It was Monitor VII, manned by the Chicagoans, which had the honor of sighting the enemy. Just as the twilight of a bright May day was closing down over the radio men at the Philadelphia airport, the static detector marked an unusual disturbance, then two quick shocks, which must have come from the patrol's bow beam. In quick succession, the other five, standing ready on their starting ramps, took in their crews, and roared up and away in a torrent of explosions at a thousand miles an hour.
Soaring to fifty thousand feet above the earth, the squadron of rocket-ships made its way north, Monitor II in the lead.
“Well, here we go,” called Gloria, gaily, from her seat behind the searchlight. “Hope they don't give us the run-around this time.”
“They won't have the chance,” said Ben. “That is, provided those Chicago boys have sense enough to remember their instructions and let them alone till we all get there. With six of these ships we ought to be able to rough 'em up a little bit.”
At a speed of over a thousand miles an hour, thanks to the thinness of the atmosphere through which they were traveling, it was only a few minutes' hop from Philadelphia to the Catskill city of the elephant-men. Ben had hardly finished speaking before Sherman called from the control seat, “There they are!”
Far beneath, half revealed, half-hidden by the few tiny clouds of fleece that hung at the lower altitudes, they could see the naked scar in the hills that marked the Lassan headquarters. Around it floated half a dozen of the huge green balls they had encountered on the last occasion. As they swept by, another one, looking like a grape at the immense distance, trundled slowly out from the enormous door, swung to and fro for a second or two and then swam up to join those already in the sky.Monitor VII was to the north and above them—as she perceived the American fleet she swept down to join the formation, falling into her prearranged place.
“Do we go now?” asked Sherman.
“Not yet,” said Ben. “Give them all a chance to get out. The more the merrier. I'd like to finish the job this time. We can't get in that door, and if we did the rocket-ships would be no use to us in those passages, and they're the best we've got. Besides they're playing snooty too, and aren't paying a bit of attention to us. I hope they intend to fight it out to a finish this time.”
They turned north, giving the Lassans time to assemble their fleet. “What's the arrangement?” asked Gloria. “Do we all go for them at once?”
“No. We dive in first and the rest follow behind, pulling up before they get in range. If anything happens to us, they'll rescue us—if they can. You see we don't know what they've got any more than they know what we've got, and I thought it would be a good idea to try the first attack with only one ship. In a pinch the rest can get away—if the Lassans haven't developed a lot of speed on those green eggs of theirs.”
“How many now?” asked Sherman, from the controls, as the squadron swung back southward and the scarred mountain swam over the horizon again.
“Two—five—nine—eleven—oh, I can't count them all,” said Gloria, “they keep changing formation so. There's a lot of them and they're coming up toward us, but slowly. They haven't got that blue beam at the base any more, either—you know the one that globe we got after was riding on.”
As they approached it was indeed evident that the green globes were rising slowly through the twilight in some kind of loose formation. It was too complex for the American observers to follow in the brief glimpses they were vouchsafed as they swept past at hurricane speed. There seemed to be dozens of the Lassan globes; as though they expected to overwhelm opposition by mere force of numbers. Nearer and nearer came the rocket-ships, nearer and nearer loomed the sinister Lassan globes, betraying no signs of life, silent and ominous.
“Go?” called Sherman from his seat at the controls.
“Go!” said Ben.
The Monitor II dived; and as she dived, Gloria Rutherford switched on the deadly beam of the searchlight which would carry the gravity-beam against their enemies. For a moment it sought the green globes; then caught one fairly. Ben Ruby threw the switch; and down the light beam leaped the terrible stream of the broken atoms like a wave of death. Leaped—and failed!
For as it struck the green globe, instead of the rending explosion and the succeeding collapse, there came only a bright handful of stars, a coruscating display of white fire that dashed itself around the Lassan ship like foam on some coast-rock. It reeled backward, driven from its position under the tremendous shock of the sundered atoms, but it remained intact.
