With a tingling thrill, understanding burst in upon Sandhurst’s mind. When he had turned the wheel back to its original position, he lifted a serious face to look at McLennan.
“Do you know what this apparatus is?” he asked.
“Seems to be some kind of gravity nullifier, Chief,” Mac replied. He had missed the full meaning of his superior’s words.
“That’s evident; but it is something else too, Mac.” Sandhurst’s tones were level and quiet like those of a physician who speaks of a patient whose hours are numbered.
“I’ve got it!” Vance cut in eagerly. “This machine is a working model of the apparatus the slaves are constructing at Ishbel—the thing we helped to build!”
Points of fire glinted in Sandhurst’s gray eyes when he turned again to Mac: “Do you understand now?”
A look of surprised comprehension came into McLennan’s rugged features. He started to fume. “Why, the dirty—!” But his chief silenced him.
“Keep it to yourself, Mac,” he said briefly. “It won’t do us any good to boil over now. We’ll make a hasty examination of the things in this work-shop; then one of us will have to start out for our own laboratory without a moment’s delay.”
The girl laid her hand appealingly on his arm. “But Mr. Sandhurst, we don’t understand, Vance and I. What is the matter?”
The scientist straightened. He saw the expectantly fearful expression in her eyes. Her hand was trembling. An impulse which Sandhurst was sure was not a part of his real self, made him want to take her in his arms and comfort her, tell her that there was nothing to fear and that all troubles would pass. But even if they had been alone, and if he had not known that she was already engaged, he would not have done so. Other women had aroused similar emotions in him, but for many years he had always held back. A subconscious belief that, to be successful to the limit of his ability in his profession, he must suppress all human feelings, was perhaps responsible.
“There is no need to deceive you, Miss Gatewood,” he said. “It is already evident to you that the invaders have come to conquer—in fact have conquered the earth. Their intention is, as I believe, to colonize our world, and make a new home here for themselves. But, judging from the discoveries we have made, the earth as it is, is not an ideal place for the continuance of their race. They are accustomed to a much weaker force of gravity and a lower air pressure. However, with the aid of their scientific knowledge they seem to be capable of correcting these faults of environment. To do this they are constructing gravity nullifiers similar to, but much larger than this one here.
“When these machines are set in operation, the atmosphere, relieved of much of the force that holds it to the surface of the earth, will expand enormously—extend farther up into space. Since its volume will be vastly greater, it will necessarily be much less dense—more rarefied. The result is clear. Unless we can find some way to avert the catastrophe, and Mac and I are going to make an attempt, practically all forms of terrestrial life will perish of asphyxia.”
Fay had paled a trifle; still the savant could not help but admire her brave smile. “Thank you for being so frank, Mr. Sandhurst,” she said. “I always believed in fighting, but if death is our lot, so be it. Anyway it will be a glorious death. Just think, no people in any past age ever faced such odds, or had the opportunity to die as we and our fellow men may die!”
It was a grim ghastly little joke, yet Sandhurst smiled at it. There was no chance to deceive the girl; she knew what their chances were.
VANCE, Fay, and Sandhurst were scrutinizing with nervous haste the cryptic maze of cables, rods, and fantastic crystalline devices that lined the walls of the laboratory. There was very little that even the savant could understand. Most interesting of anything the students saw was the carcass of the dead invader, and they paused over it, asking many questions.
No one took any notice of McLennan. He had wandered off by himself, to the opposite end of the laboratory where squatted the torpedo-like object. He found an oval door in its side and, having opened it, crept into the interior. The only thing which encouraged inspection here was a small flat box set in the concave floor, near one end of the pointed, tubular chamber. Mac toyed with the two small levers which protruded from the box, one moving in a vertical and the other in a horizontal plane. Nothing happened. Dissatisfied, he turned the tiny dial on top of the box ever so slightly.
