by Ray Cummings
5
I must paint now upon a broader canvas to depict the utter chaos ofthis most memorable night in the history of the Earth, Venus and Mars.
From that point in the bowels of Greater New York, near the southerntip of Manhattan Island, the mysterious light-beam shot up. Itscreamed with its weird electrical voice for an hour, so penetrating asound that it was heard with the unaided ears as far away asPhiladelphia. A titan voice it was, shrill as if with triumph. Therewere millions of people awakened by it this night; awakened and struckwith a chill of fear at this nameless siren shrilling its note ofdanger. The sound gradually subsided; it seemed to reach its peakwithin a few minutes of the appearance of the light, and within anhour it had ceased.
But the light beam remained. Those who inspected it closely have givena clear description of its aspect; but to this day its real nature hasnever been determined.
It was a circular beam of about a ten-foot diameter. In color it wasvaguely opalescent, rather more brilliant at night than in the day.With the coming of the sun it did not fade, but remained clearlyvisible, with a spectrum sheen when the sunlight hit it so that it hadsomewhat the appearance of a titanic, straightened rainbow.
From that contact point with our Earth, the inexplicable beam stoodvertically upward. It ate a vertical hole like a chimney up throughall the city levels, through the roof and into the sky. It had atremendous heat, communicable by contact so that it melted the cityabove it with a clean round hole. But the heat was non-radiant.
I was found lying within fifty feet of the base of the beam. There hadbeen an explosion, so that Molo's metal room was gone; but from whereI lay there was only a warmth to be felt from the light.
Halsey's men found me within half an hour. I was unconscious but notinjured. I think now that the sound and not the light overcame me. Ipresently recovered consciousness; for another hour I was blind anddeaf, but that quickly wore off. They rushed me through the chaos ofthe city to the Tappan Headquarters. Grantline was there, but notSnap. I sent them back when once I was fully conscious. They searchedall the vicinity at the base of the light. Snap, alive or dead, wasnot to be found.
Anita and Venza were gone. I had seen Molo and Meka plunge away withthem as the light-beam burst forth. They were gone, and Snap was gone.
There was, by now, a turmoil unprecedented throughout all themetropolitan area. The motionless light-beam itself had done littledamage, but its appearance brought instant chaos. Within a radius offive miles of its base, the city was plunged into darkness. All powerwas cut off. Every vehicle, even the aeros passing overhead, and, theventilating system stopped. Audiphones were wrecked; it subsidedwithin an hour, though, and after that, lights and instruments broughtinto the area were not affected.
But during that hour, south Manhattan was in panic. A multitude ofterrified people awakened in the night to find blackness and thatscreaming sound. The streets and corridors and traffic levels werejammed with throngs trampling and killing one another in their effortsto escape.
This was in the stricken area; but everywhere else the panic wasspreading. Transportation systems were almost all out of commission.The panic spread until by dawn there was a wild exodus of refugeesjamming the bridges and viaducts and tunnels, streaming from all thecity exits.
This was Greater New York. But from Venus and Mars came similarreports. In Grebhar and in Ferrok-Shahn, doubtless almost simultaneouswith Greater New York, similar light-beams appeared.
"But what can it be?" I demanded of Grantline. "Something Molocontacted there? He did it. That was what he was working for, and heaccomplished his purpose. But what will the beam do to us?"
"It's doing plenty," said Grantline grimly.
"He didn't intend that. There was something else."
But what? As yet, no one knew. I had already told the authorities whatI had seen. I was the only eye-witness to Molo's activities; andheaven knows I had but a brief, confused glimpse.
The beam remained; it streamed upward from the rock. They thought,this night, that Molo's strange current had set up a disintegration ofthe atoms, and that electronic particles from them were streaming intospace.
The light-beam seemed impervious to attack. Within a few hours theauthorities were attacking its base with various vibratory weapons butwithout success.
From where Grantline and I sat, we saw the dawn coming. But theradiance-beam remained unaffected. "Gregg, look there at Venus!"
