Invasion

by Murray Leinster

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Astounding Stories March 1933. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  He picked Sylva up in his arms and ran madly.]

  Invasion

  By Murray Leinster

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: The whole fighting fleet of the United Nations is caught inKreynborg's marvelous, unique trap.]

  It was August 19, 2037. The United Nations was just fifty years old.Televisors were still monochromatic. The Nidics had just won the WorldSeries in Prague. Com-Pub observatories were publishing elaboratefigures on moving specks in space which they considered to be Martianspaceships on their way to Earth, but which United Nations astronomerscould not discover at all. Women were using gilt lipsticks that year.Heat-induction motors were still considered efficient prime movers.

  Thorn Hard was a high-level flier for the Pacific Watch. Bathyletiswas the most prominent of nationally advertised diseases, and was tobe cured by RO-17, "The Foundation of Personal Charm." Somebody namedNirdlinger was President of the United Nations, and somebody elsenamed Krassin was Commissar of Commissars for the Com-Pubs. Newspaperswere printing flat pictures in three colors only, and deploring thehigh cost of stereoscopic plates. And ... Thorn Hard was a high-levelflier for the Pacific Watch.

  That is the essential point, of course--Thorn Hard's work with theWatch. His job was, officially, hanging somewhere above thetwenty-thousand-foot level with his detector-screens out, listeningfor unauthorized traffic. And, the normal state of affairs between theCom-Pubs and the United Nations being one of highly armed truce,"unauthorized traffic" meant nothing more or less than spies.

  But on August 19th, 2037, Thorn Hard was off duty. Decidedly so. Hewas sitting on top of Mount Wendel, in the Rockies; he had aravishingly pretty girl sitting on the same rock with him, and he waslooking at the sunset. The plane behind him was an official Watchplane, which civilians are never supposed to catch a glimpse of. Ithad brought Thorn Hard and Sylva West to this spot. It waited now,half-hidden by a spur of age-eroded rock, to take them back tocivilization again. Its G.C. (General Communication) phone mutteredoccasionally like the voice of conscience.

  ]

  The colors of the mountain changed and blended. The sky to westwardwas a glory of a myriad colors. Man and girl, high above the world,sat with the rosy glow of dying sunlight in their faces and watchedthe colors fade and shift into other colors and patterns even moreexquisite. Their hands touched. They looked at each other. Theysmiled queerly, as people smile who are in love or otherwise not quitesane. They moved inevitably closer....

  And then the G.C. phone barked raucously:

  "All Watch planes attention! Urgent! Extreme high-level trafficreported seven-ten line bound due east, speed over one thousand. AllWatch planes put out all detectors and use extra vigilance. Note: thespeed, course, and time of report of this traffic checks with Com-Pubobservations of moving objects approaching Earth from Mars. Thispossibility should be considered before opening fire."

  Thorn Hard stiffened all over. He got up and swung down to the stubbylittle ship with its gossamer-like wings of cellate. He touched thereport button.

  "Plane 257-A reporting seven-ten line. Thorn Hard flying. On MountWendel, on leave. Orders?"

  He was throwing on the screens even as he reported. And the verticaldetector began to whistle shrilly. His eyes darted to the dial, and hespoke again.

  "Added report. Detector shows traffic approaching, bound due east,seven hundred miles an hour, high altitude.... Correction; six-fiftymiles. Correction; six hundred." He paused. "Traffic is deceleratingrapidly. I think, sir, this is the reported ship."

  * * * * *

  And then there was a barely audible whining noise high in the air tothe west. It grew in volume and changed in pitch. From a whine itbecame a scream. From a scream it rose to a shriek. Somethingmonstrous and red glittered in the dying sunlight. It was huge. It wasof no design ever known on earth. Wings supported it, but they wereobscured by the blasts of forward rockets checking its speed.

