led.
And the valley! For five miles they had laid a blanket ofnon-combustible gases. For five minutes, perhaps, their course couldbe seen. And at the end of that time it was as it had been before, andthe flames raged on unchecked.
His own Chief's number flashed before him; then a message that clickedacross his scanning plate:
"O'Rourke! Get out of that hole! Nitrogen won't touch it; we can'tpour in enough. It's the same all along the line. We'll have to breakit up--smother it one part at a time. Have you tried your sounddampener?"
And Danny O'Rourke had the grace to blush even through the flush thatthe fire's breath had given his face. "Forgot it!" he shouted into hisvoice sender. "Forgot the ship had the little doodad on it!"
The Chief responded audibly. "You didn't forget to go first into thatdoorway to hell," he said drily. "You fool Irishman, go back down andtry the thing; give the 'little doodad' a chance!"
* * * * *
Once more the red ship fell swiftly under Danny's hand. As before, thevalley yawned like the living threat of a volcano in eruption. Butthis time, instead of the whining nitro-producers, there came frombeneath the ship a discordant shriek like nothing that the quietmountains had ever heard. And Danny's fingers played over a strangekeyboard whose three keys were rheostats, and the crashing discordbelow rose to a horror of sound that tore and battered at the ship'sthick walls to set the nerves of the crouching man a-jangle. But hiseyes, watching through a lookout below, saw strange disturbances ofthe flames; he saw the masses of flame shiver as if stricken--fallapart--vanish!
And he held the sound controls at that same horrendous shriek whilehis ship swept on and the thunder of her passing was lost in thepandemonium that went before. But the valley, when the red ship hadpassed, was a place of charred skeleton trees--of gray, swirlingashes, and of embers, here and there, that blew back to life only tobe smothered by the gases of the ships that followed in his wake.
And the voice that spoke from the instrument beside him still spokedrily. "There's fifty miles more of that ahead," said the voice. "Justkeep moving along; we'll mop up behind you.... Oh, and by the way,O'Rourke, give my congratulations to the Infant on the success of hisinvention. His sound-dampener is some little doodad; we'll be needingmore of them, I should say."
* * * * *
It was an hour or more later at the Headquarters of the MountainDivision that the Chief amplified that remark in a way he himselfcould not have foreseen. He had been talking to Danny, and now on thewall of an adjoining room, where men sat at strange instruments, a redlight flashed.
"We still don't know what started it all," the Chief was saying. "Butit made a fine tryout for Morgan's invention. If I thought you and hecould do it, I would believe you had started that fire yourselves fora"--his voice rose abruptly to a shout--"Man! There's the red on theboard--a general alarm!"
"Throw the big switch!" he roared. "Cut us in, quick! Cut us in!"
Danny O'Rourke, under any ordinary circumstances would have beenhugely amused at the extraordinary sight of the Chief of the MountainDivision in a ferment of excitement that was near hysteria. But theflashing of the red that swept like a finger of flame across everystation number of the big board did not mean that ordinary matterswere at hand. A voice was speaking; its high-pitched shrillness showedthat the excitement of the moment was not confined to the office ofthe Mountain Division alone.
"A. F. F. Headquarters, Washington," it shrilled. "General Alarm.Chicago destroyed by fire. Flames sweeping in well defined pathsacross the country. Originated in Mountain Division. Causeundetermined. Three lines of fire reported; coming eastfast--unbelievable speed.... There! Cleveland has got it; reports apath of fire has cut across city melting steel and even stone.... NowBuffalo!... God knows what it is." The voice broke with excitement foran instant; Danny could almost see the distant man fighting forcontrol of himself as a maze of instruments about him wrote incrediblethings.
* * * * *
"Orders!" said the voice now. "All A. F. F. ships report to yourDivision Headquarters. Division officers keep in communication withWashington. Mountain Division send all equipment east. Flying orderswill be given you en route. The country--the whole world--is inflames!"
