"I'm glad," said Gloria to Murray Lee, as they leaned against the rail of the steamerParamattain their new American Army uniforms, "that they're going to attack these things in the old U. S. I'd hate like anything to think we last Americans were shoved out of our country by a lot of chickens."
Murray glanced around him. In every direction the long lines of the convoy stretched out, big liners loaded to the funnels with men, guns, tanks and ammunition. On the fringes of the troopships the sleek grey sides of the cruisers and destroyers that protected them were visible, and overhead there soared an armada of fast airplanes—no mere observation machines, or peaceful explorers like the South Africans, but fierce, deadly fighting planes, rocket-powered, which could step along at four miles a minute and climb, dive and maneuver better than a dodo.
He nodded. "You said something, sister. Say won't it be great to take a whack at them under the Stars and Stripes. I'm glad they let us do it, even if there are only fourteen of us."
In the four months since the conference with the Australian Scientific Committee it had been amply demonstrated to the three remaining governments of the world that there was not room for both man and dodos on the same planet. A carefully-worked out campaign had evidently been set in operation by whatever central intelligence led the four-winged birds with the object of wiping human life from the earth. The bombing of Canberra was merely the first blow.
While Australia was arming and organizing to meet the menace the second blow fell—on Sourabaya, the great metropolis of Java, which was wiped out in a single night. At this evidence of the hostile intentions of the dodos radio apparatus began to tap in Australia, in the Dutch colonies and in South Africa; old guns forgotten since the last great war, were wheeled out; the factories began to turn out fighting airplanes and the young men drilled in the parks.
When, late in November, a flock of twenty-five dodos was observed over north Australia, headed for Sydney, the forces of the defence were on their guard. Long before the birds reached the town they were met by a big squadron of rocket-powered fighting planes and in a desperate battle over the desert, with claw and beak and bomb against machine-gun, were shot down to the last bird. With that the attacks had suddenly ceased, and the federated governments, convinced that it was but the calm before a greater storm, had gathered their strength for a trial of arms.
It was realized that whatever lay behind this attempt to conquer all there was left of the old earth must be in some way due to the coming of the great comet and must center somewhere in America, where the comet had struck. So for the first time the race of man began to learn what international cooperation meant. Delegates from the three surviving governments met in conference at Perth with Ben Ruby accorded a place as the representative of the United States. The decision of the conference was to mobilize every man and weapon to attack the birds in America and exterminate them there if possible; if impossible to do this, then to keep them so occupied at home that they would be unable to deliver any counter-attack.
There was plenty of shipping to carry an army far larger than the federated governments could mobilize; the main weakness of the expedition lay in the lack of naval protection, for the great navies of the world had perished when the northern hemisphere passed under the influence of the comet. It was sought to make up for this deficiency by a vast cloud of airplanes, flying from the decks of many merchant ships, converted into aircraft carriers, though some of the new rocket-planes were powerful enough to cruise around the world under their own power. And so, on this March morning in 1947 the whole vast armada was crossing the Atlantic toward the United States. In view of the fact that the headquarters of the dodos seemed to be somewhere in the Catskills, it had been decided to land in New Jersey, form a base there and work northward.
In the preliminary training for the coming conflict the metal Americans had played an important part. Their construction made them impossible as aviators, which they would have preferred. But quite early it was discovered that they made ideal operators for tanks. The oil fumes and the lack of air did not in the least affect beings to whom breathing had become unimportant, and the oil was actually a benefit.
As a result the little American army had been composed of fourteen tanks of a special type, fitted at the direction of the military experts, with all the latest and best in scientific devices. They were given extra-heavy armor, fitted in two thicknesses, with a chamber between, as a protection against the light-bombs, and each tank, intended to be handled by a single operator, was provided with one heavy gun, so arranged that it could be used against aerial attack.
A stir of motion was visible at the head of the convoy. A destroyer dashed past theParamatta, smoke pouring from her funnels, the white bow-wave rising as high as her bridge as she put on full speed. From the airplane carrier just behind them in the line, one, two, three flights of fighters swung off, circled a moment to gain altitude and then whirled off to the north and west.
"What is it?" asked Gloria.
A sailor touched his cap. "Sighted a dodo, I believe, miss," he said.
"Oh, boy," said Gloria, "here we go. What would you give to be in one of those planes?"
They craned their necks eagerly, but nothing was visible except a few flecks in the sky that might be dodos or might equally well be airplanes. Faint and far, a rattle of machine-guns drifted down; there was a flash of intense light, like the reflection in a far-distant mirror, and the machine-guns ceased. A few moments later the airplanes came winging back to their mother ship. A sailor on her deck began to swing his arms in the curious semaphore language of the sea.
"What happened?" asked Gloria of the man by their side.
"I'm trying to make out, miss. One dodo, he says, carrying a bomb—hit—by—machine-gun.... Oh, the bomb went off in the dodo's claws and blew him all to pieces."
The echo of a cheer came across the water from the other ships. The first brush had gone in favor of the race of man!
That night dodos announced their presence by a few bombs dropped tentatively among the ships, but did no damage, being so hurried and harried by the airmen, and by morning the dream-towers of Atlantic City, necked with the early morning sun, rose out of the west. Far in the distance the aviators of the expedition had spied more of the birds, but after the first day's encounter with the airplanes they kept a healthy distance, apparently contented to observe what they could.
As ship after ship swung in toward the piers and discharged its cargo of men, guns and munitions, the birds became bolder, as though to inspect what was going on. But the Australian aviators attacked them fiercely, driving them back at every attempt to pierce the aerial cordon, and when night came on, nearly a third of the force had been landed and quartered in parts of the one-time pleasure city.
