The Onslaught from Rigel

by Fletcher Pratt

  CHAPTER X

  Hopelessness

  All along the line of the American tanks the guns flamed; flame-streakedfountains of dirt leaped up around the dark shape on the opposite hilland a burst of fire came from the farmhouse beside it as a misdirectedshell struck it somewhere.

  The beam from the unknown enemy snapped off as suddenly as it had comeon, leaving, like lightning, an aching of the eyes behind it. Murray Leeswung his tank round, making for the reverse slope of the hill to avoidthe light-beam. Crack! The beam came on again--right overhead this time.It flashed through the tree-tops leaving a trail of fire. He heard atorn branch bang on the roof of his tank, manipulated the gun to fire atthe source of the beam and discovered that the magazine was empty. As hebent to snap on the automatic shell-feeding device, a searchlight fromsomewhere lashed out toward the black shape that opposed them, then wentoff. In the second's glimpse it afforded the enemy appeared as a huge,polished, fish-shaped object, its mirror-like sides unscarred by thebombardment it had passed through, its prow bearing a long, prehensiblesnout--apparently the source of the light-beam.

  Suddenly a shell screamed overhead and the whole scene leaped intodazzling illumination as it burst just between the enemy tanks and theirown. It must be a shell from the dodos! The federated armies had noshells that dissolved into burning light like that. Then another andanother, a whole chorus of shells, falling in the village behind them.Murray had a better look at their opponent in the light. It seemed tolie flush with the ground; there was no visible means of either supportor propulsion. It was all of twenty feet in diameter, widest near thehead, tapering backward. The questing snout swung to and fro, fixed itsposition and discharged another of those lightning-bolts. Off to theright came the answering crash as it caved in the armor of another ofthe luckless whippets. He aimed his gun carefully at the base of thesnout and pulled the trigger; on the side of the monster there appeareda flash of flame as the shell exploded, then a bright smear of metal--adirect hit, and not the slightest damage!

  Ben Ruby's voice came through the radiophone, cool and masterful. "Pullout, folks, our guns are no good against that baby. I'm cutting off;radio positions back to the heavy artillery. Put the railroad guns on."

  Murray glanced through the side peep-hole again--one, two, three, four,five--all the American tanks seemed undamaged. The monster had confinedits attention to the whippets, apparently imagining they were doing theshooting. He pulled his throttle back, shot the speed up, rumbling downthe hill, toward the village. As he looked back, darkness had closed in;the brow of the hill, its rows of trees torn and broken by thelight-beam stood between him and the enemy. Before him amid the flaringlight of the enemy shells was a stir of movement, the troops seemed tobe pulling out also.

  The tanks rumbled through the streets of Waterford and came to a halt ona corner behind a stone church which held three machine-gun nests.Murray could see one of the gunners making some adjustment by the lightof a pocket torch and a wave of pity for the brave man whose weapon wasas useless as a stick swept over him.

  A messenger dashed down the street, delivered his missive to someone,and out of the shadows a file of infantry suddenly popped up and beganto stream back, getting out of range. Then, surrounded by bursts ofartillery fire, illumined by the glare of half a dozen searchlights thatflickered restlessly on and off, the strange thing came over the brow ofthe hill.

  It halted for a moment, its snout moving about uneasily as though itwere smelling out the way, and as it did so, it was joined by a second.Neither of them seemed to be in the least disturbed by the shells allthe way from light artillery to six-inch, that were bursting about them,filling the air with singing fragments. For a moment they stood at ease,then the left-hand one, the one that had led the advance, pointed itssnout at the village and discharged one of its flaming bolts. It strucksquarely in the center of an old brick house, whose cellar had beenturned into a machine-gun nest. With a roar, the building collapsed, abright flicker of flames springing out of the ruins. As though it were asignal every machine-gun, every rifle in the village opened fire on theimpassive shapes at the crest of the hill. The uproar was terrific; evenin his steel cage Murray could hardly hear himself think.

  The shining monster paid no more attention to it than to the rain. Oneof them slid gently forward a few yards, turned its trunk toward thespouting trenches, and in short bursts, loosed five quick bolts; therewere as many spurts of flame, a few puffs of earth and the trenchesbecame silent, save for one agonized cry, "First aid, for God's sake!"

  Ben Ruby's voice came through the microphone. "Retreat everybody.Atlantic City if you can make it."

  * * * * *

  With a great, round fear gripping at his heart, Murray Lee threw in theclutch of his machine and headed in the direction he remembered as thatof the main road through the town toward Atlantic City. The night hadbecome inky-black; the town was in a valley and the shadow of trees andhouses made the darkness even more Stygian. Only by an occasional matchor flashlight glare could the way be seen, but such light as there wasshowed the road already filled with fugitives. Some of them werehelmetless, gunless, men in the last extremity of terror, runninganywhere to escape from they knew not what.