  It was dropping rapidly. Then lifting-rockets spouted flame to keep itfrom too rapid a descent. It cleared a mountain-peak by a bare twohundred feet, some two miles to the south. It was a hundred-odd feetin length. It was ungainly in shape, monstrous in conformation.Colossal rocket-tubes behind it now barely trickled vaporousdischarges. It cleared the mountain-top, went heavily on in a steepglide downward, and vanished behind a mountain-flank. Presently thethin mountain air brought the echoed sound of its landing, ofrapid-fire explosions of rocket-tubes, and then silence.

  Thorn Hard was snapping swift, staccato sentences into thereport-transmitter. Describing the clumsy glittering monster, itsmotion; its wings; its method of propulsion. It seemed somehowfamiliar despite its strangeness. He said so.

  Then a vivid blue flame licked all about the rim of the world and wasgone. Simultaneously the G.C. speaker crashed explosively and wentdead. Thorn went on grimly, switching in the spare.

  "A very violent electrical discharge went out from it then. A bluelight seemed to flash all around the horizon at no great distance andmy speaker blew out. I have turned on the spare. I do not know whethermy sender is functioning--"

  The spare speaker cut in abruptly at that moment:

  "It is. Stay where you are and observe. A squadron is coming."

  * * * * *

  Then the voice broke off, because a new sound was coming from thespeaker. It was a voice that was unhuman and queerly horrible andsomehow machine-like. Hoots and howls and whistles came from thespeaker. Wailing sounds. Ghostly noises, devoid of consonants butbroadcast on a wave-length close to the G.C. band and thereforeproduced by intelligence, though unintelligible. The unhuman hoots andwails and whistles came through for nearly a minute, and stopped.

  "Stay on duty!" snapped the G.C. speaker. "That's no language known onearth. Those are Martians!"

  Thorn looked up to see Sylva standing by the Watch-plane door. Herface was pale in the growing darkness outside.

  "Beginning duty sir," said Thorn steadily, "I report that I have withme Miss Sylva West, my fiancee, in violation of regulations. I askthat her family be notified."

  He snapped off the lights and went with her. The red rocket-ship hadlanded in the very next valley. There was a glare there, which waveredand flickered and died away.

  "Martians!" said Thorn in fine irony. "We'll see when the Watch planescome! My guess is Com-Pubs, using a searchlight! Nervy!"

  The glare vanished. There was only silence, a curiously complete anddeadly silence. And Thorn said, suddenly:

  "There's no wind!"

  There was not. Not a breath of air. The mountains were uncannilyquiet. The air was impossibly still, for a mountain-top. Ten minuteswent by. Twenty. The detector-whistles shrilled.

  "There's the Watch," said Thorn in satisfaction. "Now we'll see!"

  And then, abruptly, there was a lurid flash in the sky to northward.Two thousand feet up and a mile away, the unearthly green blaze of ahexynitrate explosion lit the whole earth with unbearable brilliance.

  "Stop your ears!" snapped Thorn.

  * * * * *

  The racking concussion-wave of hexynitrate will break human eardrumsat an incredible distance. But no sound came, though the seconds wentby.... Then, two miles away, there was a second gigantic flash....Then a third.... But there was no sound at all. The quiet of the hill
sremained unbroken, though Thorn knew that such cataclysmic detonationsshould be audible at twenty miles or more. Then lights flashed onabove. Two--three--six of them. They wavered all about, darting hereand there.... Then one of the flying searchlights vanished utterly ina fourth terrific flash of green.

  "The watch planes are going up!" said Thorn dazedly. "Blowing up! Andwe can't hear the explosions!"

  Behind him the G.C. speaker barked his call. He raced to get itsmessage.

  "The Watch planes we sent to join you," said a curt voice herecognized as that of the Commanding General of the United Nations,"have located an invisible barrier by their sonic altimeters. Four ofthem seem to have rammed it and exploded without destroying it. Whathave you to report?"

  "I've seen the flashes, sir," said Thorn unsteadily, "but they made nonoise. And there's no wind, sir. Not a breath since the blue flash Ireported."

  A pause.

  "Your statement bears out their report," said the G.C. speakerharshly. "The barrier seems to be hemispherical. No such barrier isknown on Earth. These must be Martians, as the Com-Pubs said. You willwait until morning and try to make peaceful contact with them. Thisbarrier may be merely a precaution on their part. You will try toconvince them that we wish to be friendly."

