Raiders Invisible Part 4

As it came down, the creamy liquid in the dome above the cage began to swirl slowly, then to froth and boil and whip round and round, while thick, dropsical bubbles slid up from its heaving surface and burst, discharging a kind of grayish mist, under which the white substance sank, until there was nothing left in the dome but drab-colored vapor.

On the completion of this stage, the layers of tubes below warmed into life. They glowed with a soft vari-colored brightness that filled the cage with a golden splendor and seemed to rim each one of the watching men with fire.

"See you, Kashtanov," came Istafiev's voice. "The refractive index, lowered to that of air to produce invisibility, iss being raised again--all through a simple adaptation of Roentgen's theories! The substance above, mark, in the dome, which this morning you saw affect Zenalishin's blood and the pigment of his hair so that the vibrations would render his colorless tissues transparent, iss now reversing.

Soon--see!--already he becomes visible!"

Something was growing in the heart of the ribbons of color, and Chris strained his shrouded eyes to discern what it was.

Black lines, standing out in the dazzling welter of light--lines that grew and became more solid as he peered at them--lines that were shaping into a recognizable form, the form of a man's skeleton!

The effect was that of an X-ray. A skeleton hung in the cage, held steady by the cords around its arms, its naked skull with yawning eye-pits grinning out at the four men in the room. Soon other details became visible: black lumps that were organs, the web of fine thin lines that were veins; and then a hazy, ghostly outline of flesh that quickly a.s.sumed solidity, burying the bones and veins and organs which had been first apparent.

And all the time the dynamo was filling the hut with its sweeping drone, and the million points of light flung from the intercrossing flame-tongues inside the cage were dancing madly on the walls and floor and ceiling, making the whole scene unreal, fantastic, as from a dream....

"There! That iss enough," said Istafiev.

The lever went back. The streaks of blue-white that threaded the cage died; the grayish vapor in the dome above faded away, leaving more of the creamy, bleaching substance than had been there originally; the dynamo was shut off, and silence fell in the room. A naked man with a very white, peaked face and a blotch of blood encrimsoning his neck hung inside the cage, his head pitched over lifelessly to one side.

Chris stared, almost forgetting the pose of unconsciousness in his bewilderment. A queer mechanism shaped in the form of a cylinder from some oddly sparkling, almost transparent material, was clasped to the nude body's chest: over the nose and mouth was another small attachment of the same substance. A nozzle midway in the large cylinder's front side gave him the clue: from it, obviously, had come the gas which had strangled the crews of the dirigibles, and the covering over nose and mouth was a novel gas mask. The material they were made of could, obviously, be rendered invisible--a virtue not possessed by ordinary inorganic substances. Invisible death from an invisible container, carried by an invisible man!

"Yess, dead," hissed Istafiev, probing the motionless, naked body. "He just got here, told what had happened, and died. He was hurt too badly to think of taking off the gas cylinder or putting on a coat. Well, it makes no difference.... Here, Grigory, take off the mask and cylinder and bury him. And you, Kashtanov, look well at this."

From the table, he picked up a large white piece of cardboard and tapped it meaningly. There were two broad lines on it, running side by side through other smaller lines and shaded patches, and there was also a thick black arrow pointing to one particular place on it.

The chart was easy to understand. Chris Travers recognized it immediately, and his heart seemed to stop for a moment as he did.

Their first step had been the dirigibles: their second was a blow which paled the other into insignificance. And Chris told himself desperately:

"It can't go through! It can't!"

The lines on the cardboard were a detailed map of the Panama Ca.n.a.l; and the black arrow pointed unerringly to its most vulnerable, unguarded and vital point, the Gatun Spillway, which, if wrecked, would put the whole intricate Ca.n.a.l hopelessly out of commission.

Istafiev was speaking again, in low, terse tones, oblivious of the desperate resolve forming in Chris's brain.

"Only one of the dirigibles had been destroyed. Well, it iss too bad, but not fatal to the plan. The ZX-1 can hamper our country's operations when she strikes, but if the ZX-2 were also in action, they would be hampered much more--perhaps fatally. It iss not serious. So we go ahead. Now, Kashtanov, for the last time, the scheme of wrecking Gatun Spillway iss this:

"Note, here, the small golf course. That iss your landing s.p.a.ce. You know its location: a mile, perhaps, from Gatun Dam and the spillway.

At night, there iss no one near it or on it. You drop down to the golf course from seven thousand feet: the helicopter motors are m.u.f.fled, and no one will hear you come. Some of the stretches of the course are secluded and hidden by the surrounding jungle; choose one of these to land on. Well, that iss easy.

"The spillway iss about midway in Gatun Dam: its channel has been cut through a hill. You come along the side of this channel right up close to the spillway--close, remember!--and leave the box there. The range of the rays, you know, iss two hundred feet: set them to fire one minute after you leave the box. They will destroy the seven gates of the spillway and also part of the dam and the hydro-electric station.

