David Cohen groaned inwardly at the heresy of calling the enormous winter garden a greenhouse.
"There it is again! Something's inside there!" called Leo. "Something's moving about... below, there!"
His call through the radio loud hailer on his auto-gyro nearly blasted our eardrums.
"No response," he went on. "I'm hovering now where the thing shoved the windows out. There's another one gone! Oh, my God! It's a Vulcanid!"
I suppose we'd almost expected it. Better a Vulcanid — we knew them — than some new, unknown horror.
"I'm coming back straight away — will land at Parkside," called Leo.
A few minutes later his auto-gyro dropped down in the middle of the Bayswater Road as we ran to meet him.
"How many?" was the question everyone called. There had been thirty or more of us at Parkside when Leo's call came through, and we were every one in the road before he had dropped from the cabin steps.
"Don't know — I only saw the one, and he was a monster!"
We looked at each other in dismay.
"We'd better get a party out there at once," someone decided.
"I can take five in here," said Arabin. "The rest can come on in cars. No — leave a dozen here. No sense in leaving the place empty. Better bring some weapons, too, though I can't see that they'll be a lot of use."
While we went indoors for Bren guns and pistols, Alatto Skirr made sure that the car radios were tuned to the auto-gyro wavelength. He and Cohen and myself piled into the cabin, followed by Isidore — swinging not one, but two axes — and the enterprising Lucille.
During the past two months, I should mention, Lucille had considered herself engaged to me, and had even started to talk of raiding a West End couturier's for a wedding gown, for, she insisted, she was going to be a June bride. I have not brought these facts into the latter part of this narrative, because I really do not think that my own small private affairs have any place in it at this stage. I now refer to the fact on Lucille's insistence, for as I write she supervises me with her usual energy and now informs me that I must acknowledge her share of our adventures.
Leo brought us low over the winter garden and hovered over the spot where the glass was broken.
The under surface of the glass was thickly coated with green, and we could see that the tropical growths inside had flourished and run wild without their accustomed attention. But where the glass was broken we could see down into the interior and there, immediately below the shattered panes, was an undoubted Vulcanid.
The fringe of his tentacles towered at least twelve feet above the ground.
Here was a blow, indeed. When we thought that we had secured nearly all the Vulcanids in the Stamford Hill Reservoir, we had been fooling ourselves. Somehow, one or more had escaped without crossing our electrified fence. We had already checked that eighteen remained at Primswood, so the one at Kew must be one of the Stamford Hill creatures.
But must it?
Could it be possible that others had made their way here without our knowledge?
The size of this creature made us think that here was yet another colony of them — yet more Vulcanids of which we had known nothing so far.
"I'm going lower," Leo growled. "Got to see how many of the beasts there are in there."
A voice came over the speaker. It was Krill Hvensor.
"Better wait until we get there," he called. "There is no hurry, Leo Arabin. We shall be with you inside ten minutes — wait."
But Leo dropped the auto-gyro down to roof top level, and we peered down through the green glass.
There was some movement inside, but whether it was the one Vulcanid we had seen, or whether there was a whole tribe of them we could not guess.
Then came a series of rocket-like blasts, and Leo flung himself at the controls. One of our engines had petered out, and as the other one raced, we were thrown sideways.
We were too low to correct our loss of balance, and a second later the auto-gyro crashed on to the round roof.
The iron stays of the roof held, fortunately, and our aircraft slid, rattling and scraping, down the curve of the structure. Leo had time to drop the shock landing gear, and the great stilt-like legs took much of the shock of our fall as the machine hit the ground.
Before the racing engine could be switched off, the rotors had ripped through the side of the conservatory, and as they buckled the iron stays and crashed through the panes of glass we toppled over.
At that moment we blessed the foresight of Victor, the Swiss designer of the auto-gyro, for having placed release panels on every facet of the transparent cabin. Lucille pulled, the red handle of the panel at her side, and we shot out like squeezed orange pips. The perspiring Isidore leapt back again and began to fling our weapons out to us. We snatched them up and dragged him out violently, more from fear of the unknown than for any practical reason.
It was well we did, for as we backed away from the great glass house, there was a shattering of glass, and — the giant Vulcanid slid out through the hole the rotors had torn in the side of the building.
We ran towards the pagoda, down the long vista of trees, and as we ran we looked back from time to time.
Despite the size of the Vulcanid, its movement seemed but little faster than those we knew. But what horrified us was not the fact that he was after us — we could outdistance him, we knew — but the dreadful knowledge that dozens more of the great slithering creatures were pouring out through the gap behind him.
As we passed the Temperate House, we had a sudden fear that here, too, the giant Vulcanids might have set up a colony. We need not have feared, though, for through the comparatively clear glass we saw no sign of any moving creature.
