CHAPTER XXI
_Suicide?_
Gordon Smith, sometimes known as Smithy, was to remember little of thehappenings that followed the crash of the big Army dreadnought. It wasColonel Culver who dragged him from the pilot-room wreckage, ColonelCulver and one of the pilots whom he had restored to consciousness.They lowered Smithy carefully to the ground, then explored the rest ofthe ship.
Their hands were red when they returned--and empty. Captain Farrelland the rest of the crew had ceased to be units of the United StatesArmy Air Force; henceforth they would be only names on a casualty listgrown ominously long.
"Stood plumb on her tail," said the pilot, staring at the wreck. "Theyhit us just once, and the left wing crumpled like cardboard. Last Iremember was pulling her up off the trees." He stared at the mass oftwisted metal and the center section where the wing had torn loose; itstood upright, almost vertical, resting on the crushed tail.
"Funny," said the pilot in the same flat, level tone that seemed theonly voice he had since that last pull on a whipping wheel. "Damnfunny--mostly we get it first up there."
"Come here!" snapped Colonel Culver. "Lend a hand here with Smith;we've got to carry him. And don't talk so loud--those red devils willbe out here any minute."
* * * * *
Smithy was taking a more active interest in his surroundings when hesat a week later in the Governor's office.
"There's a detachment moving in there from the south," said theGovernor. "We're going to follow your advice, to some extent at least.We're sending troops to Tonah Basin. If the top of that dead crater isclosed they will blast it open; then a scouting party's going down.Call it a reconnaissance, call it suicide--one name's just as good asthe other. Colonel Culver, here, is going. But you know the lay of theland there; you could be of great help. How about it?"
"Are you asking me?" Smithy inquired.
He stood up, flexed his arms, while he grinned at Colonel Culver."Hinges all greased and working! As a flier, Colonel, you're a darngood first-aid man. I'll say that! When do we start?"
Which explains why Smithy, some time later, hidden under the grotesquedisguise of a gas mask, was one of fifty, similarly attired, who stoodwaiting about the black open maw in the great cinder-floored crater ofone of the peaks that surrounded Tonah Basin.
Night. And the big stars that hang so low in the black desert skyshould have been brilliant. They were lost now in the white glare thatstreamed upward. The crater was a fortress. Around the circle of theentire rim, on the inner side of the rough crags, men of the 49thField Artillery stood by their guns. Lookouts trailed their telephonewire to the higher peaks, where they perched as shapeless as huddledowls; and, like owls, their eyes swept the mountain's slopes and thedesert at its base, where the searchlight crews played long fingers oflight incessantly--and where nothing moved.
But the empty silence of the desert was misleading, as the men in thecrater knew.
* * * * *
They had begun arriving with the earliest light of morning. Smithy hadcome in with the first lot. And when the first big auto-gyro transporthad settled and risen again from the crater, another had taken itsplace, and another and many others after that.
That first crew had been a machine-gun battalion, and Smithy hadsmiled with grim satisfaction at the unhurried way in which theiryoung captain had snapped them into position without the loss of asecond. And their guns, Smithy noticed, were trained inward upon thecrater itself.
Inside that protecting circle the other transports landed one by one:men, mobile artillery, ammunition cases, big searchlights, and adozen engine-generator outfits. The last transports brought in strangecargo--short sections of aluminum struts with bolts and splice platesto join them together: blocks, and tackle and sheaves; then spools ofsteel alloy cable at least ten miles in length.
From the last ship they took a hoisting engine and an assortment ofaluminum plates and bars which were bolted together by waitingmechanics, and which grew magically to a crude but exceedinglysubstantial elevator, on which fifty men, by considerable crowding,could stand.
Only a floor of bolted plates, with corner posts and diagonal bracingand a single guard rail running around the four sides--but for thefirst time Smithy began to feel that he was actually going down; thatthis was not all make-believe, or a futile gesture. He would stand onthat platform; he would go down where Dean had gone. And then.... Butwhat would come after he knew he could never imagine.
* * * * *
A little crane swung the first metal work into position above theshaft. One end of the assembled framework of aluminum alloy draggedloosely on the ground; the other end swung out and projected above theshaft, swayed for an instant--and then came the first direct knowledgeof the enemy's presence. The end of a metal strut, though nothingvisible was touching it, grew suddenly white hot, sagged, then brokeinto a shower of molten, dazzling drops that rained down into the pit.
"Good," said Colonel Culver, who was standing beside Smithy. "Now weknow they are there--but it means we will have to go down there withour gas masks on."
To Smithy it was not immediately apparent how gas masks were toprotect them from the deadly invisible ray. He got the connection ofthoughts when a bomb was slid over the edge. The dull thud of theexplosion quickly came back to them.
"They popped that one off in the air--hit it with their heat ray,"said a cheerful voice beside them. "But the phosgene will keep ongoing down. Give them another!"
The interval this time was longer. "Now for a dirty crack," said thecheerful voice. "Time this one."
* * * * *
A youngster nearby snapped a stop-watch as the bomb was released. Heheld some printed tables in his hands. Odd receivers from which nowire led were clamped over his ears. This time the dull thud was longin coming. It was hardly perceptible when the young man with the stopwatch announced: "Fifty thousand feet, sir."
"Give 'em another. Time it again." A second high explosive bomb wasreleased.
"Fifty thousand feet, sir."
"Good. That measures it. And those last bombs have knocked the devilout of whatever machinery they've got down there. Now we'll give thema real taste of gas. Two of the green ones there, men. Put ten milesof cable on the drums. Get that hoisting frame into place."
But night had come, though searchlights outside the crater andfloodlights within had robbed the night of its terror, when Smithy,with Culver beside him, climbed over the guard rail of the lift thathung waiting just over the pit.
A gas mask covered his entire face. Through its round eye plates helooked at the others who crowded about him. Grotesque, almostludicrous--twenty men, armed with clumsy sub-machine guns; the otherswould follow later. A searchlight was on a tripod at the center, and aspool of electric cable.
The light sizzled into life and swung slowly about. Then the platformjarred, and the spool of cable began slowly to unwind. Beside himColonel Culver was returning the salute of an officer outside on theashy ground. Smithy raised his hand, but the brink of that pit hadmoved swiftly up--there was nothing before him but a glassy wall.
Reconnaissance? Suicide? One word was as good as another. But he wasgoing down--down where Dean Rawson had gone--down where there was adebt to be paid.
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