The Onslaught from Rigel

by Fletcher Pratt

  CHAPTER IX

  The Opening of the Conflict

  "I'm glad," said Gloria to Murray Lee, as they leaned against the railof the steamer _Paramatta_ in their new American Army uniforms, "thatthey're going to attack these things in the old U. S. I'd hate likeanything to think we last Americans were shoved out of our country by alot of chickens."

  Murray glanced around him. In every direction the long lines of theconvoy stretched out, big liners loaded to the funnels with men, guns,tanks and ammunition. On the fringes of the troopships the sleek greysides of the cruisers and destroyers that protected them were visible,and overhead there soared an armada of fast airplanes--no mereobservation machines, or peaceful explorers like the South Africans, butfierce, deadly fighting planes, rocket-powered, which could step alongat four miles a minute and climb, dive and maneuver better than a dodo.

  He nodded. "You said something, sister. Say won't it be great to take awhack at them under the Stars and Stripes. I'm glad they let us do it,even if there are only fourteen of us."

  In the four months since the conference with the Australian ScientificCommittee it had been amply demonstrated to the three remaininggovernments of the world that there was not room for both man and dodoson the same planet. A carefully-worked out campaign had evidently beenset in operation by whatever central intelligence led the four-wingedbirds with the object of wiping human life from the earth. The bombingof Canberra was merely the first blow.

  While Australia was arming and organizing to meet the menace the secondblow fell--on Sourabaya, the great metropolis of Java, which was wipedout in a single night. At this evidence of the hostile intentions of thedodos radio apparatus began to tap in Australia, in the Dutch coloniesand in South Africa; old guns forgotten since the last great war, werewheeled out; the factories began to turn out fighting airplanes and theyoung men drilled in the parks.

  When, late in November, a flock of twenty-five dodos was observed overnorth Australia, headed for Sydney, the forces of the defence were ontheir guard. Long before the birds reached the town they were met by abig squadron of rocket-powered fighting planes and in a desperate battleover the desert, with claw and beak and bomb against machine-gun, wereshot down to the last bird. With that the attacks had suddenly ceased,and the federated governments, convinced that it was but the calmbefore a greater storm, had gathered their strength for a trial of arms.

  It was realized that whatever lay behind this attempt to conquer allthere was left of the old earth must be in some way due to the coming ofthe great comet and must center somewhere in America, where the comethad struck. So for the first time the race of man began to learn whatinternational cooperation meant. Delegates from the three survivinggovernments met in conference at Perth with Ben Ruby accorded a place asthe representative of the United States. The decision of the conferencewas to mobilize every man and weapon to attack the birds in America andexterminate them there if possible; if impossible to do this, then tokeep them so occupied at home that they would be unable to deliver anycounter-attack.

  There was plenty of shipping to carry an army far larger than thefederated governments could mobilize; the main weakness of theexpedition lay in the lack of naval protection, for the great navies ofthe world had perished when the northern hemisphere passed under theinfluence of the comet. It was sought to make up for this deficiency bya vast cloud of airplanes, flying from the decks of many merchant ships,converted into aircraft carriers, though some of the new rocket-planeswere powerful enough to cruise around the world under their own power.And so, on this March morning in 1947 the whole vast armada was crossingthe Atlantic toward the United States. In view of the fact that theheadquarters of the dodos seemed to be somewhere in the Catskills, ithad been decided to land in New Jersey, form a base there and worknorthward.

  In the preliminary training for the coming conflict the metal Americanshad played an important part. Their construction made them impossible asaviators, which they would have preferred. But quite early it wasdiscovered that they made ideal operators for tanks. The oil fumes andthe lack of air did not in the least affect beings to whom breathing hadbecome unimportant, and the oil was actually a benefit.

  As a result the little American army had been composed of fourteen tanksof a special type, fitted at the direction of the military experts, withall the latest and best in scientific devices. They were givenextra-heavy armor, fitted in two thicknesses, with a chamber between, asa protection against the light-bombs, and each tank, intended to behandled by a single operator, was provided with one heavy gun, soarranged that it could be used against aerial attack.

  * * * * *

  A stir of motion was visible at the head of the convoy. A destroyerdashed past the _Paramatta_, smoke pouring from her funnels, the whitebow-wave rising as high as her bridge as she put on full speed. From theairplane carrier just behind them in the line, one, two, three flightsof fighters swung off, circled a moment to gain altitude and thenwhirled off to the north and west.

  "What is it?" asked Gloria.

  A sailor touched his cap. "Sighted a dodo, I believe, miss," he said.

  "Oh, boy," said Gloria, "here we go. What would you give to be in one ofthose planes?"

