Turber indicated high points of the vast future-city.
Turber indicated high points of the vast future-city.
Turber indicated high points of the vast future-city.
The Turber ship circled, but the transport came steadily on. We could see its decks thronged with troops. It had been hastily armed in Great London. Its cannon answered the Turber fire. But presently it came over the city roof, and ceased its fire that the balls might not fall and do damage. It slowed into a great lazy circle, preparing to land on the Tappan stage.
The Turber pirate ship followed it. We gasped. The Turber ship plunged for the liner; it kept on coming. They collided! Alan exclaimed:
"Look at this other mirror!"
A telescopic image of the scene, greatly magnified, showed on another mirror. We saw the decks of the Turber ship. No one there! Its control room held mechanisms only! There was no living soul on this Turber ship!
A vessel, like the crude steering devices of our own time, aerially controlled! Within some instrument room in the Turber section of the city this helmsman sat. We had no such ships. There was no need for such mechanism in this age. It had been lost and forgotten now with the passing centuries. But Turber had located it and brought it here—adapted it to this world-power with which the ether was flooded and which all ships used.
We saw the collision. The great white liner turned over. The two ships, locked together with broken girders, wavered and fell. We turned away as the mirrors showed us close views of the strewn human forms on the roof-top.
That was the first of the Turber suicide ships. He had others. One more was used when the next liner appeared. After that Great London ordered the others back. We were cut off from the world.
That night of June 13, when the battle had been raging some thirty-eight hours, found Alan and me quartered for needed sleep in a building of northern Westchester. Exhausted beyond all ability to talk or even to think, we slept.
Late in the evening we awoke. The tower still had not come. The battle raged everywhere with undiminished fury. The Turberites now had more than doubled their original area. The Hoboken power-house still held out; but in all the rest of the Jersey section the enemy was in full possession. Our forces at the power-house were surrounded; they could not hold it much longer.
The harbor islands were all Turber now. And the Brooklyn and Queens sections. Lower Manhattan, without local lights, with its ventilation gone, was a tomb of black corridors and rooms strewn with the dead, while Turberites with gas masks and flash lights prowled among them.
Broadway and all to its west toward the Hudson River was taken, up nearly to the Van Cortlandt region. But we still held the mid-section, which once had been Central Park; and Harlem, with widening lines into the Bronx. Still held the vital space of the tower.
But it could not be held much longer!
CHAPTER XX
ON THE CITY ROOF
Alan and I sat, that late evening of the battle's second day, upon our bed where we had just been sleeping. The news tapes and mirrors gave us the details of what had happened while we slept. Turber was winning. There could be no doubt of that.
The sleep had refreshed us; and suddenly, as I met Alan's eyes, I realized that his thoughts were the same as mine. There must be something we could do to try and rescue Nanette. We were no longer total strangers here.
We knew the city now; and by personal contact, or by reputation, we were known to most of the commanders of the city forces.
"That fellow Van Dyne," said Alan, "the Marshal of the West Manhattan area, likes us. I was thinking—"
I interrupted: "Get him to organize a small squad. It could be done without general orders. Make a secret raid into the Turber section—try to get to the aero—"
Make a desperate play; no matter how desperate! We were all desperate. The situation was almost as bad as it could be.
Alan shook his head. "I think the more men we took, the less chance of success. There's no chance, Ed, to fight our way into the Turber city. We'll have to try to get there by our wits—just you and I. I was thinking—"
He had a plan. We discussed it; elaborated it. We called on the audiphone here by our bed for Van Dyne. He was available. Luck was with us. He was where we wanted him to be, on the roof, on patrol duty.
The least of the fighting so far had been on the city roof. The Turberites had made sorties, but often had abandoned the region they took. Van Dyne told us now:
The Hoboken roof section was mainly in Turber hands. And Brooklyn. But this central Manhattan section and all north of it we held.
Van Dyne was on the roof, over mid-lower-Manhattan.
"We want to come up and see you," said Alan.
"Where are you?"
Alan told him our location in northern Westchester. "Can you order us transportation?"
"Yes," he said. "But it's round-about. Only a few official lines running."
"I know," said Alan. "Order us a guide to get us up to you. Hurry it, please."
A guide appeared in our room in a moment. He led us out to a small rail-car. It whirled us south. Then by lift to the roof. An official transport car on a narrow-gauge roof-track was operating with emergency battery. It took us south, over the roof-top.
The roof spread like a great rolling expanse of rumpled canvas. Dark everywhere, with a few dotted lights. It never was level for very far. It rose in terraces, up and down, heaped up in peaks to cover huge, looming structures beneath. A roof, built haphazard, piecemeal, through many centuries. It rose to the right, over Hoboken, and ahead of us, over mid-Manhattan, it loomed in great terraced steps.
The open sky was over us. It seemed so strange to be out in the open air! A black night, with heavy, sullen clouds.
The roof surface was a dark metal labyrinth. Narrow metal roadways crossing it; viaducts, sometimes on stilts to strike a more level path; inclines up the terraces; footpaths and ladders. The air landing stages—all now abandoned—were up here.
There were low metal towers at intervals; observation and instrument towers; occasional low metal buildings—the meteorological station; observatories; metal posts were set at points of vantage holding the image finders for the city mirrors; and there were occasional official kiosks covering the entrances downward to the city. And an intricate system of drainage sluiceways, with heat projectors to melt the winter snows.
