The Murray Leinster Megapack

by Murray Leinster

  Teddy shook his head.

  “We’ll tell her about it, and I’ll open it in the laboratory.”

  Evelyn and Davis waited apprehen­sively until Teddy emerged from that room.

  “No cold bombs, no electric shocks, and no poison gas,” he said, smiling. “Just a billet doux to Evelyn. It fits in beautifully with our plans, Davis.”

  Evelyn took the sheet he extended to her and read:

  The Dictatorial Residence, August 29th.

  His Excellency Wladislaw Varrhus, dicta­tor of the Earth, has been much annoyed by the efforts of one Theodore Gerrod to ob­struct his plans and desires. He has been in­formed through the press of the fact that Miss Evelyn Hawkins has collaborated with and encouraged Theodore Gerrod in his rash attempts. His Excellency the dictator is pleased to require that Miss Evelyn Hawkins repair to a spot some five miles due east from Noman’s Reef, off the coast of Maine. Miss Hawkins may bring with her a maid and such baggage as she may require. She is to be held as security for the cessation of Theo­dore Gerrod’s efforts to impede the secure establishment of the dictatorship. The Mis­sissippi River has been closed to traffic, and will remain closed until this order has been obeyed by Miss Hawkins. The time set for Miss Hawkins’ appearance at that spot is day­break of Tuesday, September the third. Given at the dictatorial residence.

  Wladislaw Varrhus.

  Evelyn looked at the three men with a white face. The commissioner of police looked grave. Davis was smil­ing, and Teddy was smiling, too, but with a blaze of anger in his eyes.

  “Gerrod,” said Davis whimsically, “I am much depressed that Varrhus didn’t include me with you as making efforts to obstruct his plans and desires.”

  “The government will have to be no­tified,” said the commissioner of police solemnly.

  “Do—do you think I had better go?” asked Evelyn hesitatingly.

  “No!” exploded Teddy and Davis together. Teddy went on: “Why, Evelyn, the man is insane! And besides we’ve just thought of something that’s sure to get him. We’ll lay in wait for him, and then he’ll walk into our parlor nicely. When he does—”

  “Finis,” said Davis cheerfully, “if I may borrow a phrase from the French.”

  “And if it’s a long chase,” said Teddy even more cheerfully, “the dear person set the time for dawn, and well have light to fight by. Let’s go and set to work on that plane of yours.”

  They left together in high spirits. Evelyn stood quite still after they had gone, absently crushing the letter from Varrhus in her hand. Presently, with a sob, she went to her room and allowed herself to cry. They would not let her face danger, but Teddy was going out to light, perhaps to die—and for her.

  Over at the hangar, mechanics swarmed upon the righting plane, dismounting the motors and disassembling them. The cylinders and pistons were being carefully packed. A big motor truck had already backed up at the wide door of the aeroplane shed, and as fast as the parts were packed they were loaded on it. Davis was here, there, and everywhere. He had asked permission for the experiment, and it has been granted. The government was prepared to risk almost anything rather than allow Varrhus to succeed in his huge blackmailing of the entire human race. There was no hesitation in allowing anything that might afford a fighting chance of downing the black flyer. The Mississippi floods were growing in size and destructiveness. The New York cold bomb, dropped the night Teddy and Davis had fought the black machine over the harbor, was expected to explode at any moment. Every window still intact in the city had been pasted with strips of paper to keep the fragments from becoming a menace to those on the streets when the bomb should burst them.

  Davis had conferred with the com­mandant of the forts, and volunteers had been asked for among the garrison. A boat was being heavily armed with concealed guns. It would go to the point where Varrhus would expect Evelyn to be taken. He would see the small boat, drop down to take Evelyn on board his evil craft, and the masked batteries of antiaircraft guns would open on him in a blast of fire. Teddy’s discovery that flares fired into the cloud of liquefied gas would cause it to burn harmlessly in mid-air had been adapted to protect the crew. As the guns opened on the hovering black flyer a stream of fire balls would be made to float overhead to set flaming the stream of liquid hydrogen Varrhus might be expected to shoot downward. At that, though, the mission of the boat crew was hazardous in the ex­treme.

