Collected Short Fiction, page 19
As it rose, I glimpsed the pilot of the machine.
It was not a man!
It was a queer, gleaming purple shape, with many tentacles!
With strange horror grasping at my heart, I looked quickly at the others, but it seemed that they had not seen it. Then I remembered the Doctor’s words of “creatures of the upper air” and I thought of what Ellen had said of the thing that had risen from the wrecked ship.
“That was Herman Vars,” Ellen whispered to me. “We met him at the University. He had a warped mind—tinkered with radio and claimed he was getting in touch with beings of a plane above the earth. Then—once—” she paused, flushing a little,”—well, he came to me and told me that he was going to conquer the earth, and that he wanted me to—to go with him. That was why we left Austin. I thought he was only insane—but this!”
“And he must have been t-t-t-t-telling the t-t-t-t-truth!” the Doctor said. “And he is coming after my thorium! I wonder—Pablo—the blueprints—” Suddenly he left us and ran down the hall.
“Pablo Ysan was a Mexican who helped him sometimes in his experiments,” Ellen told me. “He went away a month ago. He must have carried Dad’s plans to Vars.”
The Doctor came back with a grim look on his face. “They’re g-g-g-g-gone!” he said. “That’s why they want thorium. And I’ve got enough here to wipe out the earth, if they can use it—if they can use it,” and a grim half-smile flickered over his face.
“I’ll run down to Durango on the rail car,” Bill said. “I can have a train load of troops up here by night. Mendoza is one of my amigos—once I did him a good turn—” The Doctor nodded. “And if anything happens while I’m gone, you have your ray, and Bob can take up the Camel-back.”
The Battle
HE WENT out. In a few minutes I heard the sputter of a gasoline engine, and the ringing of the little car’s wheels on the rails, as it sped down the narrow track. The machine dwindled to a black speck on the desert’s rim, and dropped out of sight.
Dr. Vernon spent the evening tinkering with his tube. I went over with Ellen, to look at the mine. The men had been frightened by the red ships, a few days before, and had left on the train. The place was deserted. We peered down the silent black shaft, and went back. But most of the time I spent watching the sky for a sight of the red planes, ready to warn the Doctor and to go up to meet them.
Four trains pulled in before midnight, carrying one of those mobile military units with which the Montoya government so effectively nipped in the bud the revolutionary movements of 1933 and 1935. There was a battery of eight French seventy-fives and a heavier railway gun, four light tanks, a dozen battle planes and two bombing planes, and about four hundred infantry.
Before dawn, El Tigre looked like a military encampment. In the glare of great searchlights, men were digging trenches, leveling a landing field for the planes, and planting the battery. The Doctor had his ray machine ready for use.
I was much surprised at the discipline and efficiency of the well-trained Mexican troops.
With the rising of the sun, a sentry’s hail proclaimed the appearance of a score of dark specks above the grim outline of Mocolynatal—a fleet of red planes, coming to the attack!
In a moment the camp was alive. The gun crews got to their posts, airplane engines were started, infantry were lined up in the freshly dug trenches, with machine guns and rifles ready. I saw the gleaming tip of the Doctor’s great tube projecting above the huge glass dome.
In a few minutes the planes were taking the air, flying to meet the coming ships. I was with them, in the Camel-back.
I had often dreamed of the thrills of war in the air, and I was eager enough for the encounter. But, as it turned out, I was to play no noble part.
The red machines flew toward us with astonishing speed. In a few minutes they were upon us. Because of the greater speed of my ship, I was flying a little ahead of the formation of Mexican planes. That circumstance probably saved my life, as things turned out.
I was firing a burst to warm up my gun when there was a puff of smoke from the foremost machine of the red ships. I watched the tiny black projectile that came toward us, saw it pass far below me and burst into a thick cloud of gleaming purple vapor that rolled and coiled like a strange creature of the air.
