Time Travel Omnibus, page 92
Toroh’s landing at Orleen was taking place; the channel expedition had served its purpose. The two remaining barges off Anglese City were in full retreat toward the open sea. The smaller barge, with its screaming magnet, was heading swiftly down the channel toward Orleen. The figures in the air were struggling against its pull. Some were losing, being hurled forward with control of themselves lost; others were forcing their way down to the water-level where the attraction seemed less. Still others had succeeded in escaping upward beyond range. High overhead they circled, seeking some way of helping their unfortunate comrades.
The double disaster was more than Fahn could cope with, or even watch closely in the two mirrors. Orleen lay on a peninsula some ten miles broad—water on three sides of it. The Noths were landing, spreading around the shores; across the land from shore to-shore they were massed, but as yet they had not entered the city. Thousands of Arans were there—the king and his royal family—penned like rats in a trap. And there was only the small cavern with its meager number of Scientists to defend them.
• • •
Georgie found himself near the outer edge of the magnetic attraction. He could see the figures in the air nearer the barge, struggling to escape from it. He did not know where Loto was; or Azeela or Dee. He saw Mogruud, with fifteen or twenty of the Bas about him. They were passing swiftly below.
Georgie wondered what he should do. The two larger barges were withdrawing. Some of the aerial figures were following them. Georgie started that way, uncertainly. The figures were attacking the barges, from low down, near the surface of the water. Mogruud and his men were there now. Georgie hastened.
This last attack of the Anglese was one of desperate fury. Georgie could see the flash of the bolts, close to the water. One of the barges must have fired through its own darkness and struck its mate. As the blackness cleared, Georgie saw that both the Noth vessels were blazing. One of them sank plunging into the water.
The Anglese—one of them mounting—cast loose a light-bomb. In the brilliant glare, the aerial figures were darting about over the surface of the water, seeking out the Noth men and dogs who were swimming toward the island—striking them with the little thunderbolts, or with spurts of yellow-red flame at closer range. Georgie arrived to join them. It was ghastly, but necessary, work. He used his weapons until they were all exhausted.
The battle was won—all but the giant magnet. In the distance its blood-curdling scream still sounded.
And then Georgie saw Dee. She had been several thousand feet up, flying with another girl, when the magnet was first put into operation. They were not close enough to feel its pull. A whirling knife had approached them; it struck the other girl—killed her. It was spent, but a corner of it had knocked Dee’s motor-cylinder from her hand. She had begun floating down. Ever since she had been trying to swim through the air, with arms and legs kicking she had fought to sustain herself.
She was almost at the surface when Georgie saw her struggling ineffectually like a swimmer exhausted. He darted to her and gathered her into his arms. His cylinder drew them both upward.
“Dee,” he whispered. “My little Dee! You’re safe!”
• • •
Loto had dropped closely to the surface. The magnet was pulling him; but with his cylinder held against it, he could make headway. The magnet now had done most of its work; those in the air had either succumbed, or escaped beyond range.
To one side, Loto could see the attack on the other two barges. Fahn’s voice in his ear told him of the landing at Orleen; the Scientist ordered them all back. They were needed at Orleen; they must return.
But the magnet barge was heading down the channel. It would be used at Orleen. It must be stopped—destroyed now. Loto disobeyed Fahn. He headed for the little barge.
It was a plunge of no more than a few minutes. Soon Loto was well within the magnetism; he could not withdraw now. He tried to think clearly. Those others of the Anglese who had met this death, had lost control of themselves in the air. They had plunged forward, struggling, whirling so that they had not been able to use their weapons.
Loto had no thunderbolts remaining. His only weapon was the flaming liquid gas which he could project some fifty feet.
Just above the surface, head first, like an arrow he slid forward through the air. He did not fight against the magnet; he used his cylinder only to keep himself from turning sidewise.