  They craned their necks eagerly, but nothing was visible except a fewflecks in the sky that might be dodos or might equally well beairplanes. Faint and far, a rattle of machine-guns drifted down; therewas a flash of intense light, like the reflection in a far-distantmirror, and the machine-guns ceased. A few moments later the airplanescame winging back to their mother ship. A sailor on her deck began toswing his arms in the curious semaphore language of the sea.

  "What happened?" asked Gloria of the man by their side.

  "I'm trying to make out, miss. One dodo, he says, carrying abomb--hit--by--machine-gun.... Oh, the bomb went off in the dodo's clawsand blew him all to pieces."

  The echo of a cheer came across the water from the other ships. Thefirst brush had gone in favor of the race of man!

  That night dodos announced their presence by a few bombs droppedtentatively among the ships, but did no damage, being so hurried andharried by the airmen, and by morning the dream-towers of Atlantic City,necked with the early morning sun, rose out of the west. Far in thedistance the aviators of the expedition had spied more of the birds, butafter the first day's encounter with the airplanes they kept a healthydistance, apparently contented to observe what they could.

  As ship after ship swung in toward the piers and discharged its cargo ofmen, guns and munitions, the birds became bolder, as though to inspectwhat was going on. But the Australian aviators attacked them fiercely,driving them back at every attempt to pierce the aerial cordon, and whennight came on, nearly a third of the force had been landed and quarteredin parts of the one-time pleasure city.

  Covered by the darkness a few dodos came down to drop bombs that night.They met with poor success. Delicate listening apparatus, intendedoriginally to pick up the sound of approaching enemy airplanes had beenone of the first things landed. The whir of the birds' wings was plainlyaudible, and before they had realized that man had a weapon to meettheir night attacks half a dozen of them had been caught in the burstsof anti-aircraft guns and more had been met and shot down by thenight-patrolling airmen.

  The next morning saw the unloading beginning anew, while the emptiedtransports were taken around into Delaware Bay. Fortunately, the weathercontinued unusually fine for late March, bright with sunshine, givingthe dodos no opportunity to attack behind the cover of clouds. There wasjust enough cold in the air to make the Australians and South Africanslively, though the Americans found the temperature caused the oil tomove sluggishly in their metallic joints.

  At daybreak the whole American unit had been pushed out to the railroadline at Greenwood with the advance guard of tanks, and finding noopposition they continued on to Farmington, where there was an airportthat would serve for the leading squadrons of planes.

  "Do you know," said Ben to Murray
, "I wish those dodos would show alittle more pep. Fighting them is no cinch. We're a little ahead of thegame now, but it's largely because they've let us alone and haven'tbrought up any of those light-beam guns."

  "Maybe we've got 'em on the run," replied Murray. "You can't tell whenanyone will develop a yellow streak, you know."

  "Yes, but we've seen enough of these babies to know they haven't got ayellow streak a millimeter wide in their whole make-up. Yet here theylet us do just about as we please. Makes me think they're just layingfor us, and when they get us where they want us--zowie!"

  "Mebbe so, mebbe so," replied Murray. "Beeville still thinks it isn'tthe birds at all; that they've got a big boss somewhere running thewhole works and till we find out what's behind it we're fighting in thedark. Well, they'll unload the rest of the army tomorrow and then we'llget down to cases."

  * * * * *

  The country between Atlantic City and Philadelphia is flat, with a fewgentle elevations and dotted with small towns, farms and tiny bits ofwoodland. In the cold spring morning of the next day, with rainportended, the army of the federated governments pushed out along theroads through this land like a huge, many-headed snake, tanks andairplanes in the lead, the steady ranks of infantry and the big gunscoming behind. Back at Atlantic City all machine-shops and factories hadbeen set in operation and wrecking crews were already clearing therailroads and mounting huge long-range guns on trucks, preparatory tocovering the advance. All along the route was bustle and hurry; campkitchens rumbled along, harassed officers galloped up and down the lineson their horses (now, like their masters with a strange bluish cast ofskin) and messengers rushed to and fro on popping motorcycles.

  Out with the advance the American division of fourteen tanks rolledalong. The dodos seemed to have completely disappeared, even thescouting aviators, far ahead, reporting no sign of them. The army wassucceeding in establishing itself on American soil.

  But around noon a "stop" signal flashed on the control boards of thetanks. They halted at the crest of a little rise and climbed out to lookaround.

  "What is it?" asked someone.

  "Perhaps gentlemanly general wishes to disport in surf," suggestedYoshio, with his flashing, steel-toothed smile, "and proceeding isretained without presence."

  "Perhaps," said Gloria, "but I'll bet a dollar to a handful of bluekangaroos that the dodos are getting in their licks somewhere."

  "Well, we'll soon know," said Murray Lee. "Here comes a dispatch rider."

