The Onslaught from Rigel, Fletcher Pratt [smallest ebook reader .TXT] 📗

living flame, and the guns ceased firing. Murray Lee shuddered—were all man's resources, was all of man, to disappear from the earth? All his high hopes and aspirations, all the centuries of bitter struggle toward culture to be wiped out by these impervious beasts?

He was recalled from his dream by the flash of light at his control board and a voice from the radiophone "... to all units," came the message. "Railroad battery 14 about to fire on enemy tanks in Waterford. Request observation for corrections ... General Stanhope to all units. Railroad battery 14, twelve-inch guns, about to fire on enemy tanks in Waterford. Request observation for correction...."

"Lieut. Lee, American Tank Corps, to General Stanhope," he called into the phone. "Go ahead with railroad battery 14. Am observing fire from east of town."

Even before he had finished speaking there was a dull rumble in the air and a tremendous heave of earth behind and to one side of the shining enemy, not two hundred yards away. "Lieut. Lee to railroad battery 14," he called, delightedly, "two hundred yards over, ten yards right." Berrrroum! Another of the twelve-inch shells fell somewhere ahead of the giants in the village. As Murray shouted the correction one of the metal creatures lifted its snout toward the source of the explosion curiously and as if it had not quite understood its meaning, fired a light-beam at it. Another shell fell, just to one side. A wild hope surging in him, he called the corrections—these were heavier guns than any that had yet taken a hand.

"Lieut. Lee, American Tank Corps, to railroad battery 14—Suggest you use armor-piercing shell. Enemy tanks appear to be armored," he called and had the comforting reply. "Check, Lieut. Lee. We are using armor-piercers." Slam! Another of the twelve-inch shells struck, not ten yards behind the enemy. The ground around them rocked; one of them turned as though to examine the burst, the other lifted its snout skyward and released a long, thin beam of blue light, not in the least like the light-ray. It did not seem to occur to either of them that these shells might be dangerous. They seemed merely interested.

And then—the breathless watchers in the thickets around the doomed town saw a huge red explosion, a great flower of flame that leaped to the heavens, covered with a cloud of thick smoke, pink in the light of the burning houses, and as it cleared away, there lay one of the monsters on its side, gaping and rent, the mirrored surface scarred across, the phosphorescent glow extinguished, the prehensile snout drooping lifelessly. Murray Lee was conscious of whooping wildly, of dancing out of his tank and joining someone else in an embrace of delight. They were not invincible then. They could be hurt—killed!

"Hooray!" he cried, "Hooray!"

"That and twelve times over," said his companion.

The phrase struck him as familiar; for the first time he looked at his fellow celebrant. It was Gloria.

"Why, where in the world did you come from?" he asked.

"Where did you? I've been here all the time, ever since Ben ordered us home. Didn't think I'd run out on all the fun, did you? Are those things alive?"

"How do I know? They look it but you never can tell with all the junk that comet left around the earth. They might be just some new kind of tank full of dodos."

"Yeh, but—" The buzzing roar of one of the light-rays crashing into a clump of trees not a hundred yards away, recalled them to themselves. Gloria looked up, startled. The other monster was moving slowly forward, systematically searching the hillside with its weapon.

"Say, boy friend," she said, "I think it's time to go away from here. See you at high mass."

But the conference at headquarters in Hammonton that night was anything but cheerful.

"It comes to this, then," said General Grierson, the commander-in-chief of the expedition. "We have nothing that is effective against these dodo tanks but the twelve-inch railroad artillery, using armor-piercing shell and securing a direct hit. Our infantry is worse than useless; the tanks are useless, the artillery cannot get through the armor of these things, although it damages the enemy artillery in the back areas."

Ben Ruby rubbed a metal chin. "Well, that isn't quite all, sir. One of the American tanks was hit and came through—damaged I will admit. The lightning, or light-ray these dodos threw, penetrated the outer skin but not the inner. We could build more tanks of this type."

General Grierson drummed on the table. "And arm them with what? You couldn't mount a twelve-inch gun in a tank if you wanted to, and we haven't any twelve-inch guns to spare."

One of the staff men looked up. "Has airplane bombing been tried on these—things. It seems to me that a one or two-thousand pound bomb would be as effective as a twelve-inch shell."

"That was tried this afternoon," said the head of the air service, with an expression of pain. "The 138th bombing squadron attacked a group of these tanks. Unfortunately, the tanks kept within range of their light-ray artillery and the entire squadron was shot down."

"Mmm," said the staff man. "Let's add up the information we have secured so far and see where it leads. Now first they have a gun which shoots a ray which is effective either all along its length or when put up in packages like a shell, and is rather like a bolt of lightning in its effect. Any deductions from that?"

"Might be electrical," said someone.

"Also might not," countered Walter Beeville. "Remember the Melbourne's turret. No electrical discharge would produce chemical changes like that in Krupp steel."

"Second," said the officer, "they appear to have three main types of fighting machines or individuals. First, there are the dodos themselves. We know all about them, and our airplanes can beat them. Good.... Second, there is their artillery—a large type that throws a beam of this emanation and a smaller type which throws it in the form of shells. Thirdly, there are these—tanks, which may themselves be the individuals we are fighting. They are capable of projecting these discharges to a short distance—something over four thousand yards, and apparently do not have the power of projecting it in a prolonged beam, like their artillery. They are about fifty feet long, fish-shaped, heavily armored and have some unknown method of propulsion. Check me if I'm wrong at any point."