A dim, scarcely noticeable aura, like that of the invading globes, suffused itself over the transparent walls. He pressed down lightly on the vertical lever. The torpedo trembled in its metal cradle, then slowly, a hair’s breadth at a time, it rose and floated free several inches above its supporting framework. Almost imperceptibly it was edging forward. Pleased with the result of his experiment, McLennan twirled the dial back to a point a little beyond its original position. The torpedo’s motion was reversed, and it drifted over the cradle again. Shutting off the power entirely, he allowed the strange machine to come to rest. There was no need of testing the horizontal lever for he was quite sure that he knew its purpose.
Interest in his discovery of the gravity nullifier, had, during the past several minutes, taken from Sandhurst much of his realization of the danger he and his friends were facing in their present position. But the knowledge that they had entered a cul-de-sac was presently recalled to his mind with a startling jolt.
Blue lights were flickering on the walls of the passage which they had recently traversed—lights where there had been darkness before! Fay and Vance saw too, and understood.
It was useless to prepare to fight, Sandhurst knew; therefore, with all the level-headedness he could muster, he looked about for some avenue of escape. Extensive searching was unnecessary, for it was all too evident that they were trapped. It was impossible to retreat farther into the mine, for the gallery ended here. And there wasn’t a single nook or cranny in which they could find refuge.
The returning invaders were in sight, wavering weirdly through the gloom. Well, it didn’t appear as though anything could be done except to offer some makeshift of a defense. Vance had already drawn his automatic.
“Hey, come over here quick! We’ll spoil their fun yet!” It was Mac yelling from beside the torpedo.
Mechanically Sandhurst and the students obeyed. McLennan hustled them into the torpedo’s interior, climbed in himself, and slammed the door.
“Hold on like everything! We’re going to ride right through those bottled funny-faces!”
He had thrown himself down at full length before the box of controlling mechanism. No longer cautious, he moved the levers and dial as boldly as though he had been born to the task. He knew that to be bold was their only chance for salvation. But it was quickly evident that he was far from expert. The craft shot upward and thudded with a painful jolt against the roof; it dipped, swung sideways, and its nose dug deep into one wall. Mac clung frantically with one hand to a tiny stanchion, and with the other, he tried to work the unfamiliar controls. His companions, not understanding clearly beforehand what was going to happen, tumbled and rolled about him before they could catch hold of the small pegs, set at regular intervals along the center of the floor.
Meanwhile the invaders had arrived. Fiercely they circled the captured flier, sending angry darts of flame crashing into her hull. The thick glass-like substance was a good insulator, for the passengers felt only slight shocks as evidence that any of the force of the thunderbolts had penetrated to the interior of the craft. But even these were disconcerting, and added to Mac’s difficulties.
Grimly he clung to his post, fighting for a semblance of control, and, after a fashion, he succeeded. Wobbling crazily, the craft dashed down the tunnel toward the freedom of the outer air. Any moment might send them crashing to death against the sides of the passage. But there was no choice. They had taken their only chance for life and freedom. With luck on their side they reached the entrance of the mine.
Mac sent the flier rocketing at full speed up into the dusk. The en
emy globes were soon left far behind. The craft climbed upward for what must have been twenty thousand feet. It leveled off there, having reached the greatest altitude it could attain.
The hull, transparent to normal light was impervious to the compulsion waves and so the passengers encountered no difficulty from this direction.
Manipulating the lever which steered in a horizontal plane, Mac looped around and headed east toward the Murgatroyd Laboratory. Guiding the stolen craft was comparatively simple out in the open.
THE light of the purple meteor aided McLennan in picking out the ribbon of a roadway, and the squat massive building which capped the subterranean workshop where Sandhurst and he had conducted so many fascinating experiments.
Mac dived down steeply, leveled off, and let the glassy cigar settle slowly to the ground, close to the rails of the laboratory’s side track. Nearby was a big trapdoor in the ground, ordinarily used to lower supplies and equipment to the chambers below. This would serve as an entrance for their vessel.
