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

Sherman frantically, working his useless controls. There was a report, a shock, a vivid cloud of steam, and dripping and coughing like a child that has swallowed water in haste, the Monitor rose from the stream, her broken wings trailing behind her.

"I don't know—whether—I can fly—this crate or not," said Sherman, trying to make what was left of the controls work. "Shoot, Murray—if we put on enough power—we won't have to soar." There was a renewed roar of explosions from the Monitor. Desperately, swinging in a wide curve that carried her miles out of her way, she turned her nose southwards.

"Make Philly," cried Sherman cryptically, above the sound of the explosions that were driving their craft through the air at over six hundred miles an hour. Almost as he said it, they saw the airport beneath them. The Monitor swerved erratically; the explosions ceased; she dived, plunged and slithered to a racking stop across the foreshore of the seaplane port, ending up with a crash against a float, and pitched all four occupants from their seats onto the floor.

"Well, that's one for you and one for me," said Sherman as he surveyed the wreckage ruefully. "We used up that green ball all right, but the old Monitor will never pop another one. Did anyone notice whether there were any pieces left, by the way?"

"I did," said Gloria. "As we came up out of the water I could see a few hunks lying around on the hill."

"Mmm," remarked Sherman, "they must be built pretty solid. Wish I knew what was in them; that's one thing I never did get through that thought-helmet. Probably something they just figured out. You gave her all the power we had, didn't you?"

"There's something else I'd like to know," said Ben. "And that's whether they had time to warn the rest of the Lassans what they were up against. If they did, we stand a chance. The way I have these guys figured is that they're good, but they have a yellow streak, or maybe they're just lazy, and they don't like to fight unless they're sure of winning. If I'm right we'll have time to get Monitor II into commission and before they come out again, we'll be ready for them. If I'm wrong we might as well find a nice hole somewhere and pull it in after us."

"Yes, and on the other hand, if they did have time to warn them, they'll sit down and dope out some new trick. Though I have a hunch they won't find an answer to that gravity-beam so easily. There isn't any that I know of."

"Well, anyway," said Murray Lee, "nothing to do till tomorrow. What are you two rummies up to now?"

"Run up and push them along on Monitor II if we can," replied Ben. "I think I'll round up the rest of the mechanical Americans and put you all to work on it. We can work day and night and get it done a lot quicker."

"Me," said Sherman, "I'm going to figure out some way to install radio on that new bus or bust a button. That's one thing we ought not to do without. If we'd known the position of that green lemon before we saw it, we could have dived out of the clouds on it and made it the first shot before we got all racked up with that yellow ray."

CHAPTER XXI Reinforcements

The little group separated, going about their several tasks. From whatever cause, Ben proved to be right about the Lassan green spheres. After that one brief incursion, in which they had wrecked the greater part of Newark and most of the artillery the Australians had established to bear on the door of the Lassan city, they seemed to have returned to their underground home, realizing that the earth-men still had weapons the equal of anything the creatures of Rigel could produce.

For a whole week there was no sign of them. Meanwhile, the federated army dug itself in and prepared for the attack that was now believed certain. The success of the first Monitor had been great enough, it was decided to warrant the construction of more than one of the second edition. General Grierson wished to turn the whole resource of the Allied armies to building an enormous number, but under Ben's persuasion he consented to concentrate on only five.

For, as Ben pointed out to the general, the training of flesh and blood men for these craft would be labor lost.

"They couldn't stand the acceleration that will be necessary, for one thing. With Monitor II we expect to be able to work up swiftly to over a thousand miles an hour, and the most acceleration a flesh and blood man can stand won't give us that speed quickly enough. Of course, we could make 'em so they worked up speed slowly, but then they wouldn't be able to cut down fast enough to maneuver. And for another thing this infra-sound ray the Lassans project would kill a flesh-and-blood man the first time it hit him. What we need for this kind of war, is supermen in the physical sense. I don't want to make any such snooty statement as that Americans are better than other people, but we happen to be the only ones who have undergone this mechanical operation and we're the only people in the world who can stand the gaff. You'll just have to let us make out the best we can. In fact, it might be better for you to re-embark the army and leave us to fight it out all alone. The more women we have here, the more we'll have to protect."

The general had been forced to agree to the first part of this statement, but he gallantly refused to abandon the Americans, though he did send away men, troops and guns which had become useless in this new brand of warfare. But he insisted on retaining a force to run the factories that supplied the Americans with their materials and on personally remaining with it.

Even as it stood, there were only fourteen of the mechanical Americans remaining—enough to man three of the Monitors.

But one day, as Monitor II, shining with newness, stood on her ramp having the searchlights installed, Herbert Sherman came dashing across the flying field, waving a sheet of paper.

"I've got it," he cried, "I've got it! I knew I got something from those Lassans about electricity that I hadn't known before, and now I know what it is. Look!"

"Radio?" queried Ben.

"No, read it," said Sherman. "Radio's out. But this is a thousand times better."