Covered by the darkness a few dodos came down to drop bombs that night. They met with poor success. Delicate listening apparatus, intended originally to pick up the sound of approaching enemy airplanes had been one of the first things landed. The whir of the birds' wings was plainly audible, and before they had realized that man had a weapon to meet their night attacks half a dozen of them had been caught in the bursts of anti-aircraft guns and more had been met and shot down by the night-patrolling airmen.
The next morning saw the unloading beginning anew, while the emptied transports were taken around into Delaware Bay. Fortunately, the weather continued unusually fine for late March, bright with sunshine, giving the dodos no opportunity to attack behind the cover of clouds. There was just enough cold in the air to make the Australians and South Africans lively, though the Americans found the temperature caused the oil to move sluggishly in their metallic joints.
At daybreak the whole American unit had been pushed out to the railroad line at Greenwood with the advance guard of tanks, and finding no opposition they continued on to Farmington, where there was an airport that would serve for the leading squadrons of planes.
"Do you know," said Ben to Murray, "I wish those dodos would show a little more pep. Fighting them is no cinch. We're a little ahead of the game now, but it's largely because they've let us alone and haven't brought up any of those light-beam guns."
"Maybe we've got 'em on the run," replied Murray. "You can't tell when anyone will develop a yellow streak, you know."
"Yes, but we've seen enough of these babies to know they haven't got a yellow streak a millimeter wide in their whole make-up. Yet here they let us do just about as we please. Makes me think they're just laying for us, and when they get us where they want us—zowie!"
"Mebbe so, mebbe so," replied Murray. "Beeville still thinks it isn't the birds at all; that they've got a big boss somewhere running the whole works and till we find out what's behind it we're fighting in the dark. Well, they'll unload the rest of the army tomorrow and then we'll get down to cases."
The country between Atlantic City and Philadelphia is flat, with a few gentle elevations and dotted with small towns, farms and tiny bits of woodland. In the cold spring morning of the next day, with rain portended, the army of the federated governments pushed out along the roads through this land like a huge, many-headed snake, tanks and airplanes in the lead, the steady ranks of infantry and the big guns coming behind. Back at Atlantic City all machine-shops and factories had been set in operation and wrecking crews were already clearing the railroads and mounting huge long-range guns on trucks, preparatory to covering the advance. All along the route was bustle and hurry; camp kitchens rumbled along, harassed officers galloped up and down the lines on their horses (now, like their masters with a strange bluish cast of skin) and messengers rushed to and fro on popping motorcycles.
Out with the advance the American division of fourteen tanks rolled along. The dodos seemed to have completely disappeared, even the scouting aviators, far ahead, reporting no sign of them. The army was succeeding in establishing itself on American soil.
But around noon a "stop" signal flashed on the control boards of the tanks. They halted at the crest of a little rise and climbed out to look around.
"What is it?" asked someone.
"Perhaps gentlemanly general wishes to disport in surf," suggested Yoshio, with his flashing, steel-toothed smile, "and proceeding is retained without presence."
"Perhaps," said Gloria, "but I'll bet a dollar to a handful of blue kangaroos that the dodos are getting in their licks somewhere."
"Well, we'll soon know," said Murray Lee. "Here comes a dispatch rider."
The man on the motorcycle dashed up, saluted. "General Ruby?" he inquired, and handed the dispatch to Ben. The latter read it, then motioned the others about him.
"Well, here it is, folks," he said, "Listen to this—'General Grierson to General Ruby. Our flank guard was heavily attacked at Atsion this morning. The Third Brigade of the Fourteenth Division has suffered heavy loss and has been forced back to Chew Road. We are bringing up heavy artillery. The enemy appear to be using large numbers of light-ray guns. Advance guard is recalled to Waterford in support of our left flank.'"
"Oh—oh," said somebody.
"I knew they'd start giving us hell sooner or later," remarked Murray Lee as he climbed into his tank.
At Waterford there was ordered confusion when they arrived. Just outside the town a long line of infantrymen were plying pick and shovel in the formation of a system of trenches. Machine-gun units were installing themselves in stone or brick buildings and constructing barricades around their weapons; line after line of tanks had wheeled into position under cover of woods or in the streets of the town, the little whippets out in front, fast cruiser-tanks behind them and the lumbering battle-tanks with their six-inch guns, farther back.
Artillery was everywhere, mostly in little pits over which the gunners were spreading green strips of camouflage. As the American tanks rolled up, a battery of eight-inch howitzers behind a railroad embankment at the west end of the town was firing slowly and with an air of great solemnity at some target in the invisible distance, the angle of their muzzles showing that they were using the extreme range. A couple of airplanes hummed overhead. But of dead or wounded, of dodos or any other enemy there was no sign. It might have been a parade-war, an elaborately realistic imitation of the real thing for the movies.
Guides directed the Americans to a post down the line toward Chew Road. "What's the news?" asked Ben of an officer whose red tabs showed he belonged to the staff.
"They hit the right wing at Atsion," replied the officer. "Just what happened, I'm not sure. Somebody said they had a lot of those light-ray guns and they just crumpled up our flank like that." He slapped his hands together to show the degree of crumpling the right flank had endured. "We lost about fifteen hundred men in fifteen minutes. Tanks, too. But I think we're stopping them now."
"Any dodos?" asked Ben.
"Just a few. The airplanes shot down a flock of seven just before the battle and after that they kept away.... What is it? General Witherington wants me? Oh, all right, I'll come. Excuse me, sir," and the staff officer was off.
