by Norvell Page
Nita said, "He looked . . . frightened!"
Wentworth whipped open the door of the coupe and thrust Nita inside and there was grim tension on his face. As he ducked in behind the wheel, he heard a woman's cry soar up desolately into the night. It was a hoarse cry, more animal than human in its intensity. Nita shuddered.
"In heaven's name, Dick" she whispered. "What can be happening?"
Wentworth said, "I hope I'm wrong. I hope to heaven I'm wrong!"
He sent the car surging forward, careened around the corner from which the man had spurted. Immediately ahead, the street was empty, but even as they sped forward, some people burst into sight from a side way. They were running desperately. The night swallowed them. The sound of their pounding feet was drowned out in a rumbling crash that spread its thunder like a tangible weight upon the air. The windshield of the coupe jarred with concussion, and afterward there were mounting, ghastly screams! The roar of mingled voices became a vast murmur of fear and horror.
Wentworth said, with difficulty, "I was right. The robots are marching!"
As if his words had brought forth the sound, a new rhythm in the paean of terror began to make itself felt, more than heard. It was even, deep as primitive drums, as if giant clubs were used to turn the earth itself into a drum. It was slow, with a heavy insistent rhythm; slow as a funeral dirge, but more ominous. It continued as Wentworth drove the coupe around another corner, and the scene burst upon his eyes.
At first, there was only the wildly terrified flight of people. They were in all stages of undress. Children screamed their fright as they ran barefooted across the freezing pavements; women raced with backward twisted faces and streaming hair, some falling, to rise and run again. A running man collided with another and lashed out at the other frenziedly. His blow fell viciously low in the body. The man he had struck did not check. He ran on, bent agonizingly forward, holding his body and still running. He did not even look at the man who had hit him.
In an instant, the street was blocked with the fleeing scores of people, and once more the Spider and Nita van Sloan heard the thunderous reverberation.
"Dick!" Nita gasped, and her voice was strained. "Dick, do you realize what they're doing! They're—they're pushing over buildings! Buildings in which people live! That must have been a huge tenement . . ."
The screams of the new victims were tossed up like sparks in the hot breath of a holocaust. Beside the car, a woman with a child in her arms tripped over the curb and fell! In an instant, she was buried under the rush of other people. Her cries rose weakly, but she was given no chance to regain her feet! The child wailed. . . . With an oath, Wentworth flung himself from the stalled coupe. Men collided with him as insensately as if he was a post. He had to fight furiously to divide the stampede so that he could reach the woman. She crouched miserably upon the pavement, elbows and knees on the concrete while she sheltered the child beneath her. In those few brief moments, her clothing had been torn almost from her; her left hand had been ground to a pulp.
Wentworth slammed his fists about him, knocked men aside and stooped to help the woman to her feet. His hands were gentle despite the stampede which in an instant had swept them past the coupe and into the eddy behind it. He placed the child in her arms.
The woman did not speak. Her drawn face peered once back the way she had come and then she was plunging on with the crowd, the child clasped in her arms. It was a fight to regain the side of the coupe. Wentworth flung himself to its top, stared down the dark way the people had come and, as he stared, he felt the strained pallor creep into his cheeks. The funereal rhythm was all about him, was palpable in the air. Heavy and slow and awful in its suggestion of power. For that single moment, Wentworth could see nothing . . . and then the drumbeat of fury was louder, was in the street itself. He was gazing at the glimmering steel helmets of an entire squad of robots. It was the ground-trembling impact of their steel-shod feet that he had heard!
Chapter Five
" Lock On The Helmet "
EVEN AS HE STARED, two of the robots detached themselves from the squad and pivoted to the left. Their hands reached out—and the entire front wall of a small tenement gave way before their pressure! Falling brick rained down upon their steel-clad heads; collapsing walls lapped like furious waters about their inhuman legs. When the job was done, they turned and walked out of the debris as a man would wade a brook, and behind them people screamed in discovery of fresh horror. Wentworth saw a child dangling from the broken edge of a high floor; saw that hold slip. . . .
Eight steel monsters there were, swinging in a formal squad in the midst of destruction. Those who lingered in their path, died. The careless clash of steel feet, the swing of beam-like arms brushed human beings from their paths like flies, and always there was that awful, overbearing rhythm, the dirge-like crunch of those awful feet!
Wentworth found that his automatic was in his fist and he swore at the futility of the gesture. Somehow, these things must be stopped, but more important than that right now was the safety of these scores, these hundreds who fled through the bitter night from the path of death. It was more fearsome than any slaughter these poor victims could recognize, more awful than screaming gun shells or aerial bombs. Those at least were the fiendishness of men, but for this thing they saw no explanation at all.
The robots, if such they were, moved with the cold and silent efficiency of machines. They marched on and, now and again, two of their number would wheel from ranks to push down the front wall of a building. They were as systematic as a highly trained drill team. They towered enormous and the death they dealt was contemptuous. The overcast skies were releasing their pent clouds in torrential rain. The wet steel glistened as the massive arms swung, and still they marched on, and another tenement crashed; other scores fled screaming from their path—or screamed, trapped beneath the falling debris!
