Progress up the hillside was slow. It had become completely dark; they were without any means of making a light and would not have dared to make one if they could. The mud was tenacious, the constant contact with stumps and rocks both irritating and difficult. But at last in their fumbling way, they reached a spot where the denudation gave place to a line of trees, looming dark and friendly overhead against the skyline, and after that they went faster. Where they were or what route to take neither had any idea. That portion of the Catskills is still as wild as in the days of the Iroquois, save for the few thin roads along the line of the valleys and these they dared not seek.
They solved the difficulty by keeping to the hillcrest till it ran out in a valley, then rapidly climbing the next hill and proceeding along that in the shelter of the forest. Though they necessarily went slowly they did not halt; neither felt the need of rest or sleep, their metal limbs took no serious bruises, and the slip of the hill kept them from running in circles as people usually do when lost in the woods.
Just as the eastern sky began to hold some faint promise of dawn they came upon a farmhouse in a clearing at the top of a hill. It was an unprepossessing affair with a sagging roof, but they burst in the door and went through it in the hope of finding weapons and perhaps an electric battery, for both were used to the bountiful electric meals of the Lassans and were beginning to feel the lack.
The best the place afforded, however, was a rather ancient axe, of which Sherman possessed himself, and a large pot of vaseline with which they anointed themselves liberally, for the continued damp was making them feel rusty in the joints.
They pressed on, and did not halt to consider the situation till full day had come.
"Where do we go from here?" asked Marta, perching herself on a tree-bole.
"South, I guess," offered Sherman. "They may be looking for us there, but we got to find a city and get some things."
"There's Albany," she suggested.
"Yes, and Schenectady and they have a lot of electric power there we could use. But I vote for New York. If we head in there I can pick up a plane at one of the airports and walk right away from them."
"Well, it's a chance," she said, "but anything is. Come on...." and as they forced their way through the underbrush, "You know, from what I understood of those Lassans' thoughts, they've got something hot cooking up. I'm almost sure there are other people in the world and they're getting ready to fight them."
"Let 'em come," said Sherman grimly. "That light-ray won't stand the chance of a whistle in a whirlwind when they get after them with heavy artillery and airplane observation."
"That's just where you're all wet," replied the dancer. "They've been figuring on that for a long time. They got a gun from somewhere, and they've had all their fighting machines out, shooting it at them, and then armoring up the fighting machines to stand it. And they're building guns of their own to shoot those light-bombs. I ought to know. I was on the job."
Sherman cursed himself inwardly. So that had been the result of his exchange of information with the old Lassan who was so anxious to know about guns.
"How do they get away from it?" he asked.
"Well, I don't know quite," she said. "I'm a sap about stuff like that. All I know is what the guy that was controlling me thought about and let me have without knowing it. But I got this much out of it—that the outside of these fighting machines is coated with this 'substance of life' they talk about some way, so it's a perfect mirror, and reflects everything that hits it, even shells. The coating reflects their light ray, too, but it has to have a lead backing for that. It's no good without the lead. Seems like lead will stop that light-ray every time."
"I wonder how about big guns," murmured Sherman.
"Don't know. I didn't get anything like that in what the boss was thinking. He seemed to imagine the gun he had was the biggest there was."
They toiled on. As they progressed southward the thinning forest and the increasing walls of the cliffs drove them farther and farther toward the river, till they were forced to take to the main road willy-nilly. Along it they could walk faster, but there was more danger. They watched the heavens narrowly for any sign of the four-winged birds, but the skies seemed deserted.
At Kingston they found a filling station, and kicking in the door, located a couple of storage batteries that supplied them with a needed meal. "What do you say to a car?" asked Sherman.
"Maybe yes, maybe no," said the dancer. "It's running a chance, isn't it? Still, we're getting nowhere awful fast this way. Let's try it."
Finding a car in running order was a procedure of some difficulty, and Kingston seemed a weaponless town, though Marta finally did locate one little pearl-handled .25 calibre pop-gun. Sherman eyed it dubiously.
"That's a good thing to kill mosquitoes with," he remarked, "but I don't think it will be much use for anything else."
"Boloney," she replied. "These Lassans are yellow from way back. If I stuck this under the nose of one of them he'd throw a fit. Come on. Let's go."
Eventlessly, the road flowed past under their wheels—Newburgh, Haverstraw, Nyack—one, two, three hours. Then, just south of Chester the dancer suddenly gripped Sherman's arm.
"What's that?" she said. "No, over there. Isn't it—?"
But in one swift glance he had seen as clearly as she. Like a living thing, the car swerved from the road, dived across the ditch, and losing speed, rolled to a halt on the green lawn of a suburban bungalow. Sherman leaped out. "Come on, for God's sake," he cried. "It's a fighting machine. If they've seen us they'll start shooting."
Dragging her after him, he dived around the house, through a seedy flower-garden, down a path. As though to lend emphasis to his words there came the familiar buzzing roar, and as Sherman dropped, pulling the girl flat on her face after him, they saw the wall of the bungalow cave in, and the roof tilt slowly over and drop into the burning mass beneath. A vivid blue beam, brighter than the sunlight of the dark day, swept across the sky, winked once or twice, and disappeared.
Marta would have risen, but "Take it easy," said Sherman. "If they see us they'll pop another of those tokens at us."
He wriggled along on his stomach, picking up weeds in his body plates in the process, and making for the shelter of an overgrown hedge that ran behind the next bungalow.
"Look out," called the dancer suddenly. "Here come the birds."
She waved her hand up and back, and by screwing up his eyes Sherman could just make out a black speck against the clouds, far north. They rolled under the shelter of the hedge and lay still, scarcely daring to whisper.
The Lassan in command of the fighting machine was evidently not satisfied that he had hit them with his hasty shot. Peering through the stems, they made out the shimmering form of the machine, sliding slowly past the burning house, its snout moving hither and thither questioningly. It passed through the garden, went on down the path. The bird swung to and fro overhead. Nearer. Evidently it had noticed the prints their feet left in the soft ground.
"Listen, partner," said Marta Lami, "get through and find some people, then come and get me out of that hellhole up there. If they see me, they'll let you alone."
"No!" cried Sherman, but she was already running out across the field. The snout of the machine lifted toward her as though to deliver a blast, then rose and discharged another beam of blue light. Sherman heard one of the birds scream in answer, saw it sweep down on soaring pinions, and in a single motion snap the dancer up and away. The shimmering fighting machine swung round and turned back toward the road.
He lay still until he was sure it had gone, then, moving carefully for fear of the terror from the skies, crawled to the next bungalow. It yielded treasure-trove in the shape of a flashlight and a serviceable revolver, and securing a sheet from one of the beds to wrap around him as a loin-cloth, he set out to trudge to New York.
After a time it occurred to him that the disaster had taken place not because they were in a car, but because it had been driven unreasonably fast, and without precaution. He looked for and ultimately found another one, and keeping to the back streets and driving slowly, worked his way toward the city again. Then another idea came to him—Newark had an airport as well as New York and it was far nearer. He changed the direction of his advance, swinging west to avoid the long bridges over the Passaic River. Bridges were focal points; the birds would surely watch them, as intelligent as they were.
