Lords of the Stratosphere

The year is 1935. Aviation is in its infancy, and the stratosphere remains the last unmapped frontier. When ace pilot Franz Kress vanishes during his historic attempt to breach the heavens from Roosevelt Field, his fellow aviators Lucian Jeter and Tema Eyer refuse to accept the official explanation. They mount their own expedition into the unknown, driven by scientific curiosity and something darker: a hunch that Kress's disappearance is connected to the strange columns of light that have begun appearing across the globe, each one a silent beacon that no one can explain. What begins as a rescue mission transforms into something far more terrifying. As Jeter and Eyer climb higher into the thinning air, they discover that the sky is not empty. Something waits in the stratosphere, something that has been watching humanity's first tentative flights with an intelligence beyond comprehension. The novelette builds from adventure into genuine cosmic dread, capturing the anxieties of an era that had just begun to grasp the terrifying possibility that we are not alone in the universe.