Most of the afternoon was spent in an interminable period of waiting and watching the laboring infantry sink themselves into the ground. About four o'clock a fine, cold drizzle began to fall. The Americans sought the shelter of their tanks, and about the same time their radiophones flashed the order to move up, toward the north and east through a barren pasture with a few trees in it, to the crest of a low hill. It was already nearly dark; the tanks bumped unevenly over the stony ground, their drivers following each other by the black silhouettes in the gloom. Off to the right a battery suddenly woke to a fever of activity, then as rapidly became silent and in the intervals of silence between the motor-sounds the Americans could catch the faint rat-tat of machine-guns in the heavens above. Evidently dodos were abroad in the gloom.
At the crest of the hill they could see across a flat valley in the direction of Chew Road. Something seemed to be burning behind the next rise; a ruddy glare lit the clouds. Down the line guns began to growl again, and the earth trembled gently with the sound of an explosion somewhere in the rear. Murray Lee, sitting alone at the controls of his tank. So this was war!
There were trees along their ridge, and looking through the side peep-hole of his tank Murray could make out the vague forms of a line of whippets among them, waiting, like themselves, for the order to advance. He wondered what the enemy were like; evidently not all dodos, since so many tanks had been pushed up to the front. This argued a man or animal that ran along the ground. The dodos seemed to spend most of their time in the air....
He was recalled from his meditations by the ringing of the attention bell and the radiophone began to speak rapidly:
"American tank division—enemy tanks reported approaching. Detain them as long as possible and then retire. Your machines are not to be sacrificed; Radio your positions with reference to Clark Creek as you retire for guidance of artillery registering on enemy tanks. There—"
The voice broke off in mid-sentence. So the dodos had tanks! Murray Lee snapped in his controls and glanced forward. Surely in the gloom along that distant ridge there was a darker spot—next to the house—something.
Suddenly, with a roar like a thousand thunders, a bolt of sheer light seemed to leap from the dark shape on the opposite hill, straight toward the trees where Murray had noticed the whippets. He saw one of the trees leap into vivid flame from root to branch as the beam struck it; saw a whippet, sharply outlined in the fierce glow, its front armor-plate caving; then its ammunition blew up in a shower of sparks, and he was frantically busy with his own controls and gun.
All along the line of the American tanks the guns flamed; flame-streaked fountains of dirt leaped up around the dark shape on the opposite hill and a burst of fire came from the farmhouse beside it as a misdirected shell struck it somewhere.
The beam from the unknown enemy snapped off as suddenly as it had come on, leaving, like lightning, an aching of the eyes behind it. Murray Lee swung his tank round, making for the reverse slope of the hill to avoid the light-beam. Crack! The beam came on again—right overhead this time. It flashed through the tree-tops leaving a trail of fire. He heard a torn branch bang on the roof of his tank, manipulated the gun to fire at the source of the beam and discovered that the magazine was empty. As he bent to snap on the automatic shell-feeding device, a searchlight from somewhere lashed out toward the black shape that opposed them, then went off. In the second's glimpse it afforded the enemy appeared as a huge, polished, fish-shaped object, its mirror-like sides unscarred by the bombardment it had passed through, its prow bearing a long, prehensible snout—apparently the source of the light-beam.
Suddenly a shell screamed overhead and the whole scene leaped into dazzling illumination as it burst just between the enemy tanks and their own. It must be a shell from the dodos! The federated armies had no shells that dissolved into burning light like that. Then another and another, a whole chorus of shells, falling in the village behind them. Murray had a better look at their opponent in the light. It seemed to lie flush with the ground; there was no visible means of either support or propulsion. It was all of twenty feet in diameter, widest near the head, tapering backward. The questing snout swung to and fro, fixed its position and discharged another of those lightning-bolts. Off to the right came the answering crash as it caved in the armor of another of the luckless whippets. He aimed his gun carefully at the base of the snout and pulled the trigger; on the side of the monster there appeared a flash of flame as the shell exploded, then a bright smear of metal—a direct hit, and not the slightest damage!
Ben Ruby's voice came through the radiophone, cool and masterful. "Pull out, folks, our guns are no good against that baby. I'm cutting off; radio positions back to the heavy artillery. Put the railroad guns on."
Murray glanced through the side peep-hole again—one, two, three, four, five—all the American tanks seemed undamaged. The monster had confined its attention to the whippets, apparently imagining they were doing the shooting. He pulled his throttle back, shot the speed up, rumbling down the hill, toward the village. As he looked back, darkness had closed in; the brow of the hill, its rows of trees torn and broken by the light-beam stood between him and the enemy. Before him amid the flaring light of the enemy shells was a stir of movement, the troops seemed to be pulling out also.
The tanks rumbled through the streets of Waterford and came to a halt on a corner behind a stone church which held three machine-gun nests. Murray could see one of the gunners making some adjustment by the light of a pocket torch and a wave of pity for the brave man whose weapon was as useless as a stick swept over him.
A messenger dashed down the street, delivered his missive to someone, and out of the shadows a file of infantry suddenly popped up and began to stream back, getting out of range. Then, surrounded by bursts of artillery fire, illumined by the glare of half a dozen searchlights that flickered restlessly on and off, the strange thing came over the brow of the hill.
It halted for a moment, its snout moving about uneasily as though it were smelling out the way, and as it did so, it was joined by a second. Neither of them seemed to be in the least disturbed by the shells all the way from light artillery to six-inch, that were bursting about them, filling the air with singing fragments. For a moment they stood at ease, then the left-hand one, the one that had led the advance, pointed its snout at the village and discharged one of its flaming bolts. It struck squarely in the center of an old brick house, whose cellar had been turned into a machine-gun nest. With a roar, the building collapsed, a bright flicker of flames springing out of the ruins. As though it were a signal every machine-gun, every rifle in the village opened fire on the impassive shapes at the crest of the hill. The uproar was terrific; even in his steel cage Murray could hardly hear himself think.