  But through the rout there plowed a little company of infantry, revealedin a shell-burst, keeping tight ranks as though at drill, officers atthe head, not flying, but retreating from a lost battle with good heartand confidence, ready to fight again the next day. The dancing beam of asearchlight picked them out for a moment; Murray Lee looked at them andthe fear died within him. He slowed up his machine, ran it off the roadand out to the left where there seemed to be a clearing that opened inthe direction of the town. After all, he could at least observe theprogress of the monsters and report on them.

  He was astonished to find that he had come nearly a mile from the centerof the disturbance. Down there, the glittering monsters, still brightlyillumined by searchlight and flare, seemed to be standing still amid theouter houses of the town, perhaps examining the trench system theAustralians had dug that afternoon. The gunfire on them had ceased. Fromtime to time one of the things, perhaps annoyed at the pointlessness ofwhat it saw, would swing its trunk around and discharge a light-bolt athouse, barn or other object. The object promptly caved in, and if itwere wood, began to burn. A little train of the blazing remains ofbuildings marked the progress of the shining giants, and threw a weirdred light over the scene.

  One of the things would swing its trunk around anddischarge a light-bolt at a house or other object.]

  Now that he could see them clearly, Murray noted that they were all offifty or sixty feet long. Their polished sides seemed one huge mirror,bright as glass, and a phosphorescent glow hung about their tails. Alongeither side was a slender projection like the bilge-keel of a ship,terminating about three quarters of the way along, and with a small dotof the phosphorescence at its tip. They seemed machines rather thananimate objects. Murray wondered whether they were, or (remembering hisown evolution into a metal man) whether they were actually metalcreatures of some unheard-of breed.

  As he watched, a battery out beyond the town that had somehow gottenleft behind, opened fire. He could see the red flash-flash-flash of theguns as they spoke; hear the explosions of the shells as they rent theground around the giants. One of them swung impassively toward thebattery; there were three quick stabs of living flame, and the gunsceased firing. Murray Lee shuddered--were all man's resources, was allof man, to disappear from the earth? All his high hopes and aspirations,all the centuries of bitter struggle toward culture to be wiped out bythese impervious beasts?

  He was recalled from his dream by the flash of light at his controlboard and a voice from the radiophone "... to all units," came themessage. "Railroad battery 14 about to fire on enemy tanks in Waterford.Request observation for corrections ... General Stanhope to all units.Railroad battery 14, twelve-inch guns, about to fire on enemy tanks inWaterford. Request observation for correction...
."

  "Lieut. Lee, American Tank Corps, to General Stanhope," he called intothe phone. "Go ahead with railroad battery 14. Am observing fire fromeast of town."

  Even before he had finished speaking there was a dull rumble in the airand a tremendous heave of earth behind and to one side of the shiningenemy, not two hundred yards away. "Lieut. Lee to railroad battery 14,"he called, delightedly, "two hundred yards over, ten yards right."Berrrroum! Another of the twelve-inch shells fell somewhere ahead of thegiants in the village. As Murray shouted the correction one of the metalcreatures lifted its snout toward the source of the explosion curiouslyand as if it had not quite understood its meaning, fired a light-beam atit. Another shell fell, just to one side. A wild hope surging in him, hecalled the corrections--these were heavier guns than any that had yettaken a hand.

  "Lieut. Lee, American Tank Corps, to railroad battery 14--Suggest youuse armor-piercing shell. Enemy tanks appear to be armored," he calledand had the comforting reply. "Check, Lieut. Lee. We are usingarmor-piercers." Slam! Another of the twelve-inch shells struck, not tenyards behind the enemy. The ground around them rocked; one of themturned as though to examine the burst, the other lifted its snoutskyward and released a long, thin beam of blue light, not in the leastlike the light-ray. It did not seem to occur to either of them thatthese shells might be dangerous. They seemed merely interested.

  And then--the breathless watchers in the thickets around the doomed townsaw a huge red explosion, a great flower of flame that leaped to theheavens, covered with a cloud of thick smoke, pink in the light of theburning houses, and as it cleared away, there lay one of the monsters onits side, gaping and rent, the mirrored surface scarred across, thephosphorescent glow extinguished, the prehensile snout droopinglifelessly. Murray Lee was conscious of whooping wildly, of dancing outof his tank and joining someone else in an embrace of delight. They werenot invincible then. They could be hurt--killed!

  "Hooray!" he cried, "Hooray!"

  "That and twelve times over," said his companion.

  The phrase struck him as familiar; for the first time he looked at hisfellow celebrant. It was Gloria.

  "Why, where in the world did you come from?" he asked.

