The Third Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  “Gee!” said Sergeant Blairlee. “Unrestricted bombin’! An’ my fam’ly in back—”

  “A big ship isn’t as efficient as a small one,” said Private Simpkins bitterly, “so the goons have built an inefficient ship in order to use efficient bombs—and I’m out of the air service as a coward!”

  He bent back to the microphone switches. The different kites sent down curiously characteristic sounds. The pilot kites, three miles up and using their supporting surfaces as diaphragms, sent down an almost unvarying high-pitched whine. The flare kites hooted more or less insanely. Carrying heavy loads of flares and reflectors, they wobbled in the wind. The main lift surfaces moaned and whimpered with occasional gobbling sounds. The old hearse squealed and grunted.

  “See if y’can get some sleep,” said Sergeant Blairlee in a strained voice. “I’ll take over for a while.”

  Private Simpkins moved back from the switches.

  Then for a long time there was silence. Not complete silence, of course. Sometimes the oil-stove made a thut-thut-thuttering sound. The switches made tiny clicks as the sergeant shifted them.

  But mostly there was quietness. And presently the sergeant got himself out a cigarette and bent to the stove, the headset still in place. But in the very middle of his bending he stiffened, and with a lightninglike motion turned up the amplifier. But there was no need. He jabbed at a button and snapped:

  “Somethin’ comin’! Fast! Sounds like a whole fleet!” He worked the switches frantically as he spoke. “High level an’ low level both. They’ goin’ to try to bust through! Get set, down below there!”

  Private Simpkins opened his eyes wide. They gleamed harshly. Sergeant Blairlee barked again:

  “They’ comin’ fast! Motors on full! The whole damn sky’s full of ’em! An’ they’ comin’ straight through!”

  There was no noise at all but the regular sounds of the kite cabin. But in a matter of seconds, sound came. At first it was a faint and distant and murmurous hum. It did not seem to come nearer. It swelled. It increased in volume until it was as the buzzing of a hive of angry bees. It swelled further. It was a droning roar. It was a steady, overpowering tumult that seemed to reach from one end of the sky to the other. The cabin shook and quivered; it vibrated crazily from the terrific sound. There seemed to be nothing anywhere in the universe but this ferocious roar.

  Sergeant Blairlee reached forward and put his finger on a switch. Not a microphone switch. Another. He threw it. Then he jerked his head back and looked up through the glassite roof.

  A sudden infinitely pale glare appeared far overhead. In it were starkly outlined two enemy airplanes. They were not bombers. They were fighting ships. One of them dived downward as if flinging itself, panic-stricken, out of the light.

  Above the tumult of motors, Sergeant Blairlee’s voice came thinly:

  “Goin’ to blast our flare. Watch!”

  A stream of tiny flames, like sparks from an emery wheel, darted across a narrow section of the sky. Tracer bullets. Two other ships swam into the area of light. Its source was invisible. The flare kites blanked out the earth from the flares they carried. They threw light only upward. The anti-aircraft guns on the ground below were left in utter darkness, not forced to fire through ground haze made luminous by their own searchlights. They fired from darkness into a pitiless glare.

  In that glare, high overhead, sudden swift blossoms of white smoke appeared. Anti-aircraft shells bursting. The plane flew on, unharmed. But another appeared, and another, and suddenly one of them smoked luridly and went spinning down into oblivion below the flares.

  Off to the right and left more cold white glows sparked into being. Hearse kites of the air barrage set off their flares to join the first. Other swimming motes appeared against a sky suddenly gone blacker than black. Tiny balls of white smoke blossomed and drifted away. Over to the right another plane went down.

  “Good shootin’,” said Sergeant Blairlee in unnatural calm. “That guy’s gettin’ close to our top kite. Notice?”

  The spitting streams of small sparks continued. Suddenly there was an abrupt, a savage jerk at the cabin and all that it contained. Like a huge fish striking, hard. Sergeant Blairlee threw another switch.

  “That’ll happen once in Lord knows when,” he said harshly. “He run into the kite wire. He’ll be speakin’ to Saint Peter about now.”