The shining monster paid no more attention to it than to the rain. One of them slid gently forward a few yards, turned its trunk toward the spouting trenches, and in short bursts, loosed five quick bolts; there were as many spurts of flame, a few puffs of earth and the trenches became silent, save for one agonized cry, "First aid, for God's sake!"
Ben Ruby's voice came through the microphone. "Retreat everybody. Atlantic City if you can make it."
With a great, round fear gripping at his heart, Murray Lee threw in the clutch of his machine and headed in the direction he remembered as that of the main road through the town toward Atlantic City. The night had become inky-black; the town was in a valley and the shadow of trees and houses made the darkness even more Stygian. Only by an occasional match or flashlight glare could the way be seen, but such light as there was showed the road already filled with fugitives. Some of them were helmetless, gunless, men in the last extremity of terror, running anywhere to escape from they knew not what.
But through the rout there plowed a little company of infantry, revealed in a shell-burst, keeping tight ranks as though at drill, officers at the head, not flying, but retreating from a lost battle with good heart and confidence, ready to fight again the next day. The dancing beam of a searchlight picked them out for a moment; Murray Lee looked at them and the fear died within him. He slowed up his machine, ran it off the road and out to the left where there seemed to be a clearing that opened in the direction of the town. After all, he could at least observe the progress of the monsters and report on them.
He was astonished to find that he had come nearly a mile from the center of the disturbance. Down there, the glittering monsters, still brightly illumined by searchlight and flare, seemed to be standing still amid the outer houses of the town, perhaps examining the trench system the Australians had dug that afternoon. The gunfire on them had ceased. From time to time one of the things, perhaps annoyed at the pointlessness of what it saw, would swing its trunk around and discharge a light-bolt at house, barn or other object. The object promptly caved in, and if it were wood, began to burn. A little train of the blazing remains of buildings marked the progress of the shining giants, and threw a weird red light over the scene.
Now that he could see them clearly, Murray noted that they were all of fifty or sixty feet long. Their polished sides seemed one huge mirror, bright as glass, and a phosphorescent glow hung about their tails. Along either side was a slender projection like the bilge-keel of a ship, terminating about three quarters of the way along, and with a small dot of the phosphorescence at its tip. They seemed machines rather than animate objects. Murray wondered whether they were, or (remembering his own evolution into a metal man) whether they were actually metal creatures of some unheard-of breed.
As he watched, a battery out beyond the town that had somehow gotten left behind, opened fire. He could see the red flash-flash-flash of the guns as they spoke; hear the explosions of the shells as they rent the ground around the giants. One of them swung impassively toward the battery; there were three quick stabs of 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 theMelbourne'sturret. 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."
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 proceeding to take out and then replace the cunningly concealed finger-nut which held his ankle in position, marvelling at how any chemical or other change could have produced a threaded bolt as an integral part of the human anatomy.
Toward evening, he returned to the flying field and examined his machine. One wing showed the effect of weathering, but it was an all-metal Roamer of the latest model and it had withstood the ordeal well. The gasoline gauge showed an empty tank, but it was no great task to get more from the big underground tanks at the field. Oil lines and radiators seemed all tight and when he swung the propeller, the motor purred for him like a cat.
With a kind of secret satisfaction gurgling within him Herbert Sherman taxied across the field, put the machine into a climb, and went forth to have a look at New York.
He thought he could see smoke over central Manhattan and swung the Roamer in that direction. The disturbance seemed to be located at the old Metropolitan Opera House which, as he approached it, seemed to have been burning, but had now sunk to a pile of glowing embers. The fire argued human presence of some kind. He took more height and looked down. Times Square held a good many diminutive dots, but they didn't seem to be moving.
He swung over to examine the downtown section. All quiet. When he returned he saw a car dodging across Forty-Second Street and realizing that he could find human companionship whenever he needed it, which he did not at present, he returned to the flying field.
At this point It occurred to him to be hungry. Reasoning the matter out in the light of his mechanical experience, he drank a pint or more of lubricating oil and searched for a place to spend the night. Not being sleepy he raided a drug store where books were sold, for as much of its stock as he could use, and arranging one of the flares at the field in a position convenient for reading, he settled down for the night. In the course of it he twice tried smoking and found that his new make-up had ruined his taste for tobacco.
With the first streaks of day he was afoot again, going over the Roamer with a fine-toothed comb, since he had no mechanic to do it for him, tuning her up for a long flight. He had no definite purpose in mind beyond a look round the country. Was it all like this, or only New York?
Newark attracted his attention first. He noted there were ships at most of the piers in the river and that none of them bore signs of life. Neither had the streets on the Jersey side of the river any occupants other than those who were obviously still forever.
As he flew along toward the Newark airport, a shadow fell athwart the wing and he looked up.
A big bird was soaring past, flying above and fully as fast as the plane. In his quick glance Sherman caught something unfamiliar about its flight, and leaned over to snap on the mechanical pilot while he had another look. The bird, if bird it was, was certainly a queer specimen; it seemed to have two sets of wings and was using them as though it were an airplane, with the fore pair outstretched and rigid, the hind wings vibrating rapidly. As he gazed at the bird it drew ahead of the plane, gave a few quick flips to its fore-wings and banked around to pick him up again.
It was coming closer and regarding him with an uncommonly intelligent and by no means friendly eye. Sherman swung his arm at it and gave a shout—to which the bird paid not the slightest attention. Newark was running away under him. Reluctantly, he resumed control of the stick, put the plane into a glide and made for the airport. It occurred to him that this would be an awkward customer if it chose to attack him and he meditated on the possibility of finding a gun in Newark.
