Chapter 11: Capture

Herbert Sherman had wakened with a vague sense of something wrong and lay back in his seat for a moment, trying to remember. Everything seemed going quietly, the machine running with subdued efficiency ... It came to him with a jerk--he could not hear the motor. With that subconscious concentration of the flying man on his ship, he glanced at the instrument board first, and taking in the astonishing information that both the altimeter and the air-speed meter registered zero, he looked over the side. His vision met the familiar dentilated line of the buildings surrounding the Jackson Heights airport, with a tree plastered greenly against one of them. Queer.

His sense of memory began to return. There was the night-mail flight from Cleveland; the spot of light ahead that grew larger and larger like the most enormous of shooting stars, the sensation of sleepiness ... He remembered setting the controls to ride out the short remainder of the journey with the automatic pilot on the Jackson Heights’ radio beam, since he was clearly not going to make Montauk. But what came after that?

Then another oddity struck his attention. He recalled very clearly that he had been flying over the white landscape of winter--but now there was a tree in full leaf. Something was wrong. He clambered hastily from the cockpit.

As he swung himself over the side, his eye caught the glint of an unfamiliar high-light on the back of his hand and with the same stupefaction that Murray Lee was contemplating the same phenomenon several miles away, he perceived that instead of a flesh-and-blood member he had somehow acquired an iron hand. The other one was the same--and the arm--and the section of stomach which presently appeared when he tore loose his shirt to look at it.

The various possibilities that might account for it raced through his mind, each foundering on some fundamental difficulty. Practical joke--imagination--insanity--what else? Obviously some time had elapsed. But how about the ground staff of the airport? He shouted. No answer.

Muttering a few swears to himself he trudged across the flying field, noting that it was grown up with daisies and far from newly rolled, to the hangars. He shouted again. No answer. No one visible. He pounded at the door, then tried it. It was unlocked. Inside someone sat tilted back in a chair against the wall, a cap pulled over his face. Sherman walked over to the sleeper, favoring him with a vigorous shake and the word, “Hey!”

To his surprise the stranger tilted sharply over to one side and went to the floor with a bang, remaining in the position he had assumed. Sherman, the thought of murder jumping in his head, bent over, tugging at the cap. The man was as metallic as himself, but of a different kind--a solid statue cast in what seemed to be bronze.

“For Heaven’s sake!” said Herbert Sherman to himself and the world at large.

There seemed to be nothing in particular he could do about it; the man, if he had ever been a man, and was not part of some elaborate scheme of flummery fixed up for his benefit, was beyond human aid. However there was one way in which all difficulties could be solved. The sun was high and the town lay outside the door.

... He spent a good deal of the day wandering about Jackson Heights, contemplating such specimens of humanity as remained in the streets, fixed in the various ungraceful and unattractive attitudes of life. He had always been a solitary and philosophical soul, and he felt neither loneliness nor overwhelming curiosity as to the nature of the catastrophe which had stopped the wheels of civilization. He preferred to meditate on the vanity of human affairs and to enjoy a sense of triumph over the ordinary run of bustling mortals who had always somewhat irritated him.

In justice to Herbert Sherman it should be remarked that he felt no trepidation as to the outcome of this celestial joke on the inhabitants of the world. Beside being an aviator he was a competent mechanic, and he proved the ease with which he could control his new physique by sitting down in a restaurant next to the bronze model of a sleepy cat, removing one shoe and sock and proceeding to take out and then replace the cunningly concealed finger-nut which held his ankle in position, marvelling at how any chemical or other change could have produced a threaded bolt as an integral part of the human anatomy.

Toward evening, he returned to the flying field and examined his machine. One wing showed the effect of weathering, but it was an all-metal Roamer of the latest model and it had withstood the ordeal well. The gasoline gauge showed an empty tank, but it was no great task to get more from the big underground tanks at the field. Oil lines and radiators seemed all tight and when he swung the propeller, the motor purred for him like a cat.

