Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 Part 8

The aero-sub circled the swaying dreadnought as a shark circles a wreck, and through the walls of the aero-sub the watchers in the Secret Room could see the four-man crew of the thing. Grim faced men, men of the Orient they plainly were, coldly concentrating on the work in hand.

Their faces were those of men who are merciless, even brutal, with neither heart nor compa.s.sion of any kind for weaker ones. One man maneuvered the aero-sub, while the other three concentrated on the apparatus in the nose of the hybrid vessel.

"See," spoke Prester Kleig again, "if you can tell what manner of ray they use, and how it is projected. That's your province, General Munson!"

From the particular Secret Agent named, who was expert for war in the membership of the Secret Room, came a short grunt of affirmation. A few murmured words.

"I'll be able to tell more about it when I see how they operate when they are flying. That black streak under water ... well, I must see it out of the water, and then...."

But here General Munson ended, for the aero-sub which they were especially watching had got into action against the dreadnought.

The aero-sub was motionless and submerged just off the port bow of the dreadnought. The three men inside the aero-sub were working swiftly and efficiently with the complicated but minute machinery in the nose of their transport.

"It can be controlled, then, this ray," said Munson, interrupting himself. "Watch!"

From the nose of the aero-sub leaped, like a streak of black lightning, that ebon agency of death. It struck the prow of the battleship--and the prow, as far aft as the well-deck, simply vanished from sight, disintegrated! It was as though it had never been, and for a second, so swiftly had it happened, the water of the ocean held the impression that portion of the warship had made--as an explosive leaves a crater in the soil of earth!

Then a drumming roar as the sea rushed in to claim its own. The roaring, as of a Niagara, as the waters claimed the ship, rushing down pa.s.sageways into the hold, possessing the warship with all the invincible, speedy might of the sea.

Mingled with this roaring was the shivering, vibratory sound which Prester Kleig had experienced in his half-dream. The sound was so intense that it fairly rocked the Secret Room to its furthermost cranny.

For a second the dreadnought, wounded to death, seemed to shudder, to hesitate, then to move backward as though wincing from her death blow.

It was the pound of the inrushing waters which did it. Then up came the stern of the mighty ship, as she started her last long plunge into the depths.

But attention had swung to another warship, on the starboard beam of which another aero-sub had taken up position. Again the ebon streak of death from her blunt nose, smashing in and through the warship, directly amidships, cutting her in twain as though the black streak had been a pair of shears, the warship a strip of tissue paper.

Up went the prow and the stern of this one, and together, the water separating the two parts as it rushed into the gap, the broken warship went down to its final resting place.

Abruptly Professor Maniel swung back to the American planes which had come back to investigate the activities of the aero-subs, and on the screen, in the midst of the battle formation into which the pilots had swept to hurriedly, the Secret Agents could see the faces of those pilots....

White as chalk with fear, mouths open in gasping unbelief. One man, a pale-faced youth, was the first to recover. He stared around at his compatriots, and plainly through the sound apparatus in the Secret Room came his swift radio signals.

"Attack! Who will follow me against these people?"

His signals were very plain. So, too, were the answers of the other pilots, and the heart of Prester Kleig swelled with pride as he listened to the answering signals--and counted them, discovered that every last pilot there present elected to stay with this youngster, to avenge their country for this contemptuous insult which had been put upon her by the rape of Hampton Roads.

Into swift formation they swept, and with these planes--all planes in use were required by franchise of operating companies to be equipped for the emergencies of war--swung into an echelon formation, the youthful pilot leading by mutual consent.

They swept at full speed toward the warships, four of which had by this time been sent to destruction--one of which had appeared to vanish utterly in the s.p.a.ce of a single heartbeat, so quickly that for a second or two the shape of its bilge, the bulge of its keel, was visible in the face of the deep--and openly challenged the aero-subs.

Muzzles of compressed air guns projected from the wing-tips of the planes. b.u.t.tons were pressed which elevated the muzzles of guns arranged to fire upward from either side the fighting pits, twin guns that were fired downward from the same central magazine--the only guns in use in the Americas which fired in opposite directions at the same time.

But for a few moments the aero-subs refused combat. Their speed was terrific, dazzling. They eluded the thrusts, the dives and plunges of the American ships as easily as a swallow eludes the dive of a buzzard.

It came to Prester Kleig, however, that the aero-subs were merely playing with the Americans; that when they elected to move, the planes would be blasted from the sky as easily as the warships were being erased from the surface of the Atlantic.

One by one, as methodically as machines, the aero-sub pilots blasted the warships into nothingness. They had their orders, and they went about their performance with a rigidity of discipline which astounded the Secret Agents. They had been ordered to destroy the warships, and they were doing that first--would go on to completion of this task, no matter how many American planes buzzed about their ears.

But one by one as the warships sank, the aero-subs which had either sunk or erased them made the surface and leaped into s.p.a.ce with a snapping back of wings that was horribly businesslike as to sound, and climbed up to take part in the fight against the American planes, which must inevitably come.

The last warship, cut squarely in two from stem to stern along her center, as though split thus by a bolt of lightning, fell apart like pieces of cake, and splashed down, sinking away while the spume of her disintegration rolled back from her fallen sides in white-crested waves.

"It exemplifies the policies of Moyen," said Prester Kleig, "for his conquest of the world is a conquest of destruction."

The last aero-sub took to the sky, and the Americans rushed into battle with fine disregard for what they knew must be certain death. They were not fools, exactly, and they had seen, but not understood, the manner in which those gallant old hounds of the sea had been erased from existence.

But in they went, plunging squarely into the heart of the aero-subs'

leading formation, which formation consisted of three aero-subs, flying a wing and wing formation.

The young American signaled with upraised hand, and the American pilots made their first move. Every plane started rolling, at dazzling speed, on the axis of its fuselage, while bullets spewed from the guns that fired through the propellers.

Bullets smashed into the leading aero-subs, with no apparent effect, though for a second it seemed that the central aero-sub of the leading formation hesitated for a moment in flight.

Then, swift as had that black streak flashed from the nose of aero-subs submerged, a streak darted from the nose of the central aero-sub, and glistened in the sun like molten gold!

It touched the youngster who had called for volunteers for his attack against this strange enemy. It touched his plane--and the plane vanished instantly, while for a fraction of a second the pilot was visible in his place, in the posture of sitting, hand on a row of b.u.t.tons which did not exist, head forward slightly as he aimed guns that had vanished.

Then the pilot, still living, apparently unhurt, plunged down eight thousand feet to the sea. The water geysered up as he struck, then closed over the spot, and the gallant American youngster had become the first victim in battle of the monsters of Moyen.

Victim of a slender lancet of what seemed to be golden lightning.

"He could have killed the pilot aloft there," came quietly from Munson, "but he chose to pull his plane away from around him! Their control of the ray is miraculous!"

As though to confirm the statement of Munson, the leading aero-sub struck again, a second plane. The plane vanished, but from the spot where it had flown, not even a bit of metal or of man sufficiently large to be seen by the delicate recording instruments of Maniel dropped out of the sky.

The ray of gold was a ray of oblivion if the minions of Moyen willed.

CHAPTER VIII

_Charmion_

"Prester Kleig," came suddenly into the Secret Room the voice of far distant Moyen, "you will at once make a change in your rules regarding the admission of other than Secret Agents to the Secret Room. You will at once see that Charmion Kane, sister of your friend, is allowed to enter!"

"G.o.d Almighty!" A cry of agony from the lips of Prester Kleig. He had not forgotten Charmion, but simply had had to move so swiftly that he had put her out of his mind. For a year he had not seen her, and an hour or two more could not matter greatly.