  The telephone rang in the hangar. Teddy was on the wire. He had com­mandeered the big wooden acid vats of an electro-plating plant, and the platinum-plating solution was being mixed even then. If Davis brought the mo­tors over in parts, the plating might begin immediately.

  The big truck rumbled off, Davis smiling confidently on the seat beside the chauffeur. Half a dozen mechanics perched on various parts of the load. When the truck stopped before the electro-plating plant they leaped off and rushed the glistening cylinders inside. In twenty minutes they were in the plat­ing solution and an almost infinitely thin film of platinum was slowly forming within them.

  The workmen of the electro-plating plant labored far into the night on their task. Teddy had insisted that a film of platinum ten times the thickness of the usual precious-metal plating be used, and the process was slow. When the cylinders had been prepared, the pis­tons remained, and the exhaust ports and valves. These, too, were coated with the hard, acid-resisting metal, and Davis’ mechanics began their task of fitting piston rings to the altered motor parts. The rings themselves had then to be plated, and all the plating bur­nished and polished. Teddy and Davis snatched a few hours’ sleep while the motor in its disassembled state was be­ing carried back to the hangar and re­installed m the aeroplane. They woke, and during all the following day Davis sat in the pilot’s seat, listening with a practiced ear and aiding in the final tuning up of the changed motors, ad­justing the carburetors to their new fuel. Thirty per cent of picric acid added to the finest, highest-grade gas­oline was to be used. No one had dared use such a percentage before, even for motors that were expected to be ruined.

  Teddy, in the meantime, was famil­iarizing himself with the small one-pounder automatic gun—similar to the German antitank weapons—that was to be installed in the bow of the aeroplane. By nightfall all was finished, Teddy ran over to New York and saw Evelyn for the last time before making his attempt, and the next morning he and Davis flew to Noman’s Reef, where a camouflaged hangar had been erected on telegraphed instructions from New York. Tuesday dawn found them alert and anxiously scanning the sky for a sign of the black flyer.

  CHAPTER X.

  The stars winked palely from the graying sky. In the east a pallid whiteness showed which slowly yel­lowed and then turned to pink. The dawn was breaking.

  On the little reef men watched keenly. Far out at sea, its single funnel tipped with red paint from the crimson sunlight, a little boat tossed and rolled. That boat contained the men who had offered their lives for a chance to kill this Varrhus, who threatened the lib­erty of the world. Beside the camou­flaged hangar two great horns, seem­ing to be enlarged megaphones, pointed toward the sky. Little wires ran from their points to telephone receivers strapped on the ears of intently listen­ing men. They were microphones to detect the first sound of the musical humming of the black flyer. Teddy and Davis were be-furred and goggled, but had pushed up their goggles to take powerful glasses and scan the sky eagerly for a sight of their enemy. Mechanics stood ready at the propellers of the hidden fighting plane, prepared to spin the motors into roaring life the instant the two aviators had settled in their seats. From before the wide doors of the concealed hangar a broad expanse of beach ran smoothly down to the ocean. The little boat tossed and rolled. The men at the microphones listened intently. The others searched the sky.

  Straight down from a wisp of golden cloud a slim black speck fell toward the earth. At first, so high was it, even those with field glasses could make out only the thin shape of the glistening black body. It fell a thousand, two thousand feet—The w
hirring disks above the slender body became risible, then the enclosed cabin near the center. The musical humming filled the air. Lower and lower the strange machine dropped. Davis and Teddy were in their seats.

  “Now!” said Davis sharply, and the propellers whirled. The motors caught, sputtered, and began to run with a steady, droning roar. Davis watched keenly as the black shape slowed in its fall and came to a standstill above the little, tossing boat. Half a dozen men were holding the aeroplane back, and the small shed was full of clouds of choking dust and still more choking fumes from the motor.

  The black flyer hung motionless, barely three hundred yards above the small boat. There was a long moment of waiting. Then the decks of the boat seemed to fall in. A dozen threatening muzzles were exposed. A dozen flashes of flame shot up from the tiny vessel. Simultaneously Davis cried out, the men released his machine, and it darted forward. He took off from the beach skimmed the waves, and shot out to­ward the strange combat that was tak­ing place.