He was conscious of the dark outlines of the barge rushing at him. He fired his jet of flame; but though he did not know it then, he had fired too soon. The flames fell short. A downward thrust of his cylinder power forced him upward. He barely missed the wire caging as his body shot over it—past it.
The magnet’s scream was deafening. The Noths on the barge had fired a small thunderbolt between the wires, but had missed the swiftly passing mark.
Loto’s momentum carried him a hundred feet or more beyond the barge. The magnet stopped him, drew him swiftly back. He was turning over now. He had lost control of himself. The sea, the sky, the approaching barge—were mingled in whirling confusion. He knew he could never escape; he must strike the magnet with his flame, this time or never. A moment more and his body would be electrocuted against the cage.
A tiny bolt cracked past him. He turned over again, righted himself momentarily, and fired. The electrical scream died into abrupt silence; the flames had caught the magnet, burned out its coils.
Released suddenly, Loto’s body shot upward with the pull of his cylinder. The cage, with flames spreading under it, dropped away beneath him.
He righted himself, and at a distance of about three hundred feet, hung poised. The flames spread over the barge; its few Noth figures plunged frantically into the water.
Loto mounted upward to join his comrades. Barely seventy-five of the original three hundred and twenty-eight, were left. Ten of them were girls. Loto found Azeela safe. Georgie still carried Dee in his arms.
The flames from the burning barges died out; the silent moonlit channel was strewn with floating bodies. It seemed almost futile to search for their wounded; but they descended, and for a time moved about near the surface. Two, they found still alive—one burned, the other, a girl, mangled by a flying knife.
Silently, with their burdens, they took their way back through the air to the cavern.
• • •
It was a night of confusion. The Noths were clustered around Orleen, waiting for the dawn before they entered the city. They were still coming across the channel—swimming dogs, mounted by men. All night they came. The puny garrison of the Orleen Cavern was powerless to stop them. It exhausted its bolts; it began sending out calls for help.
The Bas around Anglese City were mobilizing with their dogs. Hastily Fahn equipped them with weapons—hand thunderbolts and flame projectors. An hour and a half before dawn they were ready to start—an almost helpless attempt to stem the horde of invaders who now held the entire west end of the island.
The little rag-end of aerial army that returned from the battle was exhausted, but in a few hours, it too was ready to start.
Fahn, with his two daughters, and Rogers, Loto and Georgie, took the Frazia plane. On its platform Fahn mounted a single projector—the most powerful he possessed.
They started an hour before dawn-silent as they gazed down at the island of palms that was passing beneath them. They overtook their Bas army—left it behind them. In the air, back over Anglese City, tiny specks showed that the aerial army was starting. Above the hum of the Frazia motors, aerial voices of the Anglese City radio sounded—voices that told the Bas peasants living between the two cities to come eastward. They were obeying; little groups of refugees—old men, women and children—were moving backward along all the roads. Ahead in the sky occasional flashes shot up from Orleen.
“The Arans went there to avoid the deluge,” Rogers said suddenly, and his laugh was grim.
But no one answered him.
Behind them presently the eastern sky was brightening. Loto was driving the plane, with Rogers beside him. The daylight grew—began reddening.
“Father! See, there is Orleen!”
THE second largest city of the island, Orleen lay in a hollow, with twin peaks close behind it, the mouth of the channel and the gulf in front and to the sides. It was an Aran city, more beautiful even than the capital.
The plane, flying high, was circling. Loto’s gaze went to the dawn. An omen of bloodshed! Azeela had called the crimson moon that, the night of the Festival. It was more than an omen—this dawn. The sun came up a huge, distorted ball of crimson fire, with lines of flame radiating from it to the zenith. A dark mass of rain cloud, hanging low above Orleen, lost its blackness as it soaked up the crimson light. The sky, even to the western horizon, was steeped in blood; the water reflected it; the air itself seemed to hold it suspended.
