Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931

“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 this 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.”