by Jerry
To Commander of the Air:
Clear the air lanes of all monopters save those which are of the patrol service. Under your personal supervision the skies above the City will be patrolled until orders for your relief are sent you. Do not relinquish vigilance day or night. Am sending orders to the electricians to keep searchlights playing into the skies during the hours of darkness. SOTA.
To Master of Electricians:
Have men posted, in reliefs of one hour, at each aerial searchlight throughout the City. Keep the skies as light as day throughout the night. Report any bodies in the air, clouds or otherwise, which are not the monopters of the aerial patrols. SOTA.
To Department Heads of Invisible Frontier: Be ready at any moment to raise Invisible Wall along your section of the Frontier. Have extra men posted at each tube, with instructions to turn the rays upon any object in the sky, cloud or monopter, indicated in orders from me giving location and direction-reading. SOTA.
To Chief of Interior Administration: Satisfy yourself that there are no traitors in the corps which has charge of the Invisible Frontier. Report results. SOTA.
This last I sent in the code always used in communication with City of the East’s secret service, a code which Sark Darlin had taught me. I was proud of the fact that I was able to send, in the code, from memory.
These orders sent forth, I connected the phones of my monopter with the receiver of the board of communication and, satisfied that any message would waken me instantly, flung myself down with my head against the beloved feet of Lona, ears attuned to the tympanum of the phones, and slept the sleep of utter exhaustion.
4
IT WAS Lona who wakened me. She had slipped into her monopter again and had mine straightened for use. There was utter silence inside the piling, not even the monotonous humming of the machinery used by the Menials coming through to us. An ominous silence. Yet no message had come over the wires. If anything had happened outside, in City of the East, no warning had reached us. Yet I knew upon waking that something was wrong. So did Lona, for she was as pale as chalk as she faced me in the pale light of the dimmed incandescents which lighted the room inside the piling.
“Look, Gerd!” she ejaculated, pointing at the board of communication.
Then I realized why no alarm had reached me, and cursed myself deeply for having jeopardized City of the East for the sake of a bit of sleep. But the sleeping had saved my life. For I had turned in my sleep and, because my phones were fastened tightly in place, my turning had pulled the connection of the phones with the board of communication. It had saved my life, I repeat, for the board of communication was nothing but a twisted mass of metal. The myriads of wires were fused together in a single ugly mass, and the wood of the board was as black as coal. The board of communication was useless—and I had been asleep. What had happened? None of the officials knew the location of this second board of communication, and they might have been trying for hours to arouse me for the purpose of asking for orders. Anything might have happened because of my negligence.
There was no time to waste. With Lona’s hand in mine, since I needed her strength and woman’s courage, I stepped out of the room. Lona led the way to the opening in the Great Rampart through which we must rise to first story level. But as we went another and more terrible revelation burst upon me.
Something ghastly had befallen the Menials!
I could only guess how many there were of them; but as far as the eye could reach in all directions, massed against the slender pilings, grouped here and there in all sorts of contorted positions, not a nude figure moved. Sightless eyes gazed straight at the ceiling, glassily staring, while faces were contorted into masks of horror unimaginable. One man, a brown one, had clasped his hands at his own throat, and the grip still held in death, so powerful that the tongue, swollen and discolored, protruded from between teeth which glistened like snarling fangs. Another man lay doubled in such a way that his face was almost against his own nude loins, and the veins on his neck stood out like cords. Dead Menials, by scores and hundreds, slain swiftly before they could attempt escape, stricken down in the positions in which the unknown agent of death had found them.
What had slain the Menials, and why had they been slain?
The reason was obvious—the Menials, who did the work of City of the East, had been slain in order that not a wheel of commerce should turn throughout all the city—and the agency which had destroyed them had been created for the very purpose it had served—and the Menials had perished.
But how?
It came in a flash, then. The Menials were nude, and only the nude had perished. Horror-stricken, I bent and examined one of the laborers.
Weird, unknown rays! That was the answer—rays which acted only upon nude flesh! For just below the breast-bone of each contorted corpse, indelibly etched in the flesh, was a brownish circle perhaps two inches in diameter—much like the light circle a small flashlight makes upon an opaque object when held close to that object. The flesh inside the circle was burned to a crisp. Turning one corpse over I found a similar circle on the back, bisected by the spinal column! The ray had pierced the nude body!
I shuddered with horror. Those little submarines! The breach in the Rampart, and men, countless men, from City of the West passing among the Menials with those gruesome little flashlights in their hands.
Lona and I had escaped because they had not found us! Now I understood the silence, and why the machinery of the Menials was motionless. That machinery is, or was, operated by electricity, and such of it as I could see as we hurried through the contorted forms in the direction of the opening upon First Floor Level, had suffered the fate of the board of communication. Twisted metal, wood black as cinders, useless junk. In all the level of the Menials was a chaos of twisted wires, fused and odorous, twisted and contorted human bodies, a vast mausoleum which made me understand something of the ruthless power of the agency we were combating, and something of the horror we might yet expect. What would we find in the upper levels? Had, while we slept, the same mysterious agency which had slain the Menials made a holocaust of City of the East? It was unthinkable.
