A Thousand Degrees Below Zero

by Murray Leinster

  CHAPTER X.

  The stars winked palely from the graying sky. In the east a pallidwhiteness showed which slowly yellowed and then turned to pink. Thedawn was breaking.

  On the little reef men watched keenly. Far out at sea, its singlefunnel tipped with red paint from the crimson sunlight, a little boattossed and rolled. That boat contained the men who had offered theirlives for a chance to kill this Varrhus, who threatened the liberty ofthe world. Beside the camouflaged hangar two great horns, seeming tobe enlarged megaphones, pointed toward the sky. Little wires ran fromtheir points to telephone receivers strapped on the ears of intentlylistening men. They were microphones to detect the first sound of themusical humming of the black flyer. Teddy and Davis were befurred andgoggled, but had pushed up their goggles to take powerful glasses andscan the sky eagerly for a sight of their enemy. Mechanics stood readyat the propellers of the hidden fighting plane, prepared to spin themotors into roaring life the instant the two aviators had settled intheir seats. From before the wide doors of the concealed hangar a broadexpanse of beach ran smoothly down to the ocean. The little boat tossedand rolled. The men at the microphones listened intently. The otherssearched the sky.

  Straight down from a wisp of golden cloud a slim black speck felltoward the earth. At first, so high was it, even those with fieldglasses could make out only the thin shape of the glistening blackbody. It fell a thousand, two thousand feet----The whirring disks abovethe slender body became visible, then the inclosed cabin near thecenter. The musical humming filled the air. Lower and lower the strangemachine dropped. Davis and Teddy were in their seats.

  "Now!" said Davis sharply, and the propellers whirled. The motorscaught, sputtered, and began to run with a steady, droning roar.Davis watched keenly as the black shape slowed in its fall and cameto a standstill above the little, tossing boat. Half a dozen men wereholding the a?roplane back, and the small shed was full of clouds ofchoking dust and still more choking fumes from the motor.

  The black flyer hung motionless, barely three hundred yards above thesmall boat. There was a long moment of waiting. Then the decks of theboat seemed to fall in. A dozen threatening muzzles were exposed. Adozen flashes of flame shot up from the tiny vessel. SimultaneouslyDavis cried out, the men released his machine, and it darted forward.He took off from the beach skimmed the waves, and shot out toward thestrange combat that was taking place.

  The black flyer had been hit. That much was certain. It lurched andstaggered in the air, losing altitude all the while. Then the pilotseemed to regain control. He swung swiftly to one side and began torise. All the time the anti-aircraft guns were firing viciously.The tossing boat made a poor platform for the gunners, however, andtheir aim was inevitably poor. The guns kept up a ceaseless roaring.Puff after puff of white smoke showed where their shells burst nearVarrhus. He began to swerve, to zigzag, using tactics strangely likethose of a dragon fly. Suddenly he darted to a point exactly abovethe small boat, and a smoky cloud began to dart down from below hismachine. Varrhus passed on, but the cloud fell swiftly, precisely likethe cloud of liquified gas he had poured down on Teddy and Davis aboveNew York harbor.

  "Flares!" cried Davis in an agony of apprehension, though his voice wasonly audible to Teddy by means of the telephone connection between thetwo helmets.

  As he spoke the men on the boat shot up the little fire balls that hadprotected the a?roplane in its former fight. A dozen balls of lightsped up to meet the menacing cloud of liquified gas. They reached it,sped into it, glowing feebly! The white cloud did not ignite, but fellon toward the boat. It reached and enveloped the little vessel, andsuddenly the guns were still.

  "Damn him!" said Teddy in a voice that shook with rage. "He's not usinghydrogen. We can't close in on him now. Our flares are no good."

  Davis tilted the nose of his machine upward, and Teddy stared down hissights. He pulled the trigger. The gun kicked backward, but the recoilcylinders did their work. The tracer shell left a little line of smokebehind it. It passed below the black body.

  "Too low," said Teddy grimly, and fired again.

  Varrhus began to climb. Straight up his machine went, but with thepicric acid giving added impetus to the explosions in the cylinders thetwo-seater climbed as rapidly. Varrhus' ascent swerved. He was directlyover the a?roplane. A whitish cloud appeared below his machine andblotted it out for an instant.

  "We zoom," said Davis almost gayly, and the fighting plane seemed tobe dancing on its tail for an instant. The cloud of gas unfolded itselfdown to the surface of the water, barely twenty yards before the spacein which Davis had checked his course.

  Around and around a huge circle. The biplane had caught up with theblack flyer, and Davis turned toward it for an instant to give Teddyan opportunity to fire. There was a flash at the stern of the slenderblack body, and the symmetry of the glistening form was marred by aragged edge where the tip of the tail had been blown off.

  "Almost," said Teddy grimly.

  "He'll dive now."

  Davis was prepared for the maneuver, and almost as soon as thehelicopter began to drop the biplane darted down after it, Teddy firingviciously. The streaks of smoke that his shells left behind them toldhim where he missed. Varrhus shifted the course of his fall, and againa cloud drifted in the air just before the pursuing plane. Davis flungthe "joy-stick" forward, and the fighter fell into an absolutelyvertical dive. A second more and it had turned upon its back and wasflying upside down, away from the threatening mist.

  Davis twisted in mid-air and righted his machine. Varrhus was dartingaway, barely two hundred feet above the surface of the water. Again thetwo-seater dived upon him. Teddy's shells were zipping dangerously nearthe black machine. It began to zigzag, to twist and turn like a snake.It doubled back and shot directly under the biplane, but too far belowfor the deadly mist to be used. Davis banked at a suicidal angle andwent after it again. They passed directly above the silent small boat,drifting aimlessly on the waves. Little icicles were forming on thebulwarks, showing that the cold of the liquified gas was still intense.

