"Hold them!" he yelled to Sykes at the sound of rushing feet. "Keep them off as long as you can!"
"... Prepare--for invasion. Blake, this is McGuire...." Over and over, he worked the swinging pointer into symbols that might in some way, by some fortunate chance, help that helpless people to resist the horror that lay ahead.
And while heavy bodies crashed against the door that Sykes was holding, there came from some deep-hidden well of memory an inspiration. There was a man he had once met--a man who had confided wondrous things; and now, with the knowledge of these others who had conquered space, he could believe wholly what he had laughed and joked about before. That man, too, had claimed to have travelled far from the earth; he had invented a machine; his name--
The pointer was swinging in frenzied haste to spell over and over the name of a man, and the name, too, of a forgotten place in the mountains of Nevada. It was repeating the message; then finished in one long crashing wail as a cloud of vapor shot about McGuire and his hand upon the pointer went suddenly limp.
CHAPTER XI
Captain Blake's game of solitaire had become an obsession. He drove himself to the utmost in the line of duty, and, through the day, the demands of the flying field filled his mind to forgetfulness. And for the rest, he forced his mind to concentrate upon the turn of the cards. He could not read--and he must not think!--so he sat through long evenings trying vainly to forget.
He looked up with an expressionless face as Colonel Boynton entered the room. The colonel saw the cards and nodded.
"Does that help?" he asked, and added without waiting for an answer, "I don't like cards, but I find my mathematics works well.... My old problems--I can concentrate on them, and stop this eternal, damnable thinking, thinking--"
There was something of the same look forming about the eyes of both--that look that told of men who struggled gamely under the sentence of death, refusing to think or to fear, and waiting, waiting, impotently. Blake looked at the colonel with a carefully emotionless gaze. "It's hell in the big towns, I hear."
The Colonel nodded. "Can't blame them much, if that's what appeals to them. A year and a half!--and they've got to forget it. Why not crowd all the recklessness and excesses they can into the time that is left?--poor devils! But for the most part the world is wagging along, and people are going through the familiar motions."
"Well," said Blake, "I used to wonder at times how a man might feel if he were facing execution. Now we all know. Just going dumbly along, feeling as little as we can, thinking of anything, everything--except the one thing. They've turned to using dope, a lot of them, I hear. Maybe it helps; nobody cares much. Only a year and a half."
* * * * *
He raised his face from which all expression was consciously erased. "Any possible hope?" he asked. "Or do we take it when it comes and fight with what we've got as long as we can? There was some talk in the papers of an invention--Bureau of Standards cooperating with the big General Committee to investigate. Anything come of it?"
"A thousand of them," said the colonel, "all futile. No, we can't expect much from those things. Though there's a whisper that came to me from Washington. General Clinton--you may remember him; he was here when the thing first broke--says that some scientist, a real one, not another of these half-baked geniuses, has worked out a transformation of some kind. It was too deep for me, but it is based upon changing hydrogen into helium, I think. Liberates some perfectly tremendous amount of power. The general had it all down pat--"
He stopped speaking at the change in Captain Blake's face. The careful repression of all emotions was gone; the face was suddenly alive--
"I know," he said sharply; "I remember something of the theory. There is a difference in the atoms or their protons--the liberation of an electron from each atom--matter actually transformed into energy; theoretical, what I have read. But--but--Oh my God, Boynton, do you mean that they've got it?--that it will drive us through space?"
* * * * *
The colonel drove one fist into the palm of his other hand. "Fool! Idiot!" he exclaimed, and it was evident that the epithets were intended for himself.
"I had forgotten that you had been trained along that line. The general wants a man to work with them, somewhat as a liason officer to link the army requirements closely with their developments; we are hoping to work out a space ship, of course. You are just the man; I will radio him this minute. Be ready to leave--" The slamming of the door marked a hurried exit toward the radio room.
And abruptly, stifflingly, Captain Blake dared to hope. "Scientists will come through with something, some new method of propulsion. All the world is looking to them!" His thoughts were leaping from one possibility to another. "Some miracle of power that will drive a fleet through space as they have done, to battle with the enemy on his own ground--"
Could he help? Was there one little thing that he could do to apply their knowledge to practical ends? The thought thrilled him with overpowering emotion an hour later as he felt the lift of the plane beneath him.
"Report to General Clinton," the colonel's reply had said. "Captain Blake will be assigned to special duty." He opened the throttle to his ship's best cruising speed, but his spirit was soaring ahead to urge on the swift scout ship whose wings drove steadily into the gathering dusk.
* * * * *
And then, after long hours, Washington! Brief words with many men--and discouragement! The seat of government of the United States was a city of despondent men, weary, hopeless, but fighting. There was a look of strain on every face; the eyes told a story of sleepless nights and futile thinking and planning. Blake's elation was short lived.
He was sent to New York and on into the state, where the laboratories of a great electrical company had turned their equipment from commercial purposes to those of war. Here, surely, one might find fuel to feed the dying embers of hope; the new development must give greater promise than General Clinton had intimated.
"Nothing you can do as yet," he was told, when he had stated his mission. "It is still experimental, but we have worked out the transformation on a small scale, and harnessed the power."
