Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930, Various [feel good books to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: Various
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And in another moment the group of dark-cloaked figures outside crept off in single file like a slithering serpent, moving down the rock defile toward where in the cauldron pit the[108] lights of the mine shone on its dark silent buildings.
CHAPTER XII The Attack on the Mine
here was a moment when I had an opportunity to speak with Jetta. Gutierrez sat watchfully by the archway corridor entrance with a needle projector across his knees. The fellow Hans, a big, heavy-set half-breed Dutchman with a wide-collared leather jerkin and wide, knee-length pantaloons, laid his weapon carefully aside and busied himself with his image mirror. There would soon be images upon it, I knew: De Boer had the lens-finder on his forehead, and the scenes at the mine, as De Boer saw them would be flashed back to us here.
This Gutierrez was very watchful. A move on my part and I knew he would fling a needle through me.
My thoughts flew. Hanley had notified Porto Rico. The patrol-ship had almost enough time to get here by now.
I felt Jetta plucking at me. She whispered:
"They have gone to attack the mine."
"Yes."
"I heard it planned. Señor Perona—"
Her hurried whispers told me further details of Perona's scheme. So this was a pseudo attack! Perona would take advantage of it and hide the quicksilver. De Boer would return presently and escape. And hold me for ransom. I chuckled grimly. Not so easy for a bandit, even one as clever as De Boer at hiding in the Lowland depths to arrange a ransom for an agent of the United States. Our entire Lowland patrol would be after him in a day.
etta's swift whispers made it all clear to me. It was Perona's scheme.
She ended, "And my father—" Her voice broke; her eyes flooded suddenly with tears "Oh, Philip, he was good to me, my poor father."
I saw that the mirror before Hans was glowing with its coming image. I pressed Jetta's hand.
"Yes, Jetta."
One does not disparage the dead. I could not exactly subscribe to Jetta's appraisal of her parent, but I did not say so.
"Jetta, the mirror is on."
I turned away from her toward the instrument table. Gutierrez at the door raised his weapon. I said hastily, "Nothing. I—we just want to see the mirror."
I stood beside Hans. He glanced at me and I tried to smile ingratiatingly.
"This attack will be successful, eh, Hans?"
"Damn. I hope so."
The mirror was glowing. Hans turned a switch to dim the tube-lights of the room so that we might see the images better. It brought a protest from Gutierrez.
I swung around. "I'm not a fool! You can see me perfectly well: kill me if I make trouble. I want to see the attack."
"Por Dios, if you try anything—"
"I won't!"
"Shut!" growled Hans. "The audiphone is on. The big adventure—and the commander—leaves me here just to watch!"
slit in the observatory pane was open. The dark figure of one of the bandits on guard outside came and called softly up to us.
"Started. Hans?"
"Starting."
"Should it go wrong, call out."
"Yes. But it will not."
"There was an alarm, relayed probably to Great New York, the commander said, from Spawn's garden. These cursed prisoners—"
"Shut! You keep watch out there. It is starting."
The guard slunk away. My attention went back to the mirror. An image was formed there now, coming from the eye of the lens upon De[109] Boer's forehead. It swayed with his walking. He was evidently leading his men, for none of them were in the scene. The dark rocks were moving past. The lights of the mine were ahead and below, but coming nearer.
The audiphone hummed and crackled. And through it, De Boer's low-voiced command sounded:
"To the left is the better path. Keep working to the left."
The image of the rocks and the mine swung with a dizzying sweep as De Boer turned about. Then again he was creeping forward.
The mine lights came closer. De Beer's whispered voice said: "There they are!"
could see the lights of the mine's guards flash on. A group of Spawn's men gathered before the smelter building. The challenge sounded.
"Who are you? Stop!"
And De Boer's murmur: "That is correct, as Perona said. They expect us. Well," he ended with a sardonic laugh, "expect us."
His projector went up. He fired. In the silence of the control room we could hear the audiphoned hiss of it, and see the flash in the mirror-scene. He had fired into the air.
Again his low voice to his men: "Hold steady. They will run."
The group of figures at the smelter separated, waved and scattered back into the deeper shadows. Their hand-lights were extinguished, but the moonlight caught and showed them. They were running away; hiding in the crags. They fired a shot or two, high in the air.
De Boer was advancing swiftly now. The image swayed and shifted, raised and lowered rhythmically as he ran. And the dark shape of the smelter building loomed large as he neared it.
I felt Jetta beside me: heard her whisper: "Why, he should attack and then come back! Greko told my father—"
But De Boer was not coming back! He was dashing for the smelter entrance. Spawn's guards must have known then that there was something wrong. Their shots hissed, still fired high, and our grid sounded their startled shouts. Then as De Boer momentarily turned his head, I saw what was taking place to the side of him. A detachment of the bandits had followed the retreating guards. The bandits' shots were levelled now. Dim stabs of light in the gloom. One of the guards screamed as he was struck.
he attack was real! But it was over in a moment. Spawn's men, those who were not struck down, plunged away and vanished. Perona had disconnected the mine's electrical safeguards. The smelter door was sealed, but it gave before the blows of a metal bar two of De Boer's men were carrying.
In the unguarded, open strong-room, Perona, alone, was absorbed in his task of carrying the ingots of quicksilver down into the hidden compartment beneath its metal floor.