  "Where did you? I've been here all the time, ever since Ben ordered ushome. Didn't think I'd run out on all the fun, did you? Are those thingsalive?"

  "How do I know? They look it but you never can tell with all the junkthat comet left around the earth. They might be just some new kind oftank full of dodos."

  "Yeh, but--" The buzzing roar of one of the light-rays crashing into aclump of trees not a hundred yards away, recalled them to themselves.Gloria looked up, startled. The other monster was moving slowly forward,systematically searching the hillside with its weapon.

  "Say, boy friend," she said, "I think it's time to go away from here.See you at high mass."

  * * * * *

  But the conference at headquarters in Hammonton that night was anythingbut cheerful.

  "It comes to this, then," said General Grierson, the commander-in-chiefof the expedition. "We have nothing that is effective against these dodotanks but the twelve-inch railroad artillery, using armor-piercing shelland securing a direct hit. Our infantry is worse than useless; the tanksare useless, the artillery cannot get through the armor of these things,although it damages the enemy artillery in the back areas."

  Ben Ruby rubbed a metal chin. "Well, that isn't quite all, sir. One ofthe American tanks was hit and came through--damaged I will admit. Thelightning, or light-ray these dodos threw, penetrated the outer skin butnot the inner. We could build more tanks of this type."

  General Grierson drummed on the table. "And arm them with what? Youcouldn't mount a twelve-inch gun in a tank if you wanted to, and wehaven't any twelve-inch guns to spare."

  One of the staff men looked up. "Has airplane bombing been tried onthese--things. It seems to me that a one or two-thousand pound bombwould be as effective as a twelve-inch shell."

  "That was tried this afternoon," said the head of the air service, withan expression of pain. "The 138th bombing squadron attacked a group ofthese tanks. Unfortunately, the tanks kept within range of theirlight-ray artillery and the entire squadron was shot down."

  "Mmm," said the staff man. "Let's add up the information we have securedso far and see where it leads. Now first they have a gun which shoots aray which is effective either all along its length or when put up inpackages like a shell, and is rather like a bolt of lightning in itseffect. Any deductions from that?"

  "Might be electrical," said someone.

  "Also might not," countered Walter Beeville. "Remember the _Melbourne's_turret. No electrical discharge would produce chemical changes like thatin Krupp steel."

  "Second," said the officer, "they appear to have three main types offighting machines or individuals. First, there are the dodos themselves.We know all about them, and our airplanes can beat them. Good....Second, there is their artillery--a large type that throws a beam ofthis emanation and a smaller type which throws it in the form of shells.Thirdly, there are these--tanks, which may themselves be the individualswe are fighting. They are capable of projecting these discharges to ashort distance--something over four thousand yards, and apparently donot have the power of projecting it in a prolonged beam, like theirartillery. They are about fifty feet long, fish-shaped, heavily armoredand have some unknown method of propulsion. Check me if I'm wrong at anypoint."

  "The projection of these lightning-rays would seem to indicate they aremachines," offered General Grierson hopefully.

  "Not on your life," said Beeville, "think of the electric eel."

  "As I was saying," said the staff man, "our chief defect seems a lack ofinformation, and--"

  General Grierson brought his fist down on the table. "Gentlemen!" hesaid. "This discussion is leading us nowhere. It's all very well toargue about the possibilities of man or machine in time of peace and athome, but we are facing one of the greatest dangers the earth has everexperienced, and must take immediate measures. Unless someone hassomething more fruitful to develop than this conference has providedthus far, I shall be forced to order the re-embarkation of what remainsof the army and sail for home. My duty is to the citizens of thefederated governments, and I cannot uselessly sacrifice more lives. Oursupply of railroad artillery is utterly inadequate to withstand thenumbers of our adversaries. Has anyone anything to offer?"

  There was a silence around the conference table, a silence pregnant witha heavy sense of defeat, for no one of them but could see the Generalwas right.

  But at that moment there came a tap at the door. "Come," called GeneralGrierson. An apologetic under-officer entered. "I beg your pardon, sir,but one of the iron Americans is here and insists that he has somethingof vital importance for the General. He will not go away without seeingyou."

  "All right. Bring him in."

  There stepped into the room another of the mechanical Americans, but aman neither Ben Ruby nor Beeville had ever seen before. A stiff wirebrush of moustache stood out over his mouth; he wore no clothes but akind of loin-cloth made, apparently, of a sheet. The metal plates of hispowerful body glittered in the lamp-light as he stepped forward."General Grierson?" he inquired, looking from one face to another.

  "I am General Grierson."

  "I'm Lieutenant Herbert Sherman of the U. S. Army Air Service. I havejust escaped from the Lassans and came to offer you my services. Iimagine your technical men might wish to know how they operate theirmachines and what would be effective against them, and I think I cantell you."