  The black flyer had been hit. That much was certain. It lurched and stag­gered in the air, losing altitude all the while. Then the pilot seemed to regain control. He swung swiftly to one side and began to rise. All the time the anti-aircraft guns were firing viciously. The tossing boat made a poor platform for the gunners, however, and their aim was inevitably poor. The guns kept up a ceaseless roaring. Puff after puff of white smoke showed where their shells burst near Varrhus, He began to swerve, to zigzag, using tactics strangely like those of a dragon fly. Suddenly he darted to a point exactly above the small boat, and a smoky cloud began to dart down from below his machine. Varrhus passed on, but the cloud fell swiftly, precisely like the cloud of liquefied gas he had poured down on Teddy and Davis above New York harbor.

  “Flares!” cried Davis in an agony of apprehension, though his voice was only audible to Teddy by means of the tele­phone connection between the two hel­mets.

  As he spoke the men on the boat shot up the little fireballs that had pro­tected the aeroplane in its former fight. A dozen balls of light sped up to meet the menacing cloud of liquefied gas. They reached it, sped into it, glowing feebly! The white cloud did not ignite, but fell on toward the boat. It reached and enveloped the little vessel, and sud­denly the guns were still.

  “Damn him!” said Teddy in a voice that shook with rage. “He’s not using hydrogen. We can’t close in on him now. Our flares are no good.”

  Davis tilted the nose of his machine upward, and Teddy stared down his sights. He pulled the trigger. The gun kicked backward, but the recoil cylinders did their work. The tracer shell left a little line of smoke behind it. It passed below the black body.

  “Too low,” said Teddy grimly, and fired again.

  Varrhus began to climb. Straight up his machine went, but with the picric acid giving added impetus to the ex­plosions in the cylinders the two-seater climbed as rapidly. Varrhus’ ascent swerved. He was directly over the aeroplane. A whitish cloud appeared below his machine and blotted it out for an instant.

  ‘’We zoom,” said Davis almost gaily, and the fighting plane seemed to be dancing on its tail for an instant. The cloud of gas unfolded itself down to the surface of the water, barely twenty yards before the space in which Davis had checked his course.

  Around and around a huge circle. The biplane had caught up with the black flyer, and Davis turned toward it for an instant to give Teddy an op­portunity to fire. There was a flash at the stern of the slender black body, and the symmetry of the glistening form was marred by a ragged edge where the tip of the tail had been blown off.

  “Almost” said Teddy grimly.

  “He’ll dive now.”

  Davis was prepared for the maneu­ver, and almost as soon as the heli­copter began to drop the biplane darted down after it, Teddy firing viciously. The streaks of smoke that his shells left behind them told him where he missed. Varrhus shifted the course of his fall, and again a cloud drifted in the air just before the pursuing plane. Davis flung the “joy-stick” forward, and the fighter fell into an absolutely vertical dive. A second more and it had turned upon its back and was fly­ing upside down, away from the threat­ening mist.

  Davis twisted in mid-air and righted his machine. Varrhus was darting away, barely two hundred feet above the surface of the water. Again the two-seater dived upon him. Teddy’s shells were zipping dangerously near the black machine. It began to zigzag, to twist and turn like a snake. It doubled back and shot directly under the biplane, but too far below for the deadly mist to be used. Davis banked at a suicidal angle and went after it again. They passed directly above the silent small boat, drifting aimlessly on the waves. Little icicles were forming on the bulwarks, showing that the cold of the liquefied gas was still intense.

  For one instant Teddy had a perfect sight, and pulled the trigger with the peculiar confidence of a marksman who knows he is making a perfect shot. There was a flash upon the upper por­tion of the black hull. A dark object shot off at a tangent from one of the whirring disks. The helicopter sank rapidly. Teddy gave a shout.

  “Landed!’’