With a kind of secret satisfaction gurgling within him Herbert Sherman taxied across the field, put the machine into a climb, and went forth to have a look at New York.

He thought he could see smoke over central Manhattan and swung the Roamer in that direction. The disturbance seemed to be located at the old Metropolitan Opera House which, as he approached it, seemed to have been burning, but had now sunk to a pile of glowing embers. The fire argued human presence of some kind. He took more height and looked down. Times Square held a good many diminutive dots, but they didn’t seem to be moving.

He swung over to examine the downtown section. All quiet. When he returned he saw a car dodging across Forty-Second Street and realizing that he could find human companionship whenever he needed it, which he did not at present, he returned to the flying field.

At this point It occurred to him to be hungry. Reasoning the matter out in the light of his mechanical experience, he drank a pint or more of lubricating oil and searched for a place to spend the night. Not being sleepy he raided a drug store where books were sold, for as much of its stock as he could use, and arranging one of the flares at the field in a position convenient for reading, he settled down for the night. In the course of it he twice tried smoking and found that his new make-up had ruined his taste for tobacco.

With the first streaks of day he was afoot again, going over the Roamer with a fine-toothed comb, since he had no mechanic to do it for him, tuning her up for a long flight. He had no definite purpose in mind beyond a look round the country. Was it all like this, or only New York?

Newark attracted his attention first. He noted there were ships at most of the piers in the river and that none of them bore signs of life. Neither had the streets on the Jersey side of the river any occupants other than those who were obviously still forever.

As he flew along toward the Newark airport, a shadow fell athwart the wing and he looked up.

A big bird was soaring past, flying above and fully as fast as the plane. In his quick glance Sherman caught something unfamiliar about its flight, and leaned over to snap on the mechanical pilot while he had another look. The bird, if bird it was, was certainly a queer specimen; it seemed to have two sets of wings and was using them as though it were an airplane, with the fore pair outstretched and rigid, the hind wings vibrating rapidly. As he gazed at the bird it drew ahead of the plane, gave a few quick flips to its fore-wings and banked around to pick him up again.

It was coming closer and regarding him with an uncommonly intelligent and by no means friendly eye. Sherman swung his arm at it and gave a shout--to which the bird paid not the slightest attention. Newark was running away under him. Reluctantly, he resumed control of the stick, put the plane into a glide and made for the airport. It occurred to him that this would be an awkward customer if it chose to attack him and he meditated on the possibility of finding a gun in Newark.

The field was bumpy, but he taxied to a stop and climbed out to look over the silent hangars before one of which a little sports plane stood dejectedly, with a piece of torn wing flapping in the breeze. As the Roamer came to rest he looked back at the bird. It was soaring away up in a close spiral, emitting a series of screams. Sherman determined to find a gun without delay.

Newark was like Jackson Heights; same stony immobility of inhabitants, same sense of life stopped at full tide in the streets. He prowled around till he found a hardware store and possessed himself of a fine .50- .50 express rifle with an adequate supply of cartridges as well as a revolver, added to it a collection of small tools, and stopped in at a library to get a supply of reading matter more to his taste than the drug store could provide.

As he took off again two specks in the sky far to the north represented, he decided, additional specimens of the peculiar bird life that had spread abroad since the change. How long it could have been, he had no idea.

He decided on a flight northwest, following the line of the mail route. There was a chance that the whole country might not be engulfed by this metal plague, though the absence of life in New York was not encouraging.

Port Jervis was his first control point, but Sherman was fond enough of the green wooded slopes of the Catskills to run a little north of his course, bumpy though the air was over the mountains. He set the automatic pilot and leaned back in his seat to enjoy the view.

Just north of Central Valley something seemed different about the hillside; a new scar had appeared along its edge. He turned to examine it, swooping as he did so and in a quick glance from the fast-moving airplane saw that the great forest trees, maples and oaks, were all down, twisted, barren and leafless, along a line that ran right up the valley and across the hill, as though they had been harrowed by some gigantic storm. The line was singularly definite; there were no half-broken trees.