A maze of metal structure, this roof-top. It was all official—the public always was barred up here. Its activity was paralyzed now. The buildings were abandoned. The lights were nearly all out. It lay dark and mysterious, with only the glow of the city showing in occasional irregular patches where the roof-structure was translucent.
Our car was frequently challenged as we passed prowling patrols of the city police. Then we came to Van Dyne.
A friendly fellow. Alan, in confidence told him our plan, and he passed us. His post here was the end of our territory. Beyond it the roof was abandoned—a sort of No Man's Land, where figures prowled; but for hours now there had been no fighting.
"Good luck," Van Dyne said.
We slipped past and ran south. We followed a narrow viaduct which bent to the right to avoid the higher terraces. The roof surface was some six feet beneath it, with occasional steps leading down. It was all solid black.
We were armed with the needlelike swords; and each of us carried a small dagger. It had been our original plan to have Van Dyne secure for us two uniforms of the Turberites. There were many bodies in the city in our territory.
But it was not necessary, Van Dyne told us promptly. The roof up here had been the scene of many bloody skirmishes. We could pick for ourselves.
We went south perhaps a mile. Alert, but we encountered nothing alive. Occasionally upon the roof we saw a heap of dead. Our little viaduct in one place was blocked with bodies. Turber's rabble was always garbed in the costumes of its native Time-worlds. It seemed a conceit of his. We lifted the dead bodies here. Grisly business! We selected two of about our size. They wore the red-coated uniforms of the British army of the Revolutionary War. In the darkness on the trestle-like viaduct we changed clothes. And then we found two dark cloaks. Threw them over our heads. In the darkness we might thus pass unnoticed. But if challenged we hoped we might be thought Turberites. Our native language—with uniforms like this—would be English, which is why we selected them. We discarded our police needle-swords and carried only the daggers.
Again we started south. The roof was at a low altitude here over the Hudson River section. We passed down to where the fence of the original Turberite area ranged in an irregular line east and west across the roof.
"Think we can get through it, Ed?"
"Van Dyne said the gates were more or less abandoned—some were smashed by the fighting up here."
"Yes. But we'll be challenged."
We had expected constantly to be challenged. The metal fence loomed close before us. It seemed thirty or forty feet high. There was a gateway near by.
"Over there," whispered Alan.
We were down on the roof-structure itself now, clambering forward over its sluiceways.
"Ed!" He gripped me. In the air over us the Turber Time-aero came sailing! It was solid—not traveling in Time—merely sailing here in Space. Two or three hundred feet above us, moving slowly north!
We stared with sinking hearts. This was so wholly unexpected. The aero seemed descending, as though it might land on the roof. A moment; and then it flashed, faded into phantom. There was an instant when I thought it had gone through the roof. The wraith of it vanished.
We stood stricken. Was Turber taking Nanette into some other Time-world? Abandoning his enterprise here? It did not seem likely when he was winning.
Or was the aero going into Time to try to find our tower? Had Turber some inkling that Lea was bringing us a superweapon? Was he sending his aero to try and prevent that? If so, were he and Nanette in the aero? We had no way of knowing.
"I think we should go on," Alan whispered at last. "Nanette may be in the city. If they'll accept us as Turberites—if we can only get to her—"
We got through the gateway. A guard was there. He chanced to speak English. We flung back our cloaks.
"Special business for Dr. Turber. Good news!"
There seemed only one fellow here. Then off to one side we saw a dozen or more, seated on the roof in a glow of light, lolling about, smoking.
The fellow passed us. We went on.
The Turber roof was dim with dotted lights. But it was all in operation. Groups of soldiers at intervals; occasionally a transport car passing along on its narrow rails.
The fellow at the gate had waved vaguely toward this viaduct we now were traversing. We had followed his gesture. Our idea was to locate some Turber official whom we might fool—or force—into giving us information about Nanette.
A low metal building showed ahead of us. It was small; it seemed perhaps of only one room. An isolated, dark spread of roof was around it. This viaduct we were on led to it. The little house had open windows, low to the floor, and there was a glow of light within.
I whispered: "Some official may be on duty there. If we can rush him—make him tell us—"
A kiosk leading down into the city showed a hundred feet or so beyond the little building.
We left the viaduct. We crept forward over the dark open roof. We came to one of the open windows of the building. There must have been at that instant a dark figure lurking near us on the roof. Watching us. But we did not see it.
The window stood with its sill at our knees. We dropped low, peered in.
A single metal room with a glow of light. A metal table-block held a strange instrument of tubes and coils. Strange to me; but not to Alan. It was a Time-vision instrument! Its screen stood facing us; upon it was an image of our tower, a phantom speeding tower!
A man sat with his back to us, hunched over the instrument. It was Turber! He was alone in the room. Alan's lips went to my ear:
"I'll go first."
The Time-vision was humming. It covered the slight noise we made. We got through the window; stalked noiselessly.
With a leap we seized Turber. He seemed unarmed, he did not struggle or cry out. He was startled; but he sat back with almost instantly recovered poise.
"Well! You here?"
We stood over him. Alan gripped him. There was a moment when I thought that Alan might plunge the dagger into him and have it over.
"Alan—easy!"
Alan shook him. He did not resist. Alan gritted: "God, I ought to kill you! Where is Nanette?"
"Nanette? Nanette?"
He began to stall. It was too much for me.
I cuffed him in the face with the flat of my hand. He winced and went livid white; his eyes bored into me. But he held firm.
He said: "Why—Nanette? Take your hands off me, young fellow!"