To the east of us there was a distant line of metal structuressurmounting the mid-Westchester hills; above them, in the brighteningsky of dawn, Venus was just rising. Mars had already set at ourlongitude. Venus, fairly close to the Earth now, was the "MorningStar."; it mounted now above that line of metal stages in thedistance.
And as Grantline gestured, I saw from Venus the same sword-like beamstreaming off almost to cross our own.
Grantline and I, with a mutual thought, ran around the balcony andgazed to where Mars had set. A narrow radiance was streaming up amongthe stars off there.
Three swinging swords of light in the sky! With the rotation of theplanets, they swept the firmament. The mysterious enemy had plantedthem--but why? What was coming next?
And as though to answer us, from far to the south, over mid-Jersey,came a new manifestation. We saw a speck rising, a distant mountingspeck of something dark, with streamers of tiny radiance flowing fromit.
"A spaceship, Gregg."
It seemed so. It came slowly from above the maze of distantstructures, gathered speed, and in a moment was gone.
But others, better equipped, had observed it. It was a cylindricalprojectile, with stream-fluorescence propelling it upward, an unusualform of spaceship. Telescopically it was seen until well after dawn.Speeding out in the direction of the Moon.
Molo and his weird allies had escaped, I thought. With their workdone here on Earth, they were off to rejoin the hovering enemy ship200,000 miles out.
I stood gripping Grantline on that balcony, and gazed with sinkingheart. Were Anita and Venza prisoners on that mounting ship? And Snap:I prayed he was there with the girls to lend them the protection I hadfailed to give.
"Haljan and Grantline wanted below."
The voice of a mechanic on the balcony behind us roused us from ourthoughts. We went down through the busy building.
The workshops of Tappan Interplanetary Headquarters had for hours beenringing with busy activity. The _Cometara_ rested upon her departurestage outside, with a score of workmen conditioning her.Newly-installed additional armament was aboard, ready to be assembledafter the start. The men to handle it were embarked. My half dozenofficers and the ten members of the crew I had already briefly met.They were waiting for me.
"On we go, Gregg. Let's wish ourselves luck." From grim, silentabstraction, Grantline had now sprung into his familiar dynamic self.
There was a solemn group of officers and a hundred or so workmen here;they stopped their fevered labors now to watch the _Cometara_ getaway, first of Earth's ships speeding into space to confront thisnameless enemy. Grantline and I went past them with silent handshakesand murmured good-bys. I saw the towering figure of Brayley. He raisedan arm for a farewell gesture to us.
We mounted the incline to the _Cometara_. She rested upon her stage, agreat, sleek bronze ship, low and rakish, with pointed ends and aflattened, arched turtle-back dome of glassite covering thesuperstructure and the decks from bow to stern. She lay quiescent,gleaming in the glow of the departure beacons; but there was an aspectof latent power upon her.
My ship! My first command! As we went through the opened port of thedomeside and I touched foot upon the deck, I prayed that I mightjustify the faith reposed in me.
Men crowded the narrow, covered deck. I saw the space-guns at the deckpressure-ports, partly assembled. My chief officer, a young fellownamed Drac Davidson, who with his twin brother had been in theInterplanetary Freight Service, rushed up to me.
"We're ready, sir."
"Very good, Drac."
; He hurried me to the turret control room. Grantline instantly hadplunged into details of assembling the weapons.
"Her ports are all closed," said Drac. He spoke calmly, but his thinface was pale and his dark eyes glowed with excitement. "The interiorpressure is set at fifteen pounds. You can ring us up at once."
No formalities to this departure! With pounding heart I entered thesmall circular turret and mounted its tiny spiral stairs to the uppercontrol room. But as I touched the levers, calmness came to me withthese familiar tasks at which I was skilled.
I slid a central-hull gravity-plate. It went smoothly, perfectlyoperated by the magnets. The vessel trembled, lifted; outside theenclosing dome I could see the dawn-light of the sky and palingfloodlights of the stage. Figures of men out there, made silentgestures of farewell, dropping slowly beneath our hull as we lifted.