Captain Blake was in no mood for temporizing; he was tired with being put off. He stared belligerently at the chief of this department.
"Power--hell!" he said. "We've got power now. How will you apply it? How will we use it for travelling through space?"
The great man of science was unmoved by the outburst. "That is poppycock," he replied; "the unscientific twaddle of the sensational press. We are practical men here; we are working to give you men who do the fighting better ships and better arms. But you will use them right here on Earth."
The calm assurance of this man who spoke with a voice of such confidence and authority left the flyer speechless. His brain sent a chaos of profane and violent expletives to the lips that dared not frame them. There was no adequate reply.
* * * * *
Blake jammed his hat upon his head and walked blindly from the room. Heedless of the protests of those he jostled on the street he went raging on, but some subconscious urge directed his steps. He found himself at the railway. There was a station, and a grilled window where he was asking for a ticket back to Washington. And on the following day--
"There is nothing I can do," he told General Clinton. "It is hopeless. I ask to be relieved."
"Why?" The general snapped the question at him. What kind of man was this that Boynton had sent him?
"They are fools," said Blake bluntly, "pompous, well-meaning fools! They are planning better motors, more power"--he laughed harshly--"and they think that with them we can attack ships that are independent of the air."
"Still," asked General Clinton coldly, "for what purpose do you wish to be relieved? What do you intend to do?"
"Return to the field," said Captain Blake, "to work, and put my planes and personnel in the best possible condition; then, when the time comes, go up and fight like hell."
An unusual phrasing of a
request when one is addressing one's commander; but the older man threw back his shoulders, that were bending under responsibilities too great for one man to bear, and took a long breath that relaxed his face and seemed to bring relief.
"You've got the right idea,"--he spoke slowly and thoughtfully--"the right philosophy. It is all we have left--to fight like hell when the time comes. Give my regards to Colonel Boynton; he sent me a good man after all."
* * * * *
Another long flight, westward this time, and, despite the failure of his hopes and of his errand, Blake was flying with a mind at peace. "It is all we have left," the general had said. Well, it was good to face facts, to admit them--and that was that! There was no use of thinking or worrying.... He lifted the ship to a higher level and glanced at his compass. There were clouds up ahead, and he drove still higher into the night, until he was above them.
And again his peace of mind was not to last.
It was night when he swung the ship over his home port and signalled for a landing. A flood of light swept out across the field to guide him down. He went directly to the colonel's quarters but found him gone.
"In the radio room, I think," an orderly told him.
Colonel Boynton was listening intently in the silent room; he scowled with annoyance at the disturbance of Blake's coming; then, seeing who it was, he motioned quickly for the captain to listen in.
"Good Lord, Blake," he told the captain in an excited whisper; "I'm glad you're here. Another ship had been sighted; she's been all over the earth; just scouting and mapping, probably. And there have been signals the same as before--the same until just now. Listen!--it's talking Morse!--it's been calling for you!"
He thrust a head set into Blake's hands, then reached for some papers. "Poor reception, but there's what we've got," he said.
* * * * *
The paper held the merest fragments of messages that the operator had deciphered. Blake examined them curiously while he listened at the silent receiver.
"Maricopa"--the message, whatever it was, was meant for them, but there were only parts of words and disjointed phrases that the man had written down--"Venus attacking Earth ... Captain Blake ... Sykes and...."
At the name of Sykes, Blake dropped the paper.
"What does this mean?" he demanded. "Sykes!--why Sykes was the astronomer who was captured with McGuire!"
"Listen! Listen!" The colonel's voice was almost shrill with excitement.
The night was whispering faintly the merest echo of a signal from a station far away, but it resolved itself into broken fragments of sound that were long and short in duration, and the fragments joined to form letters in the Morse code.
"See Winslow," it told them, and repeated the message: "See Winslow at Sierra...." Some distant storm crashed and rattled for breathless minutes. "Blake see Winslow. This is McGuire, Blake. Winslow can help--"
The message ended abruptly. One long, wailing note; then again the night was voiceless ... and in the radio room at Maricopa Flying Field two men stood speechless, unbreathing, to stare at each other with incredulous eyes, as might men who had seen a phantom--a ghost that spoke to them and called them by name.
"McGuire--is--alive!" stammered Blake. "They've taken him--there!"
* * * * *
Colonel Boynton was considering, weighing all the possibilities, and his voice, when he answered, had the ring of conviction.
"That was no hoax," he agreed; "that quavering tone could never be faked. That message was sent from the same station we heard before. Yes, McGuire is alive--or was up to the end of that sending.... But, who the devil is Winslow?"
Blake shook his head despairingly. "I don't know," he said. "And it seems as if I should--"
It was hours later, far into the night, when he sprang from out of a half-conscious doze to find himself in the middle of the floor with the voice of McGuire ringing clearly in his ears. A buried memory had returned to the level of his conscious mind. He rushed over to the colonel's quarters.
"I've got it," he shouted to that officer whose head was projecting from an upper window. "I remember! McGuire told me about this Winslow--some hermit that he ran across. He has some invention--some machine--said he had been to the moon. I always thought Mac half believed him. We'll go over Mac's things and find the address."