Alan eased up. He motioned me off. "We want Nanette, understand? We're desperate, Turber. If you balk I'll stab you now and have done. Understand?"
He said: "Yes." He managed a wry smile. "If I raise my voice I can bring a dozen of my men here in a minute."
"But we'll kill you first," said Alan.
He could not doubt it. He said: "All right—then let's be quiet. I'm no more anxious to die than you are." His poise was coming back. He was gauging us; his glance seemed roving the room. "What do you want?"
"Nanette," I said. "Where is she? The truth, damn you!"
I felt he was going to say in the aero.
Instead he said: "Down in the city, not far from here."
There was a local audiphone hanging on a hook near him. Alan said: "Order her up. Be quick! Give the order and have one man only bring her up."
He moved his hand to take down the receiver. He stopped. He said: "You see, I've told you the truth. I could just as easily have said she was in my aero. Did you see my aero passing?"
"Yes," said Alan.
"I've sent it after your tower. With Bluntnose and Jonas." The Time-vision instrument was still operating; he gestured to the screen, which still showed our speeding phantom tower. The dials here were illegible to us. Turber added:
"Where has your tower been? I just picked up this image. Is your tower coming here?"
I realized he was again stalling. I said: "You take down that receiver—"
He took it down. He said: "Shall I open the circuit?"
"Yes," commanded Alan. "And speak quietly—if you say a wrong word I'll run this dagger in your throat."
This clever scoundrel! We realized afterward that he had drawn our attention to the screen and thus had turned our backs to the door of the room which he could see out of the tail of his eyes. As we bent alert while he reached for the audiphone a figure crept up behind us; launched full upon us.
We were taken wholly by surprise—knocked against the table. The woman Josefa! She had doubtless followed Turber to the roof, jealous of his every movement. He had seen her behind us in the doorway. She leaped upon us. Turber heaved upward. Alan's dagger grazed his arm.
Turber shouted. He struck with his fist at me and flung himself backward. The woman managed to cling to us both, heedless of our knives. She clung; kicked, bit and tore at us. It took a moment for us to shake her off. But in that moment Turber was near a window. He flung a heavy metal chair at us; and turned and leaped like a misshapen cat through the window. His shouts sounded outside, as he ran, giving the alarm.
We would be trapped here in another moment.
"Alan, come on! Get out of here!"
I was free of the woman. I tore her from Alan. She panted: "You let him alone! You let him alone!"
We turned and ran. Leaped into the darkness of the roof, where a turmoil of the alarm was beginning.
How we ever got back I do not know. Hunted, as two rats would have been hunted in that metal labyrinth by a pack of wolves. But we got through safely; found a broken section of the division fence. Ran northward.
The pursuit behind us presently died away. Then we came upon a city police patrol. They saw our red uniforms and very nearly killed us before we could speak. But we convinced them of our identity.
One said: "The tower came!"
It galvanized us. "The tower?"
"Came, but did not stop. Just a phantom."
What could that mean? Lea and San, passing, but not stopping!
We got transportation down into the city, avoiding the areas where the fighting was raging. An official car took us by devious route to the tower-space. The street here was heavily guarded by the city forces, but the Turberites were fighting close to the south. Only a few blocks away we could hear the sounds of the battle.
The tower had come and passed. Its marked space in the street was empty. Our guards surrounded it. We stood among them.
A phantom showed over our heads! A moving phantom of the Turber aero! It darted across the tower-space and vanished.
Now we understood! San and Lea were trying to land. Bluntnose, with the aero, was endeavoring to prevent them. He had followed the tower through Time. Two speeding phantoms! The aero could wing its way directly through the tower without contact—when they were speeding phantoms! But not if they stopped.
The tower showed again. A brief wraith of it. Just an instant; but in that instant the aero also materialized, circling, darting. Then they both were gone.
Would San dare stop? Would he risk that Bluntnose might wreck the aero and kill himself, just to wreck the tower?
Another moment. Again the phantoms showed. The aero was slightly above the tower, and to one side.
The tower did not pass. In a breath it materialized into solidity before us. My heart seemed to stop. San had dared!
The aero seemed half to turn. And then the wraith of it vanished!
Bluntnose had not dared risk it.
From the tower came Lea and San, dragging apparatus. The projector! They had been successful.
The guards in the street were shouting triumphantly. A turmoil was around us. I stood at the foot of the tower steps; I saw Lea fling herself impulsively into Alan's waiting arms.
The tower, with San, sped safely away.
But my heart was cold. Whatever the outcome here a fairyland of happiness for me was gone—the lost what-might-have-been for Nanette, and me.
CHAPTER XXI
THE EYE OF DOOM
"Why, Ed! With this thing we can rock the city—bring death—"
"Death! Yes. But, Alan—"
"Death to them all! To Turber! If we can catch his aero before he can get to it we can kill them all!"
"But, Alan!" I was trying to say. "What about Nanette?"
He echoed: "Nanette?" Here was a tangible death for her in this weapon Lea had brought. Death for Nanette as well as destruction of the Turberites which was being planned here now. We would see it; we, indeed, might very well be chosen to accomplish it. And we stared wordlessly at each other and knew that it was inevitable.
It was about 1 A.M. of the night of June 13-14, 2445 A.D. Momentous night of history! Culmination of the Battle of Great New York! We sat, Alan and I, in a corner of one of the rooms of the Hudson Machine Shops, watching Lea with the corps of engineers who had been summoned to assemble her weapon.
