The Hammer of Thor Part 3

"Let them tend to it!" the pale-faced youngster beside him choked--one does not see his country's capital destroyed without a tightening of the throat. "They can cool it with CO_2 and put down a rescue squad, though what they can do in that furnace is more than I can see."

Danny nodded mutely; he opened the exhaust to the full, and the rocket-plane swept out on whirlwinds of raging fire, and smoke, whose flames reached up even where they flew and licked hungrily at their ship.

Jarring explosions sent shudders through their craft. Ahead of them bright flashes illumined the swirling fumes where bursting sh.e.l.ls marked the destruction of some ammunition stores outside the city.

And Danny, as he drove his red meteor into the clear air of the upper levels, was searching the heavens above for the enemy he had expected to sight down below. He knew now that his mad plunge into the seething flames was only a blind impulse--an effort to satisfy that demand within him for a foe upon whom to wreak revenge.

Beside him, his companion spun the dial of a receiving set for the Airnews Service; a voice was shouting excitedly into their cabin: "... physicists unable to find cause ... no meteoric material seen ...

new rays ... enormous temperatures ... some new and unknown conditions encountered in s.p.a.ce--"

"h.e.l.l!" said the Infant wearily, and snapped off the instrument.

"Meteors! New conditions in s.p.a.ce! But, come to think of it, we can't blame them for being off the trail. You know that the bird that's doing this flies high and fast ... and when he stops there's n.o.body left alive to tell of it!... And don't look for him here."

"Why not?" Danny demanded aggressively. "This ship isn't armed, but if I get my sights on that flyin' devil--"

"You won't," said the Infant darkly. "He's off somewhere discharging the load he's acc.u.mulated."

He reached for a map, stuck his finger on a point in eastern New York State. "Let's go there, Danny--and I'd like to get there _right now_!"

And Danny O'Rourke, who, ordinarily was a bit particular about who gave him orders, looked at the Infant's blue eyes that had gone hard and cold, and he swung his roaring ship toward the north and a place that was marked by a steady finger on the map.

New York was a place of flashing reflections far beneath them as they pa.s.sed. Danny pointed downward toward the miniature city, where a silvery river met the sea; where a maze of flaming lights in all of the colors of the spectrum gave indication of activity at the great Navy Field.

"How did he miss it, the murderin' devil?" he asked. "How come that he hit Washington first? Did he have some way of knowin' that it was the heart of the whole country?"

"And why pick on us here in this country? Or are we just the first, and will he spit his rage over the rest of the world before he's through? It it the end of the world that's come?"

To all of which there was no answer. And at last, when New York had vanished, they came to a smaller city and a broad expanse of roof that took their wheels.

Danny followed where his companion led into great buildings and a place of offices where excited officials stood in knots about news-casting cones; then they were in a quiet room, in the presence of a lean-bodied man whose hawklike face turned flinty at some request the Infant made.

"What the lad wants, I don't know," said Danny to himself, "but whatever it is he won't be gettin' it from old Gimlet-eyes."

But he saw the Infant write something on a card and he heard him say, as he handed it to the official: "Send that to the President--_at once_!" And though the words were hardly audible they had a quality that brought an instant response; while the written words brought a portly man who shook the Infant's hand fervently and inquired what service a great electric company could render.

Danny heard Gimlet-eyes protesting; heard broken bits of sentences: "... the great Sorenson tube ... he knows of our disintegrator ...

insists upon our furnishing ... preposterous...."

The portly man cut him short. "You will give Mr. Morgan whatever he wishes," he ordered crisply. Then Danny saw him clutch at a desk for support as still another man appeared at the open door to shout:

"New York! My G.o.d! New York's gone! Burning! The Empire State Building melted! Crashed!... The whole city is being destroyed!"

And in the moment of numbness that seized Danny O'Rourke he heard the Infant say: "How soon can we have it? I want it in our ship--up above--an hour? We'll be there." But Danny had no further interest in the Infant's arrangements for obtaining some unknown equipment; he was plunging through the doorway and running at full speed toward the ramp where they had descended.

He knew dimly that the younger man had followed and was crowding into the cabin after him. Danny, as he locked the port and lifted his red ship off her guides, was fully conscious of only one fact: that a hundred miles south a city was being destroyed and that somewhere in the vast heights above the city he would find the destroyer.