Late in the afternoon he spied one of them, far ahead and flying southward, but took no chances. He drew his car up to the side of the road and remained motionless for long after it had disappeared. When evening came on, he had already reached the outskirts of the city and could proceed without headlights.
Newark was a dead city, the diminished purr of the motor ringing curiously loud in the silent streets. Their complication bothered him; he was unfamiliar with the town and his flashlight gave out long before he reached his destination. But he kept steadily on, certain that the airport was somewhere at the south and east of the city. Toward the later evening a fine, cold rain began to fall, congealing to ice on the streets and on his metallic body.
The airport was just as he had remembered it on the first day of his awakening—it now seemed uncountable ages in the past. The little sports plane still stood on the platform, its torn wing dangling. The hangars were all locked; he was an inefficient burglar and spent an hour or two breaking one open and when he did, found nothing but a tri-motored monster quite beyond his powers to get out, and a rocket-plane requiring special fuel that he did not have. The next hangar yielded an autogiro and a training machine. He had no watch, but was sure that the night was passing fast, and not wishing to be abroad by daylight with an airplane, decided to chance it on the autogiro. Luckily she was full of fuel, and everything seemed tight. With some labor he removed the chocks and managed to wheel the machine out.
Not till he had it in the air did the thought of what direction he was to take occur to him. Boston—New York—Philadelphia—Chicago, he canvassed the possibilities. What was it Marta Lami had said—something about one of the fighting machines heading south? And he remembered how the astronomers had predicted that the comet would fall, probably, somewhere in New York State. If there were a borderline along which Lassans were meeting humans in any kind of conflict it was most likely to lie southward. With this thought in mind, he turned his plane to the south, and keeping the white line of foam along the coast beneath him as a guide, began to let her out.
The ceiling was low; between clouds and fitful squalls of rain flying was difficult and the weight of Sherman's mechanical body seemed to make the machine move loggily. It must have been all of an hour and three quarters later that he saw beneath him the tossing whitecaps of Great Bay, with the ribbon of Wading River running back into the distance. Just beyond, he knew, lay Atlantic City. He was debating with himself whether to land on the beach there or hop across to the Philadelphia airport when, sharp and clear from somewhere ahead and below him, came the sound of gunfire. He tried for altitude, but only ran into clouds. Nevertheless the sound was unmistakable, and as he approached it became clearer and more pronounced, a long intermittent beat, heavy guns and light, mingled together, off to the right. There was fighting going on!
Exulting in his escape from the Lassans and in the fact that he could take their opponents information that would be of value, he swung the autogiro toward the sounds that became clearer every minute. He was getting right over them now, he thought; he could see red flashes along the horizon. Down there they were locked in battle—men and Lassans, his own people and the invaders from far-away Rigel.
Suddenly a beam of the light-ray leaped from the ground. Sherman thought it was directed at him; tried to loop the plane and cursed as he remembered autogiros wouldn't loop; then saw that the light was after all, not turned in his direction, but at some object on the ground. He banked the plane over and swung lower. Undoubtedly a Lassan fighting machine—and the beam was hitting things, things large and solid, for they collapsed under the stabbing ray. A red flame rose over the wreck; the roar of an explosion reached his ears. The battle-line!
He soared again. He must reach the headquarters of whatever men were down there. The information he could bring and that Marta Lami had given him might make all the difference between the loss of the world and its salvation "... perfect mirror—reflects everything that hits it, even shells, but they don't know about the big ones.... The lead will reflect their light-rays, too ... no good against lead. Their armor is made of the same stuff...."
In the darkness beneath him troops were moving. He could catch glimpses of dark masses on the roads. Somewhere down there he distinctly heard the call of one of the four-winged birds, quite near. Then with a rush, it was suddenly upon him. He set the automatic pilot, and drew his revolver, but the bird, unfamiliar with the machine it was attacking, had dashed recklessly in. There was a rending screech as it came into contact with the wings of the autogiro; Sherman got in one shot, and then bird, man and plane tumbled toward the earth.
"The Lassans?" said General Grierson, in a puzzled tone, looking at the sheet-clad apparition. "You mean these—mechanical monsters?"
Sherman winced. "Like myself? No, sir, those are their slaves. I thought you were familiar with them. They are elephant-men and quite different."
"I meant those damned, long, shining objects that shoot that light-ray of theirs. Their guns shoot it out in packages, but we can understand that and deal with them; our artillery is just as good. But if we can't stop those shining things there will be no army left and that means no men left on this planet. This army is our last resource. If you know of anything, anything, that will stop them, for God's sake tell us! All we've found that does any good so far are the twelve-inch railroad guns and we have only four of them. One was knocked out by their shells this afternoon."
"You mean their fighting-machines," Sherman replied. "Why, I'm not absolutely certain. I only know what I picked up from them and what Marta Lami"—he swallowed hard at the mention of her name—"the bravest woman in the world, told me. But I think that a shell with a lead cap would go through those fighting machines like a knife through a piece of cheese."
There was a tiny silence in the room at this momentous announcement. Then an artillery officer said, dreamily, "The armor-piercing shells the railroad guns use have lead caps."
As though his words had released a spell there came a quick drumfire of questions:
"What are they armored with?"
"What kind of a power-plant do they use?"
"Can you stop the light-ray?"
"What makes you think so?"
Sherman smiled. "Just a moment. One question at a time. I'm not sure I can answer them all, anyway. As to what makes me think so and what they're armored with, they have a coating of steel armor, but it isn't very thick. It's plated on the outside with a coat of lead and outside that with the substance they call 'pure light.' I don't know what it is, but it's the same stuff they use in the light-ray and in their shells, and I know that lead sheeting will stop it, even when the lead is very thin."
General Grierson swung round in his chair. "Hartnett! write out an order to General Hudson, Chief Quartermaster, at once. Tell him to remove every piece of lead he can find in Atlantic City and get it melted down. Also to set up a plant for tipping all shells with lead...."
Ben Ruby leaned forward. "Can we get into their city, their headquarters, or whatever they call it?"
"My God, I hope so!" cried Sherman. "Marta Lami's in there."
"All right, young man, you'll have your chance for that," said General Grierson. "Now suppose you tell us as much as you know about these—things. Every bit of information we can get will be valuable.... Oh, by the way, Hartnett. Have an order made out to the infantry to cut the points of their bullets with their knives. That will make them dum-dum and bring the lead out. Also another one to evacuate as much infantry as possible. They aren't going to be a great deal of use...."