The bow gravity-plates slid into the repulsive-force positions. Thebow lifted. The _Cometara_ responded smoothly. We went up, poised at aforty-five degree angle. I saw the outer beacons on the stage swingupward with their warning to passing traffic in the lower lanes.
"Light our bow-beacon, Drac."
We lifted through the lower thousand and two thousand-foot lanes. Thelights of Tappen were dwindling beneath us. The interior of the_Cometara_ was humming with the whirr of its circulators andair-receivers, mingled with the throb of air pressure pumps. At threethousand feet I started the air-rocket engines. They came on with agentle purring. The fluorescence from them streamed along our hull anddown past the stern, like twin rocket tails.
With gathering speed we slid smoothly upward through the highesttraffic lanes, out of the atmosphere, through the stratosphere andinto space.
Leaving the stratosphere, I cut off the air-rocket engines, slid thestern gravity-plates for the Earth's repulsion and the bow plates forthe attraction of the Moon and Sun. The firmament swung, in a slowarc, and steadied with the Earth behind us and the Sun and Moon inadvance of our bow. We were on our course, plunging through space withaccelerating velocity toward the unknown enemy ship hovering twohundred thousand miles ahead of us. My orders were to find the shipand maneuver us close to it; and Grantline's orders were to assail it.
I gazed down at the convex North Atlantic with the reddening coastlineof North America spread like a map.
What was the nature of this strange enemy whom we sought? Thatopalescent beam from Greater New York mounted with its radiance intothe dome-like starfield; the one from Venus and the other from Marsseemed crossing overhead amid the stars.
Three swords crossing the sky! What did they mean?
* * * * *
"Will you swing east or west of the Moon?"
"We haven't decided."
Drac Davidson and I were alone in the _Cometara's_ control turret.
We were some ten hours out from Earth. Over such short astronomicaldistances it was impossible to attain any great velocity. When once wewere clear of the Earth's atmospheric envelope, the rocket-streamengines were useless. The _Cometara_ was equipped also withtail-streamers of electronic nature. They exerted a slight pressure,useful for sudden curving and turning; but they had only negligibleinfluence upon the main velocity of the vehicle.
I used the repulsion of the Earth upon our negatively charged sterngravity-plates; and with those of the bow electronified to thepositive reaction, we were drawn forward by the Sun and the Moon.
For three or four hours I held to this combination with steadyacceleration; but then I had to retard. In close quarters such asthis, the retarding velocity must be calculated with a nicety manyhours in advance.
We hung now, very nearly poised, within some forty thousand miles ofthe surface of the Moon. Bleak and cold, sharply black and white, ithung in a gigantic crescent in advance of our bow. The Sun, whoseattraction I had ceased using some hours back, was visible sharply toone side now. Its great gas streams of giant flame licked up into theblackness of the firmament. The sunlight caught the lunar mountainswith a white glare, and left the valleys black with shadow; moonlightand the mingled sunlight painted our bow. Behind our stem the greatdisk of Earth hung somber and glowing.
And everywhere else was the great black enclosing firmament. The starsblazed with a new white glory never seen through the haze of anatmosphere. Like a little world in the vastness of this awesome void,we hung poised.
Grantline came into the turret. "I've got everything ready, Gregg. Bythe gods, once you can lay telescope upon that accursed enemy ship,I'm ready to open fire on it."
"Good," I said.
But the thought of hurling our bolts at this enemy ship had struckterror into my heart for hours past. I was convinced that the threewho in all the world were dearest to me--Anita, Venza, and Snap--wereupon that enemy vessel.
Grantline asked, "Are you going closer to the Moon?"
"No."
"The ship couldn't be between us and the Moon. Waters and I have beenin the helio room for the past hour, searching with the 'scope there.Nothing doing, Gregg. Not a sign."
"I know. Our instruments here show that."
"There might be a way of sighting them," Drac put in.
"I'll try the Zed-ray," I suggested. "Drac and I have it corrected.But I doubt if it would penetrate the sort of invisibility this enemywould use."