These electronic experts recognized it; not in its working form, but in its principle. An electronic beam, with the harmless aspect of a spreading searchlight ray. Like most scientific devices of importance, its practical working mechanism was complicated, with a basic scientific principle of the utmost simplicity. It carried—this harmless-looking beam of light—vibrations both etheric and atmospheric. They were communicable—as are all vibrations.
Harmless of aspect, this bronzed projector! I would have said, with a casual glance, that it was a searchlight of my own time. I have seen many like it. But it had a focussing grid of wires across its face instead of a lens. Wires of a metal no one could name. A focussing and firing mechanism; and insulated wires leading to a cylindrical tank, long as a man—the battery, in which was stored some unnamable electronic force.
Alan and I examined the apparatus as Lea showed how it should be assembled. Within the projector was an elaborate mechanism of tiny disks and thin metallic tongues, which in operation would whirl and vibrate. There were condensing coils; and bulbs of vacuum with laceworks of filament—lights to cast the beam. I saw that the light would pass through an intricate magnifying system of prisms—condensed finally to a focal point where a whirling mirror-disk cast it loose through the projecting grid of wires.
Tremendous latent energy in this harmless-looking white light! A cold light—with a latent power diabolic. Falling upon a distant object—touching anything of material substance—the energy of its vibrations was loosed.
"If that touches a building," Alan exclaimed, "this building, for instance—why, these walls in a moment would be trembling—quivering, shaking until presently they would fall—"
The principle was known even in my own age. This cold, white light, with its inconceivably rapid vibrations, would in a moment set up similar vibrations in anything it rested upon! Nothing of material substance could for more than a moment hold its form under the lash of such inconceivable trembling! With this beam we could rock the city—smash through its roof—bring death to every living thing upon which we could get the light!
The whole apparatus was carefully insulated. It would not operate here because of the world aerial power. The insulation was to protect it now.
It could not be operated with this insulation. If we removed it, our power would instantly destroy the filaments and coils, and in a moment or two detonate the battery. The world-power would have to be shut off during its operation.
There had been a consultation of the world governments fifteen minutes ago when in code our city government had asked that the world power be discontinued. We now had the decision. At the Trinight Hour—three hours after Midnight this night—the huge Scotland plant would go dead for sixty minutes. No more time than that could be given us. Most of the air-liners—and all the civic lighting and ventilating and traffic systems—had emergency batteries for sixty minutes. Beyond that limit the whole world would go into disaster.
Sixty minutes, beginning two hours from now! It gave plenty of time to assemble the apparatus and mount it in a swift ship. Lea was to be beside the man who would be chosen to control the projector.
Now Alan and I sat whispering, for upon us had come the realization that this would mean Nanette's death.
I said: "But Nanette—this is death for Nanette!"
"Edward!"
An audible answer! A microscopic aerial voice here in the workshop room-corner! Alan heard it also. And it came again:
"Edward!"
Hushed accents! Imperative! Vehement! Nanette's voice!
"Edward, don't move! Don't look surprised! I know you're there—you and Alan—I've heard you talking."
Tiny voice, materializing from the air! Alan murmured something, but I gripped him. We sat tense.
It came again.
"Don't show surprise! It may be that they have an image of you at some other receiver! I'm alone here now—just for this moment."
I said softly: "Shall I speak? This is Ed—can you hear me?"
"Yes, Edward. They've been listening—Jonas was in here, at an aerial, eavesdropping on you. They've lifted their barrage for this one finder. Located you—they've been listening to the men there with you—Lea's weapon."
Aerial eavesdropping! Turber was aware of our plans!
Nanette's voice added:
"Turber is off somewhere, but Jonas thinks he can locate him. I wanted you to know it. I think Turber may take us in the aero and go."
I exclaimed: "Yes, Nanette! Go!"
Alan tried to speak, but I silenced him. This at least was mine! These few last minutes—Nanette's and mine!
"Go, Nanette!"
"Jonas wants us to go now, to escape without Turber! But he does not know how to operate the aero. The Indian does—Bluntnose the Indian—but he won't go now—he wants to wait for Turber. Edward, I must talk quickly—I heard what you and Alan were saying. About me—death—but I know that, of course.
"Tell Lea I said good-by. I can hear Jonas coming back now! You must have your men stop talking there—or whisper very carefully! And—can Alan hear me? Good-by, Alan, dear."
He gulped: "Oh, Nanette, little sister—"
"And—good-by. Edward—"
I stammered: "Good-by." I choked over it.
"Good-by—Edward, I—always loved you—very much—ah, so much! And I want you to know it."
I thought: "Dear God!" I stammered: "Nanette, darling—I've always loved you—"
"He's here! Don't speak!"
I gasped hurriedly: "Get away in the aero, Nanette!"
"Edward! No more! Good-by, dear."
We waited, but there was only silence.
CHAPTER XXII
SIXTY MINUTES
"Alan, will you be all right? Can you do it?"
"Yes, I must." He set his jaw grimly. "I must."
I touched his hand, where it rested on the projector; his fingers were cold, but steady.
This forward gondola-cabin, hanging almost under the nose of the swift, small ship, was silent, with only a low thrum audible from the rear motors.
From where we sat, with Lea beside us at the projector, the wide transparent windows gave us an unobstructed view forward and down. We were rising now from the Hudson air-stage—a brief flight, and we would be over the city roof. Sixty minutes! The world-power was off now; in sixty minutes it would flash on again and our weapon would be useless. Sixty minutes! A very little time! Yet, it can be an eternity.