The field was bumpy, but he taxied to a stop and climbed out to look over the silent hangars before one of which a little sports plane stood dejectedly, with a piece of torn wing flapping in the breeze. As the Roamer came to rest he looked back at the bird. It was soaring away up in a close spiral, emitting a series of screams. Sherman determined to find a gun without delay.
Newark was like Jackson Heights; same stony immobility of inhabitants, same sense of life stopped at full tide in the streets. He prowled around till he found a hardware store and possessed himself of a fine .50-.50 express rifle with an adequate supply of cartridges as well as a revolver, added to it a collection of small tools, and stopped in at a library to get a supply of reading matter more to his taste than the drug store could provide.
As he took off again two specks in the sky far to the north represented, he decided, additional specimens of the peculiar bird life that had spread abroad since the change. How long it could have been, he had no idea.
He decided on a flight northwest, following the line of the mail route. There was a chance that the whole country might not be engulfed by this metal plague, though the absence of life in New York was not encouraging.
Port Jervis was his first control point, but Sherman was fond enough of the green wooded slopes of the Catskills to run a little north of his course, bumpy though the air was over the mountains. He set the automatic pilot and leaned back in his seat to enjoy the view.
Just north of Central Valley something seemed different about the hillside; a new scar had appeared along its edge. He turned to examine it, swooping as he did so and in a quick glance from the fast-moving airplane saw that the great forest trees, maples and oaks, were all down, twisted, barren and leafless, along a line that ran right up the valley and across the hill, as though they had been harrowed by some gigantic storm. The line was singularly definite; there were no half-broken trees.
He swooped for another look, and at that moment was conscious of the beat of swift wings and above the roar of the motor heard the scream of one of those strange four-winged birds. Half-unconsciously, he put the Roamer into a steep climb and kicked the rudder to one side, just as the bird flew past him on whistling pinions, like an eagle that has missed its plunge, and recovered to rise again in pursuit. Sherman flattened out, and without paying any attention to direction, snapped in the automatic pilot and reached for his gun.
As he bent there came a sharp crack from above and behind him and another scream right overhead. He looked over his shoulder to see a second bird clutching at the edge of the cockpit with one giant claw, its forewings fluttering rapidly in the effort to keep its balance in the propeller's slipstream. With the other claw it grabbed and grabbed for him.
Sherman flattened himself against the bottom of the cockpit and fired up and back, once—twice—three times. The plane rocked; the bird let go with a shrill scream, a spurt of blood showing on its chest feathers, and as Sherman straightened up he saw it whirling down, the wings beating wildly, uselessly, the red spot spreading. But he had no time for more than a glance. The other bird was whirling up to the attack beneath him, yelling in quick jerks of sound as though it were shouting a battle-cry.
The pistol, half-empty, might too easily miss. Sherman sought the rifle, and at that moment felt the impact of a swift blow on the floor of the plane. The bird understood that he had weapons and was attacking him from beneath to avoid them! The thought that it was intelligent flashed through his mind with a shock of surprise as he leaned over the side, trying to get a shot at his enemy. Beneath the plane he caught a momentary glimpse of the ground again, torn and tortured, and in the center of the devastation the ruins of a farmhouse, its roof canting crazily over a pulled-out wall.
The bird dodged back and forth, picking now and then at the bottom of the plane with its armored beak. He leaned further trying to get in a shot, and drew a chorus of yells from the bird, but no more definite result. Bang! Again. Miss. Out of the tail of his eye he saw the line of green leap into being again. Flap, flap went the wings beneath him.
Suddenly from below and behind him there rose a deep humming roar, low pitched and musical. Abruptly the screaming of the bird ceased; it dropped suddenly away, its forewings folded, the rear wings spread, glider-like as it floated to the ground. He turned to look in the direction of the sound, and as he turned a great glare of light sprang forth from somewhere back there, striking him full in the eyes with blinding force. At the same moment something pushed the Roamer forward and down, down, down. He could feel the plane give beneath him, but in the blind haze of light his fumbling fingers could not find the stick, and as he fell a wave of burning heat struck his back and the sound of a mighty torrent reached his ears. There was a crash and everything went out in a confusion of light, heat and sound.
When he recovered consciousness the first thing he saw was a blue dome, stretched so far above his head that it might have been the sky save for the fact that the light it gave had neither glare nor shadow. He puzzled idly over this for a moment, then tried to turn his head. It would not move. "That's queer," thought Herbert Sherman, and attempted to lift an arm. The hands responded readily enough but the arms were immovable. With an effort he tried to lift his body and discovered that he was tightly held by some force he could not feel.
Herbert Sherman was a patient man but not a meek one. He opened his mouth and yelled—a good loud yell with a hard swearword at the end of it. Then he stood still for a moment, listening. There was a sound that might be interpreted as the patter of feet somewhere, but no one came near him, so he yelled again, louder if possible.
This time the result accrued with a rapidity that was almost startling. A vivid bluish light struck him in the face, making him blink, then was turned off, and he heard a clash of gears and a hum that might be that of a motor. A moment later he felt himself lifted, whirled round, dropped with a plunk, and the blue dome overhead began to flow past at rapidly mounting speed to be blotted out in a grey dimness. He perceived he was being carried down some kind of a passage whose ceiling consisted of dark stone. A motor whirred rapidly.
The stone ceiling vanished; another blue dome, less lofty, took its place. The object on which he was being carried stopped with a mechanical click and he was lifted, whirled round again and deposited on some surface. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of something round, of a shining black coloring, with pinkish highlights, like the head of some enormous beast, and wiggled his fingers in angry and futile effort.
He was flopped over on his face and found himself looking straight down at a grey mass which from its feel on nose and chin, appeared to be rubber.