He extended the sheet to Ben, who examined the maze of figures gravely for a moment.

"Now suppose you interpret," he said. "I can't read Chinese."

"Sap. This is the formula for the electrical device I was talking about."

"Yeh. Well, go on, spill it."

"Well, I suppose I'll have to explain so even your limited intelligence will grasp the point.... In our black box, we've been breaking up the atoms of lead into positive and negative charges. We've been using the positive, and then just turning the negative loose. This thing will make use of both, and give us a swell new weapon all at once.

"Look—the negative charges will do for our gravity beam just as well as the positive. They will create an excess of negative electrons instead of an excess of positive protons in the object we hit, and cause atomic disintegration. It's a gravity process just the same, but a different one. Now that gives us something else to do with the positives.

"You know what a Leyden jar is? One of those things you charge with electricity, then you touch the tip, and bang, you get a shock. Well, this arrangement will make a super-Leyden jar of the Monitor. Every time she fires the gravity-beam, the positive charges will be put into her hull, and she'll soon be able to load up with a charge that will knock your eye out when it's let loose."

"How's that? I know the outside of the Monitor is covered with lead and so is the outside of a Leyden jar, but what's the connection?"

"Well, it's this way. When you load up a Leyden jar the charge is not located in the plating, but in the glass. Now the Monitor has a lot of steel, which will take up the charge just as well as glass. As soon as she fires the gravity-beam, these filaments will load her up with the left-over positives till she grunts. See?"

"And since the earth is building up a lot of negative potential all the time, all you have to do is get your bird between you and the earth and then let go at him?"

"That's the idea. It'll make an enormous spark-gap, and whatever is between us and the earth will get the spark. Sock them with a flash of artificial lightning. We'll use the light-beam as a conductor just as with the gravity-beam."

"Sounds good, but I want to see the wheels go round. How much of a potential do you think you can build up in the Monitor?"

"Well, let's see. We've got two thicknesses of nine-inch steel ... volts to a cubic inch ... by cubic inches.... Holy smoke, look how this figures out—over eleven million volts! That's theory, of course. There'll be some leakage in practice and we won't have time to build up that much negative potential every time we shoot, but if we only do half that well, we'll have a pretty thorough-going charge of lightning ... Peterson, come over here. I want you to make some changes on this barge."

Monitor II stood on the ramp that had once held her elder sister, her outer coating of lead glimmering dully in the morning sun. Here and there, along her shining sides, were placed the windows through which her crew would watch the progress of the battle. Her prow was occupied by the same type of searchlight the earlier Monitor had borne. But this time the searchlight was surrounded by a hedge of shining silver points—the discharge mechanism for the lightning flash. At the stern, instead of the opening running right through into the ship, was a tight bulkhead, with the connections for the gravity-beam rocket-mechanism leading through it. As Sherman had pointed out, "If this lightning is going to do us any good, we've got to get above our opponent, and those Lassans have built machines that made interplanetary voyages. We've got to make this boat air-tight so that we can go right after them as far as Rigel if necessary."

It had been decided, in view of the other monitors that were building, to make the trial trip of the second rocket-cruiser also a training voyage, with Beeville and Yoshio replacing Murray Lee and Gloria in her crew. They climbed in; the spectators stood back, and with a thunderous rush of explosions and a cloud of yellow gas, the second Monitor plunged into the blue.

"Where shall we go?" asked Sherman, as the ship swooped over the plains of New Jersey.

"How much speed is she making?" asked Ben Ruby.

"I don't know exactly. We didn't have time to invent and install a reliable speed gauge. But—" he glanced at the map before him, then down through the windows at the surrounding country. "I should say not far short of eight hundred an hour. That improved box sure steps up the speed. I'm not giving her all she'll stand, even yet."

"If you've got that much speed, why don't you visit Chicago?" asked Beeville. "The Australians have only pushed out as far as Ohio and there may be some people there."

"Bright thought," remarked Sherman, swinging the prow of the vessel westward. "No telling what we'll find, but it's worth a look, anyway."

For some time there was silence in the cabin as the rocket-ship, with alternate roar and swoop, pushed along. Yoshio was the first to speak:

"Ah, gentlemen," he remarked, "I observe beneath window trace of city of beer, formerly Cincinnati."

"Sure enough," said Ben, peering down. "There doesn't seem to be much beer there now, though."

The white city of the Ohio vanished beneath them, silent and deserted, no sign of motion in its dead streets.

"You know," said Sherman, "sometimes when I see these cities and think of all the Lassans have wrecked, it gives me an ache. I think I'd do almost anything to knock them out. What right did they have to come to this country or this earth, anyway? We were letting them alone."

"Same right wolf obtains when hungry," said Yoshio. "Wolf is larger than rabbit—end of rabbit."

"Correct," agreed Beeville. "They were the strongest. It's a case of hit or be hit in this universe. Our only out is to give them better than they give us."

"Oh, I don't know," said Ben Ruby, "it may be a