In the factory of the Atlantic City Packing Company men were toiling, stripped to the waist, in an inferno of heat. The huge row of vats that had once held clams, oysters and fish to grace a nation's palate, now simmered with green-phosphorescent kettles of molten lead; the hand trucks that once bore piles of canned goods to and fro now pushed by blue-faced men in khaki, held long stacks of pointed shells. In at one end of the building they came in ceaseless procession to pause before the lead tanks where the workmen took each shell and dipped its tip briefly in the lead, then returned it to the truck. Out the other end they wheeled to be loaded in trucks, buses, limousines, everything that had wheels and would move, to be rushed to the maw of the ceaselessly crying guns.
For the offensive was on—the advance of the Lassans had been turned to a retreat. Along the water's edge, with its back to the sea and the steamers ready to pick up the survivors of the defeat of the last army of man, the last army of man had rallied; rallied and stood as the new lead-tipped shells began to come in and the artillery spouted them at the Lassan fighting-machines, no longer invincible, invulnerable monsters, but hittable and smashable pieces of mechanism.
It was Ben Ruby in a tank shining dully with the new lead plating who led the charge against the Lassan fighting machines on the first day of the battle, and who, with his little division of American tanks, had encountered three of the huge Lassan monsters outside the city. For a moment, as though dazed by the audacity of this attack, they had done nothing at all. Then all three had turned the light-rays on him. Would it hold?
The deadly rays glanced off, danced to the zenith in a shower of coruscating sparks and the gun of the American tank spoke—once, twice. A round hole, with a radiating star-pattern running out from it, appeared in the nose of the nearest Lassan fighting-machine, and it sank to the earth like a tired animal, rolling over and over, helpless. The other two turned to flee, swinging their long bodies around. Surrounded by shell-bursts, riddled by the lead-tipped weapons they too, struggled and sank, to rise no more.
After that there had been losses, of course. The Lassan shells occasionally burst in the back areas and claimed a toll. But the advance had gone on steadily for a whole day, unchecked; the Lassans were driven back.
And then, as suddenly as they had come, they disappeared. South African aerial scouts, far ahead of the army, reported there was no sign of the enemy in the whole of New Jersey. The dodos vanished from the skies, the fighting machines from the earth. The Lassans seemed to have abandoned the struggle and retired to their underground city to wait for the end.
"Frankly," said Sherman, "I don't like it. Those johnnies are too smart to give up like that. I'll bet you a thousand dollars against a lead bullet that they've gone back there to figure out some surprise for us, and when it comes it's going to be a beaner. Those babies may be elephants to the eye, but there's nothing slow about their brains."
"General Grierson doesn't think so," said Ben Ruby. "He's all ready to hang out the flags and call it a day. He sent home two more divisions of infantry yesterday."
"General Grierson hasn't got the finest girl in the world locked up in that hole under the Catskills, burning her fingers off," said Sherman with a set face. "Say, those babies aren't licked by a million miles. Their guns are just as good as ours and that light stuff they put in them is worse than powder when it goes off. They just didn't have as many guns. I'm taking even money that when they come out again, they'll have something that will make our artillery look sick."
They stood on a street-corner in Philadelphia, the new headquarters of the army of the federated governments.
"Yes, but what are we going to do about it?" asked Ben.
"A lot. For one thing we might go up there and try to bust in, but I don't think that would be very hot. They'll be expecting it. What we can do though, is get General Grierson to give us one of the laboratories here in town and some men to help us, and dope out a few little presents on our side of the fence. I learned plenty through those thought helmets of theirs while I was in that place, though I didn't realize I was getting a lot of it at the time. Those helmets work both ways, you know, and they couldn't keep me from picking up some of their stuff, especially as they were so anxious to find out what I knew they didn't watch themselves."
"Nice idea," said Ben. "I know a little about chemistry and between us we might put over something good. Let's Go."
An hour later, they were installed in their own experimental laboratory, just off Market Street, with enough assistants to help them with routine work and Gloria Rutherford and Murray Lee to keep them amused.
"All right, chief," said Ben, when they were installed. "What do we do first?"
"Figure out some kind of armor that will stand off whatever kind of ray they pop up with, I guess," offered Sherman.
"May I stick my two cents in?" said Murray Lee. "I don't think that any kind of armor is going to do a lot of good. For one thing, you don't know what the Lassans are going to produce. Those tanks we had were armored against the best kind of shells, and the Lassans turned up with the light-ray that made them look like Swiss cheese. It's your show, but if I were fishing for something, it would be a way to sock those guys. In this kind of war, the man that gets in the first punch is going to beat."
"That light-ray of theirs is pretty good," said Ben. "From what you know about it already, you ought to be able to dope out a pretty good heat ray."
"No soap," said Sherman. "Too slow. They'll be all set for that, anyway. It's right along the line they think. No, what we've got to have is something along a new line, and I'm thinking it can't be anything like a gun, either. They're onto that now." He closed the door to the inner office with a bang.
"By the way," asked Gloria, "why don't the Australians send some airplanes up there to the Catskills and shoot up the Lassan headquarters?"
"Didn't you know?" asked Ben. "They tried it. They dumped about a hundred tons of explosives all over the joint, and it might have been so much mud for all the good it did. Then they ran a railroad gun up there and tried to shell the door, but that wasn't any good, either. They've got a signal station up there watching, waiting for them to come out, and we'll just have to wait for that. Sherman"—he indicated the door behind which the aviator had retired—"is nearly bughouse. They've got his girl a prisoner in there."
"Tough break," commented Gloria. "Wish I could do something for the lady."
They talked about minor matters for a time, Ben speaking absently and cudgeling his brains for a line on which to work toward the new weapon. It is not easy to sit down and plan out a new invention without anything to start on beyond the desire to have it.
Suddenly, the inner door was flung open. In the aperture they saw Sherman, his face grinning, a small piece of metal in his hand.
"I've got it, folks!" he cried. "A gravity beam!"
"A gravity beam!" they ejaculated together in tones varying from incredulity to simple puzzlement. "What's that?"
"Well, it'll take quite a bit of explaining, but I'll drop out the technical part of it.... You see, it's like this—You remember old man Einstein, the frizzy-hair Frisian, demonstrated that magnetism and gravity are the same thing down underneath? And that some of the astronomers and physicists have said that both magnetism and light are the same thing? That is, forms of vibration. Well, one of the things I picked up from the lads in this Lassan city was that light, matter, electricity, gravitation, magnetism and the whole works, are the same thing in different forms.
"They've just jumped one step beyond Einstein. Now, they've got a way of producing, or mining, pure light, that is, pure matter in its simplest form. When it's released from pressure it becomes material and raises hell all over the shop. How they get the squeeze on it, I can't say. Anyway, it isn't important."
"Very interesting lecture—very," commented Gloria, gravely.
"You pipe down and listen to your betters till they get through," Sherman went on. "Children should be seen, not heard. But what I've got here is a piece of permalloy. Under certain magnetic conditions it defies gravity. Now if we can screen gravity that way, why can't we concentrate it, too?"
"Why not? Except that nobody ever did it and nobody knows how," said Ben Ruby.
