by Ray Cummings
CHAPTER IV
_Ambushed!_
The events which I have now to describe are world history, and havebeen written in many forms and by many observers. I must, however,sketch them in broadest outline for the continuity of this personalnarrative of the parts played by my friends and myself in the direand astounding affair which was soon to bring chaos, not only tolittle Bermuda but to the great United States as well, and a nearpanic everywhere in the world.
On this evening of May 15th, 1938, the White Invaders showedthemselves for the first time as rational human enemies. Theresidential suburb of Paget lies across the little harbor from thecity of Hamilton. It is a mile or so by road around the bay, and afew minutes across the water by ferry. The island in the Pagetsection is a mere strip of land less than half a mile wide in mostplaces, with the sheltered waters of the harbor on one side, and theopen Atlantic with a magnificent pink-white beach on the other. Thetwo are divided by a razor-back ridge--a line of little hills ahundred feet or so high, with narrow white roads and white stoneresidences set on the hill-slopes amid spacious lawns and tropicalgardens; and with several lavish hotels on the bay shore, and othersover the ridge, fronting the beach.
The invaders landed on the top of the ridge. It seemed that, withoutwarning, a group of white-clad men were in a cedar grove up there.They spread out, running along the roads. They seemed carrying smallhand-weapons from which phosphorescent-green light-beams flashedinto the night.
The first reports were chaotic. A few survivors appeared in Hamiltonwho claimed to have been very close to the enemy. But for the mostpart the descriptions came from those who had fled when still a mileor more away. The news spread as though upon the wings of a gale.Within an hour the hotels were emptied; the houses all along theshore and the bayside hill-slope were deserted by their occupants.Boats over there brought the excited people into Hamilton until nomore boats were available. Others came madly driving around theharbor road, on bicycles, and on foot--and still others escapedtoward distant Somerset.
* * * * *
A thousand people or more came in within that hour. But there wereothers who did not come--those who were living in the score or twoof houses up on the ridge in the immediate neighborhood of where theinvaders appeared....
Don and I met Mr. Dorrance at the police station within a fewminutes after the news of the Paget attack reached us. We hurriedback to the restaurant and found Jane still there with theBlakinsons. Ten minutes later we were all in the Government House,receiving the most authentic reports available.
From the windows of the second floor room where Mr. Dorrance satwith a number of the officials, Don, Jane, and I could see acrossthe harbor and to the ridge where the enemy was operating. It wasnot much over two miles from us. The huge, slightly flattened moonhad risen. The bay and the distant little hills were flooded withits light. We could see, off on the ridge-top, the tiny flashinggreen beams. But there was no sound save the turmoil of the excitedlittle city around us.
"They don't seem to be moving," Don murmured. "They're right wherethey were first reported."
It seemed as though the small group of light-beams, darting back andforth, nevertheless originated from one unshifting place. The beams,we realized, must be extremely intense to be visible even these twomiles or so, for we could see that they were very small and of veryshort range--more like a hand-flashlight than anything else. Howmany of the enemy were there? They were men, we understood: solid,human men garbed in the fashion of the apparitions which had been sowidely seen.
The patrolling airplane, connected with us here by wirelesstelephone, gave us further details. There seemed to be some fifty ofthe invaders. They stood in a group in what had been a small cedargrove. It was a barren field now; the trees had melted and vanishedbefore the silent blasts of the green light-beams. They had, thesebeams, seemingly a range of under a hundred feet. The invaders had,at first, run with them along the nearby roads and attacked thenearest houses. Part of those houses were still standing, save forthe wooden portion of them which had vanished into nothingness asthe green light touched it. The people, too, were annihilated. Theairplane pilot had seen a man running near the field trying toescape. The light touched him, clung to him for a moment. There wasan instant as he fell that he seemed melting into a ghostly figure;and then he was gone.