We reached the pagoda before the Vulcanids had got more than half way there, and Isidore at once attacked the door with an axe. We paused a moment to get our breath back, and then Leo suddenly realised something we had overlooked.
"What the devil do we want to go in here for?" he asked, panting. "Once in there and we're trapped. We should have gone the other way — towards the main gates. That's where the road party would have met us."
But we had no time to change our plan. The Vulcanids had loomed dangerously near, and we piled into the pagoda, slamming the door behind us and wedging it with a Bren gun.
"Better get right to the top, seeing we're in," urged Leo, as he pushed Lucille at the steeply-set iron staircase. It was more a ladder with broad treads than a staircase, and Lucille had to help herself along with her hands. We followed her as quickly as we could go, turning nervously for a last look at the wedged door as a bend in the ladder took it out of our sight.
We came to the platform at the top badly winded, and peered out through the tiny decorative windows.
"Perhaps was not a bad idea to come here," panted Isidore. "From here can see all around — maybe see others when they shall come."
We looked out towards the entrance by Kew Palace, a mile distant, and damned our incaution for failing to bring a walkie-talkie with us. There was as yet no sign of the road party. The trees, too, obstructed our view, both to the north, where we expected to catch our first glimpse of the cars, and to the east, where Kew Road runs alongside, and fairly near to, the pagoda.
Then David held his hand up. "Ssh! Listen!" he whispered. We held our breath for half a minute and strained our ears into the vast silence.
The silence that hung over the world had been one of our most eerie experiences, and we had never quite accustomed ourselves to it. Ever since the day we landed, now nearly a year ago, we had found ourselves suddenly stopping whatever we were doing, and listening. Without the sound of a movement anywhere, without birds and animals in the country, and without man-made sounds in the streets, the silence was truly awful. At first we had thought that our powers of hearing had been tremendously developed, for it was quite possible, on a windless day, to hear the sound of footsteps on a road four miles away.
So now we stood in the topmost cha
mber of the tall pagoda and listened for the cars. The wind was blowing softly in the right direction, but the sound of the branches creaking against each other all around us hid the sound we wanted to hear. It is hard to believe that trees can make such noise in a breeze, but the sound of them, in the absence of any other sound, was enough to cover the noise the cars would make.
David turned to a window facing east, and we looked out over his shoulder. Then, by straining, we could just hear the cars.
"They've come round to this side of the garden," David nodded. "Probably couldn't find a gate open at the other end."
We had no doubt that the car party would have put on all speed to reach us, for the break in our radio calls must have alarmed them considerably.
As we listened, above the sound of the wind in the trees, we heard a crash, followed by shouts.
"They've either crashed a gate open, or else there's been a smash," muttered Arabin.
While we were guessing which was right, we saw the first car racing along the path behind the pagoda.
Isidore leaped for the window on that side, and bawled out to the little procession of cars, but they did not hear him. Unless they stopped, the sound of their engines would cover our shouts, especially as we were in an enclosed space, with only small windows to shout through.
Leo shoved the barrel of a Bren through the window, and, aiming high, loosed off a burst. By standing on tiptoe we could just see the cars pull up, and Leo fired another burst. This time they found the direction, and we saw a dozen faces peering up at us as the cars stopped and their occupants got out.
"Get back! Keep moving!" Leo bawled. "There are dozens of the bloody creatures down there!"
Then he turned back to us.
"Odd, isn't it, that they didn't see any of 'em? Wonder if they've gone back to the greenhouse?"
Cohen moaned with anguish, and blasphemed under his breath at this continued heresy.
Axel waved his arms reassuringly around him, as he walked towards the pagoda. We lost sight of him, and then heard his voice from the bottom of the ladder.
"Is nothing down here now. Coming down safely, please," he cooed through the crack of the door.
We swarmed down the ladder so fast that our palms were scorched, and dragged away the obstruction to the door.
As we threw the door open, we saw Axel, surrounded by a dozen or more familiar faces.
We were a little shamefaced as we climbed into a station wagon, but there was not time for much explaining, as Leo impressed on Krill Hvensor and Axel. He hurriedly related the facts, and we drove cautiously down the pagoda vista, our tyres making no sound on the thick grass.
When we came to an intersection of paths, we saw before us the reason why the Vulcanids had turned back. They were clustered in a mass around the crashed auto-gyro, which lay on its side near the palm house.
Their filaments were waving — it almost seemed excitedly — as they fussed round the wrecked machine.
Krill Hvensor stood up on the front seat and thrust his head and shoulders through the roof trap. "But these are monsters such as I have never seen!" he breathed. "These are not — these cannot be — from Hafna!"
