CHAPTER III
_Wings of To-morrow_
As Prester Kleig climbed into the enclosed passenger pit of themonoplane--a Mayther--his ears seemed literally to be ringing with thedrumming, mighty voice of Moyen. But now that voice, instead of merelyspeaking, rang with sardonic laughter. He had never heard the laughterof Moyen, but he could guess how it would sound.
That airplane of the slanted wings, the bulbous, almost bulletlikefuselage, what of it? It was simple, as Kleig looked back at hismemoried glimpse of it. The submarine was a metal fish made with humanhands; the airplane aped the birds. The strange ship which had causedthe destruction of the _Stellar_, was a combination fish and bird--whichmerely aped nature a bit further, as anyone who had ever traversedtropical waters would have instantly recognized.
But what did it portend? What ghastly terrors of Moyen roamed the deepsof the Atlantic, of the Pacific, the oceans of the world? How closewere some of these to the United States?
The pale eyes of Moyen, he was sure, were already turned toward theWest.
* * * * *
Prester Kleig sighed as he seated himself beside Carlos Kane. Then Kanepressed one of the myriad of buttons on the dash, and Kleig lifted hiseyes to peer through the skylight, to where that single press of abutton had set in motion the intricate machinery of the helicopter.
A four-bladed fan lifted on a slender pedestal, sufficiently high abovethe surface of the wing for the vanes to be free of the centralpropeller. Then, automatically, the vanes became invisible, and theMayther lifted from the sandy beach as lightly, and far more straightly,than any bird.
As the ship climbed away for the skies, and through the transparentfloor the beach and the Atlantic fell away below the ship, a sigh ofrelief escaped Kleig. This was living! Up here one was free, if only fora moment, and the swift wind of flight brushed all cobwebs from thetired human brain. He watched the slender needle of the altimeter, as itmoved around the face of the dial as steadily as the hands of a clock,around to thirty thousand, thirty-five, forty.
Then Carlos Kane, every movement as effortless as the flight of thesilvery winged Mayther, thrust forth his hand to the dash again, pressedanother button. Instantly the propellers vanished into a blur as thevanes of the helicopter dropped down the slender staff and the vanesthemselves fitted snugly into their appointed notches atop the wing.
* * * * *
For a second Carlos Kane glanced at the tiny map to the right of thedash, and set his course. It was a matter of moments only, but whileKane worked, Prester Kleig studied the instruments on the dash, for ithad been months since he had flown, save for his recent half-dreamlikeexperience. There was a button which released the mechanism of thedeadly guns, fired by compressed air, all operated from the noiselessmotor, whose muzzles exactly cleared the tips of Mayther's wings, twoguns to each wing, one on the entering edge, one on the trailing edge,fitted snugly into the adamant rigging.
Four guns which could fire to right or left, twin streams of lead, thenumber of rounds governed only by the carrying power of the Mayther.Prester Kleig knew them all: the guns in the wings, the guns which firedthrough the three propellers, and the guns set two and two in thefuselage, to right and left of the pits, which could be fixed either upor down--all by the mere pressing of buttons. It was marvelous,miraculous, yet even as Kleig told himself that this was so, he felt,deep in the heart of him, that Moyen knew all about ships like these,and regarded them as the toys of children.
Kane touched Kleig on the shoulder, signaling, indicating that theatmosphere in the pits had been regulated to their new height, and thatthey could remove their helmets and oxygen tanks without danger.
* * * * *
With a sigh Prester Kleig sat back, and the two friends turned to faceeach other.
"You certainly look done in, Kleig," said Kane sympathetically. "Youmust have been through hell, and then some. Tell me about this Moyen;that is, if you think you care to talk about him."
"Talk about him!" repeated Kleig. "Talk about him? It will be a relief!There has been nothing, and nobody, on my mind save Moyen for wearymonths on end. If I don't talk to someone about him, I'll go mad, if I'mnot mad already. Moyen? A monster with the face of an angel! What elsecan one say about him? A devil and a saint, a brute whose followerswould go with him into hell's fire, and sing him hosannas as they wereconsumed in agony! The greatest mob psychologist the world has everseen. He's a genius, Kane, and unless something is done, the Westernworld, all the world, is doomed to sit at the feet, listen to thecommands, of Moyen!
"He isn't an Oriental; he isn't a European; he isn't negroid or Indian;but there is something about him that makes one thing of all of these,singly and collectively. His body is twisted and grotesque, and when onelooks at his face, one feels a desire to touch him, to swear eternalfealty to him--until one looks into his pale eyes, eyes almost milky intheir paleness--and gets the merest hint of the thoughts which actuatehim. If he has a failing I did not find it. He does not drink,gamble...."
"And women?" queried Kane, softly.
* * * * *
Kleig was madly in love with the sister of Kane, Charmion, and thisthing touched him nearest the heart, because Charmion was one of hercountry's most famous beauties, about whom Moyen must already haveheard.
"Women?" repeated Kleig musingly, his black eyes troubled, haunted. "Iscarcely know. He has no love for women, only because he has no capacityfor any love save self-love. But when I think of him in this connectionI seem to see Moyen, grown to monster proportions, sitting on a mightythrone, with nude women groveling at his feet, bathed in tears, theirlong hair in mantles of sorrow, hiding their shamed faces! That soundswild, doesn't it? But it's the picture I get of Moyen when I think ofMoyen and of women. Many women will love him, and have, perhaps. Butwhile he has taken many, though I am only guessing here, he has given_himself_ to none. Another thing: His followers--well, he sets no limitsto the lusts of his men, requiring only that every soldier be fit forduty, with a body strong for hardship. You understand?"
Kane understood; and his face was very pale.
"Yes," he said, his voice almost a whisper, "I understand, and as youspeak of this man I seem to see a city in ruins, and hordes of menmarching, bloodstained men entering houses ... from which, immediatelyafterward, come the screams of women ... terror-stricken women...."
He shuddered and could not go on for the very horror of the vision thathad come to him.
But Kleig stared at him as though he saw a ghost.
"Great God, Carl!" he gasped. "The same identical picture has been in mymind, not once but a thousand times! I wonder...."
Was it an omen of the future for the West?
Deep in his soul Prester Kleig fancied he could hear the sardoniclaughter of the half-god, Moyen.
* * * * *
A tiny bell rang inside the dash, behind the instruments. Kane had setdirection finders, had pressed the button which signaled theWashington-control Station of the National Radio, thus automaticallyindicating the exact spot above land, by grid-coordinates, where theMayther should start down for the landing.
An hour later they landed on the flat roof of the new Capitol Building,sinking lightly to rest as a feather, nursed to a gentle landing by thewhirring vanes of the helicopter.
Prester Kleig, surrounded by uniformed guards who tried to shield himfrom the gaze of news-gatherers crowded there on the roof-top, hurriedhim to the stairway leading into the executive chambers, and throughthese to the Secret Chamber which only a few men knew, and into whichnot even Carlos Kane could follow Prester Kleig--yet.
But one man, one news-gatherer, had caught a glimpse of the face ofKleig, and already he raced for the radio tower of his organization, toblazon to the Western world the fact that Kleig had come back.
Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 Page 5