January 1931 Read online

  * * * * *

  "A strange race," mused Professor Sykes. "They puzzled me. But--'less than human,' I think you said. Then how about their ships? How could they invent them?"

  "Ours--all ours! They found a world ready and waiting for them. Through the centuries they have learned to master some few of our inventions. The ships!--the ethereal vibrations! Oh, they have been cleverer than we dreamed possible."

  "Well, how can we stop them?" demanded McGuire. "We must. You have the submarines--"

  "One only," the other interrupted. "We saved that, and we brought some machinery. We have made this place habitable; we have not been idle. But there are limitations."

  "But your ray that you projected--it brought down their ship!"

  "We were protecting you, and we protect ourselves; that is enough. There is One will deliver us in His own good time; we may not go forth and slaughter."

  There was a note of resignation and patience in the voice that filled McGuire with hopeless forebodings. Plainly this was not an aggressive race. They had evolved beyond the stage of wanton slaughter, and, even now, they waited patiently for the day when some greater force should come to their aid.

  The man beside them spoke quickly. "One moment--you will pardon me--someone is calling--" He listened intently to some soundless call, and he sent a silent message in reply.

  "I have instructed them," he said. "Come and you shall see how impregnable is our position. The red ones have resented our destruction of their ship."

  The face of the girl, Althora, was perturbed. "More killings?" she asked.

  "Only as they force themselves to their own death," her brother told her. "Be not disturbed."

  * * * * *

  The throng in the vast space drew apart as the figure of their leader strode quickly through with the two men following close. There were many rooms and passages; the men had glimpses of living quarters, of places where machinery made soft whirring sounds; more sights than their eyes could see or their minds comprehend. They came at last to an open chamber.

  The men looked up to see above them a tremendous inverted-cone, and there was the gold of cloudland glowing through an opening at the top. It was the inside of a volcano where they stood, and McGuire remembered the island and its volcanic peak where the ship had swerved aside. He felt that he knew now where they were.

  Above them, a flash of light marked the passage of a ship over the crater's mouth, and he realized that the ships of the reds were not avoiding the island now. Did it mean an attack? And how could these new friends meet it?

  Before them on the level volcanic floor were great machines that came suddenly to life, and their roar rose to a thunder of violence, while, in the center, a cluster of electric sparks like whirling stars formed a cloud of blue fire. It grew, and its hissing, crackling length reached upward to a fine-drawn point that touched the opening above.

  "Follow!" commanded their leader and went rapidly before them where a passage wound and twisted to bring them at last to the light of day.

  The flame of the golden clouds was above them in the midday sky, and beneath it were scores of ships that swept in formations through the air.

  "Attacking?" asked the lieutenant with ill-concealed excitement.

  "I fear so. They tried to gas us some centuries ago; it may be they have forgotten what we taught them then."

  * * * * *

  One squadron came downward and swept with inconceivable speed over a portion of the island that stretched below. The men were a short distance up on the mountain's side, and the scene that lay before them was crystal clear. There were billowing clouds of gas that spread over the land where the ships had passed. Other ships followed; they would blanket the island in gas.

  The man beside them gave a sigh of regret. "They have struck the first blow," he said. He stood silent with half-closed eyes; then: "I have ordered resistance." And there was genuine sorrow and regret in his eyes as he looked toward the mountain top.

  McGuire's eyes followed the other's gaze to find nothing at first save the volcanic peak in hard outline upon the background of gold; then only a shimmer as of heat about the lofty cone. The air above him quivered, formed to ripples that spread in great circles where the enemy ships were flashing away.

  Swifter than swift aircraft, with a speed that shattered space, they reached out and touched--and the ships, at that touch, fell helplessly down from the heights. They turned awkwardly as they fell or dropped like huge pointed projectiles. And the waters below took them silently and buried in their depths all trace of what an instant sooner had been an argosy of the air.

  The ripples ceased, again the air was clear and untroubled, but beneath the golden clouds was no single sign of life.

  * * * * *

  The flyer's breathless suspense ended in an explosive gasp. "What a washout!" he exclaimed, and again he thought only of this as a weapon to be used for his own ends. "Can we use that on their fleets?" he asked. "Why, man--they will never conquer the earth; they will never even make a start."

  The tall figure of Djorn turned and looked at him. "The lust to kill!" he said sadly. "You still have it--though you are fighting for your own, which is some excuse.

  "No, this will not destroy their fleets, for their fleets will not come here to be destroyed. It will be many centuries before ever again the aircraft of the reds dare venture near."

  "We will build another one and take it where they are--" The voice of the fighting man was vibrant with sudden hope.

  "We were two hundred years building and perfecting this," the other told him. "Can you wait that long?"

  And Lieutenant McGuire, as he followed dejectedly behind the leader, heard nothing of Professor Sykes' eager questions as to how this miracle was done.

  "Can you wait that long?" this man, Djorn, had asked. And the flyer saw plainly the answer that spelled death and destruction to the world.

  CHAPTER XIV

  The mountains of Nevada are not noted for their safe and easy landing places. But the motor of the plane that Captain Blake was piloting roared smoothly in the cool air while the man's eyes went searching, searching, for something, and he hardly knew what that something might be.