And truly the creatures looked fearsome giants. Nearly twice as tall as the Vulcanids we had seen before, they were also quicker in their movements. How else would they differ? Would their strange mental powers be even more terrible? Would they — could they — exert their telepathic influence upon us?
But we did not stop to ask ourselves many more questions, for the monsters sensed our presence and turned towards us. As they started to glide towards us, Axel swung the car round and we sped off back along the path. The other cars, by then turned towards the gate, waited for us and we drove away as quickly as we could.
Our station wagon brought up the rear, Leo instructing the others through his microphone as we made for the gate.
Just as we approached the gate, which hung on its hinges where it had been crashed open, Krill Hvensor called out from his position in the roof trap. We missed hearing what he said, for Axel suddenly turned his head, and before we could brace our muscles for the shock, the car had turned on its side. Axel had driven straight up the sloping gate as it hung in his path.
He had hurt his leg in the smash, for he clamped his foot down firmly on the accelerator as he shouted with pain.
The engine raced madly in that fraction of a second, and an instant later there was a streak of flame from beneath the bonnet.
Somehow — I cannot begin to think how — we squirmed out of the blazing wreck, dragging Axel out without heeding his cries of pain. The preceding car stopped and backed swiftly, and its occupants — Lucille was one, as she never tires of reminding me — helped us to our feet.
As we staggered away, there was a sudden "Whoosh!" and a great cloud of flame shot up into the sky as the petrol tank caught.
We were near enough for the flash to singe our eyebrows and for a moment the intense heat stopped our breathing. We crammed ourselves into the other car, and drove away at speed, and it was not until we nearly reached Kew Green that Arabin had a sudden thought.
"Look, David," he commanded, "we must go back! If that blaze reaches the trees it might start all London burning! Turn round, quick!"
David took the car round a block of houses — quiet little suburban dwellings that surely stood for a peaceful security instead of the two-fold threat we now faced.
There by the gate the blaze was dying down, although great flaming jets still shot out now and then.
David took the car round another block so that we could drive down facing the fire.
Arabin had now taken Krill Hvensor's place in the roof trap, and he was balancing before him on the roof a fire-gun. We had not realised the potentialities of these magnificent pieces of fire-fighting equipment until the Regent Street blaze, and then we had given them a good try-out. Once we found their value, we had installed them all around us in our daily life, and each car carried a couple.
As Cohen slowly brought us nearer to the blaze, Leo sighted along the barrel of his extinguisher and pressed the trigger.
A thin jet of colourless liquid shot out into the heart of the flames, and as the heat evaporated it, the chemical started to do its work. Where the jet had struck, a black patch of twisted steel showed up against the red background.
Leo sighted the gun again, and then whipped his head up.
"See that?" he shouted. "There's a Vulcanid in that fire!"
We could hardly believe what we saw. There, amid the flames, towered one of the monsters, unharmed, and his great fringe of filaments quested round touching the red hot metal.
As we watched, the creature stepped — literally stepped — through the fire and started towards us.
Leo, in an automatic action, turned the fire-gun on the giant.
What happened then drew a shout of joy from all of us.
As the thin stream of liquid sprayed upon the Vulcanid's translucent body, the vast bulk crumpled and blackened. Another few seconds and it was stretched out across the road — dead.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
By evening, we reckoned that we had exterminated the pocket of Vulcanids in Kew Gardens. We hardly needed to go looking for them; they came out and went for us, but from the start they had no chance.
From moving cars we were able to mow them down with no risk to ourselves.
But although we now held the key to the Vulcanids' weakness, and although in our first enthusiasm we pictured ourselves ridding the world of the creatures, it was a horrible business. However, we kept at it until we had slaughtered no fewer than sixty of the monsters. We went through every building in the Gardens, but the only traces of their occupation were in the Palm House.
How they had got there we did not discover for some time, and then we learned that they had formed a small detachment of those that had escaped from the Stamford Hill Reservoir. The enormous size of the Kew Vulcanids at first led' us to suppose that they were of ano
ther species, but examinations carried out under Axel's directions showed that they were of the same stock.
Axel himself was laid up for a week with a dislocated ankle and burns, for which he himself prescribed the treatment.
After rounding up the Kew Vulcanids, Arabin called a counsel of war to discuss dealing with the rest.
We then decided that, as well as destroying the Vulcanids we knew about, we should have an even greater job on our hands: the location of those that had slipped through our net at Stamford Hill. The first step was obviously an aerial survey, with which we could combine a positive attack on Vulcanids caught in the open.
The first expedition launched on these lines found a single small pocket of the creatures, this time right out in the open near Leighton Buzzard. When we had accounted for them, we realised that we must now spread our net much more widely. It had been our hope that the Vulcanids would confine
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