Collected Short Fiction, page 55
The movement had not gone far, however, when our telescopes showed a little swarm of white dots in the indigo sky above, rapidly enlarging. Van Thoren had evidently been waiting out in space; now he was dropping to attack. Presently the men at the instruments announced that there were fifty-six of the silver spheres—they outnumbered us almost three to one.
Behind the ragged black mountain, Doane swiftly got his ships into position. He chose an odd formation—fourteen of the twenty vessels took places at the corners of a great imaginary cube, and at the center of each face. The remaining six vessels, including the Comet, were in the center of the cube, as a reserve. In this formation our protecting fan-ray screens would offer the maximum defense; and the fliers were far enough apart to interfere little with one another’s fire.
THE enemy fleet dropped for Warrington’s ranks, without regard for us. I suppose that Van Thoren counted on little opposition from our few fliers, built on the moon and manned by simple miners, when pitted against his great vessels from the Pittsburgh shops, with their skilled officers and veteran crews. As the fleet descended, thin searching rays and gleaming atomic vortexes began to fall upon Warrington’s lines about the city. Such fire from space fliers is, however, not very effective when the troops on the ground have fan-rays and are able to seek cover in the wild lunar hills.
Doane gave the order and our fleet rose from behind the mountain and came rapidly toward the Tellurians from below. No attention was paid to our advance until we were within some five miles of the enemy—below and a little to the side.
Then the fliers in the top of our mile-square cube, at Doane’s order, fired a bristling salvo of rays and vortexes. Three of the Tellurians slipped moonward in incandescent ruin. The others paused in their descent upon Warrington, and began to assume battle formation.
We continued to rise swiftly, with eleven of our ships firing scintillant rays and flaming vortexes. The bright yellow curtains of the fan-ray were extended like broad amber curtains all about us. Two more of the Tellurians went down, having been caught in unfavorable positions, where they fell quick victims before Doane’s well trained crews.
The enemy fliers formed above us, in the shape of an immense inverted bowl, miles across. And the bowl dropped down upon us, until the fliers at its rim were at our own level. The Tellurians had been firing only spasdomically; but now a great burst of flaming rays fell upon us from above, and from all about the rim of the bowl. Red rays, and green, and dazzling fingers of white stabbed at us bewilderingly. And the vast fiery globes of the atomic vortexes—blue and purple and white, fell like hail upon the yellow wings of the screen-ray.
And there were dark, invisible metal projectiles, loaded with fearful atomic explosive—more dangerous to our armored ships than the flaming rays.
For defense we had the fan-rays, played from each vessel so as not only to shield it but several others. Smoky yellow walls of vibration, they cut off the D-rays, generally destroyed the atomic vortexes, and usually burst the explosive projectiles. But sometimes there were holes in the screens; and of course the other fliers had screen-rays of their own.
Steadily the great bowl, formed of silver ships, dropped lower about us, glistening in the sunlight and gleaming with the woven rays until it was like a jeweled mantle of doom. And the ships that formed the rim slowly drew together below us, so that we were soon completely inclosed in walls of wavering flame.
From all sides we received the fire of the enemy. Only our formation saved us. Had it been broken, our individual fliers would have gone down like falling leaves. As it was, we were almost invulnerable. Doane’s study of three-dimensional tactics was paying a good return.
Little groups of Tellurian fliers suddenly began separating themselves from the main formation, making darting attacks, in an effort to break up our array. One of them, falling meteor-like from far above, came plunging through our screen rays into the very center of the cube. It was hurtling straight for the Comet. An atomic vortex left our flagship—an immense ball of blue flame—like a splendid, blazing sapphire. I saw it strike the Tellurian globe. There was a terrific explosive blast of blue fire, angrily streaked with red. Then the ship was falling, a smoking mass of crumpled, twisted ruin.
At the same time a sudden flare of yellow light burst out against the side of the flier at the upper corner of our cube—a solid projectile must have passed its ray-screen. With half its side caved in, it fell crazily, narrow rays still blazing from it.