Two men, clad in armor similar to McLennan’s, were hurrying toward them. An invading globe, shining banefully through the dusk, wobbled off toward Ishbel.
Days of tense activity followed. The entire laboratory staff participated with feverish energy in the preparation for the bid for freedom. They were resourceful workers all; but the difficulties they faced were worthy of their mettle. Materials were hard to get, and, where formerly it had been possible to have their equipment made outside the laboratory, it was now necessary to improvise everything they needed in the protection of their buried workshop.
Warned by some subtle means, the invaders strove fiercely to destroy them. Late in the afternoon following Sandhurst’s return, a cordon of big guns went into action and for over an hour filled the air with shrieking missiles that battered against the superstructure of the laboratory, reducing it to a tangle of twisted girders and metal plates that loomed vaguely through the fog of nitric oxide which enveloped them. High overhead a squadron of bombing planes, mockingly displaying the tricolored insignia of the U.S. Air Service, swooped and circled. The sunlight slanted on their metal fuselages and wings.
Only dim echoes of warlike sounds penetrated to the subterranean laboratory. The inmates had taken the precaution of blocking all except one small elevator shaft leading to the surface. The food supply was not large, but there was no immediate danger of its being exhausted. For a short time at least they were safe.
Following the bombardment, waves of khaki-clad slaves poured over the ruins. Finding nothing to kill, they undertook the task of digging the scientists out of their burrow. However, this would require weeks of hard labor to accomplish. There were layers upon layers of concrete, reinforced by steel rods and interspersed with sheets of tough metal, to be penetrated.
Yet there was one thing which gave Sandhurst grave cause for alarm—the freight trapdoor. If that were discovered, or smashed by a shell, all their hopes might easily go glimmering. McLennan, aided by Hahn and Seabrook, had carefully piled refuse upon it to hide it from view. Beyond that, nothing was possible but to trust to luck.
One night, in the sky above Ishbel and other towns, scattered hither and yon over the world, patches of dim, rosy radiance appeared. During the nights that followed, the fiery areas of light brightened progressively, as the power, fed gradually to the huge gravity nullifiers to avoid serious mishaps, increased in strength. Hour by hour the gravitational force of the earth was being diminished. The atmosphere was expanding, rarefying. If the loss of gravity continued for long, at its present rate, all breathing creatures native to the planet would soon be dead of suffocation.
It was early morning. A light frost had spread itself over the fields and hillsides. Around Murgatroyd Laboratory battalions of armed slaves squatted. Their breathing was labored and unnaturally rapid; yet, though the impotent minds in their skulls sensed that the controlling entity meant to destroy them shortly, still their bodies continued with fierce courage to obey that entity.
Their eyes watched the ruined buildings which stood up clear-cut and bizarre through the thin atmosphere. Their frost-bitten hands were ready to raise rifles to their shoulders should any of Sandhurst’s band make his appearance. Doubtless many of the minds behind those lifeless masks were already mad. Over their heads, fierce-eyed invaders aided them in their vigil.
A plane sagged sloppily only a few hundred feet above ground. Its propeller was racing inefficiently in the thin air.
With abrupt suddenness the tension of silent watching among the slaves and invaders was relieved. The great trap-door beside the laboratory swung open and a cloud of yellow vapor puffed up out of the pit it covered. In lazy rolls and eddyings it poured out toward the enemy.
The invaders, realizing that the yellow gas would bring quick death to them should they inhale even a trace of it, beat a hasty retreat. This was no time to meddle with these queer human demons who had defied them. The compulsion waves commanded the slaves to retreat also.
A vibrating whir thundered throatily out of the well which the trap-door had covered, and presently a long glass torpedo floated up into view. Its nose was turned obliquely toward the sky. Rapidly it gained momentum in its steep climb, became a mote against the blue, and faded from sight.
CHAPTER VI
The Last of the Entity
McLENNAN held the flier’s controls. They demanded all of his attention so that he could scarcely take note of the many novel impressions that were coming to him from all about. To be hurtling up and up like that produced some weird sensations—made a fellow’s head light and giddy and the rest of his body, especially his stomach, as heavy as lead.