  He went over again, as he had done a score of times, the remarks of Lieutenant McGuire. Mac had laughed that day when he told Blake of his experience.

  "I was flying that transport," he had said, "and, boy! when one motor began to throw oil I knew I was out of luck. Nothing but rocky peaks and valleys full of trees as thick and as pointed as a porcupine's quills. Flying pretty high to maintain altitude with one motor out, so I just naturally had to find a place to set her down. I found it, too, though it seemed too good to be true off in that wilderness.

  "A fine level spot, all smooth rock, except for a few clumps of grass, and just bumpy enough to make the landing interesting. But, say, Captain! I almost cracked up at that, I was so darn busy staring at something else.

  "Off in some trees was a dirigible--Sure; go ahead and laugh; I didn't believe it either, and I was looking at it. But there had been a whale of a storm through there the day before, and it had knocked over some trees that had been screening the thing, and there it was!

  "Well, I came to in time to pull up her nose and miss a rock or two, and then I started pronto for that valley of trees and the thing that was buried among them."

  * * * * *

  Captain Blake recalled the conversation word for word, though he had treated it jokingly at the time. McGuire had found the ship and a man--a half-crazed nut, so it seemed--living there all alone. And he wasn't a bit keen about Mac's learning of the ship. But leave it to Mac to get the facts--or what the old bird claimed were facts.

  There was the body of a youngster there, a man of about Mac's age. He had fallen and been killed the day before, and the old man was half crazy with grief. Mac had dug a grave and helped bury the body, and after that the old fellow's story had come out.

  He had been to the moon, he said. And thi
s was a space ship. Wouldn't tell how it operated, and shut up like a clam when Mac asked if he had gone alone. The young chap had gone with him, it seemed, and the man wouldn't talk--just sat and stared out at the yellow mound where the youngster was buried.

  Mac had told Blake how he argued with the man to prove up on his claims and make a fortune for himself. But no--fortunes didn't interest him. And there were some this-and-that and be-damned-to-'em people who would never get this invention--the dirty, thieving rats!

  And Mac, while he laughed, had seemed half to believe it. Said the old cuss was so sincere, and he had nothing to sell. And--there was the ship! It never got there without being flown in, that was a cinch. And there wasn't a propellor on it nor a place for one--just open ports where a blast came out, or so the inventor said.

  Captain Blake swung his ship on another slanting line and continued to comb the country for such marks as McGuire had seen. And one moment he told himself he was a fool to be on any such hunt, while the next thought would remind him that Mac had believed. And Mac had a level head, and he had radioed from Venus!

  There was the thing that made anything seem possible. Mac had got a message through, across that space, and the enemy had ships that could do it. Why not this one?

  And always his eyes were searching, searching, for a level rocky expanse and a tree-filled valley beyond, with something, it might be, shining there, unless the inventor had camouflaged it more carefully now.

  * * * * *

  It was later on the same day when Captain Blake's blocky figure climbed over the side of the cockpit. Tired? Yes! But who could think of cramped limbs and weary muscles when his plane was resting on a broad, level expanse of rock in the high Sierras and a sharp-cut valley showed thick with pines beyond. He could see the corner only of a rough log shack that protruded.

  Blake scrambled over a natural rampart of broken stone and went swiftly toward the cabin. But he stopped abruptly at the sound of a harsh voice.

  "Stop where you are," the voice ordered, "and stick up your hands! Then turn around and get back as fast as you can to that plane of yours." There was a glint of sunlight on a rifle barrel in the window of the cabin.

  Captain Blake stopped, but he did not turn. "Are you Mr. Winslow?" he asked.

  "That's nothing to you! Get out! Quick!"

  Blake was thinking fast. Here was the man, without doubt--and he was hostile as an Apache; the man behind that harsh voice meant business. How could he reach him? The inspiration came at once. McGuire was the key.

  "If you're Winslow," he called in a steady voice, "you don't want me to go away; you want to talk with me. There's a young friend of yours in a bad jam. You are the only one who can help."

  "I haven't any friends," said the rasping voice: "I don't want any! Get out!"

  "You had one," said the captain, "whether you wanted him or not. He believed in you--like the other young chap who went with you to the moon."

  * * * * *

  There was an audible gasp of dismay from the window beyond, and the barrel of the rifle made trembling flickerings in the sun.

  "You mean the flyer?" asked the voice, and it seemed to have lost its harsher note. "The pleasant young fellow?"

  "I mean McGuire, who helped give decent burial to your friend. And now he has been carried off--out into space--and you can help him. If you've a spark of decency in you, you will hear what I have to say."

  The rifle vanished within the cabin; a door opened to frame a picture of a tall man. He was stooped; the years, or solitude, perhaps, had borne heavily upon him; his face was a mat of gray beard that was a continuation of the unkempt hair above. The rifle was still in his hand.

  But he motioned to the waiting man, and "Come in!" he commanded. "I'll soon know if you're telling the truth. God help you if you're not.... Come in."