The officials at the Hudson shops had said to Alan and me: "You know this girl—and she knows the weapon—its operation. The Council ordered that one of you operate it, with the girl beside you."
I looked at Alan. My heart was pounding. I wanted Alan to speak, and he did not. It seemed that he never would. Then he said: "I'm older—I'll do it, if—if they think I should."
No executioner at his switch in the little room behind an electric chair of our day could ever have shuddered as Alan now must be shuddering. But he held himself firm when once we were in the ship's cabin. The controls, with a white-faced young pilot seated at them, were near us. There were several other men in the cabin, with observation instruments; and at a bank of mirrors, receivers and audiphones three operators held us in close communication with the city authorities. Our commander moved quietly about; seldom speaking; but intent upon every detail.
Sixty minutes! Five of them were already gone when—with the world-power dead at the Trinight Hour—we hastily stripped our mechanism of its insulation and rose from the landing-stage. The gigantic city loomed into the sky before us. The night was still overcast.
We climbed steeply, then levelled, and presently we were over the city roof; a thousand feet over it perhaps; and beneath us it spread in the darkness like a great rolling expanse of soiled canvas.
We had not heard Nanette's voice again. Precautions were taken against the eavesdropping. What Turber personally may have learned of our plans we never knew. Nothing probably, until near the end. He had no warning that the world-power was to be shut off. The battle everywhere in the city was undiminished in its fury. It was raging down there now. Our mirrors, here in the cabin, occasionally shadowed it, but there was no other sign.
Turber had carried our tower Space. San was gone with the tower—with orders from Lea to swing slowly past at intervals. The Turberites, finding the tower was gone, left a guard there and swept on—fighting our troops northward. The Hoboken power-house still was surrounded, but holding out. The attack there seemed momentarily to have slackened as Turber concentrated on his northern drive.
There was still no fighting on the roof. Our lines had withdrawn northward as the Turber mobs swept north through the city. Most of this roof area seemed deserted. We could make out occasionally the dark forms of the Turberites patrolling this captured area. We crossed over the Turber wall. The roof from this height was very little different of aspect.
Our projector had not yet flashed. All our lights were carefully hooded. But we thought that by now some Turber ship would have come up to assail us. There had been occasional Turber patrol ships here all day, but none were here now.
I thought that the harbor with its lacework of causeways and islands must be beneath this area of the roof. It was difficult for me to estimate. Far off, ahead to the right where the roof ended beyond Staten Island, I could see the banks of lights that marked the great Turber wall inclosing this end of his rural territory. There was no ship in sight.
I murmured: "When do we turn it on, Alan?"
"Soon. When we get near where Turber houses the aero."
"Yes, but where is that? I don't know where we are."
We had no idea where the aero was either; but our orders were to attack its usual housing place.
The pilot heard me. He said: "Approximately approaching Staten. We have little information of the Turber city. But his aero is kept some two or three miles farther ahead."
Our beam had an effective range of about fifteen hundred feet. From this present altitude we would have to direct it almost vertically downward.
Lea murmured something. We followed her gesture ahead through the observation pane into the darkness of the sky. Our pilot saw it at the same instant—a black shape looming—a Turber patrol ship rushing at us! With all my air experience, my senses reeled as we dropped. I gripped my bench. We made a forward loop—nose down.
I heard the rush of air as the Turber ship almost brushed us. We righted. The pilot muttered an oath. Somebody said: "Where did it go?" There was a flurry in the cabin.
We could see nothing in the darkness. We flew onward. Then we made out the Turber ship, not following us, but flying north. As I turned to gaze behind us, to the north on the roof-top fighting was beginning. Torchlight gleamed—waving, moving lights there.
We caught some close details on our mirrors. Our troops had come up and were assailing the Turber patrol lines. The Turberites were falling back; but beneath us, in a moment, lines of re-enforcements appeared. There were tracks here on the Turber-owned roof. We saw spots of illumination where cars were loading with fighters to be rushed north. Our image-finders showed the Turber ship. It had been rushing north—like ourselves, without lights—to meet this roof attack. A rain of missiles dropped from it.
Our commander said suddenly:
"Now, Tremont! Start here—ten degrees off the vertical, to the left about another ten. Hold the course as you have it, Pierson."
Our orders to flash the beam! Alan and I set the range-dials. Lea with nimble fingers made the last adjustments, wound the firing tensions, and then crouched on the floor by the battery to handle the gauges of its current-flow.
The projector-face swung downward through an opened aperture in the window-shield. I focused it at the agreed-upon spreading of the beam. From our instrument table some one sang out: "Eleven hundred feet altitude here, Williams. Roof ahead averages nine to eleven hundred under us—"
I made the adjustments; the beam would strike with a circle of light about a hundred feet in diameter.
Alan's voice: "All ready, Ed?"
"Yes!"
He added: "Lea?"
In the dimness of our cabin interior I saw her white arm go up in answer from where she crouched. She said: "Yes—ready."
Alan snapped on the current.
I sat back; I was limp and cold all over. There was nothing for me to do. Nothing but watch—and listen.
The light-beam grew very slowly into being. A low whirring—a trembling; it purred, this diabolic thing, like a smug cat licking its lips. Purred, and then seemed to hiss as its anger grew. Whirring, tiny vibrations of sound; they went up the scale in pitch; always soft—higher until the thing was screaming with its microscopic voice. Higher, faster until it faded away, too rapid for audibility.
