The Fire People, Ray Cummings [best thriller books to read .txt] 📗

away, Mercer's light picked it up. I saw the little lurid red circle it made as it struck the boat's canopy top, and roved along it end to end. Mercer's platform darted lower, and from that angle his light swept under the canopy. A man's scream of agony came to us across the water. The lights on the boat were extinguished; only the yellow glare of the flames rising from its interior fittings remained.

Then, a moment later, the boat's stern rose into the air, and it slid hissing into the water, leaving only a little wreckage and a few struggling forms on the swirling surface.

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We swung sharply upward. Again Mercer's platform—its light now extinguished—swept directly over us. His exultant voice floated down.

"We did it, Alan! We did it! Come on up!"

We rose to the upper air, where the girls were still circling about. The other boats were keeping on their course, spreading farther apart now to be out of range of each other's projectors. I had hoped they would turn back with this catastrophe to their leader, but they did not.

I consulted hastily with Miela, and then we gave the order for a general attack, allowing each of the leading girls to act as she saw fit.

Like a great flock of birds we swooped downward upon our prey, spreading out to attack all the boats at once. The girls now turned on their hand lights—a myriad tiny beams darting about in the semi‑darkness.

I cannot attempt to describe the scene that followed. It can be imagined, perhaps, but not told in words. As we swept within range of the lights that swung up from below to meet us, I saw a girl, flying alone, pass directly through one of the red beams. It seemed to strike her sidewise. In an instant she had passed beyond it. I saw the dim outlines of her form as she fluttered onward, wavering and aimless like a wounded bird. And then she fell, turning over and over as with one wing she strove vainly to support herself, until at last, wrapped in the sable shroud of her shield, she plunged with a great splash into the sea.

The flashing light‑rays all about us now seemed mingled in inextricable confusion. The girls must have passed through them frequently, protected by their shields; and I know our platform was several times struck by them from below. The absence of sound was uncanny. Only the whistling wind of our flight, the flapping of the girl's wings, and the hissing of steam as our rays struck the water, accompanied this inferno of light.

We swept beyond the boat we had singled out, passing five or six hundred feet above it, and in the effort to avoid its ray turning so that I was unable to bring mine upon it. As we rose again, beyond it, I saw a boat off to the left in flames. A dozen girls had rushed upon it, darting in among its smaller rays to where their own would be effective. But there was only one girl above it now, struggling brokenly to maintain herself in flight. The boat sank with the roar of an explosion of some kind, but in the sudden darkness about I could still see this lone wounded girl fluttering onward.

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We were not far away; I pointed her out to Miela, and instead of swinging back we kept on toward her. We contrived to pass close under her, and she fell abruptly almost into my arms. I stretched her out gently on the platform and turned back to Miela, who was kneeling behind our projector.

We were now nearly half a mile from the nearest of the boats. Several of them evidently had been sunk, and two or three others were sinking. One I could make out heading back for the Twilight shore; above it the lights of our girls following showed vivid against the dark‑gray sky. Where Mercer's platform was I could not tell.

Miela gripped my shoulder.

"See, Alan—there!" She pointed off to one side. "One of the boats tries to escape."

We were now some five hundred feet above the water. Half a mile beyond us, all its lights out, one of the boats was scurrying away, on across toward the Light Country. For some reason none of our girls seemed following it.

Miela issued a sharp command; we swooped downward at lightning speed and, barely skimming the surface, flew after this escaping enemy. Whether its larger projector had been rendered inoperative, or many of its crew killed, or whether it thought merely to escape us and make a landing in the Light Country, I did not know.

Whatever the reason, no lights showed from this boat as we drew after it. I had our own light out. When we came close within range I flashed it on suddenly. We were flying steadily, and I picked up the boat without difficulty, raking it through from stern to stem under its protecting canopy. I could see the canopy drop as its supporting metal framework fused in the heat of the ray; flames rose from the interior wooden fittings; the boat's stern seemed to melt away as the thin metal was rendered molten; the water about it boiled under the heat. A cloud of steam then rose up, obscuring it completely from my sight.

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I switched off the light. We continued on, rising a little. The steam dissipated. Directly below us on the bubbling, swirling water a few twisted black forms bobbed about. We were so close now I could see them plainly. I looked away hastily.

We swung back toward the Twilight shore, rising sharply. There seemed now only one boat afloat. Far above it I saw a tiny black oblong that I knew was Mercer's platform. A swarm of other dots, with the tiny pencils of red light flashing from them, showed where the cloud of girls were swooping down to the attack. Now that we were out of the action, I had opportunity to watch what was going on more closely.