Grantline nodded. "Or the Benson curve-light. You think the ship wentbehind the Moon? Or landed on the Moon?"
"It could have done either. Has Waters still got contact with theEarth? Have they seen it?"
"No."
I made a sudden decision. It would take us two hours at least to makea careful scanning with the Zed-ray; and to take an elaborate seriesof spectro-heliographs of the Moon's surface, which might show theenemy vessel if it had landed there, was a laborious process.
After brief thought, I discarded the idea. "We'll go to the helioroom," I told Grantline. "I'm going to try the Benson curve-light."
Grantline and I left the turret, heading along the catwalk under theglassite dome toward the helio cubby where the rotund, middle-agedWaters was in charge. It made my heart sink to think of the helioroom. Snap should have been there.
We crossed the transverse catwalk. The superstructure roof was underus. Farther down, the narrow decks showed with Grantline's men groupedat the firing ports, where his weapons were mounted and ready. As Isaw those grouped men loitering on the deck, waiting for me to givethem a sighting, I prayed I could do so; and yet there was theshuddering fear that the first blast would bring death to Anita.
Waters met us at the door of his cubby. His face was red; he moppedthe perspiration from his bald head. "I'm so glad you came! Will youwant the Benson-light? I say, I've lost connection with the Earth. Ihad the Washington transmitter. Five minutes ago they sent me a flashof the Mars and Venus news. They both sent ships, out."
He gasped for breath, then added in a rush: "Both the Mars and Venusships were destroyed and the enemy escaped!"
Grantline and I gasped with horror.
"Destroyed?" I said. "How?"
Waters did not know. The news came; then, immediately after, theWashington transmitter changed its wavelength and he lost connection.
"But why, in heaven's name, man, didn't you ring and tell us?"Grantline demanded. "Destroyed--only that! Just destroyed."
"I was afraid to leave my instruments," Waters said. "How could Itell? I might be able to renew connections with Washington any minute.Come on in. Do you want to try the Benson curve-light, Mr. Haljan?"
"Yes," I said. "I do." We entered the dim helio cubby. "See here,Waters, what about the projectile that ascended from Earth last night?Did the Washington observatory report what happened to it?"
"No, not a word. They lost it, evidently."
Our 'scopes on the _Cometara_ had not been able to locate theprojectile. The large instruments of Earth had lost it. Was thatbecause, with tremendous velocity, it had sped directly for the newplanet out beyond Mars?
Or, with some form of invisibility
, might it be close to us now, justas the lurking ship might be somewhere around here?
From the little circular helio cubby, perched here under the dome likean eagle's nest, I could see down all the length of the ship, and outthe side ports of the dome to the blazing firmament. The Sun, Moon andEarth and all the starfield were silently turning as Drac swung usupon our new course.
Waters bent over the projector of the Benson curve-light, makingconnections. The cubby was silent and dim, with only a tiny spotlightwhere Waters was working, and a glow upon his table where his recentmessages from Earth were filed. Grantline and I glanced at them.
Panic in Greater New York, Grebhar, and Ferrok-Shahn. The threestrange beams which the enemy had planted on Earth, Venus and Marsstill remained unchanged. I could see them now plainly from the heliocubby windows, great shafts of radiance sweeping the firmament.
Waters straightened from his task. "That will do it, Mr. Haljan." Hemet me in the center of the cubby. "When you locate the enemy, do youthink they'll destroy us as they did those other ships?"
Grantline laughed grimly. "Maybe so, Waters. But let's hope not."
Fat little Waters was anything but a coward, but being closed up hereall these hours with a stream of dire messages from Earth had shakenhim.
"What I mean, Mr. Grantline, is that prudence is sometimes better thanreckless valor. The _Cometara_ is no warship. If Earth had sent aninternational patrol vessel...."
Grantline did not answer. He joined me at the Benson projector. "Canwe operate it from here, Gregg, or will you mount it in the bow?"
"From here. Drac's swinging. When he's on the course I gave him, I canthrow the Benson-ray through the bow dome-port. Waters, you're alldone in. Go below and sleep awhile."