The loss of the ship from the strategic position at the corner of the cube broke our armor of fan-rays. I anticipated quick disaster. I was quite unprepared for Doane’s next move.
ABRUPTLY the space all about us was filled with tiny bursting charges, swiftly growing into vast clouds of white mist. In a moment Doane had surrounded our whole force in the thick white clouds of the Ziker space cloud—composed of radioactive, electrically charged particles, similar to a comet’s tail but of much denser material.
The dense swirling masses of smoky vapor hid the Tellurian fliers completely, though dazzling rays of ruby and emerald and topaz still burned through the ragged clouds. On the instant our ships were in swift motion. There was no delay; Doane must have planned the maneuver far ahead.
As the Comet emerged from the mists, an enemy ship was directly before us. There was a quick interchange of rays. The new D-ray armor—the halides of barium sprayed upon our ships—and the better training of our crews decided the encounter in our favor. The Tellurian sphere plunged downward, her hull cut half away, the bent plates and twisted girders of the wreck glowing with an infernal red.
Out beyond, we paused to build another vast cloud of dense, screening smoke. In a few minutes the sky was dotted with those great masses of mist. Our ships darted back and forth between them, firing rays and vortexes at every opportunity. Doane’s captains appeared to be well trained in the dangerous work, and seemed to synchronize the movements of their ships remarkably.
The maneuvers of the Tellurians were clumsy; plainly Van Thoren was unused to this hide-and-seek method of fighting among the clouds of smoke. He was, without doubt, a courageous and able man. But he did not have Doane’s genius, or Doane’s years of experience in battle against fearful odds. Instead of the guerilla method of strike and run, his school taught fighting in the open, ship to ship, at close quarters.
His men must have become confused; must have blundered. He attempted to save the day by massing his fleet and plowing through the dense clouds of vapor, sweeping all before him. But Doane, with his usual brilliant foresight, evaded his charge, and fell upon him in the rear, as he emerged from the clouds.
Only some twenty-odd of Van Thoren’s globes came out, to face the seventeen of Doane’s that had survived the wild battle in the mist. Now Doane abandoned his Fabian policy and closed in, counting on our D-ray armor and the superior training of our crews. For hours, it seemed, we plunged through a weird storm of colored fire, a cyclone formed of flaming rays of emerald and crimson and yellow, darting and stabbing and striking like snakes; while the saffron wings of our fan rays were beaten with a hail of blazing, fearfully explosive globes of fire, the blue and purple vortexes. And again and again those dreadful curtains were cut with a blinding glare of flame, as a ship passed into incandescent ruin beneath our rays.
Van Thoren kept his dogged courage to the end. His flagship was the last of the Tellurians left—several times it had been saved only by the prompt sacrifice of another which had rushed in to shield it. He made no move to strike his colors. Instead, his immense flier came suddenly about, plunged madly at the Comet. He was attempting to ram us, to bring his conqueror down with him.
A hundred rays were fastened upon his ship, but he came on in spite of the fire. Even when it was a glowing mass of wreckage, when all on board must already have met a quick flaming death, it plunged on toward us. Its momentum was so great and its fall so cleverly planned that only Doane’s amazing coolness and his quick brain saved us from fatal collision with the smoking wreck.
In a battle that had lasted seven hours, Doane had destroyed fifty-six of the greatest war-fliers ever built, with twenty thousand men and more upon their decks. His own loss had been surprisingly light—only five ships destroyed and two more crippled. One ship had been struck by a solid projectile, as I had seen, one rammed, and two brought down by the combined effect of vortexes and D-rays. The fate of the fifth, the Uranus, has never been definitely known—it was lost during the fighting in the space clouds.
Never, perhaps, in all space history, had a fleet been so decisively defeated, by a force numerically so much smaller, and at so light a cost.
Doane had broken the space power of Metals on the moon. Humbolt still had his immense force upon the ground; but Van Thoren’s fleet would no longer support him or keep him supplied. And Warrington could now carry out his great plan, unhampered from space.