He yelled again, with rage and vexation and in reply received a tap over the head with what felt like a rubber hose. He felt extraordinarily helpless. And as the realization came that he was helpless, without any control of what was going on he relaxed. After all, there was no use.... Some kind of examination was in progress. There was the sound of soft-treading feet behind him.
After a slight pause he was bathed in a red light of such intensity as to press upon him with physical solidity. He closed his eyes against it, and as he did so, felt a terrible pain in the region of his spine. Was it death? He gripped metallic teeth together firmly in an effort to fight the pain without yelling (perhaps this was deliberate torture and he would not give them the satisfaction) and dully, amid the throbbing pain, Sherman heard a clatter of metal instruments. Then the pain ceased, the light went off and something was clamped about his head.
A minute more and he had been flipped over on his back, and with the same whirring of motors that had attended his arrival, was carried back through the passage and into the hall of the blue dome. He was still held firmly; but now there was a difference. He could wiggle in his bonds.
With a clicking of machinery, he was tilted up on the plane that held him. A hole yawned before his feet and he slid rapidly down a smooth incline, through a belt of dark, to drop in a heap on something soft. The trapdoor clicked behind him.
He found himself, unbound, on a floor of rubber-like texture and on rising to look around, perceived that he was in a cell with no visible exit, whose walls were formed by a heavy criss-crossed grating of some red metal. It was a little more than ten feet square; in the center a seat with curving outlines rose from the floor, apparently made of the same rubbery material as the floor itself. A metallic track ended just in front of the seat; following back, his eye caught the outline of a kind of lectern, now pushed back against the wall of the cell, with spaces below the reading flat and handles attached. Against the back wall of the cell stood a similar device, but larger and without any metal track. Beside it two handles dangled from the wall on cords of flexible wire.
This was all his brief glance told him about the confines of his new home. Looking beyond it, he saw that he was in one of a row of similar cells, stretching back in both directions. In front of the row of cells was a corridor along which ran a brightly-burnished metal track, and this was lined by another row of cells on the farther side.
The cell at Sherman's right was empty, but he observed that the one on the left had a tenant—a metal man, like himself in all respects and yet—somehow unlike. He stepped over to the grating that separated them.
"What is this place, anyway?" he inquired.
His neighbor, who had been sitting in the rubber chair, turned toward him a round and foolish face with a long, naked upper lip, and burst into a flood of conversation of which Sherman could not understand one word. He held up his hand. "Wait a minute, partner," he said. "Go slow. I don't get you."
The expression on the fellow's face changed to one of wonderment. He made another effort at conversation, accompanying it with gestures. "Wait," said the aviator, "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?... Francais?... Habla Espanol?...No? Dammit what does the guy talk? I don't know any Italian—Spaghetti, macaroni, Mussolini!"
No use. The metal face remained blankly uninspired. Well, there is one thing men of all races have in common. Sherman went through the motions of drawing from his pocket a phantom cigarette, applying to it an imaginary match, and blowing the smoke in the air.
It is impossible for a man whose forehead is composed of a series of lateral metal bands to frown. If it were the other would have done so. Then comprehension appeared to dawn on him. He stepped across to his lectern, andwith his toes, pulled the bottom slide open, extracted from it a round rubber container and reaching through the bars, handed it to Sherman.
The aviator understood the difference that had puzzled him in the beginning. Instead of the graceful back-sweeping curve that sets a man's head vertical with his body, this individual had the round-curved neck and low-hung head of the ape.
To hide his surprise Sherman bent his head to examine the object the ape-man had handed him. It was about the size of a baseball with little holes in it. He inserted a finger in one of the holes, and a stream of oil squirted out and struck him in the eye. His neighbor gave a cry of annoyance at his clumsiness and reached through the bars to have the ball returned. As he received it there came sudden flickerings of lights along the hall from somewhere high up, like the trails of blue and green rockets. The mechanical ape-man dropped the oil-ball and dashed to the front of his cell.
Sherman saw a vehicle proceeding down the line of cells; a kind of truck that rode on the track of the corridor and was so wide it just missed the gratings. It had a long series of doors in its sides, and as it came opposite an occupied cell, stopped. Something invisible happened; the bars of the cell opened inward and the inmate emerged to step into a compartment which at once closed behind him.
When it stopped at the ape-man's cage Sherman watched the procedure closely. A little arm appeared from beneath the door of the compartment and did something to one of the lower bars of the cell. But the truck passed Sherman by, moving silently along to other cells beyond him.
He turned to examine the room more closely, and as he did so, saw that a second truck was following the first. This one, with an exactly reversed procedure, was returning robots to their cells. This second truck dropped an inmate in the cell at his right (another ape-man) and trundled along down the line, but as it reached the end of the corridor, turned back and running along till it came to his cell, stopped, flung out the metal arm, and opened the bars in invitation.
Sherman had no thought of disobeying; as long as he was in this queerest of all possible worlds, he thought, one might as well keep to the rules. But he was curious about the joint of the cage and how it unlocked and he paused a moment to examine it. The machine before him buzzed impatiently. He lingered. There came a sudden clang of metal from inside the car, a vivid beam of blue light called his attention, and looking up, he saw the word "EXIT" printed in letters of fire at the top of the compartment.
With a smile he stepped in. A soft light was turned on and he found himself in a tiny cubbyhole with just room for the single seat it provided and on which he seated himself. There was no window.
The machine carried him along smoothly for perhaps five minutes, stopped and the door opened before him. He issued into another blue-domed hall. A small one this time, containing a rubber seat like that in his cell, but with an extended arm on which rested a complex apparatus of some kind. The seat faced a white screen like those in movie theaters.
