Astounding Stories, February, 1931 Part 6

Lance stepped out of the c.o.c.kpit into the rain, though holding himself tensely ready to leap back again and soar away. He stared around, and peered above.

Was that a shadow?--a nightmare flying bird?--or a plane?

He grasped a hand-flash, and rapidly signalled his ident.i.ty. The next instant, it seemed, the shadow wavered, then fell earthward with great speed.

Out of the gloom and rain it came--an enemy plane.

It dropped down beside his scout. From its c.o.c.kpit came a few swift flashes of light.

Hay!

Lance ran eagerly over to the other plane, and out from its enclosed cabin stepped the man he had known as Praed.

Wordlessly, they gripped hands. Hay's thin, straight face wore a smile, and he met Lance's eyes keenly. Lance stammered:

"S-sorry, Captain Hay, about--about the way I treated you at the base.

You see, I had no idea who you were."

Hay cut short his apologies with a laugh. "Rot! I'd've been the same way myself." He glanced rapidly at Lance's plane. "Got it?" he questioned. "I'm a bit late; had a h.e.l.l of a time getting here without arousing suspicion. We'd best hurry."

Lance nodded. They hurried to the Goshawk. As they worked, carefully lifting out the Singe beacon, Lance, in crisp, short-clipped sentences, told his companion of Ranth, the spy.

"You don't know how much he got through?"

"No," said Lance. "No."

"Hm-m. Well, we'll have to trust to luck."

"You know the working of the beacon?" Lance asked. On the other's nod of affirmation he continued: "What's your plan?"

"Light about five miles this side of Frisco itself, just near the main Slav military base. Anywhere in that territory would do, though. The beacon doesn't go up in a narrow ray; it spreads, diffuses. The squadron of torpedoes will cover some fifty or sixty miles of ground, I believe. They'll utterly demolish the city, and every d.a.m.ned Slav in it." His face, in the darkness, went grim and hard. "And it'll d.a.m.n well pay them back," he rasped, "for the horrible way they ma.s.sacred San Francisco's population...."

The Singe beacon was in his plane. Hay turned to Lance, stretching out his hand for a farewell clasp. Then Lance asked the question that had been worrying him.

"Colonel Douglas told me to give you a last handshake for him. _Last._ Why did he say that?"

"Because," Hay said smilingly, "I'm staying by the beacon to make sure that nothing goes wrong. I guess that's why he said it, old fellow...."

Lance gasped: "You're sacrificing your life?"

"Of course. To save seventy-five million others."

Then suddenly they both stared above.

A roar of sound--of purring motors, of props, mixed with the chatter of a dozen machine-guns--had belched with numbing suddenness from the low-hanging clouds.

Enemy planes! A patrol of them!

"G.o.d!" jerked Lance. "Ranth's warning got through! Part of it, anyway!"

He leaped for his plane, shouting: "I'll hold 'em off! You get away _quick_!" and, through a veritable hail of lead, sprang into the c.o.c.kpit.

Then, a cold pang at his heart, he sprang out again.

A bullet had caught Hay!

For a moment, the Slav fire ceased, while their planes zoomed up to start another death-dealing dive. And in that moment Lance was at Hay's side, where he had fallen.

"They--got me," whispered Hay, a stream of blood welling from his gasping mouth. "I'm--I'm going. C-carry me to--to your plane. I've still a--a little strength left. You take the beacon. I--I'll hold them--as--as long as--I can. Put through that beacon, boy! _Put it though!_"

His brain a maelstrom, Lance stared at the crumpled figure. It was the only way! He heard the motors above come roaring down again; desperately he carried the blood-choking Hay to his own plane; propped him limply at the controls. Bullets spat through a frenzy of noise.

Weakly Hay started the Goshawk's Diesels, and weakly, into Lance's face, smiled, and beckoned him to leave.

And, as Lance, a grim resolve at his heart, turned, Hay's blood-frothed lips formed the words: "Carry on!"

Through the raining lead, seeming to bear a charmed life, Lance leaped to Hay's plane, hearing as he did so his own, with a stricken pilot at its controls, hurtle upwards.

Carry on! For the life of America!

Carry on!

Ten minutes past the hour of nine. A full thousand miles behind the lines, on the wide black field of America's major war base, a small group of men stood, surveying the awesome weapons a.s.sembled there.

Row upon row of huge, dully-gleaming cigar-shaped things stretched away into the darkness before them. There were only one or two faint lights to give illumination, and the night choked in on them, making them terrifying.

They resembled, more than anything else, half-sized dirigibles, being roughly about one hundred feet long and perhaps as much as thirty feet high. At first sight, they seemed to be numberless; then, as the bewildered eye became more sane, one could count them and see that there were, in reality, about thirty. Their prows were stubby; in the port side of each a tiny trap-door yawned, and standing by every trap-door was the overall-clad figure of a mechanic, waiting for the signal.

The Commander of the American Air Force looked up from his wrist-watch. At his side was a peculiar gnomelike figure, a figure with hunched, twisted back and huge, over-heavy head. This was Professor Singe, and from that ridiculous head had come the germ which had finally expanded into the torpedoes arrayed before him.

His eyes were nervous; his crooked face twitched ceaselessly. "Time?"

he kept asking. "Time? Is it yet time?" And finally the tall figure of the Commanding Officer turned and rapped: "Time!"

An aide-de-camp raised a hand. As if working by some mechanical device, the figure which stood by each torpedo climbed through the trap-doors, jumped out a second later, and came running to the head of the field.

"About thirty seconds," muttered Singe nervously, eyes alight. "Thirty seconds for their motors to catch the stream. Thirty--ah!"

For the squadron of man-made horrors had stirred.