  The second flare evidently flashed into flame. They saw a crumpled thing come spinning down, dangling from an apparent nothing. It burned yellowly in mid-air. It dropped suddenly, like a plummet.

  Now the noises from the ground smote amazingly upon their ears. The crashes of the antiaircraft guns sounded like twenty men beating unrhythmically upon a block of deep-toned, resonant wood. And overhead the white smoke blossoms bloomed and bloomed.

  “Our own planes’ll be climbin’ now,” said Sergeant Blairlee. “They won’t fight over us. That’s for the gunners. Our planes’ll take what the gunners leave, an’ the flares’ll give ’em light enough to fight by, even four-five miles away.”

  Another savage jerk at the cable. A second. Sergeant Blairlee stared upward. Incredibly, his own flare came into plain view as a ball of fiercely white light. It began to topple, rolling over and over as its kite went down, alternately glaring upon all the world and being eclipsed by the surfaces that had upheld it.

  Sergeant Blairlee pushed the switch that would ignite a third flare.

  “They got somethin’ there,” he observed. “I bet they got a line on our cable from those first two an’ then somebody dives across wind draggin’ a grapnel for the kite wire. I better report it.”

  His voice muttered through the monstrous din that now filled all the world. The roar of motors and the battering crash of guns and the sound of shells going off above. A giant hand seized the cabin and shook it horribly.

  “Shell went by,” said Sergeant Blairlee. “That was the wind from it. Hell! They got our third flare!”

  He lighted the fourth with a flick of his finger. And over all the sky above them a cold white glare played, and in that glare swam a multitude of graceful shapes with the symbol of the enemy upon their under-wings. In that glare, too, were a multitude of sudden puffballs of smoke that appeared instantaneously and then gradually collapsed into untidy streaks of white. Things fell from the sky. Ever and again one of the silvery swimming things crumpled, or collapsed and went reeling pathetically down out of the light and into oblivion.

  Suddenly Private Simpkins slipped a headphone over his head, reached forward to the filter, and began feverishly to tune it. He snapped over his shoulder:

  “Listen here to what I’ve got!”

  Sergeant Blairlee obeyed. Then he said harshly:

  “Look there!”

  Off to the right a flare went reeling earthward, undoubtedly sheared off by just the technique that had disposed of two of their own flares, throwing light toward the sky. Another flare burst into flame and on the instant went reeling. A plane with swinging grapnel had been waiting for it to appear. The enemy ships were staying deliberately in range of antiaircraft guns to grapple for and destroy all kite-borne flares that would light up the heavens. It was suicidal, but it was working. A savage jerk at the cable told of their own fourth flare torn away. Sergeant Blairlee stabbed the button that would set off the next, while he listened with all his ears to the sound that Private Simpkins had tuned in. It was a full-throated, bellowing roar. It was synchronized motors, in incredible number, roaring through the night with a sound like that of a monstrous organ. Cracks and crackling sounded through it. Gunfire. But the motor sound the two men listened to was like no motor sound ever heard before.

  “Giant ship!” said Private Simpkins fiercely. “Twenty-four motors, all of ’em two-thousand-horse! The ship I saw or its sister! It’s slow and it’s low and it’s clumsy. That’s why they sent the fighters on ahead to yank out our fla
res. It’ll go over at six or eight thousand feet, no more, so it can carry a full load of bombs, and I’ve got a hunch there’s something like a smoke screen dropped on the ground to blind our searchlights if they try to use ’em. They’re blasting our flares to cut a hole for it, and it’s got ten-ton bombs or better to drop on the cities behind our lines. And that means—”

  Again a savage, wrenching heave. A flare went swooping crazily earthward not a hundred yards from the cabin vision ports. By some freak of setting, the flare kite had gone into a nose dive when sheared loose from its cable. It sped toward earth—and disclosed long trailing fingers of smoke reaching downward. That meant smoke bombs down below.

  “One more flare,” said Sergeant Blairlee savagely. “Our last!”

  He heard a snarling, ripping sound just overhead. Something had gone through the hearse. Many bullets. They heard the noise of the punctured surfaces. Then the whole hearse reeled and the breath was jerked out of both of them. The last flare had been grappled and destroyed.