"Do you think--do you suppose--?" began Colonel Boynton doubtfully.
"I don't dare to think," Blake responded. "God only knows if we dare hope; but Mac--Mac's got a level head; he wouldn't send us unless he knew! Good Lord, man!" he exclaimed, "Mac radioed us from Venus; is there anything impossible after that?"
"Wait there," said Colonel Boynton; "I'll be right down--"
CHAPTER XII
Lieutenant McGuire awoke, as he had on other occasions, to the smell of sickly-sweet fumes and the stifling pressure of a mask held over his nose and mouth. He struggled to free himself, and the mask was removed. Another of the man-creatures whom McGuire had not seen before helped him to sit up.
A group of the attenuated figures, with their blood-and-ashes faces, regarded him curiously. The one who had helped him arise forced the others to stand back, and he gave McGuire a drink of yellow fluid from a crystal goblet. The dazed man gulped it down to feel a following surge of warmth and life that pulsed through his paralyzed body. The figures before him came sharply from the haze that had enveloped them. A window high above admitted a golden light that meant another day, but it brought no cheer or encouragement to the flyer. McGuire felt crushed and hopeless in the knowledge that his life must still go on.
If only that sleep could have continued--carried him out to the deeper sleep of death! What hope for them here? Not a chance! And then he remembered Sykes; he mustn't desert Sykes. He looked about him to see the same prison room from which he and Sykes had escaped. The body of the scientist was motionless on the hammock-bed across the room; an occasional deep-drawn breath showed that the man still lived.
No, he must not leave Sykes, even if he had the means of death. They would fight it through together, and perhaps--perhaps--they might yet be of service, might find some way to avert the catastrophe that threatened their world. Hopeless? Beyond doubt. But he must hope--and fight!
The leader had watched the light of understanding as it returned to the flyer's eyes. He motioned now to the others, and McGuire was picked up bodily by four of them and carried from the room.
* * * * *
McGuire's mind was alert once more; he was eager to learn what he could of this place that was to be their prison, but he saw little. A glory of blending colors beyond, where the golden light from without shone through opal walls--then he found himself upon a narrow table where straps of metal were thrown quickly about to bind him fast. He was tied hand and foot to the table that moved forward on smooth rollers to a waiting lift.
What next? he questioned. Not death, for they had been too careful to keep him alive, these repulsive things that stared at him with such cold malevolence. Then what? And McGuire found himself with unpleasant recollections of others he had seen strapped in similar fashion to an operating table.
The lift that he had thought would rise fell smoothly, instead, to stop at some point far below ground where the table with its helpless burden was rolled into a great room.
He could move his head, and McGuire turned and twisted to look at the maze of instruments that filled the room--a super-laboratory for experiments of which he dared not think.
"Whoever says I'm not scared to death is a liar," he whispered to himself, but he continued to look and wonder as he was wheeled before a gleaming machine of many coils and shining, metal parts. A smooth sheet of metal stood vertically beyond him; painted a grayish-white, he saw; but he could not imagine its use. A throng of people, seated in the room, turned blood-red faces toward the bound man and the metal sheet.
"Looks as if we were about to put on a show of some kind," he told himself, "and I am cast for a leading role." He watched as best he could from hi
s bound position while a tall figure in robes of lustreless black appeared to stand beside him.
The newcomer regarded him with a face that was devoid of all emotion. McGuire felt the lack of the customary expression of hatred; there was not even that; and he knew he was nothing more than a strange animal, bound, and helpless, ready for this weird creature's experiments. The one in black held a pencil whose tip was a tiny, brilliant light.
* * * * *
Abruptly the room plunged to darkness, where the only visible thing was this one point of light. Ceaselessly it waved back and forth before his eyes; he followed it in a pattern of strange design; it approached and receded. Again and again the motion was repeated, until McGuire felt himself sinking--sinking--into a passive state of lethargy. His muscles relaxed; his mind was at rest; there seemed nothing in the entire universe of being but the single point of light that drew him on and on ... till something whispered from the far reaches of black space....
It came to him, an insistent call. It was asking about the earth--his own world. _What of Earth's armies and their means of defense?_ Vaguely he sensed the demand, and without conscious volition he responded. He pictured the world he had known; how plainly he saw the wide field at Maricopa, and the sweeping flight of a squadron of planes! _Yes--yes! How high could they ascend?_ From one of the planes he saw the world below; the ships were near their ceiling; this was the limit of their climb. _And did they fight with gas? What of their deadliness?_ And again he was seated in a plane, and he was firing tiny bullets from a tiny gun. No. They did not use gas. _But on the ground below--what fortifications? What means of defense?_
McGuire's mind was no longer his own; he could only respond to that invisible questioner, that insistent demand from out of the depths where he was floating. And yet there was something within him that protested, that clamored at his mind and brain.
Fortifications! They must know about fortifications--anti-aircraft guns--means for combatting aerial attack. Yes, he knew, and he must explain--and the thing within him pounded in the back of his brain to draw him back to himself.
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