The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

Sir Harry and his friends naturally had one great advantage in being able to have their ships laid down, built, and equipped out of hand without any fear of interference by the authorities, while the anarchists were forced to have the sections of theirs made by various and widely-separated firms, and then had to take them away to be put together on the floating dockyard into which they had transformed the Bremen. On the other hand, this advantage was, if anything, more than neutralised by the fact that their enemies were already in possession of the only air-ship capable of taking the offensive at any moment, and that, too, in a style that would far eclipse her former depredations.

  The immediate consequence of Max's visit to America and Europe had been the completion, under the specified time, of the armament which Hartog had designed for the Vengeur, and while the whole world was wondering what had become of her, she was lying snugly hidden on an uninhabited islet in the Faroe group, taking on board her guns and ammunition from the Pilgrim. When she took the air again, she carried four pneumatic shell-guns capable of throwing projectiles charged with five pounds weight of either anarchite or fire-mixture, to a distance varying from two to five miles, according to her elevation.

  These were mounted two ahead and two astern, and on each broadside she carried two automatic guns of the Maxim pattern, but of very light construction and small calibre, from each of which could be projected, every minute they were in action, seven hundred conical nickel-coated bullets, which would kill at a range of from four to five thousand yards. In addition to these she carried five hundred specially prepared projectiles made of papier-mache, and charged with fire-mixture, for use in her vertical bomb-tubes.

  As her net lifting power was nearly two tons over and above the weight of the hull, machinery, and guns, she was able to carry a quantity of ammunition sufficient to do an enormous amount of damage, considering the very advantageous conditions under which it would be discharged - conditions which would allow every projectile to be sent home to its mark with the most deliberate aim.

  As soon as the Pilgrim had performed this part of her work, she set out for Liverpool, where the anarchist agents had instructions to send the parts of the air-ships and their equipments as they were completed, and there, under the noses of the authorities, the harmless-looking cases were shipped as hardware and machinery for the port of Montevideo, and carried away, as soon as a cargo was completed, to the island of Trinidad, off the coast of Brazil, where she was met by the Bremen and the Destroyer.

  Meanwhile, a series of conferences were being held between Sir Harry and his Utopian friends, and a syndicate that had been formed to develop and keep in the country a new machine for navigating the air. This air-ship had been designed by Mr. Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the automatic gun which, in its deadly fashion, had sung the praises of his inventive skill in so many parts of the world.

  The aeroplane, as Mr. Maxim had appropriately named this engine of warfare, was to all intents and purposes a huge kite with auxiliary wings, supporting a car in which an engine, driven by steam and burning vaporised gasoline fuel, operated two huge propellers projecting from the stern.

  These forced the inclined aeroplane and wings against the air, the upthrust of which lifted the machine from the ground after a short run corresponding to that of a bird taking flight from the earth.

  But the flying machine was plainly no match for the airship proper. In fact, some time before, Mr. Maxim had said that if ever an air-ship could be made that could raise itself vertically from the ground and keep itself suspended motionless in the air at any desired elevation within reason, it would be an immeasurably superior engine of warfare to his own aeroplane.

  Now that there could be no longer any doubt that such an airship had been built, Mr. Maxim, with the impersonal unselfishness of the true scientist, promptly admitted the fact, and set himself to work to design an air-ship that would beat the Vengeur. This was the common ground upon which he and Sir Harry and his friends met, and the result was, that they put their resources and their knowledge together, and formed a corporation under the title of the Aerial Navigation Syndicate.

  Adams and Mr. Austen still retained in their own exclusive keeping the secret of the composition of the motor-fuel to be used in the engines, and the last of the Articles of Association was to the effect that no attempt was to be made to trespass upon this forbidden ground. The Syndicate possessed a capital of three millions, and, as the event proved, no capital ever before subscribed for any object made such enormous profits as this did, though how they were to be made remained a matter of pure conjecture, until the world rubbed its eyes and wondered why it had never thought of such a scheme before.

  The advantage of their alliance with Mr. Maxim very soon became apparent to Sir Harry and his friends. His unrivalled inventive skill, and the immense experience he had gained in the long course of experiments that he had made in connection with the construction of his aeroplane, at once bore fruit in improved designs for the new airships. Not only were they to be made larger and more powerful, but several improvements were to be made both in their internal construction and the materials used, which were expected to greatly increase their strength and carrying power, and would so enable them to carry a more powerful armament and a greater quantity of ammunition.

  A fleet of twenty-four of these air-ships had been laid down in ten different manufactories scattered over the British Isles, and all the firms engaged in the work had been obliged to give a pledge, under heavy penalties, not to disclose any particulars connected with the work, or to allow the workmen engaged on one part to know what was being done in another department. Added to this, the firms that were building the hulls knew nothing about the machinery; and even the various parts of the engines, the propellers, and the lifting fans were made by different engineering firms under orders given in different names.

