The Onslaught from Rigel Part 31

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 La.s.san ships of which there always appeared to be one more right before them as Sherman twisted and turned the _Monitor_ 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 G.o.d, 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 La.s.san city that they think we can't navigate s.p.a.ce 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, pa.s.s and charge again against the diminishing number of the La.s.san 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 La.s.sans 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 La.s.san globe blew up; then they were climbing again. Beneath them the night had come.

The earth was a dark ma.s.s, 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 La.s.san and she pressed the lightning ray; but this time there was no flash, no flaming La.s.san 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."

CHAPTER XXIII

Into the Depths

The _Monitor_ turned again, speeding back toward the remaining La.s.san ships; with a startling shock of surprise, Gloria noticed that there were only two. Down below them one of the last three American rocket-cruisers had spread her wings and was gliding gently toward the earth. Like the _Monitor's_, her crew had evidently found the lightning flash worthless at the enormous alt.i.tude and was abandoning the battle till conditions became more favorable. The other rocket remained faithful; turned as they turned and charged up with them toward the last of the La.s.sans.

It was a weird scene. They had climbed so far that the earth was now perceptibly round beneath them; a vague line marked the westward progress of the sunset and beyond it the sun, an immense yellow ball, set with a crown of vividly red flames, hung in the inky-black heavens.

On the opposite side, the stars, more brilliant and greater in number than any ever before viewed by the eye of man, made the sky a carpet of light across which the green globes moved like shadows, their undersides illumined by the sun.

As the _Monitor_ approached, the nearest globe seemed to be turning on its axis. Suddenly, out of the side that faced them, came the quick, stabbing beam of the light-ray, like the flicker of a sword. It struck the _Monitor_ full on the prow. There was a burning rain of sparks past the windows; the rocket-ship leaped and quivered, and those within felt, rather than saw, something give. Then, with a tremendous explosion, all the more horrible because utterly without sound, the great globe that had thrown the ray, burst into fragments.

And at the same moment the _Monitor_ began to fall. Down, down, down went the rocket-cruiser with the round ball of the earth rising to meet them at a speed incredible. The sun went out; they were swallowed in a purple twilight as they plunged. The earth changed from a ball to a dish, from a dish to a plane, from a plane to a dark ma.s.s without form, and in the ma.s.s vague lights and glimmerings of water came out, and still their course was unchecked, still Sherman fought frantically with the useless controls.

Desperately Murray pressed the firing keys of the stern-rockets; unchecked she drove on, almost straight down, plunging to certain destruction. The earth loomed nearer, nearer, the end seemed inevitable--.

Then Gloria saved them. In some moment of inspiration, she threw on the searchlight; and the automatic connection fired the gravity-beam. There was a shattering report; the course of the _Monitor_ was halted, and bruised and broken, she tumbled over and over to the ground, safe but ruined.

"Suffering La.s.sans!" said Ben Ruby, as they picked themselves out of the wreckage, "but that was a jar. What hit us, anyway?"

Sherman pointed to Gloria, breathlessly. "Give the little girl a hand,"

he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "She sure pulled us out of the fire that time."

"I'll say she did," said Murray, "but what happened, anyway? I thought that light-ray of theirs wouldn't work on these ships."

"It won't--in air," said Sherman ruefully, surveying the wreck of the _Monitor_. "But the air blankets down the effect a lot. Out there we got the whole dose. Even then it shouldn't have hurt us so seriously, but I expect a lot of our lead sheathing got jarred loose when we went through those yellow rays and when they let that light-ray go, she leaked all over the place. Wonder what made that La.s.san ship blow up like that, though? I thought she sure had us."

"Oh," said Ben, "I think maybe I did that. When the light-ray came on it occurred to me that the gravity-beam might go down their beam of light just as fast as it would down ours, and they must have a port-hole or something through their gravity-screen or they couldn't let the ray out.

So I just let them have it."

"Boy, you sure saved the lives of four of Uncle Sam's flying men that time. About one second more of that stuff and we'd have cracked up right there. Look at the front of our bus. The outer plating is all caved in and the inner is starting to go."

"She is pretty well used up isn't she? What gets me though, is that there's one more of those things loose."

"Look!" cried Gloria suddenly, pointing upward.

Far in the zenith above them they saw a point of light; a point that grew and spread and became definite as a great star; then it became a shooting star, plunging earthward, and so great was its speed that even as they watched they could make out a green fragment, flame-wrapped in its midst.

"The last one!" said Sherman. "Thank G.o.d for that. Wonder how they got her?"

"Wonder what we do next," remarked Murray, practically.

They looked about them. They were on a hillside in a little clearing in a high, narrow valley. On every side were woods, dark and impenetrable.

Just below they could hear the purl of a brook, and the trees about them were bare with the dark bareness of spring, a few fugitive buds being the only announcement that the season of growing was at hand. No landmarks, no roads were visible, and the sky was darkening fast.

"The question," said Gloria, "is not where do we go, but where are we going from."

"It might be most anywhere," remarked Murray. "Adirondacks, Catskills, or even Laurentians. I don't think we got far enough west for it to be the Blue Ridge or the Appalachians, but there's no way of telling."

"Well," Gloria offered, "I've been in a lot of mountains in my day, but I never saw any where following a stream didn't take you somewhere sooner or later. I vote we trail along with that brook there and see what happens."

"Bright thought," commented Ben. "Let's see what we can dig out of the wreck by way of weapons."

"What for? There aren't any animals, and they couldn't hurt you if there were. If we meet any of the La.s.sans any weapon you got out of that mess wouldn't be much use. Wish we had a flashlight though."

Treading carefully, but with a good deal of noise and confusion, they began to crash their way through the underbrush along the bank of the stream. At the foot of the valley it dived over a diminutive waterfall and then tumbled into another similar brook. Along the combined streams ran a road--a dirt road originally, now long untraveled, muddy and bad, but still a road.

An hour's walking brought them around the foot of another mountain and into a valley where the road divided before a projecting b.u.t.tress of rock. A teetering sign-post stood at the fork. With some trouble, and after getting himself immersed to the knees in the ditch, Murray managed to reach it and straining his eyes in the starlight, made out what it said. "THIS WAY TO HAMILTON'S CHICKEN DINNERS. 1 MILE" it read. With a snort of disgust he hurled the deceitful guidepost into the ditch and joined the others.

"Toss a coin," someone suggested. No coins. A knife was flipped up instead. It fell heads and in accordance with its decision they took the road to the right. It led them along beside the stream for a while, then parted company with it and began to climb, and they soon found themselves at the crest of the hill. The night had become darker and darker, clouding over. But for the road they would have been completely lost. Finally, after skirting the hillcrest for a distance, the road dipped abruptly, and as it did so, they pa.s.sed out of the forest into a region cleared but not cultivated, with numerous close-cut stumps coming right to the roadside.