But the low hiss and sputter of the current remained. And the light-beam grew. Darkness at first; then a radiance of faint dull red, streaming down from our projector; red and then up through the spectrum to violet; then white. Cold white—nothing but the mingling of all colors made too rapid for separate visibility.
A minute of this process. Our ship was hovering—horizontal propellers holding us poised. Some one said:
"His vehicle ought to be about here."
Beneath us now was the same Space which in my Time held the Turber Sanatorium! I gazed down our white, slightly spreading beam. It fell on the roof here with a hundred foot circle of white illumination. It showed a small metal house on the roof-surface, with a group of Turberites on guard along a railed trestleway near it. They had evidently been lounging about; they were on their feet now, surprised by the light.
I stared, cold with fascination. I heard Alan murmur: "God!"
The men stood with upflung hands against the dazzling light. Stood transfixed—and then tried to run. I saw one fall; another turn, waver and crumple. Others, stronger, tried to stagger—weirdly swaying with arms flinging wildly and legs bending, crumpling—they did not lie mercifully still at once, but writhed gruesomely.
The figures were strewn in a moment. Some, near the edge of the circle, got out of it and away. Confusion—horror down there. Other figures came like frightened animals running into the light; stood stricken and fell—or managed to get back.
Lea appeared beside me. She bent over Alan—showed him other adjustments. The circle of light narrowed upon the small house.
I had been aware of a sound from below.
A throbbing—a rhythmic throb. The house and all this immediate section of the roof was vibrating—trembling—shaking—
It grew louder. Like a pendulum, where at the end of each swing your finger gives it an added push, the impulse of our beam was shaking this little building—rocking this roof-segment.
A corner of the building split off and fell; a crack seemed to open in the roof; the little house broke apart and slithered through the crack. The human figures spilled down.
A jagged hole was here. The light bored down into it. A ragged broken cross-section of the great city-structure. Our glimpse went down through rending, clattering walls, falling ceilings, collapsing floors and tiers. Human figures engulfed. A turmoil, a chaos of sound and movement.
The destruction seemed to spread inward. One tier brought down another. A widening jagged wound was here in the metallic city. It extended a hundred or two hundred feet down from the roof level. But our range from this altitude could go no deeper. Was the aero down there in some fortified room underneath this tangled wreckage? Nanette, down there perhaps, still alive—
"Move us along, Pierson. Tremont, spread the beam! We'll go down to five hundred feet."
The roof broke in larger fragments as the light widened and intensified with our descent. This whole section of the city must have been quivering now; we could hear its ragged pulse, mingled with the rending of metal, the crash and crack of trembling, collapsing interior walls.
With the first breaking of the roof insulation-barrage, our mirrors began picking up interior images. I did not see them—I sat at the projector with Alan, watching the widening break in the roof as our beam bore down from this lower altitude. But I heard the comments of the men behind me in the cabin. The panic of defeat was spreading throughout the Turber-owned city. Mobs of Turberites, soon in a wild rush to come this way; against all reason, rushing in a panic of terror toward this quaking, falling area! Because the Time-aero was near here!
We realized it. But no Turber mob ever reached the vehicle. We found later that it was fortified with metallic barriers. They shut off the mob which tried for safety—barred those few who got past or around the falling area.
The panic spread up north to the battle lines. The tide of the fighting abruptly turned. The Turberite wolves, suddenly stricken with rumors of defeat, began trying to withdraw. Our troops pursued them. Soon it was a rout. I heard no orders—no talk of the taking of prisoners. Like wolves trying to run, the Turberites were hunted down.
Lea plucked at me. I turned again to look back toward Manhattan. There were torches everywhere on the roof to the north—our police troops, suddenly heartened, were surging up triumphant and sweeping the enemy back. In the glare of the lights the black Turber ship up there showed as it winged away. Escaping—and in a moment one of our ships rose up and took after it.
Some one said: "Look! The Turber Jersey landing-stage!"
Far ahead, where the city ended beyond the Staten Island section, a group of Turber ships came up. Coming to attack us! The thought flashed to me. But it was not so. Turber ships—escaping. They sped off to the south, over the Turberite rural district.
I prayed that one of them might be carrying Nanette.
Someone said: "Forty minutes; twenty left!"
Had this all been only forty minutes?
"Pierson! Lower! There it is!"
We dropped nearly down to the roof level. The roof-structure was gone now over a segment of fully a mile. The beam, with Alan oscillating it, bathed the whole shattered area in white light. Indescribable scene of ruin! A vast honeycomb of metal city, shaken into ruins as though by some persistent earthquake; girders of metal piled in a tangled mass like jackstraws. Stone and mortar; plaster; wood—all the innumerable shattered substances strewn in a wreck inconceivable. Fires were starting in a dozen places; lurid glare of red-yellow flames; black smoke rolling up.
And sounds inconceivable—a torrent of crashes—explosions—and, I think, an undertone built with the myriad screams of the dead and dying.
As we descended almost to the level of the hole where a huge slice of the roof was dangling, our light struck into an open area of the city. There was less wreckage here; we could see down to the ground level. It was not very far down—a rise of ground was here; a hill—and it seemed an open parklike space of metal pavement surrounded by high metallic barriers.
They crumbled, these barriers, within a moment as the white beam caught them. There had been a low roof over the park, but it was fallen.
The aero stood exposed, but still unharmed. It rested motionless on the pavement. Our beam touched it. Horror surged at me. I gasped: "Alan—" He swung the beam away. What he said I do not know. But he had seen it—as I saw it; the white light always showed everything with intense clear detail; the figure of Nanette standing in the aero doorway! We could even see her now, dim but distinguishable—standing there—wavering from the shock of the light as it had so briefly struck her.