Beside him, Danny O'Rourke heard the voice of his Chief."Unbelievable--impossible--preposterous!" His voice like that otherwas growing shrill. "The country--world--in flames!"
But he found voice to snap out a command to a waiting officer in thedoorway of the adjoining room. "Repeat general order. Send all crafteast!"
To Danny he whispered. "Your 'little doodad'--I wish to heaven we hada thousand of them now! But what does it mean? Lanes of fire acrossthe country--whole cities destroyed! What devil's work is this?...There's nobody who knows."
But Danny was staring as if he saw through the high, instrument-coveredwalls. Back to a valley of flame that was like a doorway to hell, whererocks, gray with the frosty years, had been melted to pools ... back toa glinting light where something swift and scintillant had flashed oncein a cloudless sky ... back--far back ... back to a street in a townhalf across the world, and a figure of a giant who strode away with asmile of triumph on his ill-formed face ... but first that giant hadmelted his way through walls of stone; and, like the stone, steel barsand human flesh were as nothing before the invisible heat that come froma slender rod!
His own voice, when he moved his dry tongue to speak, came huskily; itwas as if another person were speaking far off:
"I think you're wrong ... yes, I thing you're wrong, Chief. There'sone man who knows and 'tis myself is that one.... One man--and theother is a beast like no livin' man on the face of the earth! _He_knows--he and the devils he's brought with him!"
* * * * *
It was an unsatisfactory interview that Danny had with the Chief."You're crazy!" was the verdict of that A. F. F. official when Dannyhad finished. "You're crazy, or else--or else--" His voice trailedoff; his eyes were on the moving letters that flashed their message ofdisaster in an ever changing procession across the scanning screen onthe wall.
"... outbreaks have ceased ... tremendous destruction ... no rationalexplanation ... meteors, perhaps ... thousands of lives ... noestimate...."
There seemed no end to the tale of disaster, and the Chief's voicedied away into silence. If Danny was right he had no words to fit theunbelievable truth.
"Get into your new ship," the Chief ordered brusquely, "and take theInfant with you. I'll send a relief man to his station. Go east--layyour course for Washington; you'll get other orders on the way!"
And a half hour later the first rocket ship of the A. F. F. wasblasting its way through the thin gases of the stratosphere eastwardbound. But by now Danny O'Rourke had a more sympathetic listener thanbefore.
"In big puddles it was, and lakes! 'Twas still melted, some of it, inthat valley."
"Why not?" asked the Infant casually. "Radiant heat moves with thespeed of light. We wouldn't think anything of focusing ten millioncandle power of light energy into a spot like that. Why not heat? Justbecause we haven't learned to generate it--focus it--shoot it out in astream like water from a hose--there's no use in denying that someoneelse has beat us to the punch."
The Infant's calm blue eyes were upon the luminous plates of theship's microscope where the swift moving terrain beneath them waspictured clearly. The mountains were behind them now; endless miles ofripening grain made the land a sea of yellow and brown and, acrossthat ocean, like the lines of foam that mark the wake of ships, laythree straight lines of black.
"Meteors!" sneered the Infant. "Yet if you'd tell your story to someof these wise men they would die of laughing--and maybe that wouldn'tbe a bad idea, either; they will be dying in a way that's a damnedsight more unpleasant unless someone finds how to catch these birds."
* * * * *
Ahead of them the lookouts framed blue
emptiness. Below, on directsight, was but the vaguest blur that meant earth and clouds farbeneath. Only the magnification of the microscope brought out thedetails, and on its screen the unrolling picture showed those threelines broadening and merging to widespread desolation; then the smokeclouds came between to shut off a world reeking with the fumes ofdestruction. An occasional flash of red wings showed where the unitsof the A. F. F. were at work.
They beheld a city, below them--and smoking ruins where three greatgashes had been torn with torches of flame. To Danny there came athought that was sickening: it was as if some great
The Hammer of Thor Page 3