"The projection of these lightning-rays would seem to indicate they are machines," offered General Grierson hopefully.

"Not on your life," said Beeville, "think of the electric eel."

"As I was saying," said the staff man, "our chief defect seems a lack of information, and—"

General Grierson brought his fist down on the table. "Gentlemen!" he said. "This discussion is leading us nowhere. It's all very well to argue about the possibilities of man or machine in time of peace and at home, but we are facing one of the greatest dangers the earth has ever experienced, and must take immediate measures. Unless someone has something more fruitful to develop than this conference has provided thus far, I shall be forced to order the re-embarkation of what remains of the army and sail for home. My duty is to the citizens of the federated governments, and I cannot uselessly sacrifice more lives. Our supply of railroad artillery is utterly inadequate to withstand the numbers of our adversaries. Has anyone anything to offer?"

There was a silence around the conference table, a silence pregnant with a heavy sense of defeat, for no one of them but could see the General was right.

But at that moment there came a tap at the door. "Come," called General Grierson. An apologetic under-officer entered. "I beg your pardon, sir, but one of the iron Americans is here and insists that he has something of vital importance for the General. He will not go away without seeing you."

"All right. Bring him in."

There stepped into the room another of the mechanical Americans, but a man neither Ben Ruby nor Beeville had ever seen before. A stiff wire brush of moustache stood out over his mouth; he wore no clothes but a kind of loin-cloth made, apparently, of a sheet. The metal plates of his powerful body glittered in the lamp-light as he stepped forward. "General Grierson?" he inquired, looking from one face to another.

"I am General Grierson."

"I'm Lieutenant Herbert Sherman of the U. S. Army Air Service. I have just escaped from the Lassans and came to offer you my services. I imagine your technical men might wish to know how they operate their machines and what would be effective against them, and I think I can tell you."

CHAPTER XI Capture

Herbert Sherman had wakened with a vague sense of something wrong and lay back in his seat for a moment, trying to remember. Everything seemed going quietly, the machine running with subdued efficiency.... It came to him with a jerk—he could not hear the motor. With that subconscious concentration of the flying man on his ship, he glanced at the instrument board first, and taking in the astonishing information that both the altimeter and the air-speed meter registered zero, he looked over the side. His vision met the familiar dentilated line of the buildings surrounding the Jackson Heights airport, with a tree plastered greenly against one of them. Queer.

His sense of memory began to return. There was the night-mail flight from Cleveland; the spot of light ahead that grew larger and larger like the most enormous of shooting stars, the sensation of sleepiness.... He remembered setting the controls to ride out the short remainder of the journey with the automatic pilot on the Jackson Heights' radio beam, since he was clearly not going to make Montauk. But what came after that?

Then another oddity struck his attention. He recalled very clearly that he had been flying over the white landscape of winter—but now there was a tree in full leaf. Something was wrong. He clambered hastily from the cockpit.

As he swung himself over the side, his eye caught the glint of an unfamiliar high-light on the back of his hand and with the same stupefaction that Murray Lee was contemplating the same phenomenon several miles away, he perceived that instead of a flesh-and-blood member he had somehow acquired an iron hand. The other one was the same—and the arm—and the section of stomach which presently appeared when he tore loose his shirt to look at it.

The various possibilities that might account for it raced through his mind, each foundering on some fundamental difficulty. Practical joke—imagination—insanity—what else? Obviously some time had elapsed. But how about the ground staff of the airport? He shouted. No answer.

Muttering a few swears to himself he trudged across the flying field, noting that it was grown up with daisies and far from newly rolled, to the hangars. He shouted again. No answer. No one visible. He pounded at the door, then tried it. It was unlocked. Inside someone sat tilted back in a chair against the wall, a cap pulled over his face. Sherman walked over to the sleeper, favoring him with a vigorous shake and the word, "Hey!"

To his surprise the stranger tilted sharply over to one side and went to the floor with a bang, remaining in the position he had assumed. Sherman, the thought of murder jumping in his head, bent over, tugging at the cap. The man was as metallic as himself, but of a different kind—a solid statue cast in what seemed to be bronze.

"For Heaven's sake!" said Herbert Sherman to himself and the world at large.

There seemed to be nothing in particular he could do about it; the man, if he had ever been a man, and was not part of some elaborate scheme of flummery fixed up for his benefit, was beyond human aid. However there was one way in which all difficulties could be solved. The sun was high and the town lay outside the door.

... He spent a good deal of the day wandering about Jackson Heights, contemplating such specimens of humanity as remained in the streets, fixed in the various ungraceful and unattractive attitudes of life. He had always been a solitary and philosophical soul, and he felt neither loneliness nor overwhelming curiosity as to the nature of the catastrophe which had stopped the wheels of civilization. He preferred to meditate on the vanity of human affairs and to enjoy a sense of triumph over the ordinary run of bustling mortals who had always somewhat irritated him.

In justice to Herbert Sherman it should be remarked that he felt no trepidation as to the outcome of this celestial joke on the inhabitants of the world. Beside being an aviator he was a competent mechanic, and he proved the ease with which he could control his new physique by sitting down in a restaurant next to the bronze model of a sleepy cat, removing one shoe and sock and