"Well, here's the catch. We can do anything we want to with gravity if we go about it right. What is it in chemical atoms that has weight? It's the positive charge, isn't it? The nucleus. And it's balanced by the negative charges, the electrons, that revolve around it. Now if we can find a way to pull some of these negative charges loose from a certain number of atoms of a substance, there are going to be a whole lot of positive charges floating around without anything to bite on. And if we can shoot them at something, it's going to have more positive charges than it can stand. And when that happens, the something is going to get awful heavy, and there are going to be exchanges of negative charges among all the positive charges, and things are going to pop."
"Yes, yes," said Ben. "But what good does all this do? Give us the real dope on how you're going to do it."
"Well, with what I picked up from the Lassans, I think I know. They know all about light and mechanics, but they're rotten chemists, and don't realize how good a thing they've got in lots of ways. Now look—if you throw a beam of radiations from a cathode tube into finely divided material you break up some of the atoms. Well, all we have to do is get an extra-powerful cathode tube, break up a lot of atoms, and then deliver the positive charges from them onto whatever we're going for. That would be your gravity beam."
"How are you going to get radiation powerful enough to split up enough atoms to do you any good?" inquired Ben.
"Easy. Use a radium cathode. The Lassans have the stuff, but never think of using it seriously. They think it's an amusing by-product in their pure light mines, and just play round with it. Nobody ever used it before on earth, because it was too expensive for such foolishness, but with so many less people around, we can get some without too much trouble, I guess."
"Mmm. Sounds possible," said Ben. "That is, in theory. I'd like to see it work in practice. How are you going to throw this beam?"
"Cinch. Down a beam of light. Light will conduct sound or radio waves even through a vacuum and this stuff I'm sending isn't so very different. Whatever we hit will act as an amplifier and spread the effect through the whole body."
"Boy, you want to be careful you don't blow up the earth," said Murray Lee. "Well, Gloria, I guess we're indicated to go out and dig up some radium. Let's fool them by going before they ask us. There ought to be a supply in some of the hospitals."
They rose and the other two plunged into an excited and highly technical discussion. When they returned, the workmen had already constructed a black box, not unlike an enormous camera in shape, in the center of the floor. At its back and attached to it, stood a stand fitted with a series of enormous clamps. Ben and Sherman were at a bench, working blowpipes, and shaping the delicate, iridescent glass of a long tube with a bulge at its center.
"Here you are," said Murray Lee. "I had to row with the Surgeon-General of the Dutch Colonial contingent to get this. He wanted to use it on some tuberculosis experiment. But I convinced him that he wouldn't be worrying about 't. b.' if the Lassans came out of their hole and stood the army on its head. How goes the job?"
"Swell," said Sherman. "Now you children run along and play. We're busy. We won't be finished with this thing before tomorrow afternoon, if then."
As a matter of fact it was the next evening before Murray and Gloria were summoned back to the laboratory. The device they had seen was now mounted on a stand of its own, with long ropes of electrical connections running back from it, and had been pushed back to the end of the room. Opposite it was another stand with a two-foot square piece of sheet iron resting on a chair in its center. The lens of the big camera was pointed in that direction.
"Now," said Sherman, "watch your uncle and see what happens."
He turned a switch; the tube at the back of the apparatus lit up with a vivid violet glow and a low humming sound filled the room.
"I decided to use powdered lead in the box," he explained. "It is the heaviest metal there is available, and gives us the largest number of nuclei to project."
A second switch was thrown in and a beam of light leaped from the camera and struck in the center of the iron sheet, producing merely a mild white illumination.
"Poof!" said Gloria. "That isn't such a much. I could do that with a flashlight."
"Right you are. I haven't let her go yet. Hold your breath now."
He bent over, drove a plunger home. For just a second the only visible effect was a slight intensification of the beam of light. Then there was a report like a thunder-clap; a dazzling ball of fire appeared on the stand; a cloud of smoke, and Murray and Gloria found themselves sitting on the floor. The iron plate had completely vanished; so had the chair, all but two of its legs, which, lying in the center of the stand, were burning brightly. The acrid odor of nitrogen dioxide filled the room.
"Golly," said Ben Ruby, seizing a fire extinguisher from the wall and turning it on the blaze. "That's even more than we expected. Look, it made a hole right through the wall! We'll have to keep that thing tied up."
"I'll say you will," said Murray, helping Gloria up. "It's as bad for the guy that's using it as the one at the other end. But seriously, you've got something good there. What happened to the iron plate?"
"Disintegrated. Let's see, where does iron come in the periodic table, Ben? Twenty-six? Then you'll probably find small quantities of all the chemical elements from twenty-five down in that heap of ashes. Phooey, what a rotten smell! That must be the action of the beam on the nitrogen in the air."
"There's a lot to be worked out in this thing, yet, though," declared Ben, "and if you're right about the Lassans making a comeback, precious little time in which to work it out. For one thing, we've got to get a searchlight that will throw a narrow pencil of light for a long distance. I don't think those elephant-men are going to let us poke this thing under their noses. And for another we've got to dope out something to keep it in and some way to furnish current for it...."
"Can't you work it from a tank?" asked Murray, "and rig up a friction accumulator to work from the tracks?"
"I can, but I don't like the idea," Sherman replied. "From the way those Lassans took to our airplanes, I could make a guess that when they come, they're going to come in some kind of flying machine. The dodos are no good in modern war. We'd never catch any kind of an airplane with a tank."
"How about an airplane for yourselves?"
"Too unsteady and too frail. I want something that will take a few pokes and not fold up."
"Say, you guys have less ingenuity for a couple of inventors than anyone I ever heard of," Gloria put in. "Why don't you get one of these Australian rocket-planes and fix it up. It's big enough to hold all your foolishness, and if this thing is half as powerful as it looks, you ought to be able to harness it some way for a power-plant. Then you can plaster your rocket all over with armor. I think—"
Sherman interrupted her by bringing his fist down on the table with a bang that made the glasses rattle.
"You've got it! By the nine gods of Clusium! With the punch this thing gives us used as a rocket, we'd have power enough to fly to the moon if we wanted to. Why a rocket airplane at all? Why not a pure rocket? Let's go."
It was another week before workmen, even toiling with all the machine-shop facilities of Philadelphia at their disposal, and working day and night, could turn out the machine to Sherman's design, and it was two more before the apparatus was installed. The trial trip was set for the early morning when there would be least chance of atmospheric disturbance.
TheMonitor(she had been named for the famous fighting craft with which the American navy ushered in a new age in the history of war) now stood near the center of the flying field at the Philadelphia airport—a long, projectile-like vessel with gleaming metal sides, set with heavy windows, ten feet in diameter and nearly twice as long. At her stern a funnel-like opening led to the interior. This was the exhaust for the power-plant. At her bow the sharp nose was blunted off and its tip was occupied by the lens of a high-powered parabolic searchlight, slightly recessed, and with the discharge tubes for the atomic nuclei arranged around its edge so they would be thrown directly into the light-beam as soon as generated.
