by Jerry
Other groups were found and helped as the years passed; and in helping others, we aided ourselves. For from each town, in payment of our aid, we required a definite number of young men and women to aid us in producing the arms, planes, chemicals and tools necessary to our continued prosperity.
The busy years sped by hardly reckoned by us, so busy were we. And, imperceptibly, the country round about, for a radius of five hundred miles from Endurance, was dotted with smaller or larger towns, all built on the model that we had demonstrated to be successful. A quaint and beautiful state had sprung up, amazingly modern and scientific in some ways; amazingly mellow and picturesque in others. The nation of which Professor Abelton was the ruler was in no wise crude or inefficient. There were no idle hands in our community, and no privilege of position or wealth. One for all, and all for one, was the motto of Endurance and its daughter towns.
The catastrophe was in the end a splendid thing for man, I think. For in the great cataclysm, stifling customs and obsolete laws were cast aside—and a great leader of mankind organized a society upon the basis of scientific law.
The world, aside from the menace of the insects of the air, was a very beautiful place, at that time. Little towns throve in every hamlet. The songs of our happy, busy people filled the air and mingled with the songs of our airplanes as they winged their ways from town to town bearing peace and good will.
Our airplanes were as quaint and yet as efficient as the life we lived. They were as much a part of our lives—more a part of our lives—than dogs, horses, or any other animal had ever been to early man. Our planes were not built in great shops, and turned out by the thousand like so many wooden boxes; they were not built by men who saw them only as items in a profit-and-loss statement. Our planes were built by artists—by artists with a sense of flight. And we who built them knew that they were far more faithful and far more intelligent than any animal. Thought shone in them, and the loving skill of the artist was clear in every part. They were far more sensitive than the most highly-strung horse, and quick to detect roughness or gentleness in the hands of those who flew them. Their moods were legion, and they surprised, delighted—yes, and irritated—like any close friend. They could be coaxed, and they loved to obey one whose orders were firmly given. But they could be cruel and treacherous to the weak or lubberly, and to those who persistently maltreated them.
Yet were we not content. For these planes, beautiful and bright, and brave though they were, could not conquer the enemies of the air, as our tanks had done the monsters of the land.
Our tanks and tractor guns, slowly but surely had rid the earth of the brutal hulking terrors who cumbered it. Every day these tanks, looking themselves like great insects, lumbered out to their assigned areas, and patiently hunted for their prey. Having found the creatures, they blew them to pieces. Each evening the hunters returned with a record of their kills. It was dangerous, exciting work; but the going and going of the tanks and their attendant guns was so familiar a spectacle that busy people, at the end of the day, often failed to notice their passing. This persistent hunting, however, had its effect and soon in the areas patrolled by our tanks there was little to fear from the monsters.
The Professor’s Plan
THE greater number of insects, however, lived for the most part in the air. These, because of our inability to carry great guns in our planes, we were powerless to kill. As the reconquest of the land round about us became more complete, the number of our enemies in the air increased. This was because the land monsters had taken a deadly toll from the larvae of the air dragons—the larvae being left unprotected from the other devilish monsters who attacked them. Our tanks, indeed, destroyed these giant larvae when ever they could find them; but this was very rarely. The great flying insects made their homes in the great swamps which had come into existence and there they laid their eggs and there their larvae were hatched. Our tanks could not penetrate these great bogs, and now that their natural enemies were gone, the skies grew literally black with the winged legions who sailed through the air. It is impossible to describe the conditions of that time. For a time we had been able to cultivate fields beyond our enclosure. Now that was again impossible. Taking off and landing in our planes became a most dangerous operation, and scores of pilots were killed week after week.
Twenty years after the first invasion of monsters, we were again faced with a problem which tried the hearts and minds of men. And, as in the former time the Professor’s great mind had solved the problem, so now he came to our aid with a weapon that vanquished the terrors of the air.
The announcement came about in this manner. The Professor called a great conference of all those who held administrative positions in our now far-flung confederation. When we were seated, he spoke:
“So far, we have done well. Our great confederation of cities holds undisputed sway over the countryside for miles about. But it is not consistent with the glory and dignity of man that he should cower in walled and roofed cities, or flee to the upper reaches of the air when his enemies pursue him. We must have some weapon in the air, which will do the work that the tanks have accomplished on the land. But it may not be a lumbering, slow-moving machine. It must be strong enough to carry heavy guns, but it must be also as swift as a bird in flight. ‘Can it be done?’ you ask. Gentlemen, it must be done. Our future and the future of mankind depends upon it!
“Long, long ago, I told you that our deliverance depended upon two things: the building of safe cities, and the building of great airplanes. The first of these steps, you have nobly completed. The second lies before us. During the last five years my mind has been constantly busy with this problem, and I am happy to be able to lay before you a plan for the craft that we need.”
He spread a little pile of plans and blue prints upon the table. “The airplane itself,” he said, “cannot become very much larger than the largest machines we now possess; because the support of much greater weights on the landing wheels is impossible. Not much more than six tons per wheel—the loads carried now—can be carried. If we built an airplane of the size we wish, the problems of supporting the weight, maneuvering on the ground, taking off and landing would be impossible of solution.”