And the wings of my machine no longer caught the air! The controls were useless. I was drifting up. The radiation of that shining cloud had negated the gravity of the machine!
Half a dozen more of the strange bombs burst behind me, and I saw the other ships drifting up, even more rapidly than mine, for they had been nearer the clouds. I kept firing for a minute, but I believe I hit none of the red ships. Soon they had passed beneath, in the direction of the mine.
Helpless, I drifted on into the sky!
I had a clear view of the battle at the mine. As the red machines came within range, the railway gun and the camouflaged seventy-fives began firing. One of the red ships suddenly went down in flames, and then two more. Whether they were hit, or were victims of the Vernon Ray, I do not know.
But in a few minutes the vicinity of the mine was dotted with the coiling hills of purple gas from the gravity-destroying bombs. I saw railway cars and engines, guns and tanks, and even the railroad rails and the mining machinery, torn from their places and plunging into the air. Suddenly the huge glass dome was shattered, and a great object shot up through it—Dr. Vernon’s terrible instrument!
What can men do against instruments that hurl them off the earth?
By that time I was so high that the whole plain about the mine was but a tiny brownish patch, and soon that was veiled in the mists of distance. I grew very cold, and beat my arms against my sides to warm them. My breath grew short, and presently my nose began to bleed. The blue sky grew darker until a few stars broke into view, and then many. The flaming sun seemed to give no heat. Intense cold crept over my limbs.
As I was floating upward to my doom, I thought of the impending fate of the earth. The red fleets might sweep over the world, sending armies, battleships, cities and factories into the frozen night of space. That madman, Vars, with his incredible allies that we had glimpsed, with the negative gravity bombs and Dr. Vernon’s ray machine, could realize his mad dream of world dominion. Humanity would be helpless against his insane power.
Amid those speculations of the horror to come, my consciousness faded.
The Camp in the Crater
THE next I knew, it was late in the evening. The sun was low over the black hills in the west. My machine was still perhaps two miles high, and floating slowly down. I started the motor, and got the machine under control.
I found that I had drifted far to the east of the mine. By the time the red sun set, I was back over it. I landed in a terrible scene of wreckage. All objects of iron—machines and weapons—were gone. Trenches, shelters, and buildings were stripped ruins. Here and there were dead men, singly and in piles. They showed no wounds; either they had been killed by the intense radioactivity of the gravity bombs, or by a Vernon Ray machine carried on the red planes.
I landed by the ruined residence, near two dead men in uniform. In fearful anticipation, I hurried through the silent rooms. The doors were broken down and the walls were bullet-splintered—there had been fighting in the hall. I searched the empty rooms in which the precious thorium had been stored. Three more cold bodies I found, but they were of the Mexican soldiery. I found no trace of Ellen, Bill, or the Doctor.
Had they been swept away into space? Or had the triumphant lunatic, Vars, taken them captive and carried them to his stronghold in the crater of Mocolynatal?
I did not find the Doctor, but in his laboratory, in the inside pocket of a coat carelessly thrown aside, I found the compact little ray tube with which he had bleached the flowers on the day before. I examined it curiously, and put it in my pocket.
Darkness had fallen when I went out to the Camel-back, got in, and started the turbine motor. I rose into the night and flew northward over the starlit mountain wilderness. At last I made out the shape of Mocolynatal ahead, and climbed far above it. I sailed over, and came upon a strange scene.
Indeed, the mountain had a crater! Below me was a great bowl, perhaps two miles across, brilliantly lit by rows of electric lights. I made out long lines of buildings—huge structures of sheet iron, gleaming in the light. Toward the south rim seemed to be a landing field, with broad beams of intense light pouring out over the hundreds of red planes lined up across it. North of that was a lake, and I saw scores of red seaplanes moored by brightly lit docks at the edge.
There was movement below me. I saw the headlights of moving trucks upon smooth gravel roads about the lake, and there were men at work on the docks and at the landing field. Dense smoke, a luminous white in the glare of the lights, was rising from some of the buildings that must have been factories.