  For one instant Teddy had a perfect sight, and pulled the trigger withthe peculiar confidence of a marksman who knows he is making a perfectshot. There was a flash upon the upper portion of the black hull. Adark object shot off at a tangent from one of the whirring disks. Thehelicopter sank rapidly. Teddy gave a shout.

  "Landed!"

  The black machine recovered again. One of the disks was badly injuredand now slowed and stopped, showing that the blade of one of thefour sustaining propellers had been broken, but the remaining threeincreased their speed. Varrhus seemed to abandon the idea of fighting.He began to shoot away toward the northeast. He was more than a mileaway, and Teddy had stopped firing. Varrhus had had no difficulty indistancing the same machine a week before, and anticipated no troublein losing it, even with his own flyer partially crippled. He had notreckoned on the picric compound now being used for fuel. The biplanesped madly after the fleeing black aircraft. The motors roared hugely,and the wind was like a solid mass, pushing fiercely against Teddy'sexposed head. A small half-moon of glass protected Davis from the wind,but for the gunner no such protection was practicable. The rushing ofthe wind through the wires and along the sides of the stream-line bodyamounted to a shriek. Never had such speed been known before.

  Davis' voice came quietly to Teddy above the sounds outside, muted bythe heavy, padded helmet. The telephone receivers were fast againstTeddy's ears.

  "We're making two hundred and twenty-six."

  "We're not gaining," said Teddy grimly.

  "Wait until he rises. The motor's adjusted to be most efficient atabout seven thousand feet."

  The black speck ahead of them was drawing no nearer, it is true, butit was not dwindling. The silvery wings of the biplane cut through theair with fierce impatience. It flew in the straightest of straightlines after the other craft. Dark-brownish smoke blew backward from thebellowing exhausts, tinged almost to saffron by the presence of theexplosive acid. T
he sunlight kissed the upper surfaces of the wings ofthe pursuing plane. Below them the ocean rolled and tossed.

  Whistling wind and roaring engines. Speed, speed, speed! The biplanerushed with incredible swiftness through the air. The black flyerskimmed lightly on, barely in advance of its white-winged enemy. TwiceTeddy essayed a shot, but the biplane trembled so that accuracy wasimpossible, and he could see by the smoke of his tracer shell that hehad gone far wide of the black machine. The space between the blackspeck and the waves below it seemed to increase.

  "Rising," said Davis. "Now we'll get him."

  Teddy kept his eyes fixed on Varrhus' slender, needlelike craft. Hewas barely conscious of the upward tilt of the machine in which he wasriding, but he saw that they were keeping pace with Varrhus as he rosein the air.

  "Four thousand feet," said Davis crisply. "And two hundred andtwenty-nine miles an hour. There's land ahead."

  Teddy saw a mountainous coast line becoming visible far away. The blackflyer continued to rise.

  "Six thousand feet," said Davis again, "and two hundred and thirty-twomiles----"

  The pilot of the other machine saw that they were gaining. He droppedabruptly.

  "Now!" exclaimed Davis fiercely.

  He dived downward. The descent, coupled with the immense power of theengines--now delivering vastly more than the eight hundred horse powerfor which they were designed--made them shoot toward the black flyerwith increasing speed. The other machine was barely more than halfa mile away and every detail of its construction was visible. Teddynoticed for the first time a slender tube rising between the two centersustaining propellers. He instantly leaped to the conclusion that itwas the means by which the jets of liquified gas had been shot out. Hefired.

  "A hit!" cried Davis.

  There had been a flash from the top of the cabin. A jagged rentappeared in the polished roofing, and the slender tube vanished. Theblack flyer seemed to abandon all hopes of escape. It sped madly for agap between two of the tall mountains that rose along the coast line.At the unprecedented speed with which both machines had been travelingthe coast seemed fairly to rush at them. No villages were visible,but it seemed to be a habitable, if not an inhabited, land. The blackflyer swept on across country, Varrhus evidently making every effort togain even a few yards on his adversaries, and Davis just as fiercelydetermined that he should not. Once, twice, three times Teddy fired.

  A smoothed and inclosed field, almost surrounded with small buildings,appeared. Varrhus dashed toward it desperately, the white-wingedbiplane vengefully after him. The black flyer dropped like a stone andthe biplane dived straight for it. In that last dive Teddy worked hisone-pounder as coolly as if at target practice. Flash! Flash! The blackflyer crumpled and fell the last fifty feet as an inert mass.

  Teddy jumped from the biplane as it flattened out and settled to theground. With his automatic pistol drawn and ready, he darted towardthe partly wrecked black machine. As he drew near a sallow face cameweakly to a window of the cabin. An automatic flashed from beside theface and Teddy heard a queer sound and a fall behind him. He did notstop, but rushed on, shooting viciously at the face in the opening. Hereached the wreck, wrenched open the door, and swung into the cabinwith utter disregard for danger.

  A tall, lean, sallow man was sitting exhausted in the pilot's seatof the black flyer. His right arm was crimsoned from a wound in hisshoulder, and blood spurted in little frothy jets from a second woundin his neck. Teddy's fire had been better directed than he knew. Ashe entered with pistol ready, the sallow man raised his head erect bya tremendous effort. A hooked nose, a merciless mouth, and blazingeyes filled Teddy with repulsion. The sallow man stared at himsuperciliously.

  "I am Wladislaw Varrhus, dictator of all the earth," he said in ametallic voice. "I command--I--command."

  Speech failed him. His head dropped and he fell limply from thecushioned seat.