He seated himself and at once a series of words appeared in dark green on the screen. "Dominance was not complete," it said. "Communication?" Then below, in smaller type, as though it were the body of a newspaper column. "Lassans service man. Flier writing information through communication excellent. Dinner bed, book. No smoking. Yours very truly."
As he gazed in astonishment at this cryptic collection of words it was erased and its place was taken by a picture which he recognized as a likeness of himself in his present metallic state. A talking picture, which made a few remarks in the same incomprehensible gibberish the ape-man had used, then sat down in a chair like that in which he now rested, and proceeded to write on the widespread arm with a stylus which was attached to it. The screen went blank.... Evidently he was supposed to communicate something by writing.
The stylus was a metal pencil, and the material of the arm, though not apparently metallic, must be, he argued from the fact that it seemed to have electric connections attached. As he examined it, the blue lights flickered at him impatiently. "The white knight," he wrote in a fit of impish perversity, "is climbing up the poker." Instantly the words flashed on the screen.
Pause. "IS CLIMBING" declared the screen, in capitals; then below it appeared a fairly creditable picture of a knight in armor followed by a not very creditable picture of a poker. Sherman began to comprehend. Whoever it was behind this business had managed a correspondence course of a sort in English, but had failed to learn the verbs and he was being asked to explain.
For answer he produced a crude drawing of a monkey climbing a stick and demonstrated the action by getting up and going through the motions of climbing. Immediately the screen flashed a picture of the knight in armor ascending the poker by the same means, but it had hardly appeared before it was wiped out to be replaced by a flickering of blue lights and an angry buzz. His interlocutor had seen the absurdity of the sentence and was demanding a more serious approach to the problem. For answer Sherman wrote, "Where am I and who are you?"
A longer pause. "Dominance not complete," said the screen. Then came the picture of the first page of a child's ABC book with "A was an Archer who shot at a frog" below the usual childish picture. Then came the word "think." With the best will in the world Sherman was puzzled to illustrate this idea, but by tapping his forehead and drawing a crude diagram of the brain as he remembered it from books, he managed to give some satisfaction.
The process went on for three or four hours as nearly as Sherman could judge the time, ending with a flash of the word "Exit" in red from the screen and a dimming of the blue-dome light. He turned toward the door and found the car that had brought him, ready for the return journey. As it rumbled back to his cell he ruminated on the fact that none of the men (or whatever it was) behind this place had yet made themselves visible, for it was incredible that beings of the type of the metallic ape-man who occupied the next cell to his should have intelligence enough to operate such obviously highly-developed machinery.
But what next? He pondered the question as the car deposited him in his cell. Obviously, he was being kept a prisoner. He didn't like it, however comfortable the imprisonment.
The first thing that suggested itself was a closer inspection of his cell. The lectern yielded an oil-ball like that the ape-man had given him and another, similar device, containing grease. There were various tools of uncertain purpose and in the last drawer he examined a complete duplicate set of wrist and finger joints. The larger cupboard had deep drawers, mostly empty, though one of them contained a number of books, apparently selected at random from a good-sized sized library—"Mystery of Oldmixon Hall," "Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1903," "The Poems of Jerusha G. White"—a depressing collection.
This seemed to exhaust the possibilities of the cell and Sherman looked about for further amusement. His ape neighbor had pressed himself close to the bars on that side, indicating his interest in what Sherman was doing by chuckling bubbles of amusement. Further down the line one of the ape-men was holding the pair of handles that projected from the wall beside his cabinet. Sherman grasped his also; there was a pleasant little electric shock and in the center of the wall before him a slide moved back to disclose a circle of melting light that changed color and form in pleasing variations. The sensation was enormously invigorating and it struck the aviator with surprise that this must be the way these creatures.... "These creatures!" he thought, "I'm one of them...." the way these creatures acquired nourishment. The thought gave him an inspiration.
"Hey!" he called in a voice loud enough to carry throughout the room. "Is there anyone here that can understand what I'm saying?"
There was a clank of metal as faces turned in his direction all down the line of cages. "Yes, I guess so," called a voice from about thirty feet away. "What do you want to say?"
Sherman felt an overwhelming sense of relief. He would not have believed it possible to be so delighted with a human voice. "Who's got us here and why are they keeping us here?" he shouted back.
A moment's silence. Then—"Near's I can make out it's a passel of elephants and they've got us here to work."
"What?" Sherman shouted back, not sure he had heard aright.
"Work!" came the answer. "Make you punch the holes on these goddam light machines. It wears your fingers off and you have to screw new ones in at night."
"No, I mean about the elephants."
"That's what I said—elephants. They wear pants, and they're right smart, too."
Insoluble mystery. "Who are you?" called the aviator.
"Mellen. Harve Mellen. I had a farm right here where they set up this opry house of theirs."
Along the edge of Sherman's cell a blue light began to blink. He had an uncomfortable sensation of being watched. "Is there any way of getting out of here?" he shouted to his unseen auditor.
"Sssh," answered the other. "Them blue lights mean they want you to shut up. You'll get a paste in the eye with the yaller lights if you don't."
So that was it! They were being held as the servants—slaves—of some unseen and powerful and very watchful intelligence. As for "elephants with pants" they might resemble that and they might not; it was entirely possible that the phrase represented merely a picturesque bit of metaphor on the part of the farmer.
Why it must be an actual invasion of the earth, as in H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds," a book he had read in his youth. The comet could have been no comet then, and.... Yet the whole thing—this transformation of himself into a metal machine, the crash of the Roamer and his subsequent bath in the painful red light. It was all too fantastic—then he remembered that one does not feel pain in dreams....
They were giving him books, food—if this electrical thing was indeed the food his new body required—little to do; keeping him a prisoner in a kind of poisoned paradise.