We looked at him enquiringly. If the airplane could not be made much larger, what then was in the professor’s mind?
“These problems are, however, easy to solve,” continued the professor, “in the hydroplane.
“A year ago we dammed up the river that runs through the valley and now we have converted the gorge that surrounds this plateau into a great lake. I told you that the project was for defence, and so it was; but it is for defence on a greater scale that you ever dreamed. It does indeed furnish a barrier to any land monster that might come near us; but its real purpose is that of a landing place for the great hydroplane which we shall build to sweep the skies clear of our enemies. No matter how great we build our hydroplane, it will be easy to land it in the water. Here are the plans. Yours is the task of building it!”
* * *
Within six months, on the professor’s birthday, we presented him with the Conqueror, the first of the fleet which was to win back for man the heritage he had so nearly lost to the terrible, giant insects.
I have said that we who made airplanes were actuated by a love for the beings that we created. Need I say, then, that this new giant plane commanded the best that we had in us? Into it we put the best work of our lives. Five thousand of us worked upon the actual assembly of the great plane.
Ah, what a ship she was! Each part of her was a part of the soul of the man who had worked it. She was a poem of shining metal, the flowering genius of a people who knew and loved aircraft as no other people had.
The entire machine was made of metal—even the wing covering. The huge conical hull was entirely enclosed in metal on the upper and lower decks. The middle deck, however, was wide open—for here we mounted our great guns.
The Flight of the Conqueror
THE ship
was nine hundred feet long, which gave us plenty of room for a battery of eight eight-inch guns, and twenty five-inch guns. The eight-inch guns were mounted in turrets, so that they could be trained in any direction; and the five-inch guns were placed at interval along each side of the deck.
To lift this terrific mass, we gave the Conqueror a wing spread of nine hundred feet. These wings, each four hundred and fifty feet long, swung from the hull at a sharp dihedral angle, and then curved down until they were horizontal.
We could never have flown her, however, had not the genius of the professor applied itself to the engineering problem. He had delved into the records made of gas engines; and he had seen that it was necessary to possess an engine more powerful and more efficient than any we now possessed in order to fly his great new machine.
No one will ever know how many sleepless nights our leader spent on his problem. But in the end he had perfected a rotary gas engine which we tested with tremendous success in our smaller planes.
The Conqueror was driven by twenty of these evaporative cooled-gas turbines which we placed in the wings; ten on the starboard side and ten on the port side, to drive twenty propellers.
When we launched the Conqueror, a cry of great joy arose from the assembled thousands who had not until then seen the great ship. She slid down the ways—and into the great lake which now washed about the eminence on which our city stood. The finishing touches were made, ammunition and supplies were taken aboard, and I—to my great surprise and delight—was given command of her.
We were anxious to try our machine against the enemies of our race, and preparations were made to insure a successful battle. Although we could but ill afford the sacrifice, a hundred cows, pigs and sheep were taken from our flocks, and each was put in a steel cage. These cages were attached to captive balloons, the ropes of which were wound about winches, each of which was attached to a tank.
On the morning set for the battle, our tanks crawled out across the causeway which led from our city across the lake to the further shore. This was a distance of two miles; but the tanks crawled yet another three miles before they unwound their winches and let their captive balloons and their captive decoys rise into the air. It was fortunate for the occupants of the tanks that the winches operated from within, for the great dragons, scanting meat from afar, were now filling the sky. Already some were tearing at the cages with their hideous claws and jaws; and one or two balloons had sunk to earth under the weight of monsters who had seized the cages.
Incredible as it must seem to a world in which such creatures are but exhibits in a museum, there were fully two or three thousand of these chimeras in the sky.
Then the Conqueror rose. I was within her, and so could not see her flight from below; but the professor was so impressed that he wrote down his experiences, and I quote his words here:
“Four of the propellers began to spin, and the great boat moved imperceptibly forward to the accompaniment of an increasing hum. Two by two, the other air screws began to revolve, and the Conqueror, having reached the center of the lake, swung about in the direction of the enemy. For a moment, her movement ceased, and she seemed to crouch as if for a mighty leap. The engines and the airscrews roared together in a gathering crescendo as if they knew what lay before them and were bellowing a challenge. Then the Conqueror leaped forward, plowing through the water and spurting fountains of snowy spray. With a sudden spring, like a living thing, the great metal mass cleared the water. She sniffed the wind and rose until she was lightly skimming the lake’s blue surface. Then, giving the lake’s bosom a farewell caress, she rocketed up into her element—the air! Straight toward her frightful foes she flew, her guns already spurting death!”
At the first volley, the shells took effect, and a great gap was blown in the mass of flying monsters. They swarmed about looking for their enemy. Round and round them we circled—all our guns trained to port. Broadside after broadside we fired, until the sky was full of flame and the earth below was a shambles.”
Within the plane, there was no cheering. To us, this was a dirty job to be quickly and thoroughly done. Gun crews, naked except for their trunks, loaded and fired with an efficiency that was more than human, learned through long hours of fighting on the walls and in the tanks. The ship, steady as a rock, made a perfect base for gun-fire.