Gatun Lake will then empty itself; the ca.n.a.l will be half drained; the power will be gone--it will take half a year to repair it all. The ZX-1 can fly up to the east coast, thanks to Zenalishin's fumbling--yess; but these American fleets are ma.s.sed in the Pacific; they will have to go around South America to reach the Atlantic--and that will take weeks.

"And in that time the Soviet has crossed the Atlantic uncontested and has paralyzed the heart of America, her eastern states. Ah, it iss magnificent!"

But Kashtanov's thoughts were elsewhere. Peering hard at the chart, he said:

"I have a minute to get clear, eh? Well, I can do that; but won't the water sweeping through from Gatun Lake after the spillway is wrecked catch me?"

"No. You run up the hill the spillway channel is cut through; it iss high ground, and the golf course iss on high ground. No one will see you coming or going, naturally, and the box iss not big enough to be noticed at night. The noise of its equalizers will be covered by the water coming through the spillway. It iss--what they say?--fool-proof.

You cannot fail, Kashtanov. And--" he broke into swift-flowing, liquid Russian, his swarthy face lighting up, his arms waving, one of them slapping the other's back.

"Stop the dramatics," said Kashtanov, "and speak in English. I've worked so long in America, Russian is hard to understand. Time to begin?"

Istafiev glanced at a watch on his wrist. "A few minutes. Look you."

He went to a side locker in the room, opened it, hauled out with both hands a box of plain dull metal, and put it on the table. It was larger than the one Chris Travers had seen on the ZX-1, but otherwise similar.

"A double charge of nitro-lanarline iss in this," murmured Istafiev complacently. "Imagine it, when released! You know the working well, do you not? Yess. Well, I put it in the plane, ready." He stepped to the hut's single door and pa.s.sed out. Through it Chris could see the tiny clearing, dark under the camouflaged framework, now closed once more; the light from the hut showed him the wings of the helicopter-plane standing there. He heard, moreover, the sound of a shovel from somewhere, and knew that a lonely grave was being dug in the wilderness. Then Istafiev shouted:

"Grigory! That grave, make it wide, make room for two." He came back and peered sidewise at Chris. "Not conscious yet?" A foot thudded into the American's side. "No. Well, I see to him when you are gone, Kashtanov. Yess, thick darkness iss here. Time to begin. Take off your clothes."

Chris was now keenly alert, poised, ready for any chance that might come. The odds were two or three to one, and a gun into the bargain, but the stakes were higher than any ever played for before; and a stroke had to be made, no matter how seemingly hopeless. Through his lashes he watched, turned things over in his mind--and something leaped within him when he saw Kashtanov unbuckle the gun around his waist and lay it down, meanwhile taking off the clothes he was wearing: and when he heard the question which followed, and Istafiev's answer.

Naked, lean-muscled and sinewy, Kashtanov paused before the door of the cage. "How will this affect me?" he asked. "Painful?"

"You will be conscious of no sensation. You will see me, yess, and the room, but you will be paralyzed completely while the power is on."

"Paralyzed, eh?" murmured Kashtanov. "Well, let's go," and he placed himself inside the cage.

Paralyzed, when the power was on! In effect, that left only Istafiev in the room: the man Grigory was outside, and the noise of the dynamo would drown any shouts for help. And Kashtanov's gun was on the table....

Imperceptibly, Chris's muscles tensed as he judged the distance to the table and reckoned out each movement after the first leap. One sweeping blow with the gun would put Istafiev safely out of action; then he could be bound and Grigory summoned and tied also at the point of the gun. If, by that time, Kashtanov was invisible inside the cage, the levers could be reversed and his body brought back to visibility and bound.

Then--a call broadcast from the hut's radio-telephone to headquarters at the Ca.n.a.l and the fleets in the Pacific!

"It'll work," Chris told himself. "It's d.a.m.n well got to!"

But a certain part of the invisibility machine did not enter his plans.

The creamy liquid in the gla.s.sy dome began, as before, to swirl slowly: but apart from that its action was different. The white ma.s.s, instead of discharging the vapor-laden bubbles, became a whipping, highly agitated whirlpool as the tubes below glowed softly and ribbons of golden light snaked out and laced through the nude body of Kashtanov. The liquid above flowed rapidly in a complete circle, its center sucked hollow, exactly as a gla.s.s quarter-filled with water behaves when rotated quickly. Thus the outer surface of the dome, coated inside with the milky liquid, gleamed and scintillated as the whirl of light struck it and danced off it: and it even became dimly reflective.

In seconds Kashtanov's figure lost definite outline and a.s.sumed a ghostly transparency that bared the internal organs and veins: and then his skeleton appeared.

Istafiev was facing the control panel. As he gathered his limbs for the decisive leap, Chris's eyes were on his stocky back. But Istafiev was watching keenly the gleaming, gla.s.sy dome above.

He was surveying the action of the white substance and judging the time of the process by it. Then suddenly his vision centered on something that had seemed to move on the surface of the dome.

Something had moved. Chris, lying against the wall behind, had opened his eyes fully, had dragged back his legs beneath him and balanced himself for his leap. And, in distorted perspective, his actions were reflected on the dome.

Just for a second he poised--then sprang.