“Well, I'm a son-of-a-gun!” declared Sherman, as he put the Monitor into a spiral climb at nine hundred miles an hour to avoid any counter-attack. “If they haven't found a gravity screen! I didn't think it was possible. Goes to show you you never can tell, especially with Lassans. Look out folks, here comes the gaff, I'm going to loop!”
For as he spoke the formation of green globes had opened out—swiftly by ordinary standards, though slowly in comparison with the frantic speed of the American rocket-vessel. From half a dozen of them the racking yellow ray of infra-sound leaped forth to seek the audacious ship that had attacked them single-handed. All round her they stabbed the atmosphere, striking the few clouds and driving them apart in a fine spray of rain, but missing the Monitor as she twisted and heaved at frantic speed.
Twenty miles away and high in the air they pulled up to recover themselves.
“And that,” Sherman went on with his interrupted observation, “explains why they aren't using those blue beams for support any more. Of course a gravity screen that would work against our beam would work against the gravity of the earth just as well. They must have some way of varying its effect, though. They aren't rising very fast and haven't got much speed.”
“Probably the Lassans can't stand the acceleration,” suggested Murray.
“Probably you're right. They can't have less than one Lassan in each globe… Of course, they might control them by radio, with the thought-helmets and have the crews all robots, but that wouldn't be a Lassan way of doing things. And I doubt if they'd think radio safe, anyhow, even if they know about it, of which I'm not sure. We're shedding any amount of static around, and would play merry hell with most any radio. Wish I knew how they worked that gravity screen, though. I'll bet a boat-load of Monitors against a thought-helmet that it's magnetic.”
“Wish we had some way to signal the rest of the fleet,” said Ben, as they swung into their position at the head of the formation again. “I don't want them pushing in there with the gravity-beam if it isn't going to do any good.”
Murray laughed. “They'll find it out soon enough. I think we've got plenty speed to beat those infra-sound rays, too. If that's as strong as they come, we've got 'em licked.”
“Don't crow yet, boy friend,” said Gloria. “You don't know what those babies have up their sleeves—excuse me, their trunks.”
As the American fleet formed for a mass attack, the Lassan globes had been rising, and now they were a bare five thousand feet below the rocket-cruisers, swinging along at a height of 25,000 feet above the earth in the last rays of the setting sun. As the green globes rose they took their places in a formation like an enormous crescent, the ends of which were extended as each new globe came up to join it.
“Looks like they want to get us in the middle and pop us from all directions at once,” observed Sherman. “Well, here goes. Pick the end of the line; that's our best chance. How's your potential, Gloria?”
“O. K., chief,” she answered. “Lightning this time?”
He nodded. The rockets of the Monitor II roared; its prow dipped forward, and at an incredible speed it swept down on the line of Lassan warships, followed by the rest of the American fleet. But it was no surprise this time. As the monitors plunged in, from every green globe that could bring them to bear, the long yellow rays shot forth. Right through them the Monitor II plunged; the grate of it, even through their double coating of armor and the vacuum chambers, set their teeth on edge; then the rocket-ship was pointing directly down at one of the Lassans and Gloria snapped the key that released the artificial lightning.
A jagged beam of flame, intenser than the hottest furnace, leaped through the air, struck the green globe, and sought the earth in a thousand tiny rivulets of light. For just a second the globe seemed unharmed; then slowly, and almost majestically, it began to dissolve in mid-air, spouting flames at every pore. Fully ten miles down and beyond, the Monitor turned again, and not till then did the sound of the explosion reach them, a terrific, rending thunder-clap.
“See that?” cried Sherman. “That formation of theirs isn't so dumb. They've got it all ranged out; none of our ships can get at them without coming through at least one of those yellow rays, and if we stay in them too long—blooie!”
