by Ray Cummings
CHAPTER X
_Weird Battleground!_
"We have it going very well," said Tako, chuckling. "Don't you thinkso? Sit here by me. We will stay here for a time now."
Tako had a small flat rock for a table. On it he had spread hisparaphernalia for this battle--if battle it could be called. Weirdcontest! Opposing forces, each imponderable to the other so that nophysical contact had yet been made. Tako sat at his rock; givingorders to his leaders who came hurrying up and were away at hiscommand; or speaking orders into his sound apparatus; or consultinghis charts and co-ordinates, questioning Don and me at times overthe meaning of shadowy things we could see taking place about us.
A little field headquarters our post here might have been termed.[8]
[8] The detailed nature of the scientific devices Tako used in the handling of his army during the attack never has been disclosed. I saw him using one of the eye-telescopes. There was also a telephonic device and occasionally he would discharge a silent signal radiance--a curious intermittent green flare of light. His charts of the topography of New York City were to me incomprehensible hieroglyphics--mathematical formula, no doubt; the co-ordinates of altitudes and contours of our world-space in its relation to the mountainous terrain of his world which stood mingled here with the New York City buildings.
We were grouped now around Tako on a small level ledge of rock. Itlay on a broken, steeply ascending ramp of a mountainside. Themountain terraces towered back and above us. In front, two hundredfeet down, was a valley of pits and craters; and to the sides atumbled region of alternating precipitous cliffs and valley depths.
Upon every point of vantage, for two or three miles around us,Tako's men were dispersed. To us, they were solid gray blobs in theluminous darkness. The carriers, all arrived now, stood about a milefrom us, and save for their guards, the men had all left them. Theweapons were being taken out and carried to various points over themountains and in the valley depths. Small groups of men--some twohundred in a group--were gathered at many different points,assembling their weapons, and waiting for Tako's orders. Messengerstoiled on foot between them, climbing, white figures. Signalsflashed.
Fantastic, barbaric scene--it seemed hardly modern. Mountain defileswere swarming with white invaders, making ready, but not yetattacking.
* * * * *
We had had as yet no opportunity of talking alone with Jane since weleft the carrier. The incident with Tolla was to us whollyinexplicable. But that it was significant of something, we knew--byJane's tense white face and the furtive glances she gave us. Don andI were ready to seize the first opportunity to question her.
Tolla, by the command of Tako, stayed close by Jane, and the twogirls were always within sight of us. They were here now, seated onthe rocks twenty feet from us. And the two guards, whom Tako hadappointed at the carrier, sat near us with alert weapons, watchingJane and us closely.[9]
[9] There was a thing which puzzled me before we arrived in the carrier, and surprised me when we left it; and though I did not, and still do not wholly understand it, I think I should mention it here. Traveling in the carrier we were suspended in a condition of matter which might be termed mid way between Tako's realm and our Earth-world. Both, in shadowy form, were visible to us; and to an observer on either world we also were visible.
Then, as the carrier landed, it receded from this sort of borderland as I have termed it, contacted with its own realm and landed. At once I saw that the shadowy outlines of New York were gone. And, to New York observers, the carriers as they landed, were invisible. The mountains--all this tumbled barren wilderness of Tako's world--were invisible to observers in New York.
But I knew now how very close were the two worlds--a very fraction of visible "distance," one from the other.
Then, with wires, disks and helmets--all the transition mechanism worn now by us and all of Tako's forces--we drew ourselves a very small fraction of the way toward the Earth-world state. Enough and no more than to bring it to most tenuous, most wraithlike visibility, so that we could see the shadows of it and know our location in relation to it, which was necessary to Tako's operations.
In this state, New York City was a wraith to us--and we were shadowy, dimly visible apparitions to New York observers. But in this slight transition, we did not wholly disconnect with the terrain of Tako's world. There was undoubtedly--if the term could be called scientific--a depth of field to the solidity of these mountains. By that I mean, their tangibility persisted for a certain distance toward other dimensions. Perhaps it was a greater "depth of field" than the solidity of our world possesses. As to that, I do not know.
But I do know, since I experienced it, that as we sat now encamped upon this ledge, the ground under us felt only a trifle different from when we had full contact with it. There was a lightness upon us--an abnormal feeling of weight-loss--a feeling of indefinable abnormality to the rocks. Yet, to observers in New York, we were faintly to be seen, and the rocks upon which we sat were not.
There was just once after we left the carrier, toiling over therocks with Tako's little cortege to this vantage point on the ledge,that Jane found an opportunity of communicating secretly with us.