Nita called up to Wentworth urgently, "The police are on the way, Dick! I heard Kirkpatrick's voice. They're sending an emergency wagon, and reserves!"
Wentworth swore deeply. He jumped to the ground and snatched up the microphone that connected with the two-way radio of the car, swiftly sent out a call for Kirkpatrick.
"Wentworth calling Kirkpatrick," he snapped. "Wentworth calling Kirkpatrick . . ." He got his answer and rushed on. "Eight steel robots are wrecking tenements, killing people, Kirk," he said. "They are bullet-proof and even a car cannot knock them over. Do not send your men against them. They will only be slaughtered! Send for fire equipment! Send for Fifth Avenue buses. A charge by big trucks may knock them down! Nothing less will serve."
Even as he spoke, he heard the wail of sirens and Kirkpatrick's voice burst out from the receiver with a volume that meant the commissioner was very close. He was ordering his blue cohorts into battle!
Wentworth swore at Kirkpatrick's stubbornness, but there was a pallor in his cheeks at realization of what this meant. Kirkpatrick no longer even trusted him as an ally!
"But they'll be killed!" Nita cried. "Why is Stanley doing a thing like that?"
Wentworth shook his head. "That does not matter," he said quietly. "Take this car away from here, when I call to you. You may meet me later down Sutton Place."
"But, Dick, surely if the police . . ."
Wentworth had swung to the pavement. From the rear compartment, he removed the robes of the Spider and the steel mask which Nita had worn in lieu of makeup, which was a replica of the Spider's countenance.
"Go now," he said, "and there must be no disobedience!"
Nita nodded, white-faced, and fought the car into a U-turn. Men clambered on the running board, scrambled upon its top to escape from the on-pressing terror from behind, and the coupe limped out of sight with a dozen fugitives clinging to it. A long spring hurled Wentworth into a dark doorway and, instants later, a sombre and sinister figure crept out again into the shadows, a figure with hunched shoulders from which a long cape flowed; whose beetling brows were hidden beneath the low broad b
rim of a black hat. Any man who saw him now would recognize the Spider, but so great was the fear of these panic-driven people that they failed to see even the Master of Men!
Wentworth's eyes searched the facades of the tenements ahead of the robots. The people there already were aroused by the march of the steel monsters; the inhabitants already were fleeing. So much had been accomplished by the screams of the victims. The very air shivered now to the rhythms of the march of the steel men. Wentworth turned his back upon them and peered toward the shriek of the sirens. An instant later, the red-eyed limousine of the commissioner of police whipped into the street. On the instant, Wentworth was in action!
With the Spider's robes whipping out behind him, he hurled himself straight toward Kirkpatrick's car! Twin guns were in his fists and, as he raced forward, he began to shoot!
Two shots exploded the front tires of the police limousine. It yawed wildly, slewed to a halt, and the doors were batted open. A squad car whined around the corner in its wake, screamed to a halt, and police erupted from it also. Wentworth stood squarely in the middle of the street and the guns flamed in his hands—but the lead screamed high above the heads of the police!
For a long minute he stood there, a plain target for a score of guns, while he shouted defiance at the police. It was just the instant before police guns began to hammer at him that he leaped aside and fled toward the tenements that lined the way! It was a daring move, daringly executed, but the Spider was willing to risk his life endlessly to save these policemen. Lead made the air about him alive. He felt bullets tug at his whipping cape. His hat jarred upon his head, and then he dived into the shelter of a doorway. There was a smile on his lips. The police would follow him, and he would lead them a close chase, showing himself every now and then. By the time he had eluded them, the danger from the robots should be over. . . .
Even as the thought crossed his mind, he heard Kirkpatrick's voice rasp out on the loudspeaker attached to his car for direction of his men in battle.
"Come back!" Kirkpatrick shouted. "Return to positions! The Spider is only a decoy for these men in steel. Their ally! Return to your posts!"
Something like a sob drove out between Wentworth's clenched teeth. Even his risking death had not served to save the police from the doom that would overtake them if they attacked the robots! He whirled about to face the police, but they had already obeyed Kirkpatrick's orders. They were returning to their posts—and to certain death!
Wentworth darted back toward the street, heard the volley fire of the police. They had swung the squad car broadside across the street in the path of the marching robots. Machine guns hammered from behind that barrier. A gas gun boomed deeply and the shell burst against the armor of the leading robot. The giant of steel did not even falter in its even, implacable stride!
Glaring toward those impregnable titans, Wentworth saw them perform the maneuver they had executed before. Two of them swung ponderously from line and marched to the front of a tenement building. They placed their hands against the front wall, and there was a dull rumbling explosion. As they pivoted back then toward the ranks, the tenement wall crumpled in upon itself. It was a feast of destruction and the robots paid no more attention to the onslaught of the police than if the bullets had been a buzzing swarm of mosquitoes!