The lunatic had indeed made thorough preparation for his planned attack against the world!
I cut off the engine of my machine, set the motor to whirling, and dropped silently toward the circle of darkness about the rim of the crater. In fifteen minutes more I had landed it on a bare, rocky slope. I waited a moment, but there was no sign that my coming had been observed, so presently I left the plane, with my automatic in my hand, wishing I knew how to operate the strange weapon in my pocket.
I spent several hours slipping about in the shadows among the fallen boulders on the bank of talus about the rim, looking down into the brightly lit crater. At last, I came down in the shadow of an isolated building of gray concrete, with slender masts rising above it—the hidden radio station.
In an open space before it, flooded with light, I saw a strange machine. It was like one of the red airplanes, but the closed fuselage was so large that it looked almost like a small dirigible balloon, while the short wings were no larger than those of the ordinary machines. It occurred to me that the “negative-gravity” gas was probably used to lift it.
As I stood watching it, I saw a party coming aboard. There were a dozen soldiers, in red uniform. Among them I recognized the short figure of Vars, the maniac, if he was a maniac. And behind him were three closely guarded figures, one of them evidently a woman. Were they my three lost friends? I had every reason to think they were. Vars had promised not to injure Ellen or the Doctor, had implied that he wished to take them with him.
I was still watching when I heard a light footstep behind me. I whirled quickly, only to receive the sharp point of a bayonet against my chest.
“Drop it!” a sharp voice commanded as I tried to raise my automatic. The pressure back of the keen blade was somewhat increased, and I obeyed.
“Where did you come from, anyway?” the voice inquired.
I said nothing.
“Then I’ll give you a chance to tell somebody else, Pard.”
A dark-faced man in red uniform stepped out of the shadow of the building. He searched me, and discovered the Doctor’s little weapon. “What’s this, Pard?” he asked quickly.
Desperately I cudgeled my brain. “It’s—er—a patent radium cigarette lighter. Inventor gave it to me. I broke it the other day.”
He looked at me sharply. I tried to assume indifference; and he handed it back. “Forward march, and no tricks,” he ordered, and prodded me with the bayonet until I would have given a good deal to know the secret of the little weapon he had returned to me.
Presently we reached a low concrete building. He put me past a barred door, and locked it. I was left alone in the dark. Presently I struck the few matches I had, to examine the little weapon. I set the dial by guess, and found the tiny lever that lit the tube with the soft crimson light, but I could not test it.
Toward morning I had an incredible visitor!
A pale violet light was suddenly thrown through the bars of the door. I looked up to see the amazing Thing before it, regarding me. It was octopus-like, with a central body upheld on a dozen whip-like tentacles! But it was luminous, purple, semi-transparent!
The shapeless glowing purple body had a nucleus of red—a little sphere of intense red light embedded in the shining form. It seemed like a terrible eye, watching me.
For a moment the awful thing was there, and then it moved silently away, drawing itself upon the slender gleaming tentacles. It left me weak and trembling. I hardly dared believe my eyes. Was this one of the “beings from another plane” with which Vars had allied himself in his insane attack against the earth?
CHAPTER IV
The City Above the Air
AT LAST the light of day, filtering through my prison bars, aroused me from a terrible dream of a gleaming purple octopus that was crushing and strangling me in its coils. Little did I realize how soon that dream was to become a reality!
The red-uniformed sentry came and brought me a little breakfast. I tried to engage him in conversation as I ate, but all I could get out of him was “Aw, shut your trap, Pard!”
He ordered me out of the cell. As I stood outside, blinking in the blaze of morning sunshine, I saw that the crater had been deserted since I had entered. The rows of great sheds were empty, with doors ajar. The long lines of red planes were gone. Even the great ship into which I thought Ellen and the others taken was not to be seen. The radio station appeared to have been dismantled. There were no more than a dozen airplanes left in the pit; and even as I looked, some of these took off and spiraled up into the sky.
