Morale Part 2

"What?"

"My pants caught on fire," said Sergeant Walpole, woodenly. "I was sittin' on the monocycle, tryin' to figure out which way to duck. An' my pants caught on fire. The bike was gettin' hot. I climbed off it an' it blew up. My rifle was hot, too, an' I chucked it away. Then I saw a s.h.i.+p go down, on fire. The Wabbly'd stopped still an' it didn't fire a shot.

I'll swear to that. Just my monocycle got hot an' caught on fire, an'

then a s.h.i.+p busted out in flames an' went down. A couple more eggs come down an' three s.h.i.+ps dropped. Didn't hit 'em. The concussion blew the fabric off 'em. Another one caught fire an' crashed. Then another one. I looked, an' saw the next one catch. Then the next. It was like a searchlight beam hittin' 'em. They flamed up, blew up, an' that was that. The last two tried to get away, but they lit up an' crashed."

The pilot's hand flicked up and down, interminably. There was the steady fierce down-beat of the slip-stream from the vertical propellers. The helicopter swept forward in a swooping dash.

"The whole east coast's gone crazy," said the 'copter man drily. "Crazy fools trying to run away. Roads jammed. Work stopped. It leaked out about the planes being wiped out to-day, and everybody in three states has heard those eggs going off. You're the only living man who's seen that crawling thing and lived to tell about it. I've sent your stuff back. What's that about the thing on top?"

"I hid," said Sergeant Walpole, woodenly. "The Wabbly sent over gas-sh.e.l.ls where the s.h.i.+ps landed. Then it went on. Headin' west. It's got a crazy-lookin' d.i.n.kus on top like a searchlight. That moved, while the s.h.i.+ps were catchin' fire an' cras.h.i.+n'. Just like a searchlight, it moved an' the s.h.i.+ps went down. But the Wabbly didn't fire a shot."

The helicopter man's wrist flexed swiftly....

"Gawd!" said Sergeant Walpole in sudden agony. "Drop! Quick!"

The helicopter went down like a stone. A propeller shrieked away into s.p.a.ce. Metalwork up aloft glowed dully red. Then there were whipping, las.h.i.+ng branches closing swiftly all around the helicopter. A jerk. A crash. Stillness. The smell of growing things all about.

"Well?" said the 'copter pilot.

"They turned it on us--whatever it is," said Sergeant Walpole. "They near got us, too."

A match scratched. A cigarette glowed. The Sergeant fumbled for a smoke for himself.

"I'm waiting for that metal to cool off," said the helicopter pilot.

"Maybe we can take off again. They located us with a loop while I was sending your stuff. d.a.m.n! I see what they've got!"

"What?"

"A way of transmitting real power in a radio beam," said the 'copter man. "You've seen eddy-current stoves. Everybody cooks with 'em nowadays. A coil with a high-frequency current. You can stick your hand in it and nothing happens. But you stick an iron pan down in the coil and it gets hot and cooks things. Hysteresis. The same thing that used to make transformer-cores get hot. The same thing happens near any beam transmitter, only you have to measure the heating effect with a thermo-couple. The iron absorbs the radio waves and gets hot. The chaps in the Wabbly can probably put ten thousand horsepower in a d.a.m.ned beam.

We can't. But any iron in the way will get hot. It blows up a s.h.i.+p at once. Your monocycle and your rifle too. d.a.m.n!"

He knocked the ash off his cigarette.

"Scientific, those chaps. I'll see if that metal's cool."

Something whined overhead, rising swiftly to a shriek as it descended.

Sergeant Walpole cowered, with his hands to his ears. But it was not an earth-shaking concussion. It was an explosion, yes, but subtly different from the rending snap of hexynitrate.

"Gas," said the Sergeant dully, and fumbled for his mask.

"No good," said the 'copter man briefly. "Vesicatory. Smell it? I guess they've got us. No sag-suits. Not even sag-paste."

The Sergeant lit a match. The flame bent a little from the vertical.

"There's a wind. We got a chance."

"Get going, then," said the 'copter man. "Run upwind."

Sergeant Walpole slid over the side and ran. A hundred yards. Two hundred. Pine-woods have little undergrowth. He heard the helicopter's engines start. The s.h.i.+p tried to lift. He redoubled his speed. Presently he broke out into open ploughed land.

In the starlight he saw a barn, and he raced toward that. Someone else plunged out of the woods toward him. The helicopter-engine was still roaring faintly in the distance. Then a thin whine came down from aloft....

When the echoes of the explosion died away the pilot was grinning queerly. The helicopter's engine was still.

"I said it could be done! Pack of fat-heads at Headquarters!"

"Huh?"

"Picking up a s.h.i.+p by its spark-plugs, with a loop. They're doing that up aloft. There's a s.h.i.+p up there, forty thousand feet or so. Maybe half a dozen s.h.i.+ps. Refueling in air, I guess, and working with the thing you call a Wabbly. When I started the 'copter's engine they got the spark-impulses and sighted on them. We'd better get away from here."

"Horses in here," said Sergeant Walpole. "The Wabbly came by. No people left."

They brought the animals out. The horses reared and plunged as there were other infinitely sharp, deadly explosions of the eggs coming down eight miles through darkness.

"Let's go. After the Wabbly?" said the 'copter man.

"O' course," said Sergeant Walpole. "Somebody's got to find out how to lick it."

They went clattering through darkness. It was extraordinary what desolation, what utter lack of human life they moved through. They came to a town, and there was a taint of gas in the air. No lights burned in that town. It was dead. The Wabbly had killed it.

PART IV

"... which panic was enhanced by the destruction of a second flight of fighting planes. However, the destruction of Bendsboro completed civilian demoralization.... A newscasting company re-broadcast a private television contact with the town at the moment the Wabbly entered it. Practically all the inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast heard and saw the annihilation of the town--hearing the cries of '_Gas!_'

and the screams of the people, and hearing the cras.h.i.+ngs as the Wabbly crushed its way inexorably across the city, spreading terror everywhere....

Frenzied demands were made upon the Government for the recall of troops from the front to offer battle to the Wabbly.... It is considered that at that time the one Wabbly had a military effect equal to at least half a million men." (_Strategic Lessons of the War of 1941-43._--U. S. War College. Pp. 83-84.)

They did not enter the town. There was just enough of starlight to show that the Wabbly had gone through it, and then crashed back and forth ruthlessly. There was a great gash through the center of the buildings nearest the edge, and there were other gashes visible here and there.

Everything was crushed down utterly flat in two eight-foot paths; and there was a ma.s.s of crumbled debris four feet high at its highest in between the tread-marks.

They looked, silently, and went on. They reached a railroad track, the quadruple track of a branch-line from New York to Philadelphia. The Wabbly was going along that right-of-way. There was no right-of-way left where it had been. Rails were crushed flat. Culverts were broken through. But the horses raced along the smoothed tread-trails. Once a broken, twisted rail tore at Sergeant Walpole's sleeve. Somehow the last great plate of a tread had bent it upward. Presently they saw a ma.s.s of something dark off to the left. Flames were licking meditatively at one of the wrecked cars.

Then they heard explosions far ahead. Flames lighted the sky.

"Our men in action!" said Sergeant Walpole hungrily.

He flogged his mount mercilessly. Then the sky became bright in the distance. The horses, going down the crushed-smooth trail of the treads, gained upon the din. Then they saw the cause of it, miles distant. A train was burning luridly. Its forepart was wreckage, pure and simple.

The rest was going up in flames and detonations. Munitions, of course.

The Wabbly was off at one side, flame-lit and monstrous, sliding smoothly out of sight.