  An hour was needed while the bearded man learned the truth. And Blake, too, picked up some facts. He learned to his great surprise that he was talking with an educated man, one who had spent a lifetime in scientific pursuits. And now, as the figure before him seemed more the scientist and less the crazed fabricator of wild fancies, the truth of his claims seemed not so remote.

  Half demented now, beyond a doubt! A lifetime of disappointments and one invention after another stolen from him by those who knew more of law than of science. And now he held fortune in the secret of his ship--a secret which he swore should never be given to the world.

  "Damn the world!" he snarled. "Did the world ever give anything to me? And what would they do with this? They would prostitute it to their own selfish ends; it would be just one more means to conquer and kill; and the capitalists would have it in their own dirty hands so that new lines of transportation beyond anything they dared dream would be theirs to exploit."

  * * * * *

  Blake, remembering the history of a commercial age, found no ready reply to that. But he told the man of McGuire and the things that had made him captive; he related what he, himself, had seen in the dark night on Mount Lawson, and he told of the fragmentary message that showed McGuire was still alive.

  "There's only one way to save him," he urged. "If your ship is what you claim it is--and I believe you one hundred per cent--it is all that can save him from what will undoubtedly be a horrible death. Those things were monsters--inhuman!--and they have bombarded the earth. They will come back in less than a year and a half to destroy us."

  Captain Blake would have said he was no debater, but the argument and persuasion that he used that night would have done credit to a Socrates. His opponent was difficult to convince, and not till the next day did the inventor show Blake his ship.

  "Small," he said as he led the flyer toward it. "Designed just for the moon trip, and I had meant to go alone. But it served; it took us there and back again."

  He threw open a door in the side of the metal cylinder. Blake stood back for only a moment to size up the machine, to observe its smooth duralumin shell and the rounded ends where portholes opened for the expelling of its driving blast. The door opening showed a thick wall that gave insulation. Blake followed the inventor to the interior of the ship.

  * * * * *

  The man had seen Winslow examining the thick walls. "It's cold out there, you know," he said, and smiled in recollection, "but the generator kept us warm." He pointed to a simple cylindrical casting aft of the ship's center part. It was massive, and braced to the framework of the ship to distribute a thrust that Blake knew must be tremendous. Heavy conduits took the blast that it produced and poured it from ports at bow and stern. There were other outlets, too, above and below and on the sides, and electric controls that were manipulated from a central board.

  "You've got a ship," Blake admitted, "and it's a beauty. I know construction, and you've got it here. But what is the power? How do you drive it? What throws it out through space?"

  "Aside from one other, you will be the only man ever to know." The bearded man was quiet now and earnest. The wild light had faded from his eyes, and he pondered gravely in making the last and final decision.

  "Yes, you shall have it. It may be I have been mistaken. I have known people--some few--who were kindly and decent; I have let the others prejudice me. But there was one who was my companion--and there was McGuire, who was kind and who believed. And now you, who will give your life for a friend and to save humanity!... You shall have it. You shall have the ship! But I will not go with you. I want nothing of glory or fame, and I am too old to fight. My remaining years I choose to spend out here." He pointed where a window of heavy glass showed the outer world and a grave on a sloping hill.

  * * * * *

  "But you shall have full instructions. And, for the present, you may know that it is a continuous explosion that drives the ship. I have learned to decompose water into its components and split them into subatomic form. They reunite to give something other than matter. It is a liquid--liquid energy, though the term is inaccurate--that separates out in two forms, and a fluid ounce
of each is the product of thousands of tons of water. The potential energy is all there. A current releases it; the energy components reunite to give matter again--hydrogen and oxygen gas. Combustion adds to their volume through heat.

  "It is like firing a cannon in there,"--he pointed now to the massive generator--"a super-cannon of tremendous force and a cannon that fires continuously. The endless pressure of expansion gives the thrust that means a constant acceleration of motion out there where gravity is lost.

  "You will note," he added, "that I said 'constant acceleration.' It means building up to speeds that are enormous."

  Blake nodded in half-understanding.

  "We will want bigger ships," he mused. "They must mount guns and be heavy enough to take the recoil. This is only a sample; we must design, experiment, build them! Can it be done? ... It must be done!" he concluded and turned to the inventor.

  "We don't know much about those devils of the stars, and they may have means of attack beyond anything we can conceive, but there is just one way to learn: go up there and find out, and take a licking if we have to. Now, how about taking me up a mile or so in the air?"

  * * * * *

  The other smiled in self-deprecation. "I like a good fighter," he said; "I was never one myself. If I had been I would have accomplished more. Yes, you shall go up a mile or so in the air--and a thousand miles beyond." He turned to close the door and seal it fast.

  Beside the instrument board he seated himself, and at his touch the generator of the ship came startlingly to life. It grumbled softly at first, then the hoarse sound swelled to a thunderous roar, while the metal grating surged up irresistibly beneath the captain's feet. His weight was intolerable. He sank helplessly to the floor....

  Blake was white and shaken when he alighted from the ship an hour later, but his eyes were ablaze with excitement. He stopped to seize the tall man by the shoulders.