Far below, the earth had diminished to a great saucer-like panorama of dull greens and faded browns, here and there flecked with bits of blue-gray that were lakes.
Sandhurst was at the stern of the flier, watching anxiously the metal braces that held the straining propulsion ray projector in position. The construction of this device had been his chief care during the days of preparation. The energy units of the airboat they had captured from the invaders had been insufficient to raise it up out of the atmosphere. And so the scientist had found it necessary to make use of his own ingenuity.
He had been rather successful. Driven by the powerful backward thrust of the propelling beam, their rate of climb was terrific. It drew the blood from the faces of the adventurers and made specks of blackness dance before their eyes.
Sandhurst would have liked to build a flier that was completely his own; however, since time was pressing and materials were hard to get, there was nothing he could do but make use of the captured vessel. It seemed to be serving the purpose remarkably well.
Why the savants had chosen Fay and Vance to accompany them may seem strange in view of the fact that they might have selected others more competent to cope with the vicissitudes of the hazardous venture. Sandhurst knew that the quality of their mettle had been proven, and the insistence of the youth that they be given the honor, had been so eager and zealous that refusal was next to impossible. Sandhurst and Mac had capitulated.
In spite of the danger of their position it was evident that the students were enjoying themselves. True, they clutched fiercely at the improvised hand-grips; they were perhaps a little frightened, yet their fear was not the agonizing fear of terror; it was that mild thrilling fear, which makes the hazard of adventure so fascinating.
For his own part, Sandhurst was undergoing the most glorious experience of an eventful life. The threat of death was there, but who cared? The shrieking wind of their hurried flight, the drone of machinery he had created, the earth, dimming to a blurred fairyland behind, and the silent mysteries of the universe unfolding all about, gave rise in him to an ecstasy which, a month before, he would not have believed himself capable of feeling.
He watched the two rockets of the invaders that pursued them. Gradually they fell behind and faded in the mists of the atmosphere. Sandhurst smiled in satisfaction.
&nb
sp; The tortured screech of the atmosphere, as the flier tore on its way, was fading, for they were approaching the outer limits of the earth’s blanket of air.
Vance and Fay were gazing up to where the violet of the sky was deepening, darkening. The girl raised her arm and pointed to a tiny pinpoint of light that glowed steadily against the soft, cold purple.
Almost simultaneously, Mac made a similar discovery. “We’re getting up in the world, Chief,” he shouted. “Stars! Whew, what a climb! My head’s buzzing like a hive o’ bees!”
“But it’s worth the pain,” Vance put in. “Just think, nobody, anytime has ever been up this high before. Look at those stars! And the sun’s shining! Look at it!—Fay, Mr. Sandhurst!”
Visibly, as they mounted higher, the solar disc climbed through the grey mists of the atmosphere. It was ruddy and baneful.
“Like a blood-red bubble surging up through a sea of—opal,” Vance muttered softly.
Only the muffled whir of the projector was audible now, and so Mac heard the phrase. “Poetic lad you are,” he chuckled amusedly without turning, “like the chief.”
“Silly ass, maybe,” the boy rejoined with a sheepish grin.
“Don’t mention that characteristic of mine, Mac,” Sandhurst said, with a show of benign sarcasm, “I’m terribly sensitive about it.”
But McLennan was ready to stop talking. “Shut up, you guys,” he growled. “I’m busy. There’s the meteor coming right toward us.”
The visiting orb had climbed out of the grey fog at the western rim of the world and was moving visibly in their direction.
They had cleared the terrestrial atmosphere now, and were riding in empty space. The sun, ringed by the silvery wisps of its corona, glowed fiercely in the black, star-shot firmament.
The purple meteor which, since the reduction of the earth’s gravitational force, had taken a new path more distant from its adopted primary, was approaching alarmingly near to the flier.
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