  “We’re all dark,” said Sergeant Blairlee, in a sudden, terrible calm. “We can’t do anything more. Might’s well cut—”

  Private Simpkins thrust him savagely back.

  “Wait!” he snapped. “Hold on! I’ll cut when we need to cut! You break out our landing flares! That big ship’s coming! It’s slow! We’ve got two—maybe three—minutes yet, and one chance in ten million of doing something! Get out those flares!”

  Private Simpkins wrenched open a vision port. Thin, icy air streamed in. Numbingly cold air. Now they heard more distinctly still the sounds of the action going on. The air was full of the roar of many motors. From below came the snapping detonations of antiaircraft fire. But that was slacking. There were no more flares here, and the one to the right went out as Sergeant Blairlee looked, and the one to the left dived steeply to earth and vanished.

  Long fingers of light reached up. Searchlights on the ground. But around each there was a nimbus of illuminated vapor. The long white pencils flickered here and there, and they picked out a silver thing and the guns opened furiously. But the searchlight glare was thinned and made vague by the vapor above it—and the silver thing stunted insolently. Shells burst vainly. Other smoke bombs dropped to blind the searchlights and the gunners too. And then the two in the hearse kite heard with their own ears the throaty organ sound of mighty engines coming nearer.

  “Cut the main lift kites,” snapped Private Simpkins, “and ready with that first flare!”

  Still dazed, overwhelmed alike by a sense of futility and a dread of irreparable disaster for those behind the lines, Sergeant Blairlee obeyed. The cabin jerked violently. Something dark went swooping away and down from them. He saw it once, in the enfeebled rays of a searchlight. The main lift kites, swooping to earth. The old hearse hung steady. Once aloft, its own surfaces would sustain it in a wind like this.

  “Ready—and—now!” cried Private Simpkins fiercely. “Drop that flare! Quick!”

  The flare, dropping away below them, had ignited. It showed streaky layers of mist below. Nothing else. No guns could sight or aim through that luminous curtain. But no targets could be seen for bombers to aim at, either. The flare swung lazily in mid-air, dropping below its parachute. It showed streaking small bombers dropping smoke bombs to add to the screen below.

  And it showed the giant ship.

  It was a giant. It was a good four thousand feet below the kite cabin, but even at that distance it was huge. It came on steadily, roaring, its twenty-four motors, six pulling and six pushing on each wing, plainly visible.

  Above and about and before it danced one-man fighters of its own side. They were vastly swifter. Naturally. To carry monstrous bombs, bigger than had ever before been used in war, the giant ship had sacrificed efficiency and speed and climbing power and ceiling. And of course maneuverability. But it carried destruction concentrated within it to a more terrible degree than ever before in history. And it drove on like some huge leviathan of the air, and its protecting swarm of fighting ships danced before it like midges.

  Private Simpkins reached down and took the cable cut-off handle in his grip. He watched from the opened vision port.

  “Put that other landing flare where I can reach it!” he commanded.

  Sergeant Blairlee numbly obeyed, unable to take his eyes from the flying monster. The sound of gunfire had practically ceased. There was only the overwhelming roar of a myriad motors, with the bellowing progress of the giant ship sounding through all the rest. Here and there searchlights still tried to pierce the thickening layer of smoke above them, with increasingly obvious futility.

  Private Simpkins, tight-lipped, made a single movement. The old hearse shuddered and began to fall. She lurched, wallowed, spun crazily for an instant—and then she was in a steep, controlled dive. Through the opened vision port poured a rush of air that was like a solid stream of pure frigidity. The hearse kite swung as it dived. The bobbing landing flare was left behind.

  “Say!” said Sergeant Blairlee, unsteadily. “What you doin’, guy?”

  “I’m going to ram the damned thing!” said Private Simpkins fiercely, between his teeth. “Then they’ll find out whether I’m a coward or not!”

  Wind whistled past the diving hearse kite, now turned into a projectile. The whistling rose to squeals. Then screams. There was a sudden stream of sparks darting across squarely before their eyes. Tracer bullets. They seemed to go through that stream. Nothing happened. The roar of the monster ship cut through the pandemonium all about, and in the harsh white glare of the landing flare it swam toward them. Below them. More streaming sparks. A ripping sound—many ripping sounds—in the surfaces of the hearse. The monster was below them!