... At all events the locks on these bars should offer no great difficulty to a competent mechanic. He set himself to a further examination of the tools in the lectern.
The main difficulty in the way of any plan of escape lay in his complete lack of both information and the means of obtaining it. The mechanical ape-men were hopeless; they merely babbled incoherent syllables and seemed incapable of fixing their attention on any object for as long as five minutes. As for the New York farmer his cage was so far away that the conversation could be carried on only in shouts, and every shout brought a warning flicker of the blue lights. On the second day, out of curiosity, Sherman kept up the conversation after the blue lights went on. A vivid stream of yellow light promptly issued from one corner of the cage, striking him fully in the eyes, and apparently it was accompanied by some kind of a force-ray for he found himself stretched flat on the floor. After that he did not repeat the experiment.
The next question was that of the lock on the cell-bars. The closest inspection he could give did not reveal the joints; they were extraordinarily well fitted. On the other hand, he remembered that the arm of the truck had reached under one of the lower bars. Lying flat on his back, Sherman pulled himself along from bar to bar, inspecting each in turn. About mid-way along the front of the cell, he perceived a tiny orifice in the base of one bar—a mere pin-hole. Marvelling at the delicacy of the adjustment which could use so tiny a hole as a lock he sat down to consider the question.
He was completely naked and had nothing but the objects that had been placed in his cell by his jailers. However—
Among the assortment of tools in his bureau was a curve-bladed knife with the handle set parallel to the blade as though it were meant for chopping, and forming the wall of the same drawer was a strip of a material like emery cloth. After some experimenting he found a finger-hole which, when squeezed, caused this emery-cloth to revolve, giving a satisfactory abrasive.
Thus armed with a tool and a means of keeping an edge on it, he took one of the metal bands from the drawer that contained the duplicate set of hands and set to work on it....
Producing a needle that would penetrate the hole in the bars was all of three days' work, though he had no means of marking the time accurately. The metal band was pliable, light, and for all its pliability and lightness, incredibly hard. His tool would barely scratch it and required constant sharpenings. Moreover, he had little time to himself; his unseen scholar required constant lessons in English. But at last the task was done. Choosing a moment when one of the cages at his side was empty and the occupant of the other was busy over some silly sport of his own—tossing a ball from one hand to another—Sherman lay down on the floor, found the opening and drove his needle home. Nothing happened.
He surveyed the result with disappointment. It was disheartening, after so much labor to attain no result at all. But it occurred to him that perhaps he had not learned the whole secret of the arm, and the next time the car came down the corridor for him, he was lying on the floor, carefully watching the opening.
As he had originally surmised, a needle-like point was driven home. But he noted that on either side of the point the arm gripped the bar tightly, pressing it upward.
This presented another difficulty. He had only two hands; if one of them worked the needle he could grip the bar in only one place. But he remembered, fortunately, that his toes had showed a remarkable power of prehension since the change that had made him into a machine.
He finally succeeded in bracing himself in a curiously twisted attitude and driving the needle home under the proper auspices. To his delight it worked—when the needle went in the bars opened in the proper place, swinging back into position automatically as the pressure was withdrawn.
With a new sense of freedom Sherman turned to the next step. This was obviously to find out more of the place in which he was confined and of the possibilities of escape. It seemed difficult.
But even on this point he was not to be long without enlightenment. His unseen pupil in English was making most amazing progress. The white screen which was their means of communication now bore complicated messages about such subjects as what constituted philosophy. Sherman felt himself in contact with an exceptionally keen and active mind, though one to which the simplest earthly ideas were unfamiliar. There were queer misapprehensions—for instance, no process of explanation he could give seemed to make the unseen scholar understand the use and value of money, and they labored for a whole day over the words "president" and "political."
In technical matters it was otherwise; Sherman had barely to express the idea before the screen made it evident that the auditor had grasped its whole purport. When he wrote the word "atom" for instance, and tried to give a faint picture of the current theory of the atom, it was hardly a second before the screen flashed up with a series of diagrams and mathematical formulae, picturing and explaining atoms of different types.
After four weeks or more (as nearly as Sherman could estimate it in that nightless, sleepless place where time was an expression rather than a reality) the car that came for him one day discharged him into a room entirely different from the school-room. Like the school-room it was small, and some twenty feet across. Against the wall opposite the door stood a huge machine, the connections of which seemed to go back through the wall. Its vast complex of pulleys, valves and rods, conveyed no hint of its purpose, even to his mechanically-trained mind.
Across the front of it was a long, black board, four feet or more across and somewhat like the instrument board of an airplane in general character. At the top of this board was a band of ground glass, set off in divisions. Beneath this band a series of holes, each just large enough to admit a finger, and each marked off by a character of some kind though in no language Sherman had ever seen.
To complete the picture, one of the mechanical ape-men stood before the board as though expecting him. On the ape-man's head was a tight-fitting helmet, connecting with some part of the machine by a flexible tube. As Sherman entered the room the ape-man motioned him over to the board, pointed to the holes and in thick, but intelligible English, said "Watsch!" A flash of purple light appeared behind the first of the ground-glass screens. The ape-man promptly thrust his finger into the first of the holes. The light went out, and the ape-man turned to Sherman. "Do," he said. The light flashed on again, and Sherman, not unwilling to learn the purpose of the maneuver, did as his instructor had done.
He was rewarded by a tearing pain in the finger-tip and withdrew the member at once. Right at the end it had become slightly grey. The ape-man smiled. Behind the second ground-glass a red light now appeared and the ape-man thrust his finger into another of the apertures, indicating that Sherman should imitate him. This time the aviator was more cautious, but as he delayed the light winked angrily. Again he received the jerk of pain in the finger-tip and withdrew it to find that the grey spot had spread.