Had the maniac finished his preparations for an attack upon the earth? Had his dreadful army gone forth to begin the ruin of the world?
The guard motioned with his bayonet toward one of the red ships near us on the ground. “Hustle!” he said. “Get aboard. You are going up to see the Master.”
From what I later learned, there must have been several hundred white men in the conspiracy with Vars. In exchange for their services, he had offered freedom from the law (which was a great inducement to the class of men he gathered) and a chance to share in the spoils of world conquest. His recruits had numbered bandits and desperadoes of all descriptions, and even a few unscrupulous men of finely trained minds.
In a few minutes we were in the fuselage compartment of the red machine. It was closed and made air-tight. We were seated upon comfortable chairs, and had a good view through circular windows in the sides. The pilot was forward, out of sight, and there was another closed space to the rear, but our compartment took up most of the hull.
The guard refused to answer my questions concerning the ship’s propulsion, but I later learned that it was lifted by the negative gravity gas. The motors utilized intra-atomic energy derived by the forced decomposition of thorium, and at high altitudes the propellers were supplemented by rocket guns.
Besides my taciturn guard, there were two other men in the ship. One, a fat, red-faced fellow, who looked as if he had been drinking too much mescale, was boasting of his close association with Vars, “the Master,” and of his promised part in the spoil of the earth conquest.
The other was a lean, shrunken man, with red eyes. He stared apprehensively at the pilot’s room forward, muttering to himself. I caught a few of his words,
“The shining horrors! The shining horrors. Devils from the sky!”
The machine left the crater floor and flew rapidly up on a steep spiral course. In a few minutes the rugged mountain panorama was spread out like a relief map below us. Presently the stars were visible, and still we climbed, comfortable enough in the heated, air-tight compartment. The propellers had been stopped, but the gravity-neutralizing gas continued to lift the vessel straight up.
Then I noticed a faint purple veil coming over the stars above. Suddenly it seemed that we were plunging through a bank of thin purple mist. Abruptly we shot above a landscape weirder than the wildest dream!
We had climbed above a vast plain!
A flat purple desert stretched inimitably away below us. Far in the west rose a colossal range of sheer purple mountains. The weird plain was covered with strange and stunted violet plants. In the south was a patch of blazing blue that looked like a lake of heavy mist. Beyond rose a forest of fem-like violet plants.
It was a new land above the air!
The sky was utterly black, above that desolate purple world. The stars were blazing with strange splendor, like a mist of sunlit diamond dust. They were brighter than they ever are on earth, for we were above the atmosphere. I turned toward the east, to look at the morning sun. Its light was blinding. The solar corona spread out like great wings from a sphere of livid white.
And on the purple desert, below the blazing sun, was a city!
Great spires and towers and domes rose above the dull flat expanse of purple and blue and violet. The strange buildings were scarlet. They gleamed with a metallic luster, as if they were made of the same metal as the red airplanes.
This was the land of the madman’s allies, the home of the purple, gleaming creatures!
In all that strange world, save for the intense red of the weird city, there was no bright color. The smooth plains, the towering mountains, the great lakes, were dull purple or blue or violet. And all were semitransparent! I could see the Sierra Madre like a little gray ridge, scores of miles below. And in the west, below those purple mountains, was the broad blue Pacific, gleaming like steel.
I cried out in wonder to the guard.
“Huh,” he muttered. “It’s nothin’. I’ve been up here a dozen times. Nothin’ solid. Just mist. Even the—Things—cut like butter.”
The Second Shell
CERTAINLY our machine had risen easily enough through the purple rocks below us. The scientific aspects of that second crust about the earth have been considered very carefully, and the best scientific opinions have been sought.
Mankind dwells upon a comparatively thin crust about the molten or plastic interior of the earth. It would seem there is a similar crust about the air. Science long ago had evidence of it in the reflection of radio waves by the so-called Heaviside Layer.