"Alan—don't!" An anguished cry that sounded like my voice; and our commander's voice: "On the vehicle, Tremont! God, don't let it get away!" The walls around the park were falling. There was a mingled glare of our beam and the yellow light of the burning ruins near by. It showed a man's figure appearing in the aero doorway; he jerked Nanette backward into the interior. He stood for a moment in the doorway; Bluntnose, the Indian! He flung up his arm like a signal. And other figures showed, running forward. Turber; and Josefa. Trapped somewhere in the city and just now arriving at the waiting Time-vehicle. Turber, with his knowledge of the city labyrinth just now able to get here. His figure, and the woman who clung to him, avoided our circle of light; Alan in his confused horror had swung it farther away.
Instant impressions. A second or two while we sat cold and stricken. Our commander's voice: "Tremont! Good God, man! Is that Turber?"
The commander bent over Alan and seized the projector. The light swung to Turber and the woman. They staggered, but kept on. Then the woman fell. She lay twitching. Turber left her. He stumbled, fell; but got up. Gruesomely contorted—staggering with twitching steps. Almost at the aero's entrance he fell again. Relief surged over me. The aero, bathed in the white and yellow glare, went thin as a ghost. An apparition—with the solid broken figure of Turber lying huddled. A wraith of the vehicle. It was gone!
But only for a moment! Why, what was this? The horror surged back to me. Unimaginable horror! The aero had gone. But had gone only a moment into our future, and then had stopped. And in that moment we had caught up with it.
As we stared at the empty space, with that passing moment the Time-aero materialized again. It lay in a tangled, disintegrating heap of metal with lurid green tongues of gas-flame licking at it!
CHAPTER XXIII
UNRECORDED HISTORY
To me, the rest of those sixty minutes were a vague, drab dream of things horrible to see. Awesome—but though the rocking, shattering Turber city went down while I watched, it all seemed dreamlike. My mind was on that torn heap of wreckage which had been Turber's Time-vehicle. Nanette's body lying somewhere there.
Alan seemed dazed. A man shoved him away and took his place. He sat huddled by Lea. I sat, numbly staring. Then someone said: "Two minutes! That's enough, Grantson! Get the girl and those ancients to insulate the projector. Hurry! We won't need it any more, but no use ruining it."
The world-power was about to come on again. We hastened to insulate our projecting mechanism. The light-beam died. But its work was through. All this end of the Turber-owned city was in ruins. The black waters of what had once been New York Bay were exposed. The islands and the causeways and all the structure there was strewn and tumbled and broken. All of what had been Staten Island was wrecked. Fires and explosions everywhere, and masses of lurid smoke mounting; and all the upper air pungent with the smell of chemicals.
The gas clouds hid the Staten Island hill, with its wrecked aero.
We swung back toward Manhattan as the world-power flashed on. Our sixty minutes were over.
Aftermath of the battle; I need not detail it. To Alan and me it was all unimportant. We kept Lea close with us. Gentle little creature! Why, I suppose her ethereal beauty could not be matched in all the world. But my mind went always to Nanette.
I recall how vaguely I gazed at the mirrors as they pictured the rout and final destruction of the Turberites. The hunt for the panic-stricken mobs ceased in a few hours; those still alive were allowed to escape. I recall sitting with triumphant city officials and hearing it all discussed. The Turberites would be banished to various other localities—scattered. I heard the triumph when searching parties in the ruins found the Turber Treasure Vaults. His tremendous wealth would go to enrich the city government; to rebuild the destroyed area.
Turber and all his leaders were dead. His Empire was broken; its menace met and conquered. There was official government praise and thanks for Lea, Alan and myself. Our interest in it all was apathetic. We had lost Nanette—we found that our greatest desire was to get away from this world which had taken her from us.
Alan and I did not go with the party of searchers who brought back the bodies from the wreckage around Turber's vehicle. Nanette was not found—but they told us there were many bodies not recognizable. We did not go to see them.
A day passed—then another—and on the third a message came which took Lea and Alan and me in shuddering trembling haste to where now workmen were cleaning away the wreckage of the shattered area.
Nanette!
Three workmen had seen it happen. They were working just now, close beside the mangled pile of metal which was Turber's vehicle. From the air a few feet above their heads—the empty air—a human form came hurtling. They saw it all in an instant materialize. A shadow—a ghost—but in a second, when it struck the ground almost at their feet, it was solid. A human form. A girl—lying broken and unconscious. But still alive!
We were taken to see her in the improvised morgue and hospital near the ruins. It was Nanette. We could see that. And we looked just once, and then they led us away.
She was still alive. Oh, I thanked God for this era of progress of 2445! Five hundred years ahead of my own lifetime these surgeons and physicians who for days were working over Nanette! They said she might live. Her broken body might be restored to a semblance of itself.
Our tower with San arrived. It waited, this time.
Then, at last, they said that Nanette surely would live. They took us one day to see her. She lay so swathed in bandages that not much more than her eyes were visible. We spoke to her, just for a moment; bending low, we could hear her murmuring answers. Then Lea held her close and crooned to her, and she went back to sleep.
Another week. We saw her again; propped up for a moment in bed to receive us. The bandages were gone now from her face and head and shoulders. She sat, staring into the direction of our voices.
