Chapter 5: The Menace

Naturally, exploration of the familiar, yet unfamiliar world into which they had suddenly been thrown was the first preoccupation of the New York colonists. None of the group cared to wander far from the Institute during the first weeks, however, in view of the possible difficulty of obtaining electrical food for a long trip, and Beeville’s researches on the potentialities of their new bodily form advanced so slowly that they hardly dared leave.

His discoveries in the first weeks were, in fact, purely negative. Farrelly, the publisher, smashed a finger in some machinery, but when O’Hara turned an exact duplicate out on his lathe and Beeville attached it, the new member altogether lacked sensation and could be moved only with conscious effort--an indication that some as yet unfamiliar reaction underlay the secret of motion in their metal form.

But the greatest difficulty in the way of any activity lay in the almost abysmal ignorance of the mechanical and technical arts on the part of the whole group. O’Hara was a fair mechanic; Dangerfield dabbled in radio, and Farrelly could run a printing press (he published a comical parody of a newspaper on one for several days; then abandoned the effort); but beyond that the utmost accomplishment was driving a car, and most of them realized how helpless the old civilization had been without its hewers of wood and drawers of water.

To remedy this condition, as much as to keep them busy, Ben assigned to each some branch of mechanical science to be learned, the supply of information, in the form of books, and of experimental material, in every form, being inexhaustible. Thus the first week found Tholfsen and Mrs. Roberts scouring the line of the New York Central for a locomotive in running order. After numerous failures, they succeeded in getting the thing going, only to discover that the line was blocked with wrecks and they would need a crane to clear the track for an exploring journey of even moderate length.

At the same time, Murray Lee, with Dangerfield and two or three others, made an effort to get the Park Central’s broadcasting station in operation; a work of some difficulty, since it involved ventures into what were, for them, unknown fields. Daily they tap-tapped messages to each other on telegraph sets rescued from a Western Union office, in preparation for the time when they could get a sending set put together.

But the most ambitious effort and the one that was to have the largest share of ultimate consequences, was the expedition of Farrelly, Gloria and a clothing-store proprietor named Kevitz in quest of naval adventure. After a week’s intensive study of marine engines from books the three appropriated a tug from the Battery and set off on a cruise of the harbor.

Half an hour later they were high and dry off Bedloe’s Island, gloomily contemplating the prospect of spending their lives there, for an attempt to swim when weighted down with three hundred pounds of hardware could end only in failure. Fortunately the tide came to their rescue, and with more daring than judgment, they continued their voyage to Governor’s Island, where they were lucky enough to find a solitary artilleryman, weak with hunger, but hilarious with delight at the discovery that his metallic form was not a delirium tremens delusion induced by the quart of gin he had absorbed on the night before the change.

The giant birds, which Beeville had professionally named “tetrapteryxes,” seemed to have vacated the city with the appearance of the colonists. Even the nest Roberts had stumbled on proved deserted when an expedition cautiously revisited the place; and the memory of the birds had sunk to the level of a subject for idle remarks when a new event precipitated it into general attention.

Massey, the artist, with all the time in the world, and the art supplies of New York under his finger, had gone off on an artistic jag, painting day and night. One morning he took his canvas to the top of the Daily News building to paint the city at dawn from its weather-observation station. The fact that he had to climb stairs the whole way up and finally chisel through the door at the top was no bar to his enthusiasm. Kevitz, hurrying down Lexington Avenue in a car to join his fellow mariners in investigating the machinery of a freighter, saw him in the little steel cage, silhouetted against the reddening light of day.

There was an informal rule that everyone should gather at the Institute at ten in the evening, unless otherwise occupied, to report on the day’s events, and when Massey did not appear two or three people made comments on the fact, but it was not treated as a matter of moment. When the artist had not shown up by dawn of the next day, however, Murray and Gloria went to look for him, fearing accident. As they approached the building Murray noticed that the edge of the weather observation platform was twisted awry. He speeded up his car, but when they arrived and climbed the mountainous flights of stairs he found no bent and damaged form, as he had expected.

The roof of the building held nothing but the painting on which he had been working--a half-completed color sketch of the city as seen from the tower.

“Where do you s’pose he went?” asked Gloria.

“Don’t know, but he went in a hurry,” replied Murray. “He doesn’t care about those paintings much more than he does about his life.”

“Maybe he took a tumble,” she suggested. “Look, there’s his easel, and it’s busted.”

“Yes, and that little chair he totes around, and look how it’s all twisted out of shape.”

“Let’s look over the edge. Maybe he went bugs and jumped. I knew a guy that did that once.”

“Nothing doing,” said Murray, peering over the parapet of the building.

Mystery.

“Say--” it was Gloria who spoke. “Do you suppose those birds--the tetra-axes or whatever Beeville calls them--?”

They turned and scanned the sky. The calm blue vault, flecked by the fleecy clouds of summer, gave no hint of the doom that had descended on the artist.

“Nothing to do but go home, I guess,” said Murray, “and report another robbery in Prospect Park.”

The meeting of the colonists that evening was serious.

“It comes to this, then,” said Ben, finally. “These birds are dangerous. I’m willing to grant that it might not have been they who copped Massey, but I can’t think of anything else. I think it’s a good idea for us to leave here only in pairs and armed, until we’re certain the danger is over.”

“Ain’t that kind of a strong step, Mr. Ruby?” asked Kevitz. “It don’t seem to me like all that business is necessary.”

Ben shook his head decisively. “You haven’t seen these things,” he said. “In fact, I think it would be a good idea for us all to get some guns and ammunition and do target practice.”

The meeting broke up on that note and the members of the colony filed into the room where the supply of arms was stored, and presently to form an automobile procession through the streets in search of a suitable shooting gallery.

When targets were finally set up in the street in automobile lights, the general mechanical efficiency of the colony revealed itself once more. Gloria Rutherford was a dead shot and the artilleryman from Governor’s Island almost as good; Ben himself and Murray Lee, who had been to Plattsburg, knew at least the mechanism of rifles, but the rest could only shut their eyes and pull the trigger, with the vaguest of ideas as to where the bullet would go. And as Ben pointed out after the buildings along the street had been peppered with the major portion of Abercrombie and Fitch’s stock of ammunition, the supply was not inexhaustible.

“And what shall we do for weapons then?” he asked.

Yoshio, the little Japanese, raised his hand for attention.

“I have slight suggestion, perhaps merely cat’s meow and not worthy exalted attention,” he offered. “Why not all people as gentlemen old time in my country, carry sword? It is better than without weapon.”

“Why not, indeed?” said Ben above a hum of laughter. “Let’s go.” And an hour later the company re-emerged from an antique store, belted with the strangest collection of swords and knives and fishing gaffs ever borne by an earthly army.

“I wonder, though,” said Gloria to Murray Lee, as they reached the Institute as dawn was streaking up the sky. “All this hooey doesn’t seem to mean much. If those birds are as big as that they aren’t going to be scared by these little toad-stabbers.”

She was right. That night Ola Mae Roberts was missing.

The siege came a week later.

It was a week of strained tenseness; a certain electricity seemed at hand in the atmosphere, inhibiting speech. The colonists felt almost as though they were required to whisper...

A week during which Murray, with Dangerfield and Tholfsen, worked energetically at their radio, and progressed far enough so they could do a fairly competent job of sending and receiving in Morse code. A week during which the naval party got a freighter from the South Street docks and brought her round into the Hudson.