They peered through the windows at the formation. Off at one side, they could make out the forms of two more rocket-ships, outlined against the sky, while behind and above them pursued by the searching yellow beams, came the rest. As they turned, they saw the gravity-beam shoot from one of the American ships, crumple uselessly against a green globe. Then they plunged in, again, firing the gravity beam earthward to work up the potential for another lightning discharge.
The hills below rocked and roared to the repeated shock. Trees fell in crashing ruin as lightning-bolt or infra-sound shivered them to bits; great cars of burned earth and molten rock marked the spots where the gravity-beam struck the ground. All round was a maze of yellow rays, lightning flashes, and green globes that reeled, rose, fell, sometimes blowing up, sometimes giving ground, but always fighting back sternly and vigorously and always rising through the clear spring evening.
Murray Lee, at the rear of the ship, was the only one to see an American rocket-ship, caught and held for a few fatal moments by two yellow rays, slowly divest itself of its outer armor, then of its inner, and go whirling to the earth, dissolved into its ultimate fragments by those irresistible pennons of sound.
Gloria Rutherford at the prow was the only one to see another caught bow-on in a yellow ray, reply by firing its gravity-beam right down the ray and into the green globe through the port from which the ray had issued. The ray went out—a spreading spot of flame appeared at the port and the great green globe crumpled into a little ball of flame before her eyes. But such events as these were the merest flashes in the close-locked combat. For the most part they had time to do nothing but handle the controls, throw switches to and fro, shoot forth gravity-beam and lightning-flash in endless alternation at the Lassan ships of which there always appeared to be one more right before them as Sherman twisted and turned theMonitor with a skill that was almost uncanny.
Suddenly he pulled out; the four looked round. They were miles high; below half hidden in the dusk, were the red and brown roofs of a city. Far away on the horizon the battle still roared; a rolling cloud of smoke now, shot with the vivid fires of the American lightning flashes. The wings of their ship were spread; they were soaring gently earthward without the application of the rocket power.
“Had to get away for a minute,” Sherman explained. “We were heating up from the speed. My God, but we're high up; at least 45,000 feet!”
“Yes, and getting higher,” Ben pointed out. “Those green globes must be headed for the moon.”
“Do you know, I wouldn't be a bit surprised but what you're right,” replied Sherman, “I'll bet an oil-ball against the whole Lassan city that they think we can't navigate space and they're trying to get above us and then hang around and pop us when we have to land. Well, come on gang, let's get back.”
He shot the wings in again, worked the controls, and they headed back toward the conflict.
It was less of a turmoil now, more of an ordered swing, charge, pass and charge again against the diminishing number of the Lassan globes. Of the American rocket-ships Gloria could now count but two beside their own. One she had seen break up; whether the others, badly damaged, had hauled out for repairs, or whether, riven by the deadly yellow ray, they had gone crashing to the earth, there was no way of knowing. But the Lassans were not escaping unharmed; there were hardly a third as many as at the beginning and even as they approached another one disappeared in the vivid flash of the rocket's lightnings. Still the rest rose steadily on, going straight up as though they indeed hoped to escape their tormentors by rising to the moon.
They dived in: Gloria pressed the lightning key and another Lassan globe blew up; then they were climbing again. Beneath them the night had come. The earth was a dark mass, far down, and from that enormous distance looked slightly dished out at the edges. But though the earth was dark, at that ultimate height of the atmosphere the sun had not yet set. Still the strange fight went on, higher and higher. The roar of the exhaust explosions died away behind them and Murray looked questioningly at Sherman.
“Out this far, there isn't much air,” he said. “Takes air to conduct sound. Wonder what they're up to, anyway. All right, Gloria.”
He dived at another Lassan and she pressed the lightning ray; but this time there was no flash, no flaming Lassan ship falling in ruins to the ground.
“Who'd have thought it!” said Sherman, as he swung the Monitor round after the charge. “Of course—we're up so high that we've made a spark gap that even lightning won't jump. But I don't get their idea; those sound rays won't be any good out here, either.”