Chapter 10: Weird Battleground!

“We have it going very well,” said Tako, chuckling. “Don’t you think so? Sit here by me. We will stay here for a time now.”

Tako had a small flat rock for a table. On it he had spread his paraphernalia for this battle--if battle it could be called. Weird contest! Opposing forces, each imponderable to the other so that no physical contact had yet been made. Tako sat at his rock; giving orders to his leaders who came hurrying up and were away at his command; or speaking orders into his sound apparatus; or consulting his charts and co-ordinates, questioning Don and me at times over the meaning of shadowy things we could see taking place about us.

A little field headquarters our post here might have been termed.[8]

[8] The detailed nature of the scientific devices Tako used
in the handling of his army during the attack never has been
disclosed. I saw him using one of the eye-telescopes. There
was also a telephonic device and occasionally he would
discharge a silent signal radiance--a curious intermittent
green flare of light. His charts of the topography of New
York City were to me incomprehensible
hieroglyphics--mathematical formula, no doubt; the
co-ordinates of altitudes and contours of our world-space in
its relation to the mountainous terrain of his world which
stood mingled here with the New York City buildings.

We were grouped now around Tako on a small level ledge of rock. It lay on a broken, steeply ascending ramp of a mountainside. The mountain terraces towered back and above us. In front, two hundred feet down, was a valley of pits and craters; and to the sides a tumbled region of alternating precipitous cliffs and valley depths.

Upon every point of vantage, for two or three miles around us, Tako’s men were dispersed. To us, they were solid gray blobs in the luminous darkness. The carriers, all arrived now, stood about a mile from us, and save for their guards, the men had all left them. The weapons were being taken out and carried to various points over the mountains and in the valley depths. Small groups of men--some two hundred in a group--were gathered at many different points, assembling their weapons, and waiting for Tako’s orders. Messengers toiled on foot between them, climbing, white figures. Signals flashed.

Fantastic, barbaric scene--it seemed hardly modern. Mountain defiles were swarming with white invaders, making ready, but not yet attacking.

We had had as yet no opportunity of talking alone with Jane since we left the carrier. The incident with Tolla was to us wholly inexplicable. But that it was significant of something, we knew--by Jane’s tense white face and the furtive glances she gave us. Don and I were ready to seize the first opportunity to question her.

Tolla, by the command of Tako, stayed close by Jane, and the two girls were always within sight of us. They were here now, seated on the rocks twenty feet from us. And the two guards, whom Tako had appointed at the carrier, sat near us with alert weapons, watching Jane and us closely.[9]

[9] There was a thing which puzzled me before we arrived in

the carrier, and surprised me when we left it; and though I

did not, and still do not wholly understand it, I think I

should mention it here. Traveling in the carrier we were

suspended in a condition of matter which might be termed mid

way between Tako’s realm and our Earth-world. Both, in

shadowy form, were visible to us; and to an observer on

either world we also were visible.

Then, as the carrier landed, it receded from this sort of

borderland as I have termed it, contacted with its own realm

and landed. At once I saw that the shadowy outlines of New

York were gone. And, to New York observers, the carriers as

they landed, were invisible. The mountains--all this tumbled

barren wilderness of Tako’s world--were invisible to

observers in New York.

But I knew now how very close were the two worlds--a very

fraction of visible “distance,” one from the other.

Then, with wires, disks and helmets--all the transition

mechanism worn now by us and all of Tako’s forces--we drew

ourselves a very small fraction of the way toward the

Earth-world state. Enough and no more than to bring it to

most tenuous, most wraithlike visibility, so that we could

see the shadows of it and know our location in relation to

it, which was necessary to Tako’s operations.

In this state, New York City was a wraith to us--and we were

shadowy, dimly visible apparitions to New York observers.

But in this slight transition, we did not wholly disconnect

with the terrain of Tako’s world. There was undoubtedly--if

the term could be called scientific--a depth of field to the

solidity of these mountains. By that I mean, their

tangibility persisted for a certain distance toward other

dimensions. Perhaps it was a greater “depth of field” than

the solidity of our world possesses. As to that, I do not

know.

But I do know, since I experienced it, that as we sat now

encamped upon this ledge, the ground under us felt only a

trifle different from when we had full contact with it.

There was a lightness upon us--an abnormal feeling of

weight-loss--a feeling of indefinable abnormality to the

rocks. Yet, to observers in New York, we were faintly to be

seen, and the rocks upon which we sat were not.

There was just once after we left the carrier, toiling over the rocks with Tako’s little cortege to this vantage point on the ledge, that Jane found an opportunity of communicating secretly with us.