“The day of the deluge,” murmured Loto. “Who could doubt it, seeing this? The blood that will be spilled today—”
As though to symbolize his words, the cloud above Orleen began spilling its rain. And as the water fell, it caught the crimson sunlight—a myriad tiny drops of blood falling upon the Aran city.
The storm was transitory; the rain cloud swept past; but the blood in the sky remained.
In the hour that had passed since the plane left Anglese City, the Noths had occupied Orleen. Its cavern was taken. The Noth men and dogs stood in solid ranks around the mountain base; the beaches were black with them. Across the channel they were still coming—riders mounted upon swimming dogs—an occasional barge.
There were no sounds of thunderbolts in the city—no flashes. But as the plane descended, human sounds were heard—faint screams. And the city streets were in confusion.
Fahn was staring down into the city through spectacles with lenses mounted in short black tubes. He murmured something that his companions did not catch. His face was white and set; he was struggling to hold his composure.
“Descend, Loto. They are not armed with thunderbolts; those are all with Toroh and his men in the cavern.”
The plane glided down, circling low above the city. The scene of carnage there became a series of brief, fragmentary pictures. Above the drone of the Frazia motors, the snarling of fighting dogs sounded; the screams of men and women, the shrill treble of children—human screams of death agony from the fangs of brutes tearing at them.
The plane passed low above a city street, following its length to the blue water that lapped on the white sand at its end. The street seemed full of dogs. A Noth rider—sinister, animal-like with his black-bound head and his naked torso covered with black hair—arrived at a silent white house, with Its white columns, splashing fountain, and vivid trellised flowers. The Noth dismounted, rushed into the house; he came out dragging an Aran woman—flung her white body to the eager snarling brute. At the beach hundreds of terrified Arans sprang into the water; but the dogs followed them, pulled them under, released them at last, and the surf flung back their mangled bodies to the sand.
There was a public square, where a hundred or more Arans had feathered. The dogs charged them—tore at them—flung them into the air—fought over their broken bodies long after life was gone.
To every corner of the city the dogs spread simultaneously. A child climbed a pergola—a little Aran boy, white-skinned, with long golden curls and a plump baby face. The dogs could not reach him. A Noth man climbed up, pulled him down.
Loto had given the Frazia controls to his father. With a small thunderbolt globe at his belt, he went to the platform outside the cabin. Presently he found Azeela beside him. Her arm was around him; together they clung to their insecure footing, watching the scenes below as the plane made its swift circle over the city.
What could Fahn do? The thunderbolt projector, here on the platform, could kill a few Noths—a few dogs here and there. But of what avail among these hordes? The Orleen Cavern? Could they attack that? Toroh was probably there in the cavern. If they could kill him, these Noth barbarians without a leader—
Confused and sick from what he was seeing, Loto tried to force Azeela into the cabin, but the white-lipped girl would not go. The plane approached a house where on the roof top an Aran woman crouched with two little girls huddled at her feet. A Noth appeared from below, dashed at them across the roof. Beneath the eaves a dozen dogs stood with bared, dripping fangs held upward.
The plane was almost over the house. Loto pointed his globe downward, pressed its lever. There was a flash; a miniature crack of thunder; the globe recoiled in his hand. On the roof top the Noth man and the Aran woman and her children lay dead. The woman’s white robe was blackened; the children’s bodies were Mack—shriveled; a cornice of the building was ripped off; the woodwork was blazing.
It was so useless! Loto flung the globe from him, loathing it for having killed that woman and her little girls. He drew Azeela back with him into the cabin.
The king’s palace of Orleen stood near the waterfront, in the midst of broad, magnificent gardens. A mob of Noths surged around it, into the lower doors, on the balconies and roof top. As the plane passed overhead, its occupants caught a fleeting glimpse of the queen and her children, the girl wives of the king and the king himself—in the face of death with petty barriers at last broken down—all huddled together In a corner of the roof. The Noths rushed at them—broad, heavy swords flashing.
The plane swept past.