  "I don't believe they're Martians, sir--"

  Sylva came racing to the door of the plane.

  "Thorn! Something's coming! I hear it droning!"

  Thorn himself heard a dull droning noise in the air, coming towardhim.

  "Occupants of the rocket-ship, sir," he said grimly, "seem to beapproaching. Orders?"

  "Evacuate the ship," snapped the G.C. phone. "Let them examine it.They will understand how we communicate and prepare to receive andexchange messages. If they seem friendly, make contact at once."

  * * * * *

  Thorn made swift certain movements and dived for the door. He seizedSylva and fled for the darkness below the plane. He was taking adesperate risk of falling down the mountain-slopes. The droning drewnear. It passed directly overhead. Then there was a flash and adeafening report. A beam of light appeared aloft. It searched for andfound Thorn's plane, now a wreck. Flash after flash and explosionafter explosion followed....

  They stopped. Their echoes rolled and reverberated among the hills.There was a hollow, tremendous intensification of the echoes aloft asif a dome of some solid substance had reflected back the sound. Slowlythe rollings died away. Then a voice boomed through a speakeroverhead, and despite his suspicions Thorn felt a queer surprise. Itwas a human voice, a man's voice, full of a horrible amusement.

  "Thorn Hardt! Thorn Hardt! Where are you?" Thorn did not move orreply. "If I haff not killed you, you hear me," the voice chuckled."Come to see me, Thorn Hardt. Der dome of force iss big, yes, but youcan no more get out than your friends can get in. And now I haffdestroyed your phones so you can no longer chat with them. Come andsee me, Thorn Hardt, so I will not be bored. We will discuss derCom-Pubs. And bring der lady friend. You may play der chaperon!"

  The voice laughed. It was not pleasant laughter. And the humming dronein the air rose and dwindled. It moved away from the mountain-top. Itlessened and lessened until it was inaudible. Then there was deadsilence again.

  "By his accent, he's a Baltic Russian," said Thorn very grimly in thedarkness. "Which means Com-Pubs, not Martians, though we're the onlypeople who realize it; and they're starting a war! And we, Sylva, mustwarn our people. How are we going to do it?"

  She pressed his hand confidently, but it did not look promising. ThornHard was on foot, without a transmitter, armed only with hisbelt-weapons and with a girl to look after, and moreover imprisoned ina colossal dome of force which hexynitrate had failed to crack....

  * * * * *

  It was August 20, 2037. There was a triple murder in Paris which wasrumored to be the work of a Com-Pub spy, though the murderer'sunquestionably Gallic touches made the rumor dubious. Newspapervendor-units were screaming raucously, "Martians land in Colorado!"and the newspapers themselves printed colored-photos of hastilyimprovised models in their accounts of the landing of a blood-redrocket-ship in the widest part of the Rockies. The inter-continentaltennis matches reached their semi-finals in Havana, Cuba. Thorn Hardhad not reported to Watch headquarters in twelve hours. Quadrupletswere born in Des Moines, Iowa. Krassin, Commissar of Commissars of theCom-Pubs, made a diplomatic inquiry about the rumors that a Martianspace-ship had landed in North America. He asked that Com-Pubscientists be permitted to join in the questioning and examination ofthe Martian visitors. The most famous European screen actress landedfrom the morning Trans-Atlantic plane with her hair dyed a lightlavender, and beauty-shops throughout the country placed rush ordersfor dye to take care of the demand for lavender hair which would beginby mid-afternoon. The heavy-weight champion of the United Nations waswarned that his title would be forfeited if he further dodged a fightwith his most promising contender. And ... Thorn Hard had not reportedto Watch headquarters in twelve hours.

  He was, as a matter of fact, cautiously parting some bushes to peerpast a mountain-flank at the red rocket-ship. Sylva West lay on theground behind him. Both of them weary to the point of exhaustion. Theyhad started their descent from Mount Wendel at the first gray streakof dawn in the east. They had toiled painfully across the brokencountry between, to this point of vantage. Now Thorn looked down uponthe rocket-ship.