  As a matter of fact, two or three of these firms were actually employed at the same time in making portions either of the air-ships or their machinery for both the anarchists and the Syndicate; but, as the most elaborate precautions were taken on both sides to keep all reliable information out of the newspapers, and as the prices paid by both were so high, the various manufacturers found the keeping of the secrets far too profitable to run any risks of the momentous work on which they were engaged becoming known to anyone save themselves and their employers.

  The object of this policy of secrecy was, in the first place, to obviate as far as possible the danger of discovery by anarchist spies, which would in all probability lead to the destruction by the Vengeur of any dockyard or manufactory that was found to be making any part of the Syndicate's ships. Added to this, the Syndicate had ulterior motives in view, which carried its plans far beyond the extermination of the anarchists as a fighting force.

  The British Government had refused to avail itself of Mr. Austen's offer to place the designs of the Nautilus at its disposal unless the secret of the motor-fuel were also given up to them. This was, of course, impossible, and so the Nautilus and her sister ship, the Aries, which was being constructed as rapidly as possible at Elswick, were to remain, for the time being at any rate, the only examples of that type of war-ship in existence.

  An immense amount of popular indignation was naturally aroused by the publication of the news that the Government had virtually retired from the building of any aerial craft which could hope to engage the Vengeur on equal terms. Questions were asked in Parliament and answered in the usual - terms of official reticence and ambiguity. The Syndicate kept its own counsel rigidly, and the interviewers who besieged its members were sent empty away one after the other, until they gradually got tired, and relieved their disappointment by spreading reports that the Syndicate had nothing to tell because it had nothing to do.

  It was reported on wholly erroneous grounds, or rather on no grounds at all, that all efforts to transform the aeroplanes into air-ships such as the Vengeur were believed to have ended in failure, and this sent public opinion round the other way,
until it praised the Government and the War Office for refusing to spend the money that was so urgently needed for strengthening the army and the fleet upon experiments in an entirely new fighting arm, which, for all anyone knew for certain, might. never be brought to perfection. The members of the Syndicate, far from denying these reports, rather encouraged them, as their work depended in no way upon popular favour or support, and anything that tended to increase the mystery in which they were shrouding their plans was so much added defence against the very probable attacks of their enemies in the anarchist camp.

  As for the Vengeur and the Destroyer, as day after day and week after week went by,, and nothing was heard of either of them, it began to be believed either that some unknown misfortune had overwhelmed them, or that the capture and now certain fate of their leader had so disorganised them that; like a body without a head, they bad become incapable, for the time being, of definite action.

  Even the Utopians were themselves deceived by the quietude of affairs since the arrest of Renault. They felt certain that he was not the man to disclose the secret of the motor-fuel to any of his followers, for to do so would be to surrender the one claim he had to supremacy among a band of men whose especial boast it was that they owned no law but that of their own individual wills. From this they argued to the conclusion that the Vengeur had exhausted her supply of fuel, and that, while the only man who could and would replenish it was lying waiting for death in Newgate, the air-ship, as useless as a steamer without coal, was hidden in some out-of-the-way place, impotent for any further mischief.

  But while the public was diverting its attention from the doings of the anarchists to the war with Russia, which the rapid breaking up of the ice in the Baltic would in a few days bring from the East to the West, and while the members of the Syndicate were permitting themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security, the enemy had been hard at work with equal secrecy and equal energy. Lea Cassilis, from her house in Paris, had been in constant communication with the anarchist groups, both in England and all over the Continent, perfecting the preparations for the simultaneous striking of a number of blows at the social organisation on the day fixed for Renault's execution.

  Spies had also been ceaselessly at work, ferreting out as far as was possible the designs of Sir Harry and his friends with regard to the building of the new aerial fleet, for Lea had learned from Max that Mr. Austen at least, and probably Adams as well, knew the all-important secret of the motive power, and would therefore be certain to build other airships to replace the stolen one.

  Their comings and goings were watched, and their footsteps dogged day and night by anarchist spies, and, in spite of all the precautions that they took, their lives were in danger, and might have been taken a dozen times over, had not Lea, still firmly convinced that some means would be found to rescue Max, and believing that his vengeance would only be satisfied by killing them himself, expressly forbidden their death, at any rate until it was known whether or not Max would be able to take his vengeance for himself.

  So successful, however, were her spies in their efforts to find out what the Syndicate was really doing, that on the night of the Sunday before the Tuesday fixed for Max's execution, four explosions occurred almost simultaneously in four of the works where parts of their air-ships were being constructed. One happened in London on the banks of the Thames, another at Sheffield, another at Birmingham, and another on the Clyde.

  How they were carried out was, of course, a mystery, and remained one; but so well were they planned and executed that essential parts of no fewer than eight of the twenty-four air-ships were utterly ruined, and the building of the complete fleet was thus delayed for quite three months longer. The next morning, the "Anarchist Terror," as the newspapers had come to call it, was more widespread than ever. The explosions were taken as a direct renewal of the warning that had been given by Max himself and in the red poster.