Wentworth saw Kirkpatrick knuckle his mustache, then turn sharply toward Sergeant Reams at his side, as always. Reams ran toward the squad wagon and, a moment later, returned with a loose canvas bag that Wentworth knew contained hand grenades. With a final word to the police about him, ordering them to hold their positions, Kirkpatrick marched forward to meet the robots!
The sheer courage of that maneuver stopped Wentworth's breath in his lungs . . . but he did not wait to see the inevitable end of that reckless attack. Instead, he whirled and raced back through the hallways of the tenement, out into the street beyond. First Avenue was only a block away and there was a ceaseless parade of heavy trucks there. It was the only hope against these monsters. If he could seize a truck of sufficient mass . . .
Traffic stalled with screaming brakes when the awful figure of the Spider dashed out into the street, but Wentworth wove a rapid way through them toward the truck he had selected. It was a gigantic cement mixer, weighing more than ten tons. As he raced toward it, the driver slammed on his power brakes and leaped to the earth. He fled, screaming, toward the sidewalk. An instant later, Wentworth had hurled himself behind the wheel and had ground the accelerator to the floor. The great truck gathered speed slowly, then faster. Behind the wheel, Wentworth's face was set grimly. There was small protection for him here, but if he could save Kirkpatrick. . . .
Wentworth manipulated the truck into the street where the robots marched. As the heavy machine straightened out, he heard the burst of a grenade and saw the white fury of its flame as it shattered between two of the robots. One of the steel giants staggered sideways a half-stride. Afterward, it stood motionless and slowly lifted a long, steel arm! Wentworth knew what that portended! The thing was getting ready to shoot Kirkpatrick!
Before flame spurted from the leveled forefinger of the monster, another grenade burst nearby. This time, the giant did not stagger, but apparently Kirkpatrick was unharmed, for two more grenades burst among the huddle of steel men! Then a great voice boomed out in the narrow street, a voice that had the rumbling accents of thunder! It was the first time Wentworth had heard one of the robots speak, and, strangely, the Spider smiled! For the voice that issued from one of those tanks-on-foot was human!
Wentworth had not realized until that moment how powerfully these impregnable giants had worked upon his imagination. Despite their horror, and their incredible strength; despite the futility of the attack he was about to launch, it was a relief to know that they were human beings under their shells!
But the robots were mustering in close ranks now that filled the street from side to side, and even as Wentworth approached them from behind . . . the robots began once more to march forward! The grenades that burst among them seemed no more than the echo of their steely tread. They did not even bother to shoot! What need, when the ponderous weight of their march, the swing of their derrick arms could crush out anyone who dared to impede their progress?
Wentworth's lips drew bitterly thin. He slipped the steel mask over his face, and wrung the last ounce of speed from the truck . . . and headed straight for the close-marching ranks of the robots!
Yet, even in his extremity, Wentworth did not drive blindly. He knew by now that the robots were almost impervious to blows. The impact of the truck would be less than the force of an exploding grenade. But he had a plan. The robots marched in two ranks of four men each. It was Wentworth's plan to part those ranks, to smash into the steel giants squarely between two of the men in the rear rank. If he had enough strength, he thought that he would drive those two men aside against their companions. He might even reach the front rank. After that. . . .
Wentworth slammed the truck into second gear an instant before he reached the robots. One of the steel monsters turned its head, started a beam-like arm toward him . . . and was too late. With a crash like the collapse of a skyscraper. Wentworth drove the mighty truck squarely between the two middle robots! A grenade burst overhead at the same instant, and metal fragments punched down through the cab where Wentworth crouched. The impact of the collision hurled him violently against the wheel, but he kept his foot upon the accelerator, kept the truck grinding in second gear.
For an instant, Wentworth thought that even this attack had failed. Then the robot on his right was swung half-about and driven to its knees. Its upflung arms clashed against the giant on its right, and the steel fist rang like an anvil. The second robot reeled sideways, crashed against a tenement wall. The brick balustrade at the top of the wall tipped forward and rained down into the street. The fragments rang on the steel armor, but did not dent it. Two robots had partly fallen, and a third took long reeling strides forward, off-balance from the powerful impac
t of the ten-ton truck. But there were still five other robots which had not been disturbed by the charge. They were turning to confront Wentworth, with that ponderous slowness that was in itself fearfully ominous, bespeaking the power of those steel-thewed monsters. Wentworth thrust himself backward from the wheel, where the blow had thrown him. His breath had been driven from his body, and he was dizzy with shock. He saw one of the robots lift a slow, deadly finger to shoot him!
Wentworth slammed the gear into reverse and whipped out one of his heavy automatics. It was a futile thing in his hand, a popgun against artillery, but Wentworth flung up its muzzle with swift sureness. This was the gun that had saved his life in a thousand battles with the lords of the Underworld, and he was past master of its use. What he attempted would have balked many famous experts with firearms . . . but it was the Spider who held this gun!
One shot he fired, then the truck leaped backward under the surge of power he pumped into the engine. And the robot's hand suddenly spurted out a burst of flame! The right forefinger had exploded, for Wentworth had deftly plugged its muzzle with lead from his own swift gun!