This last engagement seemed to last less than a minute. The girls darted fearlessly downward among the rays that swung up from the boat. Scores of them were hit; I could see their forms illuminated for an instant by the lurid red and green light. Some passed through it safely; many fell. But those who got within range hit the boat without difficulty. Its lights went out suddenly and a moment later it sank. The girls' lights flashed off, and they rose again into the air—tiny black shapes circling about Mercer's platform.

The scene now seemed suddenly very dark, peaceful and still. A great weight lifted from my heart, though it still remained heavy with what I had seen. I turned to Miela; her face was white and drawn.

"We have won, my girl," I said.

She smiled wanly.

"We have won. But, oh, Alan, that women should have to do such deeds!"

Her eyes shone with the light of a soul in sorrow.

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"Pray to your God now, my husband, that this war may be the last, for all time, in all the universe."

CHAPTER XXVII.
THE SIEGE OF THE LONE CITY.

Our losses totaled nearly a hundred and fifty girls. We brought back with us on the platforms but six wounded. I shall never forget that hour we spent searching among the wreckage—those blackened, twisted forms of what had once been men and women. I shall not describe it.

Of all the boats which Tao had dispatched on this ill‑fated expedition, only one escaped to return with news of the disaster. I was glad now that one, at least, had survived, for the report it would give would, I felt sure, dissuade Tao from making any other similar attempt at invasion.

Our broken little army made its way slowly back to the Great City. We went, not in triumph, but indeed with all the aspect of defeat. The people received us in a frenzy of joy and gratitude to the girls for what they had done.

This first battle took place, as I have said, just after we four had returned from our tour of the Light Country, and before the recruiting of the young men was fairly under way. To this recruiting it proved an extraordinary stimulus. The girls, having been in successful action, stirred the young men of the nation as probably nothing else could, and all over the country they came forward faster than they could be enrolled.

It was two or three days after the battle that Miela came to me one morning with the wounded girl she and I had rescued in the air.

"We have a plan—Sela and I—my husband," she said.

The girl seemed hardly more than a sweet little child—fifteen or sixteen, perhaps. It gave me a shock now to realize that we had allowed her to go into such a combat. One of her blue‑feathered wings was bound in a cloth. Its lower portion, I could tell, had been burned away.

"Never will she fly again, my husband," said Miela, "for she is one of those who has sacrificed her wings that we might all be safe from the invader."

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She then went on to explain that now, while this feeling of gratitude to the girls ran so high among the people, the time seemed propitious for changing the long‑hated law regarding their wings. I had not thought of that, but agreed with her wholly.

I called the people into the castle gardens that same night. Never had I seen such a gathering. We allowed fully ten thousand to come in; the rest we were forced to send away.

Miela made a speech, telling them that in recognition of the girls' services in this war, I had decided to allow them henceforth to keep their wings unmutilated after marriage. We exhibited this little girl, Sela, as one who had given her power of flight, not as a sacrifice on the altar of man's selfishness, but in the service of her country. Then Sela herself made a speech, in her earnest little child voice, pleading for her sisters.

When she ended there may have been some unmarried men in our audience who were still against the measure—doubtless there were—but they were afraid or ashamed to let their feeling be known. When the meeting broke up I had ample evidence of the people's wishes upon which to proceed.

Within a week my congress met, and the law was repealed. We informed the other cities of this action, and everywhere it was met with enthusiasm.

Enlistment and war preparations went steadily on, but despite it all there were more marriages that next month—three times over—than in any before. I had now been in power some three months, and the time was approaching when we were ready to make our invasion of the Twilight Country. We had been maintaining a rigid aërial patrol of the Narrow Sea, but no further activities of the enemy had been threatened.

The expedition, when it was ready, numbered about a thousand young men, each armed with one of the hand light‑ray cylinders; fifty officers, and about fifty older men in charge of the projectors and rockets, who, for want of a better term, I might call our artillery corps. There was also the organization of girls, and a miscellaneous corps of men to handle the boats, mechanics to set up the projectors, and a commissariat.

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The thousand young men represented those we had selected from the several thousand enlisted in the Great City. All the rest, and the many thousands in the other cities, we were holding in reserve.

We took with us, on this invading expedition, only small‑wheeled trucks, on which to convey the larger projectors, and storage tanks and other heavy apparatus, for the Lone City river ran directly to the point where we planned to conduct our siege.

Some forty large boats were required to carry the men, ammunition and supplies. Mercer and I, with Anina and Miela, traveled as before through the