As the four approached her she had been placed on the ramp from which she was to start, slanting slightly upward, with a buffer of timber and earth behind it, to take up the enormous recoil her power plant was expected to develop.
"How do you get in?" asked Gloria, walking around theMonitorand discovering no sign of a door.
"Oh, that's a trick I borrowed from our friends the Lassans," explained Sherman. "Look here." He led her to a place half way along one side, where two almost imperceptible holes marred the shining brightness of the new vessel's sides. "Stick your fingers in."
She did as directed, pressed, and a wide door in the side of the projectile swung open. "Bright thought. No handles to break off."
They stepped in, bending their heads to avoid the low ceiling.
"She isn't as roomy or comfortable or as heavily armored as the one I mean to build later," explained Sherman, "but this is only an experimental craft, built in a hurry, so I had to take what I could get.... Now here, Murray you sit here. Your job is going to be to mind the gravity beam that furnishes us our power. Every time you get the signal from me, you throw this power switch. That will turn on all three switches at the stern, and shoot the gravity beam out for the exhaust.... You see, we can't expect to keep up a steady stream of explosions with this kind of a machine. We wouldn't be able to control it. We'll travel in a series of short hops through the air, soaring between hops, like a glider."
"How are you going to do any soaring without wings?" asked Murray.
"We have wings. They fold into the body at the back. I've made them automatic. When the power switch is thrown the wings fold in; after the explosion they come out automatically unless we disconnect them. If we want to really go fast, we'll disconnect them and go through the air like a projectile."
"Oh, I see. Will the windows stand the gaff?"
"I hope to tell you they will. I had them made of fused quartz, with an outer plating of leaded glass, just in case the Lassans try to get fresh with that light-ray of theirs.
"Now, Gloria, you sit here. You're the best shot in the crowd, and it's going to be your job to run that searchlight in the prow. As soon as you pick up anything with it, Ben will throw his switch, and whatever is at the end of it will get a dose of pure protons. We'll have to do a good deal of our aiming by turning the ship itself. I made the searchlight as flexible as I could, but I couldn't get a great deal of turn to it on account of the necessity of getting the nuclei into the light beam."
"By the way," asked Murray. "Won't this pure light armor of the Lassans knock your beam for a row of ashcans?"
"I should say not! If they use it, we've got 'em. That stuff has weight and the minute this beam of ours hits it, it will intensify the effect, and no matter how much pressure they have on it, it will blow up all over the place.... All set? Let's go. Throw in your switch, Murray."
Murray did as directed. There was a humming sound and the tiny beam of light leaped across the rear end of the ship and out the exhaust. Across it fell a thin powder of iron filings—the material that was to be decomposed to furnish the power.
Bang! With a roar, theMonitorleaped forward, throwing all of them back into their heavily padded seats, then dipped and soared as the wings came into play. The passengers glanced through the windows. Beneath them the outskirts of Philadelphia were already speeding by.
"Say," said Ben, "this is some bus. We must be making five hundred miles an hour."
"Sure," said Sherman. "We could do over seven hundred as a pure projectile, but we can't use that much speed and keep our maneuvering power."
"Where to, folks?" asked Sherman, during one of their periods of soaring, as they floated high above the hilly country to the west of the Delaware River.
"Oh, most anywhere," said Ben. "I would like to see you try out this new-fangled gun of yours on something, though."
"What shall we try it on? A house?"
"No, that's too easy. We saw what it could do to things like that in the laboratory. Find a nice rock."
"O. K. Here goes. Don't give her the gun for a minute, Murray."
With wings extended, theMonitorspiralled down toward the crest of the mountain. A projecting cliff stood just beneath them, sharply outlined in the rays of the morning sun.
"Now this is going to be difficult," warned Sherman. "Throw that connecting bar, Ben. It holds the power switch and the beam switch together so they're both turned on at once. Otherwise the recoil we'd get on this end of the beam would tumble us over backward. Hold it, while I set the controls. We've got to take a jump as soon as we fire, or we'll pop right into the mess we make.... Ready? All right, Gloria, go ahead with your searchlight."
The beam of the searchlight shot out, pale in the daylight, wavered a second, then outlined the crest of the cliff.
"Shoot!" cried Sherman.
There was a terrific report; a shock; theMonitorleaped, quivering in every part, and as they spiralled down to see what damage they had done, they beheld no cliff at all, but a rounded cup at the tip of the mountain in which a mass of molten rock boiled and simmered.
"Fair enough," said Ben. "I guess that will do for the Lassans, all right. Home, James?"
"Right," answered Sherman. "We've found out all we want to know this trip."
The homeward journey was accomplished even more swiftly than the trip northward as Sherman gained in experience at the controls of the machine. As it glided slowly to earth at the airport a little group of officers was waiting to meet them.
"What in thunder have you been doing?" one of them greeted the Americans. "Your static, or whatever it was you let loose, burned out all the tubes in half the army radio sets in New Jersey."
"By the nine gods of Clusium!" said Sherman. "I never thought of that. We're reducing matter pretty much to its lowest terms, and it's all a good deal alike on that scale—vibrations that may be electricity, magnetism, light or matter. Of course, when we let go that shot there was enough radiation to be picked up on Mars. I'll have to figure out a way to get around that. Those Lassans are no bums as electricians and after we've been at them once or twice, they'll be able to pick up our radiation whenever we're coming and duck us."
"There's another thing," said Ben. "I thought theMonitorvibrated a good deal when you let that shot go."
"It did. We'll have to get more rigidity or we'll be shaking ourselves to pieces every time we shoot. But this, as I said, is an experimental ship. What we've got to do now is turn in and build a real one, with heavy armor and a lot of new tricks."
"How are you going to know what kind of armor to put on her?"
"That's easy. Steel will keep out any kind of material projectiles they're likely to have, if it's thick enough. It won't keep out the light-ray, but we'll put on a thin lead plating to take care of that, just in case, though I don't think they're likely to try it after the one failure.
"Then inside the steel armor, we'll put a vacuum chamber. That will stop anything but light and maybe cosmic radiation, and I don't think they're up to that, although we'll get a little of the effect through the struts that support the outer wall of the chamber. What I would like though, is a couple of these Lassan thought-helmets. Not that you people are slow on the uptake, but we'd be a lot faster if we had them, and we're going to need all the speed we can get."
They were crossing the flying field as they spoke, making for headquarters, where Sherman presently laid out the design for the secondMonitor, embodying the improvements he had mentioned. The engineer who looked it over smiled doubtfully.
"I don't think we can give this to you in less than three or four weeks," he said. "It will take a lot of time to cast that armor you want and to build the vacuum chamber. I assume your own workmen are going to make the internal fixtures."
"Correct from the word go," Sherman told him. "But you better have it before three or four weeks are up. Ben, what do you say we run over to the lab and see if we can dig up something new."
It was two days later when they stood at headquarters on the flying field again. TheMonitorhad made three more trips, on one of them, flying over the Lassan city without seeing anything more important than the Australian signal station perched on a nearby hill. Meanwhile the army of the federated governments had pushed out its tentacles, searching the barren waste that had been the most fruitful country in the world. East, west, south and north the report was the same; no sign of the Lassans or any other living thing.
