Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 Part 12

However, only a scattered aero-sub here and there went down without the strange substance of the yellow ray being released. In most cases, upon the contact of plane with aero-sub, the aero-subs and planes were instantly blotted from view by the yellow, golden flames from the heart of the winged harbingers of Moyen.

Golden flames, blinding in their brightness, dropping down, mere shapeless blotches, then fading out to nothingness in a matter of seconds--with aero-sub and airplane totally erased from action and from existence.

The American flyers saw and knew now the manner of death they faced. Yet all along the battle front not an American tried to evade the issue and draw out of the fight. A sublime, inspiring exhibition of ma.s.s courage which had not been witnessed down the years since that general engagement which men of the time had called the Great War.

Prester Kleig turned to look at Maniel. Drops of perspiration bathed the cheeks of the master scientist, but his eyes were glowing like coals of fire. His face was set in a white mask of concentration, and Prester Kleig knew that Maniel would find the answer to the thing he sought if such answer could be found.

Would the American flyers be able to hold off the minions of Moyen until Maniel was ready? The fight out there above the waters was a terrible thing, and the Americans fought and died like men inspired, yet inexorably the winged armada of Moyen, preceded by those licking golden tongues, was moving landward.

"Great G.o.d!" cried Munson. "Look!"

There was really no need for the order, for every Secret Agent saw as soon as did Munson. Under the sea, just off the coast, the mother-subs had touched their blunt nose against the upward shelving of the sea bottom--had touched bottom, and were slowly but surely following the underwater curve of the land, up toward the surface, like unbelievable antediluvian monsters out of some nightmare.

"Yes," said Kleig quietly, "those monsters of Moyen can move on land, and the aero-subs can operate from them as easily on land as under water."

Kleig regarded the time, whirled to look at Professor Maniel.

One hour and forty minutes had pa.s.sed since Maniel had begged for two hours in which to prepare some mode of effectively combatting the might of Moyen. Twenty minutes to go; yet the mother-subs would be ash.o.r.e, dragging their sweating, monstrous sides out of the deep, within ten minutes!

Ten minutes ash.o.r.e and there was no guessing the havoc they could cause to the United Americas!

"Hurry, Maniel! Hurry! Hurry!" said Prester Kleig.

But he spoke the words to himself, though even had he spoken them aloud Maniel would not have heard. For Maniel, for two hours, had closed his mind to everything that transpired outside his own thoughts, devoted to foiling the power of Moyen.

"I've found him!" snapped Munson.

He pointed with a shaking forefinger to one of the mother-subs crawling up the slant of the ocean bed, twisted one of the little nubs of the Sound-and-Vision apparatus, and the angelic face and Satanic eyes, the twisted body, of Moyen came into view.

The face was calm with dreadful purpose, and Moyen stood in the heart of one of his monsters, his eyes turned toward the land. With a gasp of terror, dreadfully afraid for the first time, Prester Kleig turned and looked into the eyes of Charmion....

"No," she said. "It will never happen. I have faith in you!"

There were still ten minutes of the two hours left when the mother-subs broke water and started crawling inland, swiftly, surely, without faltering in the slightest as they changed their element from water to land.

As though their appearance had been the signal, the aero-subs in action against the first line of American planes broke out of the one-sided fight and dived for their mother s.h.i.+ps, while a mere handful of the American planes started back for home to prepare anew to continue the struggle.

Prester Kleig gave the signal to the second monster armada which had remained in reserve.

"Do everything in your power to halt the march of Moyen's amphibians!"

Ten minutes to go, and Professor Maniel still labored like a t.i.tan.

CHAPTER XI

_Caucasia Falls Silent_

As the scores of amphibian monsters came lumbering forth upon dry land it became instantly apparent why the aero-subs had returned to the mother s.h.i.+ps. For a few moments, out of the water, the amphibians were almost helpless, with practically no way of attack or defense--as helpless as huge turtles turned legs up.

But as each aero-sub entered its proper slot in the side of the mother amphibian, it was turned about and the nose thrust back into the opening, which closed down to fit tightly about the nose of the aero-sub, so that those flame-breathing monsters protruded from the sides of the amphibians in many places--transforming the amphibians into monsters with hundreds of golden, licking tongues!

As, with each and every aero-sub in place, the amphibians started moving inland, Professor Maniel made his first move. With the tiny apparatus upon which he had been working, he stepped to the table before the Sound-and-Vision apparatus and spoke softly to his compatriots.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I have finished, and it will work effectively!"

Though Maniel spoke softly, it was plain to be seen that he was proud of his accomplishment, which remained only to be attached to start performance.

A matter of seconds....

Yet during those seconds was the real might, the real power for utter devastation, of Moyen fully exposed!

The amphibians got under way as the airplanes of the Americas swept into the fight.

From the sides of the monsters licked out those golden tongues of flame--and from the front.

Half a dozen amphibians slipped into New York from the harbor side and started into the heart of the city. And between the time when Maniel had said he was ready and the moment when he made his first active move against Moyen, a half-dozen skysc.r.a.pers vanished into nothingness, the spots where they had stood swept as clear of debris as though the land had never been reclaimed from Nature!

None was ever destined to know how many lives were lost in that first attack of the monsters of the golden, myriad tongues; but the monsters struck in the midst of a working day when the skysc.r.a.pers were filled with office workers.

And resolve struck deep into the hearts of the Secret Agents: if Moyen were turned back, he must be made to pay for the slaughter.

A matter of seconds....

Then a moment of deathly silence as Munson gave way at the screen for the gnomelike little Professor Maniel.

"Now, gentlemen!" snapped Maniel. "If my theory is correct,"

manipulating instruments with lightning speed as he talked, "the reversion of the principle of my Vibration-r.e.t.a.r.der--which captures vibrations speeding outward from the earth and transforms them once again into sound and pictures audible and visible to the human ear--this apparatus will disintegrate the monsters as our boats and planes were disintegrated!

"In this I have even been compelled to manipulate in the matter of time! I must not only defeat and annihilate the minions of Moyen, but must work from a mathematical absurdity, so that at the moment of impact that moment itself must become part of the past, sufficiently remote to remove the monsters at such distance from the earth that not even the mighty genius of Moyen can return them!"

The whirring, gentle as the whirring of doves' wings. In the center of the picture on the screen were those half-dozen amphibians laying waste Manhattan. Maniel set his intricate, delicate machinery into motion.

Instantly the amphibians there seemed to become misty, shadowy, and to lift out of Manhattan up above the roof-tops of skysc.r.a.pers still remaining, nebulous and wraithlike as ghost-shrouds--yet swinging outward from the earth with speed almost too swift for the eye to detect.

But where the amphibians had rested there stood, reclined--in all sorts of postures, surprising and even a bit ridiculous--the men of Moyen who had operated the monsters of Moyen!