* * * * *
Fifty invaders. But they were human; they could be attacked. Whenthey first appeared, the nature of them still unrealized, aphysician's automobile, manned by three soldiers, had been comingalong the bay road at the foot of the ridge. The soldiers turned itinto a cross road and mounted the hill. Two of them left it,scouting to see what was happening; the other stayed in the car. Oneof the enemy suddenly appeared. His ray struck the car. Its tires,its woodwork, and fabric and cushions melted and vanished, and theman within it likewise disappeared. Everything organic vanishedunder the assailing green beam. The other two soldiers fired at theattacker. He was human. He fell as their bullets struck him. Thenothers of his fellows came running. The two soldiers were drivenaway, but they escaped to tell of the encounter.
The airplane pilot, half an hour later, flew low and fired down intothe group of enemy figures. He thought that one of them fell. Healso thought he was out of range of their beams. But a pencil-pointof the green light thinned and lengthened out. It darted up to hishundred-and-fifty-foot altitude and caught one of his wings. Theplane fell disabled into the bay near the city docks, but the pilotswam safely ashore.
I need not detail the confusion and panic of the governmentofficials who were gathered here in the room where Don, Jane and Istood watching and listening to the excitement of the incomingreports. For quiet little Bermuda the unprecedented situation wasdoubly frightening. An attack would have to be made upon theinvaders. There were only fifty of the enemy; the soldiers and thepolice could in a few hours be mobilized to rush them and kill themall.
But could that be done? The thing had so many weird aspects, theinvaders still seemed so much in the nature of the supernatural,that Mr. Dorrance advised caution. The enemy was now--this was aboutten o'clock in the evening--quietly gathered in the little field onthe ridge-top. They seemed, with their first attack over, no longeroffensive. But, if assailed, who could say what they would do?
* * * * *
And a thousand unprecedented things to do were pressing upon theharassed officials. Panic-stricken crowds now surged out of allcontrol in the Hamilton streets. Refugees were coming in, homeless,needing care. The soldiers and the police were scattered throughoutthe islands, without orders of what to do to meet these newconditions.
And new, ever more frightening reports poured in. The telephoneservice, which links as a local call nearly every house throughoutthe islands, was flooded with frantic activity. From nearly everyparish came reports of half-materialized ghosts. Fifty invaders?There were that many gathered on the Paget hill, but it seemed thatthere must be a thousand watching apparitions scattered throughoutthe islands. Harmless, merely frightening, wraiths. But if thatlittle group in Paget were assailed, this other thousand might in amoment cease to be harmless "ghosts."
The astounded Bermuda officials were forced now to accept therealization that this was solid science. Incredible, fantastic,unbelievable--yet here it was upon us. Some unknown, invisible realmco-existed here in this same space. Its inhabitants had found a wayto come out.
The government wireless, and the Canadian cables, could no longerwithhold such news as this. Bermuda appealed now to Washington andto London for help. Warships would be coming shortly. Passengerliners on the high seas bringing holiday visitors, were turnedaside. The ships in the port of New York would not sail for Bermudatomorrow.
I think that the outside world would have had jeering publics amusedat little Bermuda hysterical over a fancied attack from the fabledfourth dimension. But by midnight this night, the United States atleast was in no mood for jeering. A mess
age came--reaching us soonafter eleven o'clock, Bermuda time--by cable, through Halifax fromWashington. The thing already had passed beyond the scope of theBermudas. White apparitions were seen on the Atlantic seaboard nearSavannah. And then at Charleston; and throughout the night atseveral other points farther north. None materialized into solidity.But the "ghosts" were seen, appearing, vanishing, and reappearingalways farther north.
It was a world menace!
* * * * *
At about midnight Mr. Dorrance joined Jane, Don and me where westood by the Government House windows watching the distantmotionless group of enemy lights. He was pale and harassed.
"No use for you to stay here," he told us. "Don, you and Bob takeJane home. It's the safest place now."
The reports seemed to indicate that of all the parishes, St. Georgeswas now most free of the apparitions.