But there was no time to lose. It takes time to tell, but scarce two minutes could have elapsed after my wakening before Lona and I once more stood at the first story level.
CITY of the East was as light as day and the catastrophe which had fallen upon the Menials had thrown all City of the East into turmoil! Great searchlights played across the heavens, their diverging rays crossing and recrossing, their varied colors creating a kaleidoscope more brightly tinted than the greatest rainbow. Imagine the wonder of it! A City of a million spires and turrets, of a million buildings whose crests were in the clouds; buildings which formed a City of the East whose boundaries were the Mississippi on the west, the Atlantic on the east, and the regions of cold and heat to the north and south; a City divided into sections, each of which comprized no more than two square city blocks, each of which was part of a still larger section which was, roughly, five miles square—and each of the lesser sections equipped with powerful searchlights. Uncountable searchlights, of a myriad of colored beams, each playing across its allotted portion of the midnight sky.
City of the East, vast and immeasurable in the human mind, was the abode of terror unutterable, for attack had been delivered from an unexpected quarter and countless lives had been lost. I looked upward at the flight after flight of the aerial patrols, close-mustered specks in the sky at Air Lane 50,000, and the lights from the searchlights gilded their monopters eerily, so that they seemed like monster moths, with sunlight glinting on their wings. Swift darting moths, patrolling all the sky.
Lona and I turned westward, speeding at the ultimate limit of our monopters for the Invisible Frontier. This could easily be seen now, for where the lights from the darting searchlight-wedges encountered the Invisible Frontier the beams broke short off, so that the Wall, invisible as I knew it to be, was indicated by a night-black mass, through which e
ven the beams of the searchlights could not penetrate. Even light disintegrated and refused to penetrate the Wall of the Rays.
Though we looked as far as we could in both directions, the black wall seemed endless, and we flew for several miles parallel to it to satisfy ourselves that there was no breach. An eery experience, if you will, for we could not see the apparatus which directed the rays. Just an ebon wall against the West, as though it had been the edge of the absolute darkness of outer space—and silence. Satisfied that there was no breach along the Invisible Frontier, Lona and I turned back toward the Atlantic and, since Air Lane 40,000 was dteserted, we flew with the speed of the hurricane.
From this height we could see little of City of the East, so far below us, for our eyes were blinded by the glare of the myriad of lights which blazoned the heavens through which we sped. Through yellow light now; now through blue; now through pale green, we fled into the East. I was now in communication with the commander of the air. Two black clouds, he told me, had been dispersed at his orders when he had been unable to communicate with us; two black clouds which had apparently hung motionless at least ten thousand feet above Air Lane 50,000. He had ordered the nearest of the ray stations of the Invisible Frontier to disperse these clouds, which had been done instantly—and out of each had fallen a single huge monopter (huge, that is, in comparison with our own monopters), to plummet downward into the heart of City of the East.
I had an idea whence the clouds came.
“Am heading out over the Atlantic,” I wirelessed the commander. “Keep your Wave-length adjusted for contact. Lona Darlin is with me. Obey orders sent by either of us. Keep a sharp lookout on the Invisible Frontier. If the searchlights penetrate it at any point let me know at once.”
Then I severed connections and Lona and I hurtled onward into the East.
FOR the second time in twenty-four hours we could see, dimly it is true, and then only with the aid of powerful night glasses, the outline of the Great Rampart. We could not see it until we had left the shoreline several miles behind, because of the searchlights; but when it did become visible I began to get some idea of the terrible thing that we faced. Before, mountainous waves of water had crashed against the Great Rampart along a distance of little more than five miles, a local storm artificially induced, in some way, by the big submarine. Now a storm so vast in comparison as to dwarf that other into insignificance crashed against the Great Rampart. The roar was so vast that its very volume caused Lona and me, holding hands to keep from being separated, to be tossed to and fro like chips in a mill-race. No threat of destruction to a mere five miles of Rampart this time, for the storm was visible to right and left as far as we could see.
It might have extended along the whole length of the Great Rampart, as I believed, and later verified, that it did. But outward from the coastline a mere ten miles the ocean was as untroubled as a pond—and for an excellent reason!
Side by side, each in contact with its neighbor to right and left, submarines, only less vast than the first we had seen, pointed their steel noses at the Great Rampart! No beams as from searchlights came from their decks, and I knew that Lona and I had not been seen—yet. This was a terrible danger into which I was taking her. Had I tried to send her back she would not have understood my reason for so doing; besides which I wished her with me, even though both of us lost our lives.
Submarines afloat, abreast, their noses pointed at the Great Rampart. An attack was imminent; but how would it be delivered? It would be useless to charge the Great Rampart, even with metal monsters as vast as these. What, then?
I was soon to know. As before we had seen the tiny submarines dart back from the artifically created maelstrom before the Great Rampart, we saw them drop back again; but multiplied in numbers by the number of the big submarines which had lined up offshore to begin the offensive.
