The Onslaught from Rigel/Chapter XXI
The little group separated, going about their several tasks. From whatever cause, Ben proved to be right about the Lassan green spheres. After that one brief incursion, in which they had wrecked the greater part of Newark and most of the artillery the Australians had established to bear on the door of the Lassan city, they seemed to have returned to their underground home, realizing that the earth-men still had weapons the equal of anything the creatures of Rigel could produce.
For a whole week there was no sign of them. Meanwhile, the federated army dug itself in and prepared for the attack that was now believed certain. The success of the first Monitor had been great enough, it was decided to warrant the construction of more than one of the second edition. General Grierson wished to turn the whole resource of the Allied armies to building an enormous number, but under Ben's persuasion he consented to concentrate on only five.
For, as Ben pointed out to the general, the training of flesh and blood men for these craft would be labor lost.
“They couldn't stand the acceleration that will be necessary, for one thing. WithMonitor II we expect to be able to work up swiftly to over a thousand miles an hour, and the most acceleration a flesh and blood man can stand won't give us that speed quickly enough. Of course, we could make 'em so they worked up speed slowly, but then they wouldn't be able to cut down fast enough to maneuver. And for another thing this infra-sound ray the Lassans project would kill a flesh-and-blood man the first time it hit him. What we need for this kind of war, is supermen in the physical sense. I don't want to make any such snooty statement as that Americans are better than other people, but we happen to be the only ones who have undergone this mechanical operation and we're the only people in the world who can stand the gaff. You'll just have to let us make out the best we can. In fact, it might be better for you to re-embark the army and leave us to fight it out all alone. The more women we have here, the more we'll have to protect.”
The general had been forced to agree to the first part of this statement, but he gallantly refused to abandon the Americans, though he did send away men, troops and guns which had become useless in this new brand of warfare. But he insisted on retaining a force to run the factories that supplied the Americans with their materials and on personally remaining with it.
Even as it stood, there were only fourteen of the mechanical Americans remaining—enough to man three of the Monitors.
But one day, as Monitor II, shining with newness, stood on her ramp having the searchlights installed, Herbert Sherman came dashing across the flying field, waving a sheet of paper.
“I've got it,” he cried, “I've got it! I knew I got something from those Lassans about electricity that I hadn't known before, and now I know what it is. Look!”
“Radio?” queried Ben.
“No, read it,” said Sherman. “Radio's out. But this is a thousand times better.”
He extended the sheet to Ben, who examined the maze of figures gravely for a moment.
“Now suppose you interpret,” he said. “I can't read Chinese.”
“Sap. This is the formula for the electrical device I was talking about.”
“Yeh. Well, go on, spill it.”
“Well, I suppose I'll have to explain so even your limited intelligence will grasp the point… In our black box, we've been breaking up the atoms of lead into positive and negative charges. We've been using the positive, and then just turning the negative loose. This thing will make use of both, and give us a swell new weapon all at once.
“Look—the negative charges will do for our gravity beam just as well as the positive. They will create an excess of negative electrons instead of an excess of positive protons in the object we hit, and cause atomic disintegration. It's a gravity process just the same, but a different one. Now that gives us something else to do with the positives.
“You know what a Leyden jar is? One of those things you charge with electricity, then you touch the tip, and bang, you get a shock. Well, this arrangement will make a super-Leyden jar of the Monitor. Every time she fires the gravity-beam, the positive charges will be put into her hull, and she'll soon be able to load up with a charge that will knock your eye out when it's let loose.”
“How's that? I know the outside of the Monitor is covered with lead and so is the outside of a Leyden jar, but what's the connection?”
“Well, it's this way. When you load up a Leyden jar the charge is not located in the plating, but in the glass. Now the Monitor has a lot of steel, which will take up the charge just as well as glass. As soon as she fires the gravity-beam, these filaments will load her up with the left-over positives till she grunts. See?”
“And since the earth is building up a lot of negative potential all the time, all you have to do is get your bird between you and the earth and then let go at him?”
“That's the idea. It'll make an enormous spark-gap, and whatever is between us and the earth will get the spark. Sock them with a flash of artificial lightning. We'll use the light-beam as a conductor just as with the gravity-beam.”
