their strange
visitors, and it should not be difficult to convince them that
friendliness was safest, even if they displayed unfriendly desires.
    The pressing problem was food. There were two thousand people in
the building, soft-bodied and city-bred. They were unaccustomed
to hardship, and could not endure what more primitive people would
hardly have noticed.
    They must be fed, but first they must be taught to feed
themselves. The fishermen would help, but Arthur could only hope
that they would prove equal to the