"Go home," he insisted. "You and Bob stay with Jane. Take care ofher, lads." He smiled grimly. "We--all the government--may be movingto St. Georges by morning."
"But, father," Jane protested, "what will you do? Stay here?"
"For a while. I'll drive over by daybreak. I'll keep the Victoria.You have your cycles; you three ride over. Be careful, lads. Youhave your revolvers?"
"Yes," said Don.
We had no time for leave-taking. He was at once called away from us.
We left the Government House shortly after that, got our bicyclesand started for the north shore road. Government Hill, where theroad climbed through a deep cut in the solid rock, was thronged withcarriages, and with cyclists walking up the hill. Most of thetraffic was going in one direction--refugees leaving this proximityto the enemy.
We reached the top of the hill, mounted and began the long coastdown. In an hour and a half or less we would be home.... Ah, if onecould only lift the veil which hides even the immediate future, uponthe brink of which we must always stand unseeing!
The north-shore road had the rocky seacoast upon our left--calmmoonlit ocean across which in this direction lay the Carolinas someseven hundred miles away. We had gone, perhaps three miles fromHamilton. The road was less crowded here. A group of apparitions hadbeen seen in the neighborhood of the Aquarium, which was ahead ofus, and most of the refugees were taking the middle road alongHarrington Sound in the center of the island.
But we decided to continue straight on. It was shorter.
"And there will be more police along here," Don reasoned.
Heaven knows we did not feel in immediate danger. Cycling soldierspassed us at frequent intervals, giving us the news of what layahead. And we both had revolvers.
* * * * *
We came presently to the bottom of one of the many steep littlehills up which it is difficult to ride. We were walking up thegrade, pushing our machines with Jane between us. A group ofsoldiers came coasting down the hill, but when we were half-way upthey had passed out of sight. It chanced at the moment that we werealone on the road. No house was near us. The ocean to our left layat the bottom of a fifty-foot rocky cliff; to the right was a thickline of oleander trees, heavy with bloom.
Ahead of us, to the right within the line of oleanders, the glowingwhite figure of an apparition was visible. We stopped, out of breathfrom the climb, and stood by the roadside.
"See it there?" Don murmured. "Let's wait and watch it a moment."
One may get used to anything. We were not frightened. The figure, nomore than twenty feet ahead of us, stood partly within a tree-trunk.It could not materialize there. It was the figure of a man, withhelmet and looped wires.
"Not that fellow who called himself Tako," I whispered.
This one was smaller, no larger than Jane, perhaps. He raised hisarms as though warning us to stop. We stood gazing at him, undecidedwhether to retreat or advance. An omnibus carriage coming from St.Georges stopped at the brow of the hill. Its occupants climbed outand began shouting at the apparition, at the same time flingingstones, one of which came bounding past us.
"Hi!" I called. "Stop that! No sense to that!"
* * * * *
Suddenly I heard a rustling of the oleanders at my side. We had nowarning; our attention was wholly upon the apparition and the men bythe carriage on the brow of the hill flinging stones. There was arustling; the shadowed oleanders parted and figures leaped upon us!
I recall hearing Don shout, and Jane cry out. Our cycles clatteredto the road. I fired at an oncoming white figure, but missed. Thesolid form of a man struck me and I went down, tangled in my wheel.There was an instant when I was conscious of fighting madly with ahuman antagonist. I was conscious of Don fighting, too. Jane stood,gripped by a man. Four or five of them had leaped upon us.
I had many instant impressions; then as I fought something struck myhead and I faded into insensibility. I must have recovered within amoment. I was lying on the ground, partly upon a bicycle.
Don was lying near me. White figures of men with Jane in their midstwere standing off the road, partly behind the bushes. They wereholding her, and one of them was swiftly adjusting a network ofwires upon her. Then, as I revived further, I heard shouts; peoplewere arriving from down the hill. I tried to struggle to my feet,but fell back.
In the bushes the figures--and the figure of Jane--were turningsilvery; fading into wraiths. They drifted down into the ground.They were gone.