The monsters, after a long battle, were reduced to a mere handful, and were seeking to flee. We gave chase, our great speed making this easy; ever and anon a battery would fire and one of our erstwhile terrors would fall to earth in shattered fragments.
We had demonstrated our superiority. No longer need we watch the sky with terror. A decisive battle had been, won over the enemy, with the aid of the Conqueror.
The next day, flushed with victory, we flew to the nearest of the great swamps where the monsters had their refuge. There circling about, we saw wonders which we had not dreamed of before. Wasp nests a thousand feet long and half as high were built in groves of great trees. Holes we saw, ten feet in d’ameter, marking the dens of other wasps. Caves in the sides of hills marked the dwelling places of great beetles, and ant-hills that were actually hills rose among the gigantic trees.
Here we fought another battle, and hither for many days we returned, to rid the place of the horrors who abided there. Thousands of pounds of shot and shell were fired into the abiding place of death before it was purged of its hellish spawn.
We bombed and shelled the nests, hills, and caves, until no vestige of them was left, and when the rage-maddened survivors came roaring up to attack us, we served them a meal of dynamite and steel.
This swamp was the base from which the greater part of the insects in our locality conducted their operations, and the reducing it to impotence was a tremendous job. One day, however, we returned in the level rays of a setting sun to tell our people that the great swamp no longer hid a living monster. We had plowed it over and over with high-explosive shells. We had mowed down trees and swept away undergrowth, and finally set fire to the whole area. Few of the dragons who had lived there escaped, and those who did flew far away from the awful attack that had been launched upon them.
Man, with the aid of his new friend, the airplane, had once demonstrated his superiority over his brute foes, and had persuaded nature, indeed, to yield to him the inheritance of which she had tried to defraud him.
* * *
The Historian stopped reading, and we noted for the first time, so great had been our interest in the story—that the throbbing and pulsing of the dance orchestra had ceased.
No word had been spoken, so moved were we by the stark, simple grandeur of that tale. We could not speak. We stood in awe and wonder before the quiet courage and devotion to mankind that shone from every word of the simple story.
Silently we went out upon the deserted deck. Through the casement above, we saw the eastern stars hanging low, like great lamps in the purple sky. On the dim horizon, a yellow band was brightened in the east, and suddenly a bank of clouds flamed red as they caught the rays of the coming sun. Then, with terrifying speed, the sun leaped over the rim of the world, and spread beneath our feet a golden carpet, a magic mat from the mysterious East.
Nature smiled at us.
But I did not smile with her. The story I had just heard made me fear her. I shuddered, and turned away.
THE END
ZAPT’S REPULSIVE PASTE
J.U. Giesy
“Meow-w-w-w!” The sound was one of feline protestation, a sort of outraged plaint, uttered in the accents of a snarling rage.
“Goodness! Was that Fluffy?” exclaimed Miss Nellie Zapt to her fiancé, Bob Sargent, with whom she was sitting in the dusk, back of the vines on the porch of her father’s house.
“Sounded like her voice, at any rate,” Bob agreed.
“Meouw! Psst! Zit!”
Nellie started to her feet and stood slenderly poised as a fresh outburst of something suspiciously like inarticulate profanity drifted to her ears. And then she
laid hold of her companion.
“Come along, there’s something wrong,” she urged, and dragged him to his feet.
She darted into the house intent on learning what had evoked the outcries so vociferously emitted by her pet, and Sargent followed very much as he had been following her for something like a year. She was a dainty, glowing creature, and Bob was all tangled up in her feminine charms. So he kept close now as with a tapping of quick little heels on polished wood she entered the living-room of the house via the entrance hall.
And then Nellie paused. She stared—at the figure of a small man with spectacles on the bridge of a high, thin nose, and iron-gray whiskers, who stood with back-tilted head, beside a small tin-pail deposited on the table in the center of the room.
“Father!” Miss Zapt gasped.
And Sargent also gave vent to an exclamation: “Good Lord!”
“Eh?” Xenophon Xerxes Zapt, “Unknown Quantity Zapt,” as his associates sometimes called him because of the double “X” in his name, the celebrated investigator of the unknown in science, lowered his head and jerked it around in the direction of his daughter’s voice. There was the atmosphere about him of a small boy apprehended in some prank. He put out a hand and laid it on the little tin-pail. “Did you speak, my dear?” Out of near-sighted blue, eyes, he peered at his radiant offspring, who had drawn herself up in an indignant fashion.
“I did,” said Miss Zapt firmly. “I suppose you’re responsible for that?”
She lifted a graceful arm and pointed overhead, as indeed she very well might, considering that she pointed at the wildly gyrating form of a superb Angora cat.
One would hardly expect to find a Persian Angora flattened, with no visible means of support, against the ceiling of a room, as this one certainly was. She hung there threshing with frantic legs at the impalpable air, with a motion not unlike a rather desperate effort at swimming, the total result of which was that she spun herself about in a circle, marked by a rapidly alternating head, from which gleamed yellow eyes and a twitching bushy tail. Her demeanor was little short of hysteria itself.