Tom Dowling, I might add, came through the battle with flying colors as captain of the Sirius. The Assembly subsequently awarded him a medal for a brave and resourceful maneuver which had saved one of our crippled ships from complete destruction.
Immediately after the battle, our fifteen remaining vessels put about in the direction of Firecrest, and set off at a high rate of speed. After we had gone a hundred miles or so, and the white walls of the city had dropped out of sight behind us, we came close to the surface and circled to the west, picking up Lafollette and his forty thousand men, who had been in camp near Smith’s crater. We approached New Boston again, landing about fifteen miles west of the city, where we were completely out of sight.
Evidently the whole maneuver had been planned beforehand. Warrington and Doane must have worked out even the smallest details long in advance. The annihilation of the Tellurian fleet had been but one item of the plan.
I DID not see the next maneuver of Warrington. I can only give the reports that swept over the moon a few hours later. The general concentrated his forces just south of the city, as if planning for an assault. His D-ray batteries fired fitfully, without doing much harm to the walls.
Finally he provoked Humbolt to come out after him. Warrington had only sixty thousand men, to the hundred and fifty thousand Tellurians. Great pains had been taken to let Humbolt’s spies inform him that Lafollette’s forces were still far toward Theophilus. And the Metals commander must have been forced by sheer desperation to make the campaign. He had seen his fleet defeated. He knew that his cause was lost unless he could win a decisive victory. He must have hoped that his vastly superior force could crush Warrington completely.
At any rate, he marched out of the airlocks, with 140,000 men, leaving less than 10,000 to defend the city. It would have been folly for Warrington to engage such a force. But it was no part of his plan to do so. After a short skirmish, our commander retired, with the appearance of much disorder—provision and D-ray tubes were purposely left to lead the Tellurians on.
The sun, by that time, was only forty-eight hours high. Humbolt knew that it was too late for Warrington to march back to Theophilus; he thought he had his old opponent trapped to die in the night. So great was his confidence that, when Warrington made a show of opposing him on the plain twenty miles south of the city, he sent an offer to receive our surrender, couched in such insulting terms, that, when the troops learned of it, Warrington was hard put to it to prevent a real charge upon the Tellurians, instead of a mere play at opposition.
Warrington affected to consider the offer. While Humbolt’s advance was thus delayed, some forty thousand of Warrington’s men retired beyond the mountains, and began a round-about march back toward New Boston. When Humbolt became exasperated at the delay and advanced again, the remaining men beat a prompt retreat across the plain, and made a determined stand at the mountain rim.
Humbolt lost several thousand men in vain and reckless charges up the barren slopes, with his flanks exposed to D-rays from the ridge. Twelve hours later, when he had surrounded the hill at the cost of much effort, he found that its defenders had slipped away, leaving the heavy ray-tubes that had brought down so many Tellurians.
Now his scouts saw men making a great show of fortifying a hill a few miles farther on—white clouds of smoke and dust were rising from trench-digging machines. The scouts were fired upon as they attempted to approach.
But that last hill—though Humbolt did not know it—was defended by only about two hundred men, who had been equipped with space suits. Their orders were to make as much show as possible, and to keep the Tellurians in their pursuit at all costs. Warrington, with the rest of the troops, was already between Humbolt and New Boston.
Meanwhile, squat, red-faced Jenkins arrived at the hiding place of our fleet with the most important message of the war. He brought our orders from Warrington for the final part of the war-fliers in the great campaign. We rose and proceeded directly to the city—the two crippled vessels had been repaired while we were on the ground. We landed again, a mile or so from the walls, and disembarked Lafollette and his men. They were to cooperate with Warrington in the surface operations, while we bombarded the city from above.
But those of us who had anticipated a thrilling action were disappointed. Warrington’s and Lafollette’s forces, drawn up in an iron ring about the walls, had a most formidable aspect. And our war-fliers alone might soon have erased the city from the map. Everything was planned to make a show of force.