Here is where I made the mistake which was to prove the ruin of City of the East, for I sent a message to the commander of the air to clear the City immediately of all inhabitants, ordering them to the unmapped ways above Air Lane 50,000. I knew the monopters could do it, under pressure, though it would be a terrible strain on the nervous systems of the flyers, and many must, of necessity, fall by the wayside. Sacrifice the weak that the strong might live—it seemed sensible reasoning to me, in view of its stark necessity.
Looking back, after receiving the acknowledgment of the commander of the air, I saw the monopters rising from City of the East in veritable clouds. Not until the space below Air Lane 50,000 had become empty of aught save the beams of the mighty searchlights, whose operators were left behind at their posts—and I knew that the inhabitants who were able had been herded into the spaces above Air Lane 50,000, did I realize how neatly I had been tricked. The commander, then, of this barrier of big submarines had known all the time that Lona and I were above them; but had been subtle in his reasoning beyond imagining. It proved he had known of our presence that other time, too, when the one big submarine had wrought such havoc with the Great Rampart. From my actions then he had reasoned out my own probable line of reasoning, and I had done exactly what he had figured that I would do.
For no explosion occurred; no new breach showed in the Great Rampart. The commander of the invaders had worked a ruse the like of which had never before been encountered in the annals of modern warfare—and I had fallen into the trap. How well I knew it when the next episode occurred!
From the giant submarine directly below where Lona and I hung in the air, watching, shot a great funnel of blinding light. A funnel, or inverted cone, with its apex at the point of departure, broadening as it lifted to our place in the sky, so that the light was all about us. But it was different from the lights which the City of the East used, for we could see through the sides of the cone, around which we circled like moths in a mighty lamp chimney, unable to get through because of something inherent in the strange light which dashed us back when we would have gone through, dashed us back as effectually as a stone wall would have done, holding us prisoners inside the gleaming cone.
But we could see—great God, we could see! And in the hour or so before the end I realized to the full the catastrophe my lack of reasoning, my lack of experience with the minds of men, had brought upon City of the East! I understand now the reason of that hint I had caught in the voice of Sark Darlin w-hen he had told me I must become worthy to be the leader in affairs of City of the East. I had failed and, moving about the sides of the cone, seeking a way out, I suffered such torments as no man before me has ever suffered and, I hope, as no man may ever suffer in the future—for I could see!
AS THOUGH at a signal the under-sea hatches of the countless submarines opened and were flung back and, as the bees must have come forth when Pandora opened the box, came forth in swarms and myriads the monopters of the invaders! Now I realized, too, where even Sark Darlin had been shortsighted. He had never known of these submarines of the people of the West, feeling, no doubt, that the Invisible Frontier made it unnecessary for him to send spies and secret agents into the country of the Aliens. He had taken it for granted that City of the East was far in advance of the Aliens in point of inventions and the paraphernalia of warfare—a great mistake. We had not needed to make war, and were caught unprepared; the Aliens had been preparing for war for generations, building their monopters and submarines on the west coast, so far away that not even a whisper of warning had reached us. Then, when everything was ready for the greatest offensive in history, the long voyage down the coast in the fleet after fleet of metal amphibians, the unbelievable walk across the narrow neck of the Isthmus, the plunge into the Atlantic, and the lining up of the monsters before the Great Rampart of City of the East.
But my own mistake had been far greater. Yet, after all, what could I have done? I am sure they would have beaten us in any case, and our people would have worked out their lives in slavery instead of meeting the merciful death which was their portion because of my mistake. Yet I feel that I shall go into eternit
y with oceans and oceans of blood upon my soul. I might have done something.
But it was too late now. I knew it when, watching from the cone, desiring above all things to lose the power to watch because of the frightfulness, I saw those myriads of monopters swarm from the hatches of the metal monsters and advance upon City of the East by thousands. But stay! There was still the Invisible Frontier. I could communicate with the department heads of the Invisible Frontier and tell them to turn their rays across the top of the City. For, foreseeing the time when this very move might become necessary, Sark Darlin had caused ray reflectors to be erected on certain lines above the City so that the rays might be bent to follow the curvature of the earth, leaping the gaps between the lines of reflectors with the mathematical nicety which only a genius like Sark could have managed. It would be better to ruin the buildings, for they could be built up again, than for those huge monopters to swarm up in a surprize attack against our people, all of them now in the highest air lane and above. If I hurried I could have an invisible barrier built up between our people and the uprushing hordes of the enemy monopters.
But I reckoned without the deep wisdom of the unknown enemy commander who led the mighty offensive. For I found that even as Lona and I could not get out of this great cone of light, neither could our aerial messages! We were as separated from the City of the East as if we had been in the very bowels of the earth. The corps in charge of the Invisible Frontier would never get our message, and before they could see what was happening it would be too late—and thus it turned out.
Even as the hordes, carrying a wall of dark cloud ahead of them, climbed into the skies, high above the ceiling of our monopters, I thought of another way. Lona and I were both perfect physical specimens. Perhaps we could endure the terrific coldness of the atmosphere above the ordinary ceiling of our monopters—and win our way to freedom by flying out at the top of the cone of light.