"I could wish," said Gloria, "that those lads would stick their noses out. I'd like to try theMonitoron them."
"You'll get all you want of that," said Ben a trifle grimly. "I'm glad they're giving us this much of a break. It lets us get things organized. Sherman is monkeying with a light-power motor now. If he catches it, our troubles will be over."
"Wait a minute," called an officer at a desk, as a telegraph key began tapping. "This looks like something." He translated the dots and dashes for them. "Lassan—city—door—opening.... It's from the signal station on that mountain right over it.... Big—ball—coming out—will—will—what's this? The message seems to end." He depressed the key vigorously and then waited. It remained silent.
"Oh, boy," said Sherman, "there she goes! They got that signal station, I'll bet a dollar to a ton of Lassan radiation."
The officer was hammering the key again. "We're sending out airplane scouts now," he said. "Too bad about the signal station, but that's war!"
"Come on, gang," said Ben. "Let's get out to the flying field. Looks like we're going to be in demand."
In a car borrowed from the headquarters staff they raced out to the field where theMonitorstood, ready on its ramp for any emergency. Just as they arrived an airplane became visible, approaching from the north. It circled the field almost as though the pilot were afraid to land, then dipped and came to a slow and hesitating stop. The onlookers noticed that its guy wires were sagging, its wheels uneven; it looked like a wreck of a machine which had not been flown for ten years, after it had lain in some hangar where it received no attention at all.
As they ran across the field toward it, the pilot climbed slowly out. They noticed that his face was pale and horror-struck, his limbs shaking.
"All gone," he cried to the oncoming group.
"What? Who? What's the matter?"
"Everything. Guns. Tanks. Airplanes. The big ball's got 'em. Almost got—" and he collapsed in Ben's arms in a dead faint.
"Here," said Ben, handing the unconscious aviator to one of the Australian officers. "Come on. There's something doing up there. Big balls, eh? Well, we'll make footballs of 'em. That chap looks as though he'd been through a milling machine, though. The Lassans certainly must have something good."
With a shattering crash as Murray Lee gave her all the acceleration she would take, theMonitorleft the ramp, soared once or twice to gain altitude, and headed north amid a chorus of explosions. In less than ten minutes the thickly-settled districts of northern New Jersey were flowing past beneath them.
"Wish we had some radio in this bus," remarked Ben Ruby. "We could keep in touch with what's going on."
"It would be convenient," said Sherman, "but you can't have everything. The Lassans aren't going to wait for us to work out all our problems.... Look—what's that over there?"
At nearly the same level as themselves and directly over the city of Newark a huge globular object, not unlike an enormous green cantaloupe, appeared to float in the air. From its under side the thin blue beam of some kind of ray reached to the ground. From the face turned diagonally away from them a paler, wider beam, yellowish in color, reached down toward the buildings of the city. And where it fell on them, they collapsed into shattering ruin; roof piled on walls, chimneys tumbled to the ground. There was no flame, no smoke, no sound—just that sinister monster moving slowly along, demolishing the city of Newark almost as though it were by an effort of thought.
"Hold tight, everybody," cried Sherman. "Going up."
TheMonitorslanted skyward. Through the heavy quartz of her windows they could see a battery of field guns, cleverly concealed behind some trees in the outskirts of the city, open fire. At the first bursts the monster globe swung slowly round, the pale yellow ray cutting a swath of destruction as it moved. The shells of the second burst struck all around and on it. "Oh, good shooting," said Gloria, but even as she spoke the yellow ray bore down like a fate and the guns became silent.
"What have they got?" she shouted between the bursts of theMonitor'srocket motor.
"Don't know," replied Sherman, "but it's good. Ready? Here goes. Cut off, Murray."
From an altitude of 15,000 feet theMonitorswept down in a long curve. As she dived Gloria swung the searchlight beam toward the green globe.
"Go!" shouted Sherman, and Ben threw the switch. There was a terrific explosion, theMonitorpitched wildly, then, under control swung round and began to climb again. Through the thinning cloud of yellow smoke, they could see a long black scar across the globe's top, with lines running out from it, like the wrinkles on an old, old face.
"Damn!" said Sherman. "Only nicked him. They must have something good in the line of armor on that thing. Look how it stood up. Watch it, everybody, we're going to go again, Gloria!"
Again the searchlight beam swung out and down, sought the green monster. But this time the Lassan globe acted more quickly. The yellow ray lifted, probed for them, caught them in its beam. Instantly, the occupants of theMonitorfelt a racking pain in every joint; the camera-boxes of the gravity-beam trembled in their racks, the windows, set in solid steel though they were, shook in their frames, the whole body of the rocket-ship seemed about to fall apart.
Desperately Sherman strove with the controls; dived, dodged, then finally, with a raised hand to warn the rest, side-slipped and tumbled toward the earth, pulling out in a swinging curve with all power on—a curve that carried them a good ten miles away before the yellow ray could find them.
"Boy!" said Murray Lee, feeling of himself. "I feel as though every joint in my body were loose. What was that, anyway?"
"Infra-sound," replied Sherman. "You can't hear it, but it gets you just the same. Like a violinist and a glass. He can break it if he hits the right note. I told you those babies would get something hot. They must have found a way to turn that pure light of theirs into pure sound and vibrate it on every note of the scale all at once, beside a lot the scale never heard of. Well, now we know."
"And so do they," said Ben. "That bozo isn't going to hang around and take another chance on getting mashed with our gravity beam. Even if we did only tip him, I'll bet we hurt him plenty."
"All I've got to say," replied Sherman, "is that I'm glad we're made of metal instead of flesh and blood. If that infra-sound ray had hit us before, we'd be mashed potatoes in that field down there. No wonder the signal station went out so quick."
"Do we go back and take another whack at them?" asked Murray Lee.
"I don't like to do it with this ship," Sherman replied. "If we had theMonitor IIit would be easy. With that extra vacuum chamber around her, she'll take quite a lot of that infra-sound racket. Vacuum doesn't conduct sound you know, though we'd get some of it through the struts. But this one—. Still I suppose we'll have to show them we mean business."
TheMonitorturned, pointed her lean prow back toward Newark, and bore down. In their flight from the infra-sound ray the Americans had dived behind a fluffy mass of low-hanging cloud; now they emerged from it, they could see the huge green ball, far up the river, retreating at its best speed.
"Aha," Sherman said. "He doesn't like gravity beams on the coco. Well, come on, giddyap horsey. Give her the gun, Murray."
Under the tremendous urge of the gravity-beam explosions at her tail, theMonitorshot skyward, leaving a trail of orange puffs in her wake as the beam decomposed the air where it struck it. Sherman lifted her behind the clouds, held the course for a moment, called "Ready, Gloria?" and then dropped.