The officer left in command of the city refused Warrington’s offer of honorable surrender. The rain of D-ray batteries about the metropolis shot a few holes in the walls, and the fliers dropped a few atomic vortexes, which are almost more spectacular and terrifying than dangerous. When the troops of Lafollette and Warrington, drawn up in endless lines of white, started forward on the double-quick, with keen rays flashing from their ranks, the courage of the defenders collapsed, and the flags above the glistening towers signalled surrender.
The officer chose to yield his arms to Lafollette, and soon our friend from earth was in charge of the city. The air-locks were opened at once, and the troops admitted and set to work to help the citizens repair the damage done to the walls and roof.
The drums of barium bromides and chlorides were landed from the fleet, and a crew of men was set to work with the compressed air sprays to cover the walls with a protective film of the D-ray armor. It was nearly twenty-four hours to sunset when the city yielded. Ten hours later the breaks in the walls were repaired, and the coat of armor complete.
The work was hardly finished when Humbolt appeared. It seems that even then he did not suspect the trick. He had given up the campaign and returned to the city to take up night quarters, confident that the cold would finish Warrington and his men, whom he imagined to be entrenched out south of the city.
His astonishment must have been great when he saw the flag of the Lunar Corporation floating above the pinnacles of the city; greater still when Warrington sent him a courteous note offering to accept his Weapons.
He proceeded, in turn, to demand the surrender of New Boston. When his offer met a grave refusal, he arrayed his teeming white-clad ranks in endless lines about the city, while his lumbering tractors and tanks pulled a thousand field D-rays into position along the summit of Meteor Hill, and upon other heights beyond the glass walls. Finally his troops rushed forward in a grand assault, while the ray-tubes vomited a storm of polychromatic splendor.
A thousand jeweled rays fell upon the walls—and nothing happened.
The new armor was a complete success. Humbolt’s spectacular gesture came to naught almost ludicrously, when he discovered that neither his huge batteries nor the hand weapons of his men had any effect upon the city’s walls. And he, of course, was completely at the mercy of the weapons mounted along the walls.
Still he held out, with a lot of bluster, until the sun was near the cragged black summits in the west, and already reddening in the mists of the lunar evening. The quick chill of the air seemed to chill his own ardor.
He sent a deputation of his officers through the airlock to arrange the details of the surrender. It was to be performed with all the traditional details of military ceremony. Our fleet hung low over the scene, fifteen great globes of silver, so that I had a splendid view. The Tellurians stacked their arms, and left them at the camp, for our men to pick up.
The first part of the ceremony had a curious accompaniment. From the fifteen low-riding war-fliers ten thousand lusty voices bellowed out the stirring bars of the anthem, “To Ye Lunar Hills Ablaze,” which had been written by Captain Thomas Dowling, of the Sirius—I am sure the heart of Valence, my pretty sister, would fairly have burst with pride, if she had been there, to hear the patriotic song her husband had written falling in a swelling rain of sound upon the army he had helped so bravely to defeat.
The airlock was opened, and the sun-burned, ragged, half-starved troops of Warrington and Lafollette marched out to form two mile-long lines from the gate toward Humbolt’s camp. With colors flying, and martial music playing, the splendidly uniformed Tellurians came marching in perfect step down the lane formed by their shabby conquerors, Humbolt, in all the glory of red coat and medals and glittering braid, stalking in the lead.
At the end of the lines Warrington and Lafollette were waiting. When Humbolt arrived, Warrington received his haughtily tendered hand ray and extended it to Lafollette, who courteously gave it back to the conquered general.
Then, because of the increasing chill of the air, all parties made a hasty entrance into the city. The people, who had been chafing for years under the military autocracy of Humbolt, welcomed Warrington and Lafollette with wild jubilation.
We landed the fleet at the great space-port, which we found in excellent repair, with admirable facilities for caring for the fliers and making such adjustments as were needed after our recent action. I was soon within the glass walls of the city; as a young officer, I took part in the innumerable balls and banquets given in honor of the victors. But my heart was seldom with them. I thought only of the dark-eyed girl who was waiting for me in the little city far across the frozen lunar wastes.