“Sounds good, but I want to see the wheels go round. How much of a potential do you think you can build up in the Monitor?”
“Well, let's see. We've got two thicknesses of nine-inch steel … volts to a cubic inch … by cubic inches… Holy smoke, look how this figures out—over eleven million volts! That's theory, of course. There'll be some leakage in practice and we won't have time to build up that much negative potential every time we shoot, but if we only do half that well, we'll have a pretty thorough-going charge of lightning … Peterson, come over here. I want you to make some changes on this barge.”
Monitor II stood on the ramp that had once held her elder sister, her outer coating of lead glimmering dully in the morning sun. Here and there, along her shining sides, were placed the windows through which her crew would watch the progress of the battle. Her prow was occupied by the same type of searchlight the earlier Monitorhad borne. But this time the searchlight was surrounded by a hedge of shining silver points—the discharge mechanism for the lightning flash. At the stern, instead of the opening running right through into the ship, was a tight bulkhead, with the connections for the gravity-beam rocket-mechanism leading through it. As Sherman had pointed out, “If this lightning is going to do us any good, we've got to get above our opponent, and those Lassans have built machines that made interplanetary voyages. We've got to make this boat air-tight so that we can go right after them as far as Rigel if necessary.”
It had been decided, in view of the other monitors that were building, to make the trial trip of the second rocket-cruiser also a training voyage, with Beeville and Yoshio replacing Murray Lee and Gloria in her crew. They climbed in; the spectators stood back, and with a thunderous rush of explosions and a cloud of yellow gas, the second Monitor plunged into the blue.
“Where shall we go?” asked Sherman, as the ship swooped over the plains of New Jersey.
“How much speed is she making?” asked Ben Ruby.
“I don't know exactly. We didn't have time to invent and install a reliable speed gauge. But—” he glanced at the map before him, then down through the windows at the surrounding country. “I should say not far short of eight hundred an hour. That improved box sure steps up the speed. I'm not giving her all she'll stand, even yet.”
“If you've got that much speed, why don't you visit Chicago?” asked Beeville. “The Australians have only pushed out as far as Ohio and there may be some people there.”
“Bright thought,” remarked Sherman, swinging the prow of the vessel westward. “No telling what we'll find, but it's worth a look, anyway.”
For some time there was silence in the cabin as the rocket-ship, with alternate roar and swoop, pushed along. Yoshio was the first to speak:
“Ah, gentlemen,” he remarked, “I observe beneath window trace of city of beer, formerly Cincinnati.”
“Sure enough,” said Ben, peering down. “There doesn't seem to be much beer there now, though.”
The white city of the Ohio vanished beneath them, silent and deserted, no sign of motion in its dead streets.
“You know,” said Sherman, “sometimes when I see these cities and think of all the Lassans have wrecked, it gives me an ache. I think I'd do almost anything to knock them out. What right did they have to come to this country or this earth, anyway? We were letting them alone.”
“Same right wolf obtains when hungry,” said Yoshio. “Wolf is larger than rabbit—end of rabbit.”
“Correct,” agreed Beeville. “They were the strongest. It's a case of hit or be hit in this universe. Our only out is to give them better than they give us.”
“Oh, I don't know,” said Ben Ruby, “it may be a good thing for the old world at that. You never heard of all the governments of the world cooperating before as they are now did you? There are still people alive you know. Civilization hasn't been killed off by a long shot. And the lousy blue coloring that affected all the people who didn't get metallized isn't going to be permanent. The babies that are being born there now are normal, I hear. In a few generations the earth will be back to where it was, except for us. I don't know of any way to reverse this metal evolution.”
“Neither do I,” said Beeville, “unless we can get another dose of the 'substance of life' as the Lassans call it, and we won't get that unless they decide to leave the earth in a hurry.”
“Look,” said Sherman, “there's Chicago now. But what's that? No, there, along the lake front.”
Following the direction of his pointing finger they saw something moving vaguely along Lake Shore Boulevard; something that might be a car—or a man!
“Let's go down and see,” offered Ben.
“O. K. chief, but we've got to pick a good landing place for this tub. I don't want to get her marooned in Chicago.”