  Popular excitement rose to fever heat in a few hours; the news from the seat of war was once more at a discount, and the anarchists and their threats and possible doings once more occupied the first places in the columns of the newspapers and the excited imagination of the public. It was confidently reported, and almost universally believed, that the Vengeur had passed from town to town during the night and bombarded the works, which had been destroyed from the clouds; and then the man in the street began to ask his neighbour, with anxiety by no means unmingled with fear, what would happen to London itself if, after all, the anarchists were able to carry out their threats against it?

  CHAPTER XXII.

  AT THE LAST MOMENT.

  AS soon as day dawned over London, on Monday the 26th of April, the policemen and that portion of the inhabitants who happened, whether by reason of business or pleasure, to be abroad, were astonished and not a little disquieted to find hundreds of red placards posted in all the conspicuous parts of the city and its surroundings, bearing the simply ominous inscription:-

  BEWARE!

  ÊÊAND TAKE WARNING WHILE THERE IS YET TIMEÊÊ

  WE WILL HAVE

  LIFE FOR LIFE AND BLOOD FOR BLOOD

  -THE ANARCHIST EXECUTIVE.

  But not only was the placard posted on the walls of public and other conspicuous buildings. In the form of a leaflet it was scattered in thousands about the streets and even on the house-tops. In vain did the police attempt to collect these after they had torn the placards down. They were picked up by the early-comers into the streets and passed eagerly from hand to hand; then the evening papers, published soon after seven in the morning, got hold of them and reproduced them in their boldest and blackest type, so that by mid-day the scare was complete.

  Then came the irrepressible monger of sensation, and he, having no facts to go upon, promptly elaborated from his inner consciousness letters from non-existent correspondents, describing how, in the watches of the night, they had seen- at any rate with the eye of imagination- a vague and ghostly form corresponding to the published descriptions of the air-ship, floating to and fro over London, and scattering a red rain of leaflets far and wide over the streets and house-tops.

  That day, important news which had come to hand, telling of the break-up of the ice in the Baltic and the mobilisation of the Russian fleet, was crowded into obscure corners to make room for romantic descriptions of aerial exploits on the part of the Vengeur, which no human eye had ever seen her perform, and with equally imaginary narrations dealing with the manner in which the real inspirer of all this panic, and the veritable hero of the moment, was passing the last few hours that were left to him on earth.

  What he ate and drank, the books he read, the number of hours he had slept each night, and the very words with which he was supposed to have refused the ministrations of the chaplain; his behaviour towards the warders, and even his demeanour when alone, were all set forth with a well-simulated accuracy which spoke volumes for the imaginative capacity of those who had corrected the dearth of reliable facts out of the plenitude of their own inventiveness.

  To all this was added a touch of realism which, in the eyes of the multitude at any rate, endowed it with unimpeachable veracity. Line-sketches were given of the condemned cell, showing the arch-anarchist seated at the wooden table with his face buried in his manacled hands, while two stern-faced warders kept watch and ward on either side of him.

  Later editions followed this up with plans of Dead Man's Passage, the yard of Newgate, and the open shed under which stood the gallows ready to receive their victim. Then, when the sensation worked up by the newspapers had reached its height, rumours began to fly about from lip to lip to the effect that the air-ship, which was now a fearful reality in the popular mind, had been seen here and there and everywhere, swooping down through the clouds and hovering over affrighted towns and villages, flying at full speed through the air on some unknown errand of slaughter and destruction, and even hovering over Osborne House, with intent to bury the Queen and her household in its ruins.

  Everybody
appeared to feel confident that some extraordinary attempt at rescue would be made, and the wildest theories were advanced in anticipation of it. It was even suggested that for once the French method should be adopted, that the hour of execution should be altered, and that Renault should be taken unexpectedly from his cell and hanged out of hand without warning.

  The Home Secretary was actually asked a question in Parliament as to whether, in view of the exceptional circumstances, he did not think it advisable that something of this sort should be done; but the questioner was met with a cold rebuff; and informed that the Government declined to be intimidated by the vague threats that were being circulated, and that the law would take its course in the ordinary way, and at the appointed time - namely, eight o'clock on the following morning - an intimation with which the anarchists were promptly made acquainted through the medium of the evening papers.

  Meanwhile, Sir Harry, Mr. Austen, Adams, and Lieutenant Wyndham had come to the conclusion that, for the sake of the momentous projects which they, as active members of the Aerial Navigation Syndicate, had in view, it would be better for them to scatter as widely over the British Islands as they could, so that, in case the Vengeur was really capable of taking reprisals for the execution of Renault, and confined her operations, as, for the time being, she would be obliged to do, to London, no chance shell should make the carrying out of their plans impossible.