Like a swooping hawk, theMonitorplunged from her hiding place. Sherman had guessed aright. The green ball was not five miles ahead of them, swinging over the summits of the Catskills to reach its home. As they plunged down the yellow ray came on, stabbed quickly, once, twice, thrice—caught them for a brief second of agonizing vibration, then lost them again as Sherman twisted theMonitorround. Then Gloria's beam struck the huge globule fair and square, Ben Ruby threw the switch, and a terrific burst of orange flame swallowed the whole center of the Lassan monster.
Prepared though they were for the shock, the force of the explosion threw the ship out of control. It gyrated frantically, spinning up, down and sidewise, as Sherman worked the stick. The Catskills reared up at them; shot past in a whirl of greenery; then with a splash they struck the surface of the Hudson.
Fortunately, theMonitor'swings were extended, and took up most of the shock at the cost of being shattered against her sides. Through the beam-hole at the stern the water began to flow into the interior of the ship. "Give her the gun!" called Sherman frantically, working his useless controls. There was a report, a shock, a vivid cloud of steam, and dripping and coughing like a child that has swallowed water in haste, theMonitorrose from the stream, her broken wings trailing behind her.
"I don't know—whether—I can fly—this crate or not," said Sherman, trying to make what was left of the controls work. "Shoot, Murray—if we put on enough power—we won't have to soar." There was a renewed roar of explosions from theMonitor. Desperately, swinging in a wide curve that carried her miles out of her way, she turned her nose southwards.
"Make Philly," cried Sherman cryptically, above the sound of the explosions that were driving their craft through the air at over six hundred miles an hour. Almost as he said it, they saw the airport beneath them. TheMonitorswerved erratically; the explosions ceased; she dived, plunged and slithered to a racking stop across the foreshore of the seaplane port, ending up with a crash against a float, and pitched all four occupants from their seats onto the floor.
"Well, that's one for you and one for me," said Sherman as he surveyed the wreckage ruefully. "We used up that green ball all right, but the oldMonitorwill never pop another one. Did anyone notice whether there were any pieces left, by the way?"
"I did," said Gloria. "As we came up out of the water I could see a few hunks lying around on the hill."
"Mmm," remarked Sherman, "they must be built pretty solid. Wish I knew what was in them; that's one thing I never did get through that thought-helmet. Probably something they just figured out. You gave her all the power we had, didn't you?"
"There's something else I'd like to know," said Ben. "And that's whether they had time to warn the rest of the Lassans what they were up against. If they did, we stand a chance. The way I have these guys figured is that they're good, but they have a yellow streak, or maybe they're just lazy, and they don't like to fight unless they're sure of winning. If I'm right we'll have time to getMonitor IIinto commission and before they come out again, we'll be ready for them. If I'm wrong we might as well find a nice hole somewhere and pull it in after us."
"Yes, and on the other hand, if they did have time to warn them, they'll sit down and dope out some new trick. Though I have a hunch they won't find an answer to that gravity-beam so easily. There isn't any that I know of."
"Well, anyway," said Murray Lee, "nothing to do till tomorrow. What are you two rummies up to now?"
"Run up and push them along onMonitor IIif we can," replied Ben. "I think I'll round up the rest of the mechanical Americans and put you all to work on it. We can work day and night and get it done a lot quicker."
"Me," said Sherman, "I'm going to figure out some way to install radio on that new bus or bust a button. That's one thing we ought not to do without. If we'd known the position of that green lemon before we saw it, we could have dived out of the clouds on it and made it the first shot before we got all racked up with that yellow ray."
The little group separated, going about their several tasks. From whatever cause, Ben proved to be right about the Lassan green spheres. After that one brief incursion, in which they had wrecked the greater part of Newark and most of the artillery the Australians had established to bear on the door of the Lassan city, they seemed to have returned to their underground home, realizing that the earth-men still had weapons the equal of anything the creatures of Rigel could produce.
For a whole week there was no sign of them. Meanwhile, the federated army dug itself in and prepared for the attack that was now believed certain. The success of the firstMonitorhad been great enough, it was decided to warrant the construction of more than one of the second edition. General Grierson wished to turn the whole resource of the Allied armies to building an enormous number, but under Ben's persuasion he consented to concentrate on only five.
For, as Ben pointed out to the general, the training of flesh and blood men for these craft would be labor lost.
"They couldn't stand the acceleration that will be necessary, for one thing. WithMonitor IIwe expect to be able to work up swiftly to over a thousand miles an hour, and the most acceleration a flesh and blood man can stand won't give us that speed quickly enough. Of course, we could make 'em so they worked up speed slowly, but then they wouldn't be able to cut down fast enough to maneuver. And for another thing this infra-sound ray the Lassans project would kill a flesh-and-blood man the first time it hit him. What we need for this kind of war, is supermen in the physical sense. I don't want to make any such snooty statement as that Americans are better than other people, but we happen to be the only ones who have undergone this mechanical operation and we're the only people in the world who can stand the gaff. You'll just have to let us make out the best we can. In fact, it might be better for you to re-embark the army and leave us to fight it out all alone. The more women we have here, the more we'll have to protect."
The general had been forced to agree to the first part of this statement, but he gallantly refused to abandon the Americans, though he did send away men, troops and guns which had become useless in this new brand of warfare. But he insisted on retaining a force to run the factories that supplied the Americans with their materials and on personally remaining with it.
Even as it stood, there were only fourteen of the mechanical Americans remaining—enough to man three of the Monitors.
But one day, asMonitor II, shining with newness, stood on her ramp having the searchlights installed, Herbert Sherman came dashing across the flying field, waving a sheet of paper.
"I've got it," he cried, "I've got it! I knew I got something from those Lassans about electricity that I hadn't known before, and now I know what it is. Look!"
"Radio?" queried Ben.
"No, read it," said Sherman. "Radio's out. But this is a thousand times better."
He extended the sheet to Ben, who examined the maze of figures gravely for a moment.
"Now suppose you interpret," he said. "I can't read Chinese."
"Sap. This is the formula for the electrical device I was talking about."
"Yeh. Well, go on, spill it."
"Well, I suppose I'll have to explain so even your limited intelligence will grasp the point.... In our black box, we've been breaking up the atoms of lead into positive and negative charges. We've been using the positive, and then just turning the negative loose. This thing will make use of both, and give us a swell new weapon all at once.
"Look—the negative charges will do for our gravity beam just as well as the positive. They will create an excess of negative electrons instead of an excess of positive protons in the object we hit, and cause atomic disintegration. It's a gravity process just the same, but a different one. Now that gives us something else to do with the positives.
"You know what a Leyden jar is? One of those things you charge with electricity, then you touch the tip, and bang, you get a shock. Well, this arrangement will make a super-Leyden jar of theMonitor. Every time she fires the gravity-beam, the positive charges will be put into her hull, and she'll soon be able to load up with a charge that will knock your eye out when it's let loose."
"How's that? I know the outside of theMonitoris covered with lead and so is the outside of a Leyden jar, but what's the connection?"
