The Onslaught from Rigel/Chapter X
All along the line of the American tanks the guns flamed; flame-streaked fountains of dirt leaped up around the dark shape on the opposite hill and a burst of fire came from the farmhouse beside it as a misdirected shell struck it somewhere.
The beam from the unknown enemy snapped off as suddenly as it had come on, leaving, like lightning, an aching of the eyes behind it. Murray Lee swung his tank round, making for the reverse slope of the hill to avoid the light-beam. Crack! The beam came on again—right overhead this time. It flashed through the tree-tops leaving a trail of fire. He heard a torn branch bang on the roof of his tank, manipulated the gun to fire at the source of the beam and discovered that the magazine was empty. As he bent to snap on the automatic shell-feeding device, a searchlight from somewhere lashed out toward the black shape that opposed them, then went off. In the second's glimpse it afforded the enemy appeared as a huge, polished, fish-shaped object, its mirror-like sides unscarred by the bombardment it had passed through, its prow bearing a long, prehensible snout—apparently the source of the light-beam.
Suddenly a shell screamed overhead and the whole scene leaped into dazzling illumination as it burst just between the enemy tanks and their own. It must be a shell from the dodos! The federated armies had no shells that dissolved into burning light like that. Then another and another, a whole chorus of shells, falling in the village behind them. Murray had a better look at their opponent in the light. It seemed to lie flush with the ground; there was no visible means of either support or propulsion. It was all of twenty feet in diameter, widest near the head, tapering backward. The questing snout swung to and fro, fixed its position and discharged another of those lightning-bolts. Off to the right came the answering crash as it caved in the armor of another of the luckless whippets. He aimed his gun carefully at the base of the snout and pulled the trigger; on the side of the monster there appeared a flash of flame as the shell exploded, then a bright smear of metal—a direct hit, and not the slightest damage!
Ben Ruby's voice came through the radiophone, cool and masterful. “Pull out, folks, our guns are no good against that baby. I'm cutting off; radio positions back to the heavy artillery. Put the railroad guns on.”
Murray glanced through the side peep-hole again—one, two, three, four, five—all the American tanks seemed undamaged. The monster had confined its attention to the whippets, apparently imagining they were doing the shooting. He pulled his throttle back, shot the speed up, rumbling down the hill, toward the village. As he looked back, darkness had closed in; the brow of the hill, its rows of trees torn and broken by the light-beam stood between him and the enemy. Before him amid the flaring light of the enemy shells was a stir of movement, the troops seemed to be pulling out also.
The tanks rumbled through the streets of Waterford and came to a halt on a corner behind a stone church which held three machine-gun nests. Murray could see one of the gunners making some adjustment by the light of a pocket torch and a wave of pity for the brave man whose weapon was as useless as a stick swept over him.
A messenger dashed down the street, delivered his missive to someone, and out of the shadows a file of infantry suddenly popped up and began to stream back, getting out of range. Then, surrounded by bursts of artillery fire, illumined by the glare of half a dozen searchlights that flickered restlessly on and off, the strange thing came over the brow of the hill.
It halted for a moment, its snout moving about uneasily as though it were smelling out the way, and as it did so, it was joined by a second. Neither of them seemed to be in the least disturbed by the shells all the way from light artillery to six-inch, that were bursting about them, filling the air with singing fragments. For a moment they stood at ease, then the left-hand one, the one that had led the advance, pointed its snout at the village and discharged one of its flaming bolts. It struck squarely in the center of an old brick house, whose cellar had been turned into a machine-gun nest. With a roar, the building collapsed, a bright flicker of flames springing out of the ruins. As though it were a signal every machine-gun, every rifle in the village opened fire on the impassive shapes at the crest of the hill. The uproar was terrific; even in his steel cage Murray could hardly hear himself think.
The shining monster paid no more attention to it than to the rain. One of them slid gently forward a few yards, turned its trunk toward the spouting trenches, and in short bursts, loosed five quick bolts; there were as many spurts of flame, a few puffs of earth and the trenches became silent, save for one agonized cry, “First aid, for God's sake!”
Ben Ruby's voice came through the microphone. “Retreat everybody. Atlantic City if you can make it.”
With a great, round fear gripping at his heart, Murray Lee threw in the clutch of his machine and headed in the direction he remembered as that of the main road through the town toward Atlantic City. The night had become inky-black; the town was in a valley and the shadow of trees and houses made the darkness even more Stygian. Only by an occasional match or flashlight glare could the way be seen, but such light as there was showed the road already filled with fugitives. Some of them were helmetless, gunless, men in the last extremity of terror, running anywhere to escape from they knew not what.