  The black machine recovered again. One of the disks was badly injured and now slowed and stopped, showing that the blade of one of the four sus­taining propellers had been broken, but the remaining three increased their speed. Varrhus seemed to abandon the idea of fighting. He began to shoot away toward the northeast. He was more than a mile away, and Teddy had stopped firing. Varrhus had had no difficulty in distancing the same ma­chine a week before, and anticipated no trouble in losing it, even with his own flyer partially crippled. He had not reckoned on the picric compound now being used for fuel. The biplane sped madly after the fleeing black aircraft. The motors roared hugely, and the wind was like a solid mass, pushing fiercely against Teddy’s exposed head. A small half-moon of glass protected Davis from the wind, but for the gunner no such protection was practicable. The rushing of the wind through the wires and along the sides of the streamline body amounted to a shriek. Never had such speed been known before.

  Davis’ voice came quietly to Teddy above the sounds outside, muted by the heavy, padded helmet. The tele­phone receivers were fast against Teddy’s ears.

  “We’re making two hundred and twenty-six.”

  “We’re not gaining,” said Teddy grimly.

  “Wait until he rises. The motor’s adjusted to be most efficient at about seven thousand feet.”

  The black speck ahead of them was drawing no nearer, it is true, but it was not dwindling. The silvery wings of the biplane cut through the air with fierce impatience. It flew in the straightest of straight lines after the other craft. Dark-brownish smoke blew backward from the bellowing ex­hausts, tinged almost to saffron by the presence of the explosive acid. The sunlight kissed the upper surfaces of the wings of the pursuing plane. Be­low them the ocean rolled and tossed. Whistling wind and roaring engines. Speed, speed, speed! The biplane rushed with incredible swiftness through the air. The black flyer skimmed lightly on barely in advance of its white-winged enemy. Twice Teddy essayed a shot, but the biplane trembled so that accuracy was impos­sible, and he could see by the smoke of his tracer shell that he had gone far wide of the black machine. The space between the black speck and the waves below it seemed to increase.

  “Rising,” said Davis. “Now we’ll get him.”

  Teddy kept his eyes fixed on Varrhus’ slender, needle-like craft. He was barely conscious of the upward tilt of the machine in which he was riding, but he saw that they were keeping pace with Varrhus as he rose in the air.

  “Four thousand feet,” said Davis crisply. “And two hundred and twenty-nine miles an hour. There’s land ahead.”

  Teddy saw a mountainous coastline becoming visible far away. The black flyer continued to rise.

  “Six thousand feet,” said Davis again, “and two hundred and thirty-two miles—”

  The pilot of the other machine saw that they were gaining. He dropped abruptly.

  “Now!” exclaimed Davis fi
ercely. He dived downward. The descent, coupled with the immense power of the engines—now delivering vastly more than the eight hundred horsepower for which they were designed—made them shoot toward the black flyer with increasing speed. The other machine was barely more than half a mile away and every detail of its con­struction was visible. Teddy noticed for the first time a slender tube rising between the two center sustaining pro­pellers. He instantly leaped to the con­clusion that it was the means by which the jets of liquefied gas had been shot out. He fired.

  “A hit!” cried Davis.

  There had been a flash from the top of the cabin. A jagged rent appeared in the polished roofing, and the slender tube vanished. The black flyer seemed to abandon all hopes of escape. It sped madly for a gap between two of the tall mountains that rose along the coastline. At the unprecedented speed with which both machines had been traveling the coast seemed fairly to rush at them. No villages were visible, but it seemed to be a habitable, if not an inhabited, land. The black flyer swept on across country, Varrhus evidently making every effort to gain even a few yards on his adversaries, and Davis just as fiercely determined that he should not. Once, twice, three times Teddy fired.

  A smoothed and enclosed field, al­most surrounded with small buildings, appeared. Varrhus dashed toward it desperately, the white-winged biplane vengefully after him. The black flyer dropped like a stone and the biplane dived straight for it. In that last dive Teddy worked his one-pounder as coolly as if at target practice. Flash! Flash! The black flyer crumpled and fell the last fifty feet as an inert mass.

  Teddy jumped from the biplane as it flattened out and settled to the ground. With his automatic pistol drawn and ready, he darted toward the partly wrecked black machine. As he drew near a sallow face came weakly to a window of the cabin. An auto­matic flashed from beside the face and Teddy heard a queer sound and a fall behind him. He did not stop, but rushed on, shooting viciously at the face in the opening. He reached the wreck, wrenched open the door, and swung into the cabin with utter disregard for danger.