  The man on the motorcycle dashed up, saluted. "General Ruby?" heinquired, and handed the dispatch to Ben. The latter read it, thenmotioned the others about him.

  "Well, here it is, folks," he said, "Listen to this--'General Griersonto General Ruby. Our flank guard was heavily attacked at Atsion thismorning. The Third Brigade of the Fourteenth Division has sufferedheavy loss and has been forced back to Chew Road. We are bringing upheavy artillery. The enemy appear to be using large numbers of light-rayguns. Advance guard is recalled to Waterford in support of our leftflank.'"

  "Oh--oh," said somebody.

  "I knew they'd start giving us hell sooner or later," remarked MurrayLee as he climbed into his tank.

  At Waterford there was ordered confusion when they arrived. Just outsidethe town a long line of infantrymen were plying pick and shovel in theformation of a system of trenches. Machine-gun units were installingthemselves in stone or brick buildings and constructing barricadesaround their weapons; line after line of tanks had wheeled into positionunder cover of woods or in the streets of the town, the little whippetsout in front, fast cruiser-tanks behind them and the lumberingbattle-tanks with their six-inch guns, farther back.

  Artillery was everywhere, mostly in little pits over which the gunnerswere spreading green strips of camouflage. As the American tanks rolledup, a battery of eight-inch howitzers behind a railroad embankment atthe west end of the town was firing slowly and with an air of greatsolemnity at some target in the invisible distance, the angle of theirmuzzles showing that they were using the extreme range. A couple ofairplanes hummed overhead. But of dead or wounded, of dodos or any otherenemy there was no sign. It might have been a parade-war, an elaboratelyrealistic imitation of the real thing for the movies.

  Guides directed the Americans to a post down the line toward Chew Road."What's the news?" asked Ben of an officer whose red tabs showed hebelonged to the staff.

  "They hit the right wing at Atsion," replied the officer. "Just whathappened, I'm not sure. Somebody said they had a lot of those light-rayguns and they just crumpled up our flank like that." He slapped hishands together to show the degree of crumpling the right flank hadendured. "We lost about fifteen hundred men in fifteen minutes. Tanks,too. But I think we're stopping them now."

  "Any dodos?" asked Ben.

  "Just a few. The airplanes shot down a flock of seven just before thebattle and after that they kept away.... What is it? GeneralWitherington wants me? Oh, all right, I'll come. Excuse me, sir," andthe staff officer was off.

  Most of the afternoon was spent in an interminable period of waiting andwatching the laboring infantry sink themselves into the ground. Aboutfour o'clock a fine, cold drizzle began to fall. The Americans soughtthe shelter of their tanks, and about the same time their radiophonesflashed the order to move up, toward the north and east through a barrenpasture with a few trees in it, to the crest of a low hill. It wasalready nearly dark; the tanks bumped unevenly over the stony ground,their drivers following each other by the black silhouettes in thegloom. Off to the right a battery suddenly woke to a fever of activity,then as rapidly became silent and in the intervals of silence betweenthe motor-sounds the Americans could catch the faint rat-tat ofmachine-guns in the heavens above. Evidently dodos were abroad in thegloom.

  At the crest of the hill they could see across a flat valley in thedirection of Chew Road. Something seemed to be burning behind the nextrise; a ruddy glare lit the clouds. Down the line guns began to growlagain, and the earth trembled gently with the sound of an explosionsomewhere in the rear. Murray Lee, sitting alone at the controls of histank. So this was war!

  There were trees along their ridge, and looking through the sidepeep-hole of his tank Murray could make out the vague forms of a line ofwhippets among them, waiting, like themselves, for the order to advance.He wondered what the enemy were like; evidently not all dodos, since somany tanks had been pushed up to the front. This argued a man or animalthat ran along the ground. The dodos seemed to spend most of their timein the air....

  He was recalled from his meditations by the ringing of the attentionbell and the radiophone began to speak rapidly:

  "American tank division--enemy tanks reported approaching. Detain themas long as possible and then retire. Your machines are not to besacrificed; Radio your positions with reference to Clark Creek as youretire for guidance of artillery registering on enemy tanks. There--"

  The voice broke off in mid-sentence. So the dodos had tanks! Murray Leesnapped in his controls and glanced forward. Surely in the gloom alongthat distant ridge there was a darker spot--next to thehouse--something.

  Suddenly, with a roar like a thousand thunders, a bolt of sheer lightseemed to leap from the dark shape on the opposite hill, straight towardthe trees where Murray had noticed the whippets. He saw one of the treesleap into vivid flame from root to branch as the beam struck it; saw awhippet, sharply outlined in the fierce glow, its front armor-platecaving; then its ammunition blew up in a shower of sparks, and he wasfrantically busy with his own controls and gun.