The bare area seemed to run all down a long valley and spread out as it rounded the crest of a hill which hid what lay behind it from their view. As they watched a grey speck that might have been an ant at that height and distance, lumbered slowly down the valley, and then Ben noticed a tiny flicker of red light, so bright as to be clearly visible even in the day, where the grey speck moved against the hillside. A door seemed to open in the hillside; focusing the glasses the aviator handed him, he could just make out a square, bulky object that trundled forth. And then one—two—three—four—five of the huge dodo-tetrapteryx birds shot out, poised for a moment, and leaped into flight.
“Hello, Brisbane,” called Ben into the radiophone. “Five dodos have taken off from the cutting in the hills. I think they are after us. Better turn back this way and get ready for trouble.”
The aviator, understanding without being warned, had turned the plane. Ben swung round to look over his shoulder. The dodos were already some yards in the air; behind them the bulky object was running slowly out of the opening in the hillside. It had the appearance of a very long, flexible cannon. As he held his glasses on it, it stopped, straightened out and the muzzle was elevated in their direction.
“Dive!” he shouted suddenly into the voice-tube, entirely on impulse. The airplane banked sharply and seemed to drop straight down, and at the same instant right through the spot where they had just passed shot a beam of light so brilliant that it outshone the morning sun. There was a roar louder than that of the motor; the plane pitched and heaved in the disturbed air, and the light-beam went off as suddenly as it had snapped on.
“Didn't I tell you those babies were poison?” he remarked. “Boy, if that ever hit us!”
“What was it?” asked the aviator's voice.
“Don't know, but it was something terrible. Let's head for home and mamma. I don't care about this.”
The plane reeled as the pilot handled the controls. Rrrr! said something and the light-beam shot out again, just to one side this time. Out of the corner of his eye Ben could see one of the birds—gaining on them!
“How do you work this machine-gun?” he asked.
“Just squeeze the trigger. Look out! I'm going to dive her again.”
With a roar, the light-beam let go a third time. Ben saw the edge of it graze their right wing-tip; the airplane swung wildly round and down, with the pilot fighting for control; the earth seemed to rush up to meet them, tumbling, topsy-turvy. Ben noted a warped black spot where the beam had touched the wing-tip, then surprisingly, they were flying along, level with the surface of the Hudson beneath them, and hardly a hundred feet up.
“That was close,” came the aviator's voice, shaky with relief. “I thought they had us that time. Say, that's some ray they have.”
“It sure is one first-class heller,” agreed Ben. “Are you far enough down to duck it now?”
“I think so, unless they can put it through the hills or chase us with it. Do you suppose those dodos thought that up themselves?”
“Can't tell. They're right on their toes, though. Look!” He pointed up and back. Silhouetted against the sky, they could see three of them, flying in formation like airplanes. “Can we make it?”
“I'm giving the old bus all she'll stand. The Brisbane will come toward us though. Wait till those guys get going. They'll find we can take a trick or two.”
Yonkers again. Ben looked anxiously over his shoulder. The three silhouettes were a trifle nearer. Would they do it? 125th Street and the long bridge swung into view, then Riverside Drive and the procession of docks with the rusting liners lying beside them. Ben waggled the machine-gun, tried to adjust its sights and squeezed the trigger. A little line of smoke-puffs leaped forth. Tracer bullets—but nowhere near the birds. On and on—lower New York—the Battery. Wham! The water beneath and behind them boiled. Ben looked up. The birds were above them, too high to be reached, dropping bombs.
“All right, old soaks,” he muttered, “keep that up. You'll never hit us that way.”
Again something struck the water beneath them. The airplane pitched and swerved as the pilot changed course to disturb the aim of the bombers. In the distance the form of the cruiser could be seen now, heading toward them. As he watched, there was a flash from her foredeck. Up in the blue above them appeared the white burst of a shell, then another and another.
One of the dodos suddenly dived out of the formation, sweeping down more swiftly than Ben would have believed possible. He swung the gun this way and that, sending out streams of tracers, but the bird did not appear to heed. Closer—closer—and then with a crash something burst right behind him. The airplane gyrated; the water rushed upward. The end? he thought, and wondered inconsequentially whether his teeth would rust. The next moment the water struck them.
When Ben Ruby came to, he beheld a ceiling which moved jerkily to and fro and stared lazily at it, wondering what it was. Then memory returned with a snap; he sat up and looked about him. He was in one of those cubby-holes which are called “cabins” on warships, and alone. Beneath him he could hear the steady throb of the engines; at his side was a small table with a wooden rack on it, in one compartment of which stood a glass, whose contents, on inspection, proved to be oil. He drank it, looked at and felt of himself, and finding nothing wrong, got out of the hammock and stepped to the door. A seaman was on guard in the corridor.