  Then Private Simpkins sobbed:

  “We’ll miss!”

  He had dived as he would have dived a fighting plane with a dead stick. But a tetrahedral kite, even in free fall, has not the speed of a fighting plane. The monstrous ship was directly below them and it would pass directly below them. But they would pass fifty feet or more behind its tail fins. They could not possibly reach it in time to commit suicide in the attempt to break its back by ramming.

  “Miss!” sobbed Private Simpkins again. He cursed.

  Then he seized the second landing flare. He ripped away the parachute and flung it in hysterical rage straight downward. It was the only missile in the kite cabin, and it seemed futile. But it sputtered in his hands. It ignited as it went out the vision port. It flared fiercely in mid-air, seeming to envelop the kite in its flames. Then it rushed downward, on ahead.

  It was a blue-white ball of unbearable incandescence, falling like a comet with the speed of the kite’s free fall added to the power of Private Simpkins’ muscles. It was still a blue-white ball when it struck the thick and monstrous fuselage of the giant ship. It went through. There was one incredible instant when it burned within that giant structure. Vision ports along the monster’s sides seemed to spout white-hot flames.

  Then the kite fell past the giant ship’s tail and the slipstreams from its propellers struck. With a force as savage and inexorable as doom itself, the kite was flung away. Supporting surfaces ripped. Struts cracked. Then it went reeling crazily downward, while Private Simpkins tried to bring it out of a wrecked fall and still look at the giant ship’s burning.

  The ship flew on. And on. Flames ate at its vitals. And suddenly, six thousand feet up, there was a yellow flame in which it seemed that the world came to an end. The two in the hearse kite felt an intolerable wave of concussion and then a terrific crash.

  * * * *

  Sergeant Blairlee lay still, dizzily conscious of a thinning smoke screen between him and the stars, until Private Simpkins shook him.

  “Hell!” said Sergeant Blairlee. “It blew up. An’ we’re still livin’!”

  He got reluctantly to his feet. There were many small agonies all over his body. Th
ere was still a droning hum of motors in the air, but it was going away, and the harsh rasp of machine-gun fire was in the sound. Private Simpkins was a wreck to all appearance, but in the faint luminosity spread by searchlights trying to pierce the smoke his eyes blazed triumphantly.

  “I’m a coward?” he cried. “I’m a liar when I say I saw that ship? Sergeant, am I a coward and a liar?”

  Sergeant Blairlee groaned and pulled a jagged splinter out of himself.

  “Hell, no,” he admitted wearily. “You ain’t. You’re a damn rotten pilot an’ a double damn’ fool, else we’d be in kingdom come by now, but you ain’t a liar or a coward. You’re a hero. See tomorrow’s papers.”

  He took a step, and winced, and suddenly cried hysterically:

  “You’re a hero, damn it, but what’s it gettin’ us? I got a fam’ly back o’ the lines! If that damn’ ship had got through tonight it’d bombed the town they’re in! They’d be dead by now! You saved ’em for tonight, but I want ’em safe for always! What are we goin’ to do about that? What about tomorrow?”

  UNDER CHITNA’S CLOUDS

  Originally published in Collier’s, November 1939, as by “Will F. Jenkins.”

  From before the monstrous, scarred face of Chitna, a white cloud drifted away. The naked rock of the mountain showed clear. It was a long way off from the Valley Inn, but on the instant there were babbling voices down the terrace:

  “There they are, now the cloud’s gone…! They’ve made another hundred feet.… It looks like Chips is leader.… That’s bad going.…”

  Others took their turns at the telescopes. The voices continued, all brightly excited and thrilled. To Mr. Hallen, huge and impassive in his steamer chair, the sound seemed ironic, with what he knew. He permitted himself to become so far roused as to raise and extend his own telescope. Mountains loomed all about the inn—Baldy and Stretcher and the Brothers and Otter, and others past naming or counting—but there was only one of them to be regarded this day. That was Chitna, a lean, fierce mountain with an easy-chair path to its top from the southward, but an eastern face that was sheer impossibility. An impossibility that was being tried today.