The Hudson that had been a thread of silver was no longer bright as they approached the city at its mouth; burnished now with its reflection of black smoke clouds and red tongues of flame, it vanished at last under a mountain of black that heaped itself in turbulent piles and whirling ma.s.ses until the winds swept the smoke out over the sea.

And high above it all--so high that all clouds were below it--there hung in a lucent sky one tiny, silvery speck. There was a delicate steering sight on Danny's ship; he could direct the red craft as if it were in very fact a projectile that could be controlled in flight. And under the cross hairs of that sight swung a silvery speck, while the man who looked along the telescopic tube cursed steadily and methodically as if in some way his hate might span the gap and reach that distant foe.

And then the speck vanished. Danny followed it with the powerful gla.s.ses of his sighting tube; he saw it swing inland--saw it move like a line of silvery light, almost, swifter in its motion than his instrument could follow. But even in that swift flight Danny's eyes observed one fact: the enemy ship was coming down; it slanted in on that long volplane that must have ripped the air apart like a bolt of lightning. And Danny's red rocket swept out and around in a long, looping flight, while he laid the ship on the course that other had followed.

"That's one of them," he said savagely; "there must be two more. But I'll get this one if I have to crash him in air and smash my own ship right through him."

The mind of Danny O'Rourke was filled with only one idea; he had sighted his prey--the ship in which sat a man-thing who had sent a terrible death to Danny's fellows. And, though his hands moved carefully and methodically, though externally he was cool and collected, within him was a seething maelstrom of hate. All he saw was that giant figure as he had seen it before; all he knew was that he must overtake that speeding ship and send it to earth.

He had even forgotten Morgan; perhaps he was never fully conscious of his coming from the moment when that other trembling, shaken man had shouted: "New York! New York's gone!"

"There aren't two more," the Infant was saying from his seat at the rear of the cabin: "there's just one. Those three lines were always parallel except when they widened out: that meant that he had gone up higher. If we ever see that ship, we'll see three discharge tubes for the ray."

Danny O'Rourke turned his eyes that had gone haggard and deep-sunk with the sights they had seen. He stared vacantly at the Infant.

"Didn't know," he said thickly, "--didn't know you were here. I'll set you down; I'll let you out before I ram him...."

For reply, the other pointed ahead. The red ship had torn through a layer of thick clouds; Danny was flying below them above a mountainous world of bare hill-tops and wooded valleys. Directly ahead, hovering high over a mountain higher than its fellows, was the white craft of the enemy; Danny, saw it in hard outline against the darker ma.s.ses of clouds beyond. He saw that it was motionless, that a slender cable was suspended for a thousand feet below, and that the end of the cable, hanging close above the mountain top, was split into a score of wires that stood out in all directions, while, from each, poured a stream of blue fire.

And once more all this that he saw was as nothing to the pilot; all thought, too, of his fellow victim went from his mind. He could see only the white ship, doubly hideous because of its seeming purity; and, as before, he brought the cross hairs of directional sights upon it while he opened the rocket exhaust to the full.

But even pilot O'Rourke, with the highest rating in the A. F. F., could not follow the lightning-swift leap of the snow-white thing that buried itself in the smother of cloud banks above.

Danny set his red ship down on that same barren hilltop; he motioned Morgan to follow as he stepped out.

"We're somewhere in Pennsylvania," he announced. "You're stayin' here.

Sorry to dump you out like this, but you'll find a way out. Get to a radio--call a plane." He held out his hand in unspoken farewell.

But the other man disregarded it. "What's the idea?" he inquired.

Danny's reply came in short, breathless sentences. "Going up to find that ship. Ram it. No use of your getting smashed up, too. Good-by, Infant; you're a good old scout."

Danny's mind was all on what lay ahead; he was wildly eager to be off on the hunt. It took him an instant to comprehend the look from Morgan's steady, blue eyes.

"Listen!" the younger man was ordering. "You're not going to do that; I am! And not just that way, either."

"Did you see that cable and the electric discharges?" he demanded excitedly. "It's just as I thought: he acc.u.mulates a negative charge; he has to get rid of it--he's just like a thunder-cloud loaded with static--and the heat ray does it. I had it figured that way."

"Remember the little tube you saw before--that's why I asked about the wire. I knew he would have to ground it without its going through his body."