“Where is everybody?”
“On deck, sir. I hope you are feeling all right now sir.”
“Top of the world, thanks. Is the aviator O.K.?”
“Yes, sir. This way.”
He ascended to the bridge, to be greeted riotously by the assembled company. TheBrisbane was steaming steadily along in the open sea, with no speck of land in sight and no traces of the giant birds.
“What happened?” Ben asked. “Did you get rid of 'em?”
“I think so. We shot down two and the rest made off after trying to bomb us. What did you two find out?”
Ben briefly described their experiences. “I thought there was something wrong with one of your wingtips,” said the captain, “but your plane sank so quickly after being hit that we didn't have time to examine it. That light-ray cannon of theirs sounds serious. Do you suppose the dodos managed it?”
“Can't tell,” said Ben. “From what I could make out through the glasses, it didn't look like birds that were handling it.”
“But what could it be?”
“Ask me! Delirium tremens, I guess. Nothing in this world is like what it ought to be any more. Where did those birds come from; how did we get this way, all of us; who is it up there in the Catskills that don't like us? Answer me those and I'll tell you who was handling the gun.”
“Message, sir,” said a sailor, touching his cap, and handing a folded paper. The captain read it, frowning.
“There you are—” he extended the sheet to Ben. “My government is recalling all ships. Our sister-ship, the Melbourne, has been attacked off San Francisco and severely damaged by bomb-dropping dodos, and they have made a mass descent on Sumatra. Gentlemen, this has all the characteristics of a formal war.” He strode off to give the necessary orders to hurry the cruiser home, but Walter Beeville, who had joined the group at the bridge, said under his breath:
“If those birds have enough intelligence to plan out anything like that I'll eat my hat.”
“If you were not before my eyes,” said Sir George Graham Harris, president of the Australian Scientific Commission, “as living proof of what you say, and if our biological and metallurgical experts did not report that your physiology is utterly beyond their comprehension, I do not know but that I would believe you were some cleverly constructed machines, actuated in some way by radio. However, that is not the point … I have here a series of reports from different quarters on such explorations as have been made since the arrival of the comet and our recovery from its effects. We are, it appears, confronted with a menace of considerable seriousness in the form of these birds.
“In the light of your closer acquaintance with them and with conditions generally in the devastated areas, they may be more suggestive to you than to us.” He stopped and ruffled over the papers piled beside him at the big conference table. He was a kindly old gentleman, whose white Van Dyke and pale blue lips contrasted oddly with the almost indigo tint of his visage (before the comet it had been a rich wine-red, the result of a lifelong devotion to brandy and soda). Smiling round the table at his scientific colleagues and at Ben, Murray, Gloria and Beeville, who occupied the position of honor, he went on:
“I give you mainly excerpts… The first is from the South African government. They have … hm, hm … sent an aerial expedition northward, all lines of communication appearing to be broken. At Nairobi, they report for the first time, finding a town entirely unoccupied and its inhabitants turned into cast-metal statues … Addis Ababa the same … Wadi Hafa likewise. Twenty miles north of Wadi Hafa they noted the first sign of life—a bird of some kind at a considerable distance to the west of them and flying parallel with them and very rapidly.”
The scientist looked up. “It would appear beyond doubt that this bird belonged to the species we call dodos and to which Dr. Beeville has given the excellent scientific name, tetrapteryx… As the expedition proceeded northward, they encountered more of them; sometimes as many as four being in sight at one time. At Alexandria, where they halted for supplies, the dodos closed in. When the expedition took the air again with the object of flying to Crete and thence to Europe, these remarkable avians came very close, apparently trying to turn the expedition back. They reached Crete that afternoon, in spite of the interference of the birds, but that night were actively attacked on the ground. The phenomena that accompanied all other attacks were observed; the birds used incendiary bombs of great intensity. One machine was entirely destroyed with its aviators. The others, since their object was exploration, at once took to the air and returned.
“Any comments, gentlemen? No? Well the next is the report of the Dutch shipCorlaer, which attempted to reach Japan. She was permitted to proceed to within a few miles of the islands, and then began to receive light-warnings in the sky, such as Captain Entwhistle reports. Unfortunately they were in Japanese characters and there was no one aboard who could read them. She put in at the port of Nagasaki and sent out a landing party. It never returned; as in the other cases the ship was bombed at night and only made Sumatra with the greatest difficulty, one of the bombs having fallen on the quarter-deck, wrecking the steering-gear and causing extensive internal damage…
“There are minor reports with which I will not bother you. But the report of H. M. A. S. Melbourne appears highly significant. She touched at several South American ports. In the cities she reports finding all life at a standstill, although at Iquique, the landing party encountered some hill-Indians who had suffered a bluing of the blood similar to ours, and who proved distinctly unfriendly. They are reported as engaged in looting the city and getting drunk on the contents of the bodegas.