"Well, it's this way. When you load up a Leyden jar the charge is not located in the plating, but in the glass. Now theMonitorhas a lot of steel, which will take up the charge just as well as glass. As soon as she fires the gravity-beam, these filaments will load her up with the left-over positives till she grunts. See?"
"And since the earth is building up a lot of negative potential all the time, all you have to do is get your bird between you and the earth and then let go at him?"
"That's the idea. It'll make an enormous spark-gap, and whatever is between us and the earth will get the spark. Sock them with a flash of artificial lightning. We'll use the light-beam as a conductor just as with the gravity-beam."
"Sounds good, but I want to see the wheels go round. How much of a potential do you think you can build up in theMonitor?"
"Well, let's see. We've got two thicknesses of nine-inch steel ... volts to a cubic inch ... by cubic inches.... Holy smoke, look how this figures out—over eleven million volts! That's theory, of course. There'll be some leakage in practice and we won't have time to build up that much negative potential every time we shoot, but if we only do half that well, we'll have a pretty thorough-going charge of lightning ... Peterson, come over here. I want you to make some changes on this barge."
Monitor IIstood on the ramp that had once held her elder sister, her outer coating of lead glimmering dully in the morning sun. Here and there, along her shining sides, were placed the windows through which her crew would watch the progress of the battle. Her prow was occupied by the same type of searchlight the earlierMonitorhad borne. But this time the searchlight was surrounded by a hedge of shining silver points—the discharge mechanism for the lightning flash. At the stern, instead of the opening running right through into the ship, was a tight bulkhead, with the connections for the gravity-beam rocket-mechanism leading through it. As Sherman had pointed out, "If this lightning is going to do us any good, we've got to get above our opponent, and those Lassans have built machines that made interplanetary voyages. We've got to make this boat air-tight so that we can go right after them as far as Rigel if necessary."
It had been decided, in view of the other monitors that were building, to make the trial trip of the second rocket-cruiser also a training voyage, with Beeville and Yoshio replacing Murray Lee and Gloria in her crew. They climbed in; the spectators stood back, and with a thunderous rush of explosions and a cloud of yellow gas, the secondMonitorplunged into the blue.
"Where shall we go?" asked Sherman, as the ship swooped over the plains of New Jersey.
"How much speed is she making?" asked Ben Ruby.
"I don't know exactly. We didn't have time to invent and install a reliable speed gauge. But—" he glanced at the map before him, then down through the windows at the surrounding country. "I should say not far short of eight hundred an hour. That improved box sure steps up the speed. I'm not giving her all she'll stand, even yet."
"If you've got that much speed, why don't you visit Chicago?" asked Beeville. "The Australians have only pushed out as far as Ohio and there may be some people there."
"Bright thought," remarked Sherman, swinging the prow of the vessel westward. "No telling what we'll find, but it's worth a look, anyway."
For some time there was silence in the cabin as the rocket-ship, with alternate roar and swoop, pushed along. Yoshio was the first to speak:
"Ah, gentlemen," he remarked, "I observe beneath window trace of city of beer, formerly Cincinnati."
"Sure enough," said Ben, peering down. "There doesn't seem to be much beer there now, though."
The white city of the Ohio vanished beneath them, silent and deserted, no sign of motion in its dead streets.
"You know," said Sherman, "sometimes when I see these cities and think of all the Lassans have wrecked, it gives me an ache. I think I'd do almost anything to knock them out. What right did they have to come to this country or this earth, anyway? We were letting them alone."
"Same right wolf obtains when hungry," said Yoshio. "Wolf is larger than rabbit—end of rabbit."
"Correct," agreed Beeville. "They were the strongest. It's a case of hit or be hit in this universe. Our only out is to give them better than they give us."
"Oh, I don't know," said Ben Ruby, "it may be a good thing for the old world at that. You never heard of all the governments of the world cooperating before as they are now did you? There are still people alive you know. Civilization hasn't been killed off by a long shot. And the lousy blue coloring that affected all the people who didn't get metallized isn't going to be permanent. The babies that are being born there now are normal, I hear. In a few generations the earth will be back to where it was, except for us. I don't know of any way to reverse this metal evolution."
"Neither do I," said Beeville, "unless we can get another dose of the 'substance of life' as the Lassans call it, and we won't get that unless they decide to leave the earth in a hurry."
"Look," said Sherman, "there's Chicago now. But what's that? No, there, along the lake front."
Following the direction of his pointing finger they saw something moving vaguely along Lake Shore Boulevard; something that might be a car—or a man!
"Let's go down and see," offered Ben.
"O. K. chief, but we've got to pick a good landing place for this tub. I don't want to get her marooned in Chicago."
The explosions were cut off, the wings extended, and Sherman spiralled carefully downward to the spot where they had seen the moving object. With the nicety of a magician, he brought the ship to a gliding stop along the park grass, and followed by the rest, Ben Ruby leaped out. The edge of the drive was a few yards away. As they emerged from the ship no one was visible, but as they walked across the grass, a figure, metallic like themselves, and with a gun in one hand, stepped from behind a tree.
"Stand back!" it warned suspiciously. "Who are you and what do you want?"
"Conversation with sweet-looking gentleman," said Yoshio politely, with a bow.
"Why, we're members of the American air force," said Ben, "cooperating with the federated armies against the Lassans, and we were on an exploring expedition to see if we could find any more Americans."
"Oh," said the figure, with evident relief. "All right, then. Come on out, boys."
From behind other trees in the little park, a group of metallic figures, all armed, rose into sight.
"My name's Ben Ruby," said Ben, extending his hand, "at present General commanding what there is of the American army."
"Mine's Salsinger. I suppose you could call me Mayor of Chicago since those birds got Lindstrom. So you're fighting the Lassans, eh? Good. We'd like to take a few pokes at them ourselves, but that light-ray they have is too much for us. All we can do is pot the birds."
"Oh," said Ben, "we've got that beat and a lot of other stuff, too. How many of you are there?"
"Eight, including Jones, who isn't here now. Where are you from, anyway? St. Louis?"
"No, New York. Is anybody alive in St. Louis or the other western cities?"
"There was. We had one man here from St. Paul, and Gresham was from St. Louis. The birds got him and carried him off to the joint the Lassans have in the Black Hills, but he got away."
"Have they a headquarters in the Black Hills, too? They have one in the Catskills. That's where we've been fighting them."
The explanations went on. It appeared that Chicago, St. Louis and other western cities had been overwhelmed as had New York—the same rush of light from the great comet, the same unconsciousness on every side, the same awakening and final gathering together of the few individuals who had been fortunate enough to attract the attentions of the Lassans' birds and so be sent to their cities for transformation into robots.
Since that time the birds had raided Chicago and the other western cities unceasingly, and had reduced the original company of some thirty-odd to the eight individuals whom Ben had encountered. Before the birds had attacked them, however, they had managed to get a telegraph wire in operation and learn that people were alive at Los Angeles—whether mechanized or not they were uncertain, but they thought not.