Our mirror was vague and dim now with a moving interior of the main smelter room as De Boer plunged through. At the strong-room entrance he paused, with his men crowding behind him. The figure of Perona showed in the vague light: he was stooping under the weight of one of the little ingots. Beside him yawned the small trap-opening leading downward.
He saw De Boer. He straightened, startled, and then shouted with a terrified Spanish oath. De Boer's projector was levelled: the huge, foreshortened muzzle of it blotted out half our image. It hissed its puff of light—a blinding flash on our mirror—in the midst of which the dark shape of Perona's body showed as it crumpled and fell. Like Spawn, he met instant death.
Jetta was gripping me. "Why—" Gutierrez was with us. Hans was bend[110]ing forward, watching the mirror. He muttered, "Got him!"
I saw a chance to escape, and pulled at Jetta. But at once Gutierrez stepped backward.
"Like him I will strike you dead!" he said.
o chance of escape. I had thought Gutierrez absorbed by the mirror, but he was not. I protested vehemently:
"I haven't moved, you fool. I have no intention of moving."
And now De Boer and his men were carrying up the ingots. A man for each bar. A confusion of blurred swaying shapes, and low-voiced, triumphant murmurs from our disc.
Then De Boer was outside the smelter house, and we saw a little queue of the bandits carrying the treasure up the defile. Coming back here to the flyer. There was no pursuit; the mine guards were gone.
The triumphant bandits would be here in a few moments.
"Ave Maria, que magnifico!" Gutierrez had retreated to our doorway, more alert than ever upon me and Jetta. Hans called through the window-slit:
"All is well, Franks!"
"Got it?"
"Yes! Make ready."
There was a stir outside as several of the bandits hastened down the defile to meet De Boer. And the tread of others, inside the flyer at their posts, preparing for hasty departure.
Hans snapped off the audiphone and mirror. He bent over his control panel. "All is well, Gutierrez. In a moment we start."
Through the observatory window I saw the line of De Boer's men coming: Abruptly Hans gave a cry. "Look!"
glow was in the room. A faint aura of light. And our disconnected instruments were crackling, murmuring with interference. Eavesdropping waves were here! Hans realised it: so did I.
But there was no need for theory. From outside came shouts.
"Patrol-ship!"
"Hurry!"
The ship, suddenly exposing its lights, was perfectly visible above us. Five thousand feet up, possibly. A tiny silver bird in the moonlight: but even with the naked eye I could see by its light pattern that it was the official Porto Rican patrol-liner. It saw us down here: recognized this bandit flyer, no doubt.
And it was coming down!
There was a confusion as the bandits rushed aboard. The patrol was dropping in a swift spiral. I watched tensely, holding Jetta, with the turmoil of the embarking bandits around me. Gutierrez stood with levelled weapon.
"They have not moved, Commander."
De Boer was here. The treasure was aboard.
"Ready, Hans. Lift us."
The landing portes clanged as they closed. Hans shoved at his switches. I heard the helicopter engines thumping. A vertical lift: there was no space in this rocky defile for any horizontal take-away.
He was very calm, this De Boer. He sat in a chair at a control-bank of instruments unfamiliar to me.
"Full power, Hans: I tell you. Lift us!"
he ship was quivering. We lifted. The rocks of the gully dropped away. But the patrol-ship was directly over us. Was De Boer rushing into a collision?
"Now, forward, Hans."
We poised for the level flight. Did De Boer think he could out-distance this patrol-ship, the swiftest type of flyer in the Service? I knew that was impossible.
The silver ship overhead was circling, watchful. And as we levelled for forward flight it shot a warning searchlight beam down across our bow, ordering us to land.[111]
De Boer laughed. "They think they have us!"
I saw his hand go to a switch. A warning siren resounded through our corridor, warning the bandits of De Boer's next move. But I did not know it then: the thing caught me unprepared.
De Boer flung another switch. My senses reeled. I heard Jetta cry out. My arm about her tightened.
A moment of strange whirling unreality. The control room seemed fading about me. The tube-lights dimmed. A green glow took their place—a lurid sheen in which the cubby and the tense faces of De Boer and Hans showed with ghastly pallor. Everything was unreal. The voices of De Boer and Hans sounded with a strange tonelessness. Stripped of the timber that made one differ from the other. Hollow ghosts of human voices. By the sound I could not tell which was De Boer and which was Hans.
The corridor was dark; all the lights on the ship faded into this horrible dead green. The window beside me had a film on it. A dead, dark opening where moonlight had been. Then I realized that I was beginning to see through it once more. Starlight. Then the moonlight.
We had soared almost level with the descending patrol-ship. We went past it, a quarter of a mile away. Went past, and it did not follow. It was still circling.
knew then what had happened. And why this bandit ship had seemed of so strange an aspect. We were invisible! At four hundred yards, even in the moonlight, the patrol could not distinguish us. Only ten of these X-flyers were in existence: they were the closest secret of the U. S. Anti-War Department. No other government had them except in impractical imitations. I had never even seen one before.
But this bandit ship was one. And I recalled that a year ago, a suppressed dispatch intimated that the Service had lost one—wrecked in the Lowlands and never found.
So this was that lost invisible flyer? De Boer, using it for smuggling, with Perona and Spawn as partners. And now, De
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