But through the rout there plowed a little company of infantry, revealed in a shell-burst, keeping tight ranks as though at drill, officers at the head, not flying, but retreating from a lost battle with good heart and confidence, ready to fight again the next day. The dancing beam of a searchlight picked them out for a moment; Murray Lee looked at them and the fear died within him. He slowed up his machine, ran it off the road and out to the left where there seemed to be a clearing that opened in the direction of the town. After all, he could at least observe the progress of the monsters and report on them.
He was astonished to find that he had come nearly a mile from the center of the disturbance. Down there, the glittering monsters, still brightly illumined by searchlight and flare, seemed to be standing still amid the outer houses of the town, perhaps examining the trench system the Australians had dug that afternoon. The gunfire on them had ceased. From time to time one of the things, perhaps annoyed at the pointlessness of what it saw, would swing its trunk around and discharge a light-bolt at house, barn or other object. The object promptly caved in, and if it were wood, began to burn. A little train of the blazing remains of buildings marked the progress of the shining giants, and threw a weird red light over the scene.
One of the things would swing its trunk around and discharge a light-bolt at a house or other object.
Now that he could see them clearly, Murray noted that they were all of fifty or sixty feet long. Their polished sides seemed one huge mirror, bright as glass, and a phosphorescent glow hung about their tails. Along either side was a slender projection like the bilge-keel of a ship, terminating about three quarters of the way along, and with a small dot of the phosphorescence at its tip. They seemed machines rather than animate objects. Murray wondered whether they were, or (remembering his own evolution into a metal man) whether they were actually metal creatures of some unheard-of breed.
As he watched, a battery out beyond the town that had somehow gotten left behind, opened fire. He could see the red flash-flash-flash of the guns as they spoke; hear the explosions of the shells as they rent the ground around the giants. One of them swung impassively toward the battery; there were three quick stabs of living flame, and the guns ceased firing. Murray Lee shuddered—were all man's resources, was all of man, to disappear from the earth? All his high hopes and aspirations, all the centuries of bitter struggle toward culture to be wiped out by these impervious beasts?
He was recalled from his dream by the flash of light at his control board and a voice from the radiophone “… to all units,” came the message. “Railroad battery 14 about to fire on enemy tanks in Waterford. Request observation for corrections … General Stanhope to all units. Railroad battery 14, twelve-inch guns, about to fire on enemy tanks in Waterford. Request observation for correction…”
“Lieut. Lee, American Tank Corps, to General Stanhope,” he called into the phone. “Go ahead with railroad battery 14. Am observing fire from east of town.”
Even before he had finished speaking there was a dull rumble in the air and a tremendous heave of earth behind and to one side of the shining enemy, not two hundred yards away. “Lieut. Lee to railroad battery 14,” he called, delightedly, “two hundred yards over, ten yards right.” Berrrroum! Another of the twelve-inch shells fell somewhere ahead of the giants in the village. As Murray shouted the correction one of the metal creatures lifted its snout toward the source of the explosion curiously and as if it had not quite understood its meaning, fired a light-beam at it. Another shell fell, just to one side. A wild hope surging in him, he called the corrections—these were heavier guns than any that had yet taken a hand.
“Lieut. Lee, American Tank Corps, to railroad battery 14—Suggest you use armor-piercing shell. Enemy tanks appear to be armored,” he called and had the comforting reply. “Check, Lieut. Lee. We are using armor-piercers.” Slam! Another of the twelve-inch shells struck, not ten yards behind the enemy. The ground around them rocked; one of them turned as though to examine the burst, the other lifted its snout skyward and released a long, thin beam of blue light, not in the least like the light-ray. It did not seem to occur to either of them that these shells might be dangerous. They seemed merely interested.
And then—the breathless watchers in the thickets around the doomed town saw a huge red explosion, a great flower of flame that leaped to the heavens, covered with a cloud of thick smoke, pink in the light of the burning houses, and as it cleared away, there lay one of the monsters on its side, gaping and rent, the mirrored surface scarred across, the phosphorescent glow extinguished, the prehensile snout drooping lifelessly. Murray Lee was conscious of whooping wildly, of dancing out of his tank and joining someone else in an embrace of delight. They were not invincible then. They could be hurt—killed!
“Hooray!” he cried, “Hooray!”
“That and twelve times over,” said his companion.
The phrase struck him as familiar; for the first time he looked at his fellow celebrant. It was Gloria.
“Why, where in the world did you come from?” he asked.
“Where did you? I've been here all the time, ever since Ben ordered us home. Didn't think I'd run out on all the fun, did you? Are those things alive?”