“North of Callao she found no signs of life until she reached San Pedro Bay. There a man was observed to be waving from the beach. The Melbourne put in and launched a boat, but before it reached shore, one of the birds made its appearance overhead and the man disappeared into the trees and was not seen again. From the ship he appeared to be a mechanical man, such as you. Shortly afterward, theMelbourne began to see the dodos constantly, and at the region of San Francisco, she saw one of the light signals. The wording of it was: 'DEPART AWAY FAREWELL FOREVER.'”
Gloria stirred and Sir George looked at her with mild eyes. “Nothing, sir. I was just thinking that these dodos are uncommonly poetical. They told us to fly from the accursed place.”
“Yes, yes… Naturally the Melbourne, not anticipating any trouble as the result of a refusal to obey this absurd command, did not heed the warning, and steamed into the bay. Like the other ships she was attacked at night. One of the bombs fell on the fire-control station and wrecked it, bringing down the tripod mast and fusing the top of the conning tower. She got under way immediately and replied with all guns, but before escaping number three turret was struck by another bomb and all the men in the turret were killed. The roof of the turret was driven in and even the breeches of the guns melted… That, I think, summarizes the reports we have. We have seen a little of the birds, mostly at a distance, and they appear to have carried off several individuals, especially in Sumatra. I am afraid that is all we can offer.”
There was a moment's silence.
“Well, what the material in the bombs is I can't say,” said Ben, “but they know all about projecting it from guns in the form of a beam. I told you about my experience in company with the aviator from the Brisbane?”
“The eggs Roberts found, too,” said Gloria.
“Oh, yes, Dr. Beeville can tell you about that.”
“Why, there's nothing much to it,” said the scientist. “One of our people found what appeared to be a nest of these birds in a building. The nest was built of soft cloths and contained large eggs, but when the place was revisited the eggs had been removed… I may say that I have examined the remains of one rather badly mangled specimen. The brain-case is extraordinarily large—larger than I have ever seen in any animal, and they appear to be of a high order of intelligence.
“On the other hand I should certainly put the use and control of such a material as these bombs contain beyond their powers. And the fact that the nest was found in a building would indicate that the headquarters in the Catskills were used by some other and higher intelligence which was separate from and perhaps in control of these birds. Moreover, they do not appear to wish to destroy us mechanical men, but to carry us off, and the messages seen by the ships seem to indicate that the intelligence behind these birds is capable of reading and understanding English. I cannot conceive that the birds themselves would be able to do this.
“Further, there is the very strong evidence of the gun which fired on Mr. Ruby. In every case where these birds have attacked man, they have used bombs of this material put up in portable form, although the gun would have been much more effective. It would have gone right through the Melbourne or the Brisbane like a red-hot poker through a board. From this I argue that the birds are directed rather than directing, and that the directing intelligence is either too indolent or too contemptuous of us to attack man except through their agency. Finally, I deduce that we are dealing with some powerful and as yet unknown form of life. What it is or how it reached the earth, I am not prepared to say.”
“Wunnerful,” said Gloria irreverently, and a smile passed across the faces of the conferees.
“But what are the bombs made of and what makes them tick?” asked Murray Lee.
“That is a question to which I would very much like to know the answer,” said Sir George, stroking his white beard. “Perhaps Mr. Nasmith, our chemical member, will be good enough to give us something on the point.”
“Not much,” said Nasmith, a lantern-jawed man with black hair. “We made a chemical analysis of the portions of the Melbourne which had been struck by the bombs, and all we can say is that it gave a most extraordinary result. These portions were originally made of Krupp armor steel, as you know. Our analysis showed the presence of a long series of chemical elements, including even gold and thorium, most of them in minute quantities. Titanium appeared to be the leading constituent after iron.”
“Then,” said Sir George, “the situation appears to be this. We don't know what the dodos are or what is behind them, but they have possession of a large part of the world to which they are disposed to forbid us any access. They have powerful weapons and the intelligence to use them, and they appear to be unfriendly. I suggest that the sense of this meeting is that the government should take immediate measures of investigation and if necessary, of hostility.”
“Swell,” said Gloria, “only you didn't go half far enough. We've been there and you haven't. You want to get the best guns you've got and go for them right away.”
There was a murmur of approval. As Sir George rose to put the question to a vote there came a knock at the door. Heads were turned to greet a young man who hurried to the president and whispered something. Sir George turned to the meeting with a startled face.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “the dodos are bombing Canberra, the capital of Australia, and are being engaged by the Australian air force.”