THE twin peaks of Orleen stood six hundred feet apart, just behind the city. The one that housed the cavern had a broad circular base, with a ragged, volcanic-looking cone above. The other peak was considerably higher; it looked down upon its fellow.
To the higher of the peaks, Fahn had directed Rogers to fly the plane. The Scientist had hardly spoken. He was pale, grim as ever, but his gaze upon his daughters held a curious softness. What were his plans? What were they going to do? Georgie asked the questions; but Fahn ignored them.
The little aerial army approaching from Anglese City was now in sight. Fahn’s radio spoke to it. He ordered it back, and ordered it to descend and stop the Bas army and its dogs. All of them were to return to the capital.
The plane landed on a small level rock near the summit of the higher peak. Over the cavern, six hundred feet away a solitary male figure stood. The blood light of the sunrise fell full upon it. Toroh! He was standing there, regarding the city.
Fahn leaped to the projector, but Toroh had disappeared.
“Hurry!” exclaimed the Scientist. He still would not let them question him. He was unlashing the projector: they helped him lower it to the ground. He leaped down after it, adjusting it, swinging it to bear down upon the lower peak.
“We must hurry,” he repeated. He was back on the cabin platform. “They will be out of the cavern, firing upon us.”
The Noths down there were gazing up; others were now pouring out of the cavern entrance.
Fahn’s projector was trained on the crater of the lower mountain. From this greater height its depths were visible.
In the cabin of the plane the Scientist’s arms went around his daughters. “Good-by, my girls—for a little time,” he whispered in their own tongue.
They were frightened; suddenly Dee was crying. But he pushed them from him. He would attack the cavern; they must all stay in the plane—rise high—very high.
Something in the man’s look—the command in his voice—struck them all silent. They obeyed. He climbed down to the rock. The plane’s helicopters drew it swiftly into the air.
The sun was above the eastern horizon; the sky seemed an inverted bowl of blood. Beneath the plane, Fahn’s figure, standing beside his projector, showed clear cut against the black rock under him. At the base of the cavern-mountain Noths had appeared with apparatus. They were adjusting it hurriedly.
A blue-white flash from Fahn’s projector spat downward across the six hundred feet and into the crater mouth. Thunder rolled out. Another flash. Another—until they became almost continuous. Far down in the earth within the crater the slumbering forces there began to answer. A rumbling sounded—a low, ominous muttering, pregnant with infinite power. Steam hissed upward; a puff of smoke—
The plane had been ascending rapidly. It was thousands of feet up now. Fahn’s thunderbolts persisted; and at last the angered fires of the earth were unleashed. The mountain seemed to split apart; the report was deafening; flaming gases, cinders and ashes were hurled upward and outward.
The main force of the explosion was sidewise toward the city, but even so the plane barely avoided the torrent of molten rock and blazing gas that mounted from below.
The city was engulfed in flame over which a heavy smoke hung like a pall. A tremendous lake of viscous liquid fire lay where the peaks and the cavern once had been. The earth was rumbling, shaking, splitting apart. The scene was vague—dull with a lurid red glare that struggled with the blackness of the smoke.
A moment, and a rift appeared. The smoke seemed to part, roll aside. Through the rift the burning city showed for an instant clear and distinct—the crowded city in which now no single human or beast could have remained alive.
Still not content, the earth was heaving over the whole western end of the island. And from the sea a great tidal wave came rolling up over the sinking land—hissing, quenching the fires, obscuring everything In a cloud of steam.
Like a mist, the steam presently dissipated. The turgid waters lashed themselves into furious waves that gradually were stilled.
It was daylight—sullen red day—with only the wreckage on the waters—charred fragments of bodies, thousands of them floating for miles around—mute evidence of what had gone before.
ONCE again the plane hung like a shimmering ghost above the towering piles of steel and masonry—New York City at the peak of its civilization. To Azeela and Dee it had been a brief trip of awe and wonder—a trip northward through space and back through time.