My poor Nanette! Her face, shriveled and scarred! She raised what seemed a twisted arm to welcome us. She tried to smile. A travesty—a mockery. I recalled her gentle beauty, her sweet womanly dignity—that little smile, so sweet, that she used to have.
I leaned over her. "Nanette, darling!"
"Edward, you came—I didn't want them to let you come—"
I said: "Lea is here. Do you recognize her voice?" I bent over her as though with a great secret. "Nanette, she and Alan love each other. We're just waiting for you to get well—it won't be so long now. Then we're going home."
"No," she murmured. "They say it won't be long now. And they say—"
"San is here with the tower. But he stays always in it. That's why he hasn't been to see you."
Oh, I had phrased it wrongly! She shuddered.
"Edward—that time, you remember—when I said good-by over the aerial? I—I thought that it was—really good-by. You understand?" She was stammering.
"I don't understand, Nanette."
"I mean—I—I told you that I loved you. That was very wrong of me. I do not—I do not love you. I n-never did."
She could not see the rush of moisture that clouded my eyes. I gulped, but I managed a laugh.
"You can't get out of it that way. Of course you love me! I'll make you!"
But she held me off. "No."
From across the room the watching nurse said: "She should be kept quiet, Mr. Williams."
I relaxed and sat back. "We'll forget it, Nanette—not talk about it now, because—"
"Yes, forget it. They say, these surgeons—"
"Nanette, listen—we're rich! You didn't know that. The city government here has awarded us—the four of us—and some for San—some of the Turber gold. In 1945, Nanette, what we four have will be accounted at nearly a million dollars."
She was trying to speak, but I talked fast against it. "You've always wanted to live in the country, haven't you? So does Lea. We're going to buy—Alan and I are—two little homes—near each other, understand—out in the country somewhere in our world of 1945. Where there will be trees and flowers—and the beautiful sky over us."
"Edward, I'd rather you went away. You understand? It's wonderful of you—your plans and all that."
"Nanette, you're talking nonsense!"
"All right. Perhaps I am. They say my hair can be made to grow long again very quickly, Edward." Her voice was trying to be jocular. "That will help, won't it? And yesterday a surgeon was here from Great London. A specialist in plastic surgery—"
The nurse called: "Better go now, Mr. Williams. Not tire her."
There were more days of waiting.
We had long since heard, through Nanette's nurse, her brief account of those last moments in Turber's aero. She had been for a time alone in the control room with Bluntnose and Jonas. They were waiting for Turber. Jonas had fallen into a panic of fear; he sat huddled and chattering, dominated by the Indian who, with stolid indifference to the city tumbling around them, was waiting for the master.
Nanette had stood in the aero doorway. Her mind was groping with a plan. Bluntnose came and pulled her back. He stood in the doorway and shouted welcome to the arriving Turber and the woman Josefa.
Nanette knew that the control room was filled with a blinding glare of light reflected from our white beam so near at hand outside. She heard Jonas scream something about the glare; she could feel it—almost see it. And she could hear, outside the aero, a pandemonium of sound.
She knew every detail of the corridor and the control room. She ran past the huddled Jonas. In a moment Turber would enter, and the aero would flash away and escape. Nanette ran for the instrument table which held the controls. She knew it was close by a window; she knew that the window was open and that it was some six or eight feet above the ground.
Desperate plan! Just a chance to wreck the aero and still to save her own life. She had no knowledge of the controls' operation. She leaped for the table. Her fingers tore at the delicate wires—her clenched little fists smashed the fragile vacuum globes.
She felt the aero sway crazily; she felt it flash as she flung her body through the window. She fell into the black emptiness of insensibility—
The aero had lurched a few seconds into the future, and with every law of Nature transgressed by its derelict flight it had stopped and crashed into ruins.
Nanette's body, hurtling through the air, must have been just within the aero's influence. Inconceivable shock to her! A fall through Space of a few feet. But the impulse from the lurching Time-vehicle had thrown her—as she fell those few feet—into the third day forward.
But it was over now. She lived; these surgeons with their science were giving her back to me.
We waited through those hours; the operation was successful. Her face was—restored.
And so I find myself now with little more to record. We are back now in the world of 1945. We went with Lea while she took leave of her grandfather; and she left him to follow her destiny with Alan. But San would not come. He took us to our own Time-world and left us. He said, forever.
No one saw us as we slipped from the tower into Central Park that last time. A few days only since we had left. It was in the night; and no one was there to see the phantom tower as it came, paused solid for a moment, and then vanished.
Or if we were seen, what of it? No one would believe it; the newspapers would not bother to print it again.
The world here moves quietly along.
Not far from New York City—now in 1945, as I write—there are two little houses, twins upon a small farm. Alan Tremont and his wife live in one of them; and the other is Nanette's home and mine. No one around here is very interested in us. Nanette says that the neighbors sometimes speculate upon Mrs. Tremont's nationality. Some of the women have called her a Scandinavian; they say she looks like one—or talks like one, I forget which. But there is a Swedish woman in the village who is convinced that Lea Tremont is a fair-haired, blue-eyed native girl of the South Sea Islands. The Swedish woman has never been to the South Sea Islands, but she is convinced of it nevertheless.
Once—only last week—Nanette found Lea dancing in the shadowed moonlight of our apple orchard. Dancing for Alan. Her robe of blue fabric—her golden hair flying. Shadow girl! Her fairy figure weaving in and out of the shadows.
But you can't explain to the farmer's wife down the road that Mrs. Tremont is a shadow girl!
THE END