invisiblefingers of death were sweeping back and forth where men and women ranshrieking in terror or waited calmly and dry-eyed for the end. Abovethem a slender rounded thing wove its pattern of destruction back andforth ... back and forth. A spectral ship--a pale phantom, elusiveand dimly seen until it came against the black of rolling smoke frombelow.
But to Danny O'Rourke, slanting down from tremendous heights, thewhite shape was never lost. On the cross hairs of his directionalsights the ghostly ship hung, and Danny threw his own red rocket likea living flame over and down where the white one sensed his coming andwaited.
Beside him a human voice, high with horror, called to him. "Comeback!" the Chief of the Mountain Division was commanding. "Danny! Forthe love of Heaven, turn back!"
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But the voice was unheard by Danny O'Rourke. There was another voicespeaking ... he could almost see the smiling pink and white face ofone beside him who spoke of his "little tin ship" ... spoke, too, of awhite ship that would be like a great thunder-cloud ... and of his ownscreaming meteor that was like the earth ... and there was to be amessenger of death like the hammer of Thor that would flash betweenthe two....
Danny saw the white one slipping easily aside; the ship was swellingsuddenly before him--it was close ... but the jagged lightning--theripping flash of blue that joined the two craft in a crashing arc--wasneither seen nor heard by Danny. Danny was too busy to notice, for hewas engaged in smiling converse with one whom he called the "Infant"and whose pink and white face beamed gladly upon him "like a damnedlittle cherub," as Danny was telling him....
But the Chief of the Mountain Division who saw all from afar could saynothing. He only stared from the lookout of his own speeding planethat framed a picture of two ships; where the red one, flaming fromwithin, kept on in its swift, straight dive; while the white one fellslowly, turning sluggishly to show its gashed and blasted sides ...till the black clouds wrapped them both in a billowy shroud....
But clouds are no bar to man's inner vision. And the Chief lookedthrough, as Danny had done, to see as in a lightning flash a worldbeaten to its knees, hopeless, ravaged and scarred--a world wherecourage might again be born--a world that would still be a world ofmen.
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The Hammer of Thor Page 7