But he stood his ground. "No, sir; I don't want to sleep."
"We've had ours," said Grantline. "We'll call you if anything showsup."
We sent Waters away. "Ready, Gregg?"
"Yes. I've got the range."
The coils hummed and heated with the current, and in a moment theBenson curve-beam leaped from the projector.
The Benson curve-light was similar to an ordinary white searchlightbeam, except that its path, instead of being straight could be bent atwill into various curves--hyperbola, parabola, and for its extremecurve, the segment of an ellipse--gradually straightening as it leftits source. It was effective for police work, with hand torches forseeing around opaque obstructions. It had also another advantage,especially when used at long range: the enemy, when gazing back at itssource, would under normal circumstances conceive it to be a straightbeam and thus be misled as to the location of its source. Or evenrealizing it to be curved, one had no means of judging the angle ofthe curve.
A narrow white stream of light, it flung through our window-oval,forward under the dome and through the bow dome bullseye, into space.I saw the men on the deck spring into sudden alertness with therealization we were using it. The bow lookout on the forwardobservation bridge crouched at his 'scope-finder to help us search.
From the control turret came an audiphone buzz, and Drac's voice: "AmI headed right? The swing is almost completed."
"Finish the job and don't bother me now."
I bent over the field-mirror of the projector. On its glowing ten-inchgrid the shifting image of my range was visible, a curving, brilliantlimb of the Moon, with the sunlight on the jagged mountain peaks;everywhere else was the black firmament and the blazing dots of stars.
Grantline crouched beside me. "I'll work the amplifiers. Going tospread it much, Gregg?"
"Yes. A full spread first. We're in no mood for a detailed narrowsearch."
I gradually widened the light. Three feet here at its source, itspread in a great widening arc. With the naked eye we could see itswhite radiance, fan-shaped as an edge of it fell upon the Moon. Andthough optically it was not apparent, the elliptical curve of it wasrounding the Moon, disclosing the hidden starfield to ourinstruments.
"Nothing yet?" I murmured.
"No."
"I'll try a narrower spread and less curve."
Grantline was searching the magnified images on the series ofamplifier grids. There was nothing. For an hour we worked; thensuddenly Grantline cried: "Gregg! Wait! Hold it!"
I tensed, stricken. I held the angle and the spread of light steady.
"Two seconds of arc, east; try that. The damned thing is shifting." Hegripped me. "It's at the eastern edge of the field; it shifts off. Itmust be in rapid motion."
Then I saw it, a mere moving dot of black; but suddenly it clarified.I saw a dot which I could imagine was a shape with discs along itsedge, moving with high velocity. Grantline was shifting our field tohold it.
"Got it, Gregg. By God, that's it! Now we'll see."
Then presently we saw that from its bow a very faint radiant beam wasstreaming. Beside me I heard Grantline gasp, "Gregg, am I crazy or isthat bow beacon like the light-beam planted in Greater New York?"
There did seem to be a similarity, but thought of it abruptly wasswept from my mind. Our cubby was alive with signals. Both the bow andthe stern observers saw the enemy ship now with their 'scopes gazingdirectly along our Benson-light. And Drac was calling, "I've got themeasurement of its velocity. Doubling every ten seconds. God, whatacceleration!"
I flung off the Benson-light. The enemy ship had come from behind thelimb of the Moon; our straight-light telescopes showed it clearly. Itwas heading unmistakably in our direction.
Drac was pleading, "We need velocity! Are you coming to the turret?"
"Yes."
Grantline and I rushed out upon the catwalk. Waters was mounting thespiral ladder from the deck. "Into your cubby," I shouted. "CallEarth. Keep calling until you get them."
Grantline rushed for the deck. I gained the control turret, Drac, withhis thin face white and set, met me at the door. "We need velocity."
I nodded. "We'll get it, Drac; have no fear of that."
I set the gravity-plates for the greatest possible accelerationforward and added the stern rocket engines for narrow-anglemaneuvering.
With gathering speed we plunged directly for the oncoming enemy ship.