  * * * * *

  It lay a little askew upon the ground, seeming to be partly buried inthe earth. A hundred feet and more in length, it was even moreobviously a monstrosity as he looked at it in the bright light of day.But now it was not alone. Beside it a white tower reared upward. Purewhite and glistening in the sunshine, a bulging, uneven shaft rose ahundred feet sheer. It looked as solid as marble. Its purpose wasunguessable. There was a huge, fan-shaped space where the vegetationabout the rocket-ship was colored a vivid red. In air-photos, therocket-ship would look remarkably like something from another planet.But nearby, Thorn could see a lazy trickle of fuel-fumes from aport-pipe on one side of the monster....

  "That tower is nothing but cellate foam, which hardens. And Sylva!See?"

  She came cautiously through the brushwood and looked down. Sheshivered a little. From here they could see beneath the bows of therocket-ship. And there was a name there, in the Cyrillic alphabetwhich was the official written language of the Com-Pubs. Here, onUnited Nations soil, it was insolent. It boasted that the red shipcame, not from an alien planet, but from a nation more alien still toall the United Nations stood for. The Com-Pubs--the Union of CommunistRepublics--were neither communistic nor republics, but they were muchmore dangerous to the United Nations than any mere Martians would havebeen.

  "We'll have some heavy ships here to investigate, soon," said Thorngrimly. "Then I'll signal!"

  * * * * *

  He flung back his head. High up and far away, beyond that invisiblebarrier against which Watch-planes had flung themselves in vain, therewere tiny motes in mid-air. These were Watch planes too, hoveringoutside the obstacle they could not see, but which even hexynitratebombs could not break through. And very far away indeed there was aswiftly-moving small dark cloud. As Thorn watched, that cloud drewclose. As his eyes glowed, it resolved itself into its componentspecks. Small, two-man patrol-scouts. Larger, ten-man cruisers of theair. Huge, massive dreadnaughts of the blue. A completecombat-squadron of the United Nations Fighting Forces was sweeping toposition about the dome of force above the rocket-ship.

  The scouts swept forward in a tiny, whirling cloud. They sheered awayfrom something invisible. One of them dropped a smoking object. Itemitted a vast cloud of paper, which the wind caught and swept away,and suddenly wrapped about a definite section of an arc. More and moreof the tiny smoke-bombs released their masses of cloudlike stuff. Inmid-air a dome began to take form, outlined by the trailing streaks ofgray. It began to be more definitely traced by in
terlinings. An aeriallattice spread about a portion of a six-mile hemisphere. The top wasfifteen thousand feet above the rocket-ship, twenty-five thousand feetfrom sea-level, as high as Mount Everest itself.

  Tiny motes hovered even there, where the smallest of visible speckswas a ten-man cruiser. And one of the biggest of the aircraft camegingerly up to the very inner edge of the lattice-work of fog and hungmotionless, holding itself aloft by powerful helicopter screws. Menwere working from a trailing stage--scientists examining the barriereven hexynitrate would not break down.

  * * * * *

  Thorn set to work. He had come toilsomely to the neighborhood of therocket-ship because he would have to do visual signaling, and therewas no time to lose. The dome of force was transparent. The air fleetwould be trying to communicate through it with the Martians theybelieved were in the rocket-ship. Sunlight reflected from a polishedcanteen would attract attention instantly from a spot near the redmonster, while elsewhere it might not be observed for a long time.But, trying every radio wave-band, and every system of visualsignaling, and watching and testing for a reply, Thorn's signal oughtto be picked up instantly.

  He handed his pocket speech-light receptor to Sylva. It is standardequipment for all flying personnel, so they may receive non-broadcastorders from flight leaders. He pointed to a ten-man cruiser fromwhich shone the queer electric-blue glow of a speech-light.

  "Listen in on that," he commanded. "I'm going to call them. Tell mewhen they answer."

  He began to flash dots and dashes in that quaintly archaic telegraphalphabet Watch fliers are still required to learn. It was the Watchcode call, sent over and over again.

  "They're trying to make the Martians