"Tolla told me something about the giant projector! Something abouthow it--"
She could say almost nothing but that. "The projector, Bob, if youcan only learn how it--"
Tolla was upon us, calling to attract Tako's attention, and Janemoved away.
* * * * *
The giant projector! We had it with us now; a dozen men hadlaboriously carried it up here. Not yet assembled, it stood here onthe ledge--a rectangular gray box about the size and shape of acoffin, encased now in the mesh of transition mechanism. Takointended to materialize us and that box into the city when the timecame, unpack and erect the projector, and with its long rangedominate all the surrounding country.
Tolla had almost told Jane something about it! Jane was trying tolearn that secret. Or she thought we might learn it from Tako. Butof what use if we did? We were helpless, every moment under the eyesof guards whose little hand-beams could in a second annihilate us.When, leaving the carrier, Jane had appeared garbed like the rest ofus and we had all been equipped with the transition mechanism whichwe knew well how to use now, the thought came to me of trying toescape. But it was futile. I could set the switches at my belt tomaterialize me into New York. But as I faded, the weapons of theguards would have been quick enough to catch me. How could Jane, Donand I simultaneously try a thing like that.
"Impossible!" Don whispered. "Don't do anything wrong. Some chancemay come, later."
But with that slight transition over, Tako at once removed from ourbelts a vital part of the mechanism in order to make it impotent.
An hour passed, here on the ledge, with most of the activity ofTako's men incomprehensible to us.
"You shall see very soon," he chuckled grimly, "I can give thesignal to attack--all at once. Look there! They grow very bold,these New York soldiers. They have come to inspect us."
* * * * *
It was night in New York City--about two A.M. of the night of May19th and 20th. Our mountain ledge was within a store on the eastside of Fifth Avenue at 36th Street. We seemed to be but one storyabove the pavement. The shadowy outlines of a large rectangular roomwith great lines of show-cases dividing it into wide aisles. Irecognized it at once--a jewelry store, one of the best known in theworld. A gigantic fortune in jewelry was here, some of it hastilypacked in great steel safes nearby, and some of it abandoned inthese show-cases when the panic swept the city a few dayspreviously.
But the jewelry of our world was nothing to these White Invaders.Tako never even glanced at the cases, or knew or cared what sort ofa store this was.
The shadowy street of Fif
th Avenue showed just below us. It wasempty now of vehicles and people, but along it a line of soldierswere gathered. Other stores and ghostly structures lay along FifthAvenue. And five hundred feet away, diagonally across the avenue,the great Empire State Building, the tallest structure in the entireworld, towered like a ghostly Titan into the void above us.
This ghostly city! We could see few details. The people had alldeserted this mid-Manhattan now. The stores and hotels and officebuildings were empty.
A group of soldiers came into the jewelry store and stood within afew feet of us, peering at us. Yet so great was the void between usthat Tako barely glanced at them. He was giving orders constantlynow. For miles around us his men on the mountains and in the valleyswere feverishly active.
* * * * *
But doing what? Don and I could only wonder. A tenseness had grippedupon Tako. The time for his attack was nearing.
"Very presently now," he repeated. He gestured toward the greatapparition of the Empire State Building so near us.
"I am sparing that. A good place for us to mount the projector--upthere in that tall tower. You see where our mountain slope cutsthrough that building? We can materialize with the projector at thatpoint."
The steep ramp of the mountainside upon which we were perched slopedup and cut midway through the Empire State Building. The building'supper portion was free of the mountain whose peaks towered to thewest. We could climb from our ledge up the ramp to the small areawhere it intersected the Empire State at the building's sixtieth toseventieth stories.
The apparitions of New York's soldiers stood in the jewelry storewith futile leveled weapons.
"They are wondering what we are doing!" Tako chuckled.
A dozen of Tako's men, unheeding the apparitions, were now busywithin a few hundred feet of us down the rocky slope. We saw atclose view, what Tako's army was busy doing everywhere. The men hadlittle wedge-shaped objects of a gray material. The materializationbombs! They were placing them carefully at selected points on therocks, and adjusting the firing mechanisms. This group near us,which Don and I watched with a fascinated horror, were down in thebasement of the jewelry store, among its foundations. There for amoment; then moving out under Fifth Avenue, peering carefully at thespectral outlines of the cellars of other structures.
Then presently Tako called an order. He stood for a moment on theledge with arms outstretched so that his men, and Don and I andJane, and the wondering apparitions of the gathered soldiers and NewYork Police could see him. His moment of triumph! It marked his facewith an expression which was utterly Satanic.
Then he dropped his arms for the signal to attack.