Chapter 20: The Coming of the Green Globes

“Where to, folks?” asked Sherman, during one of their periods of soaring, as they floated high above the hilly country to the west of the Delaware River.

“Oh, most anywhere,” said Ben. “I would like to see you try out this new-fangled gun of yours on something, though.”

“What shall we try it on? A house?”

“No, that’s too easy. We saw what it could do to things like that in the laboratory. Find a nice rock.”

“O. K. Here goes. Don’t give her the gun for a minute, Murray.”

With wings extended, the Monitor spiralled down toward the crest of the mountain. A projecting cliff stood just beneath them, sharply outlined in the rays of the morning sun.

“Now this is going to be difficult,” warned Sherman. “Throw that connecting bar, Ben. It holds the power switch and the beam switch together so they’re both turned on at once. Otherwise the recoil we’d get on this end of the beam would tumble us over backward. Hold it, while I set the controls. We’ve got to take a jump as soon as we fire, or we’ll pop right into the mess we make ... Ready? All right, Gloria, go ahead with your searchlight.”

The beam of the searchlight shot out, pale in the daylight, wavered a second, then outlined the crest of the cliff.

“Shoot!” cried Sherman.

There was a terrific report; a shock; the Monitor leaped, quivering in every part, and as they spiralled down to see what damage they had done, they beheld no cliff at all, but a rounded cup at the tip of the mountain in which a mass of molten rock boiled and simmered.

“Fair enough,” said Ben. “I guess that will do for the Lassans, all right. Home, James?”

“Right,” answered Sherman. “We’ve found out all we want to know this trip.”

The homeward journey was accomplished even more swiftly than the trip northward as Sherman gained in experience at the controls of the machine. As it glided slowly to earth at the airport a little group of officers was waiting to meet them.

“What in thunder have you been doing?” one of them greeted the Americans. “Your static, or whatever it was you let loose, burned out all the tubes in half the army radio sets in New Jersey.”

“By the nine gods of Clusium!” said Sherman. “I never thought of that. We’re reducing matter pretty much to its lowest terms, and it’s all a good deal alike on that scale--vibrations that may be electricity, magnetism, light or matter. Of course, when we let go that shot there was enough radiation to be picked up on Mars. I’ll have to figure out a way to get around that. Those Lassans are no bums as electricians and after we’ve been at them once or twice, they’ll be able to pick up our radiation whenever we’re coming and duck us.”

“There’s another thing,” said Ben. “I thought the Monitor vibrated a good deal when you let that shot go.”

“It did. We’ll have to get more rigidity or we’ll be shaking ourselves to pieces every time we shoot. But this, as I said, is an experimental ship. What we’ve got to do now is turn in and build a real one, with heavy armor and a lot of new tricks.”

“How are you going to know what kind of armor to put on her?”

“That’s easy. Steel will keep out any kind of material projectiles they’re likely to have, if it’s thick enough. It won’t keep out the light-ray, but we’ll put on a thin lead plating to take care of that, just in case, though I don’t think they’re likely to try it after the one failure.

“Then inside the steel armor, we’ll put a vacuum chamber. That will stop anything but light and maybe cosmic radiation, and I don’t think they’re up to that, although we’ll get a little of the effect through the struts that support the outer wall of the chamber. What I would like though, is a couple of these Lassan thought-helmets. Not that you people are slow on the uptake, but we’d be a lot faster if we had them, and we’re going to need all the speed we can get.”

They were crossing the flying field as they spoke, making for headquarters, where Sherman presently laid out the design for the second Monitor, embodying the improvements he had mentioned. The engineer who looked it over smiled doubtfully.

“I don’t think we can give this to you in less than three or four weeks,” he said. “It will take a lot of time to cast that armor you want and to build the vacuum chamber. I assume your own workmen are going to make the internal fixtures.”

“Correct from the word go,” Sherman told him. “But you better have it before three or four weeks are up. Ben, what do you say we run over to the lab and see if we can dig up something new.”

It was two days later when they stood at headquarters on the flying field again. The Monitor had made three more trips, on one of them, flying over the Lassan city without seeing anything more important than the Australian signal station perched on a nearby hill. Meanwhile the army of the federated governments had pushed out its tentacles, searching the barren waste that had been the most fruitful country in the world. East, west, south and north the report was the same; no sign of the Lassans or any other living thing.

“I could wish,” said Gloria, “that those lads would stick their noses out. I’d like to try the Monitor on them.”

“You’ll get all you want of that,” said Ben a trifle grimly. “I’m glad they’re giving us this much of a break. It lets us get things organized. Sherman is monkeying with a light-power motor now. If he catches it, our troubles will be over.”

“Wait a minute,” called an officer at a desk, as a telegraph key began tapping. “This looks like something.” He translated the dots and dashes for them. “Lassan--city--door--opening ... It’s from the signal station on that mountain right over it ... Big--ball--coming out--will--will--what’s this? The message seems to end.” He depressed the key vigorously and then waited. It remained silent.

“Oh, boy,” said Sherman, “there she goes! They got that signal station, I’ll bet a dollar to a ton of Lassan radiation.”

The officer was hammering the key again. “We’re sending out airplane scouts now,” he said. “Too bad about the signal station, but that’s war!”

“Come on, gang,” said Ben. “Let’s get out to the flying field. Looks like we’re going to be in demand.”

In a car borrowed from the headquarters staff they raced out to the field where the Monitor stood, ready on its ramp for any emergency. Just as they arrived an airplane became visible, approaching from the north. It circled the field almost as though the pilot were afraid to land, then dipped and came to a slow and hesitating stop. The onlookers noticed that its guy wires were sagging, its wheels uneven; it looked like a wreck of a machine which had not been flown for ten years, after it had lain in some hangar where it received no attention at all.

As they ran across the field toward it, the pilot climbed slowly out. They noticed that his face was pale and horror-struck, his limbs shaking.

“All gone,” he cried to the oncoming group.

“What? Who? What’s the matter?”

“Everything. Guns. Tanks. Airplanes. The big ball’s got ‘em. Almost got--” and he collapsed in Ben’s arms in a dead faint.

“Here,” said Ben, handing the unconscious aviator to one of the Australian officers. “Come on. There’s something doing up there. Big balls, eh? Well, we’ll make footballs of ‘em. That chap looks as though he’d been through a milling machine, though. The Lassans certainly must have something good.”

With a shattering crash as Murray Lee gave her all the acceleration she would take, the Monitor left the ramp, soared once or twice to gain altitude, and headed north amid a chorus of explosions. In less than ten minutes the thickly-settled districts of northern New Jersey were flowing past beneath them.

“Wish we had some radio in this bus,” remarked Ben Ruby. “We could keep in touch with what’s going on.”

“It would be convenient,” said Sherman, “but you can’t have everything. The Lassans aren’t going to wait for us to work out all our problems ... Look--what’s that over there?”

At nearly the same level as themselves and directly over the city of Newark a huge globular object, not unlike an enormous green cantaloupe, appeared to float in the air. From its under side the thin blue beam of some kind of ray reached to the ground. From the face turned diagonally away from them a paler, wider beam, yellowish in color, reached down toward the buildings of the city. And where it fell on them, they collapsed into shattering ruin; roof piled on walls, chimneys tumbled to the ground. There was no flame, no smoke, no sound--just that sinister monster moving slowly along, demolishing the city of Newark almost as though it were by an effort of thought.