The explosions were cut off, the wings extended, and Sherman spiralled carefully downward to the spot where they had seen the moving object. With the nicety of a magician, he brought the ship to a gliding stop along the park grass, and followed by the rest, Ben Ruby leaped out. The edge of the drive was a few yards away. As they emerged from the ship no one was visible, but as they walked across the grass, a figure, metallic like themselves, and with a gun in one hand, stepped from behind a tree.
“Stand back!” it warned suspiciously. “Who are you and what do you want?”
“Conversation with sweet-looking gentleman,” said Yoshio politely, with a bow.
“Why, we're members of the American air force,” said Ben, “cooperating with the federated armies against the Lassans, and we were on an exploring expedition to see if we could find any more Americans.”
“Oh,” said the figure, with evident relief. “All right, then. Come on out, boys.”
From behind other trees in the little park, a group of metallic figures, all armed, rose into sight.
“My name's Ben Ruby,” said Ben, extending his hand, “at present General commanding what there is of the American army.”
“Mine's Salsinger. I suppose you could call me Mayor of Chicago since those birds got Lindstrom. So you're fighting the Lassans, eh? Good. We'd like to take a few pokes at them ourselves, but that light-ray they have is too much for us. All we can do is pot the birds.”
“Oh,” said Ben, “we've got that beat and a lot of other stuff, too. How many of you are there?”
“Eight, including Jones, who isn't here now. Where are you from, anyway? St. Louis?”
“No, New York. Is anybody alive in St. Louis or the other western cities?”
“There was. We had one man here from St. Paul, and Gresham was from St. Louis. The birds got him and carried him off to the joint the Lassans have in the Black Hills, but he got away.”
“Have they a headquarters in the Black Hills, too? They have one in the Catskills. That's where we've been fighting them.”
The explanations went on. It appeared that Chicago, St. Louis and other western cities had been overwhelmed as had New York—the same rush of light from the great comet, the same unconsciousness on every side, the same awakening and final gathering together of the few individuals who had been fortunate enough to attract the attentions of the Lassans' birds and so be sent to their cities for transformation into robots.
Since that time the birds had raided Chicago and the other western cities unceasingly, and had reduced the original company of some thirty-odd to the eight individuals whom Ben had encountered. Before the birds had attacked them, however, they had managed to get a telegraph wire in operation and learn that people were alive at Los Angeles—whether mechanized or not they were uncertain, but they thought not.
Once, several weeks before, a Lassan fighting-machine had passed through the city, wrecked a few buildings with the light-ray, and disappeared westward as rapidly as it had come.
With some difficulty and a good deal of crowding the eight Chicagoans were gotten into the Monitor II for the return journey. They were a most welcome reinforcement and would furnish enough Americans to man all five of the extra rocket-cruisers.
“I hope,” remarked Sherman, a couple of days later, “that those Lassans don't come out quite yet, now. We've got the ships to meet them now, but the personnel isn't as well trained as I should like. Salsinger nearly smashed up one of the ships yesterday making his landing and one of the wings on another cracked up this morning when Roberts tried to turn too short. These rocket-ships are so fast you need a whole state to handle them in.”
“And I,” replied Ben Ruby, “hope they come out damn soon. As you say, we've got the ships now, but they're not so slow themselves, and with the building methods they have, they can turn out ships faster than we can.”
“All the same, I'd like a few days more,” Sherman countered. “In this brand of war it isn't how much you've got, but what you've got that counts. Look at all the Australians—half a million men, and the only good they are is to work in factories.”
“Can't blame them for not being made of metal like us,” said Ben. “They're doing their best and we wouldn't be here but for them. Grierson is having the shops build us another ten rocket-cruisers, on the chance that we pick up some reinforcements somewhere in the west.”
“Good,” said Sherman, “and I have another idea. I think we ought to keep at least one monitor on patrol over the Lassan city all the time. They're apt to get out and sneak one over on us. She can stay high up, near the edge of the atmosphere. Of course, she can't radio, but she can fire a couple of shots if she sights them coming out, and we can make a static detector that will register the disturbance. Then we can catch them as fast as they come out, when they'll be easiest to attack.”
“How about the other Lassan city out in the Black Hills?” asked Ben.
“Would be bad strategy to try to handle them both at once, wouldn't it,” said Sherman, “Still, if you think so …”