“How do I know? They look it but you never can tell with all the junk that comet left around the earth. They might be just some new kind of tank full of dodos.”
“Yeh, but—” The buzzing roar of one of the light-rays crashing into a clump of trees not a hundred yards away, recalled them to themselves. Gloria looked up, startled. The other monster was moving slowly forward, systematically searching the hillside with its weapon.
“Say, boy friend,” she said, “I think it's time to go away from here. See you at high mass.”
But the conference at headquarters in Hammonton that night was anything but cheerful.
“It comes to this, then,” said General Grierson, the commander-in-chief of the expedition. “We have nothing that is effective against these dodo tanks but the twelve-inch railroad artillery, using armor-piercing shell and securing a direct hit. Our infantry is worse than useless; the tanks are useless, the artillery cannot get through the armor of these things, although it damages the enemy artillery in the back areas.”
Ben Ruby rubbed a metal chin. “Well, that isn't quite all, sir. One of the American tanks was hit and came through—damaged I will admit. The lightning, or light-ray these dodos threw, penetrated the outer skin but not the inner. We could build more tanks of this type.”
General Grierson drummed on the table. “And arm them with what? You couldn't mount a twelve-inch gun in a tank if you wanted to, and we haven't any twelve-inch guns to spare.”
One of the staff men looked up. “Has airplane bombing been tried on these—things. It seems to me that a one or two-thousand pound bomb would be as effective as a twelve-inch shell.”
“That was tried this afternoon,” said the head of the air service, with an expression of pain. “The 138th bombing squadron attacked a group of these tanks. Unfortunately, the tanks kept within range of their light-ray artillery and the entire squadron was shot down.”
“Mmm,” said the staff man. “Let's add up the information we have secured so far and see where it leads. Now first they have a gun which shoots a ray which is effective either all along its length or when put up in packages like a shell, and is rather like a bolt of lightning in its effect. Any deductions from that?”
“Might be electrical,” said someone.
“Also might not,” countered Walter Beeville. “Remember the Melbourne's turret. No electrical discharge would produce chemical changes like that in Krupp steel.”
“Second,” said the officer, “they appear to have three main types of fighting machines or individuals. First, there are the dodos themselves. We know all about them, and our airplanes can beat them. Good… Second, there is their artillery—a large type that throws a beam of this emanation and a smaller type which throws it in the form of shells. Thirdly, there are these—tanks, which may themselves be the individuals we are fighting. They are capable of projecting these discharges to a short distance—something over four thousand yards, and apparently do not have the power of projecting it in a prolonged beam, like their artillery. They are about fifty feet long, fish-shaped, heavily armored and have some unknown method of propulsion. Check me if I'm wrong at any point.”
“The projection of these lightning-rays would seem to indicate they are machines,” offered General Grierson hopefully.
“Not on your life,” said Beeville, “think of the electric eel.”
“As I was saying,” said the staff man, “our chief defect seems a lack of information, and—”
General Grierson brought his fist down on the table. “Gentlemen!” he said. “This discussion is leading us nowhere. It's all very well to argue about the possibilities of man or machine in time of peace and at home, but we are facing one of the greatest dangers the earth has ever experienced, and must take immediate measures. Unless someone has something more fruitful to develop than this conference has provided thus far, I shall be forced to order the re-embarkation of what remains of the army and sail for home. My duty is to the citizens of the federated governments, and I cannot uselessly sacrifice more lives. Our supply of railroad artillery is utterly inadequate to withstand the numbers of our adversaries. Has anyone anything to offer?”
There was a silence around the conference table, a silence pregnant with a heavy sense of defeat, for no one of them but could see the General was right.
But at that moment there came a tap at the door. “Come,” called General Grierson. An apologetic under-officer entered. “I beg your pardon, sir, but one of the iron Americans is here and insists that he has something of vital importance for the General. He will not go away without seeing you.”
“All right. Bring him in.”
There stepped into the room another of the mechanical Americans, but a man neither Ben Ruby nor Beeville had ever seen before. A stiff wire brush of moustache stood out over his mouth; he wore no clothes but a kind of loin-cloth made, apparently, of a sheet. The metal plates of his powerful body glittered in the lamp-light as he stepped forward. “General Grierson?” he inquired, looking from one face to another.
“I am General Grierson.”
“I'm Lieutenant Herbert Sherman of the U. S. Army Air Service. I have just escaped from the Lassans and came to offer you my services. I imagine your technical men might wish to know how they operate their machines and what would be effective against them, and I think I can tell you.”