Chapter 8: The Dodos are Bombing

The bare area seemed to run all down a long valley and spread out as it rounded the crest of a hill which hid what lay behind it from their view. As they watched a grey speck that might have been an ant at that height and distance, lumbered slowly down the valley, and then Ben noticed a tiny flicker of red light, so bright as to be clearly visible even in the day, where the grey speck moved against the hillside. A door seemed to open in the hillside; focusing the glasses the aviator handed him, he could just make out a square, bulky object that trundled forth. And then one--two--three--four--five of the huge dodo-tetrapteryx birds shot out, poised for a moment, and leaped into flight.

“Hello, Brisbane,” called Ben into the radiophone. “Five dodos have taken off from the cutting in the hills. I think they are after us. Better turn back this way and get ready for trouble.”

The aviator, understanding without being warned, had turned the plane. Ben swung round to look over his shoulder. The dodos were already some yards in the air; behind them the bulky object was running slowly out of the opening in the hillside. It had the appearance of a very long, flexible cannon. As he held his glasses on it, it stopped, straightened out and the muzzle was elevated in their direction.

“Dive!” he shouted suddenly into the voice-tube, entirely on impulse. The airplane banked sharply and seemed to drop straight down, and at the same instant right through the spot where they had just passed shot a beam of light so brilliant that it outshone the morning sun. There was a roar louder than that of the motor; the plane pitched and heaved in the disturbed air, and the light-beam went off as suddenly as it had snapped on.

“Didn’t I tell you those babies were poison?” he remarked. “Boy, if that ever hit us!”

“What was it?” asked the aviator’s voice.

“Don’t know, but it was something terrible. Let’s head for home and mamma. I don’t care about this.”

The plane reeled as the pilot handled the controls. Rrrr! said something and the light-beam shot out again, just to one side this time. Out of the corner of his eye Ben could see one of the birds--gaining on them!

“How do you work this machine-gun?” he asked.

“Just squeeze the trigger. Look out! I’m going to dive her again.”

With a roar, the light-beam let go a third time. Ben saw the edge of it graze their right wing-tip; the airplane swung wildly round and down, with the pilot fighting for control; the earth seemed to rush up to meet them, tumbling, topsy-turvy. Ben noted a warped black spot where the beam had touched the wing-tip, then surprisingly, they were flying along, level with the surface of the Hudson beneath them, and hardly a hundred feet up.

“That was close,” came the aviator’s voice, shaky with relief. “I thought they had us that time. Say, that’s some ray they have.”

“It sure is one first-class heller,” agreed Ben. “Are you far enough down to duck it now?”

“I think so, unless they can put it through the hills or chase us with it. Do you suppose those dodos thought that up themselves?”

“Can’t tell. They’re right on their toes, though. Look!” He pointed up and back. Silhouetted against the sky, they could see three of them, flying in formation like airplanes. “Can we make it?”

“I’m giving the old bus all she’ll stand. The Brisbane will come toward us though. Wait till those guys get going. They’ll find we can take a trick or two.”

Yonkers again. Ben looked anxiously over his shoulder. The three silhouettes were a trifle nearer. Would they do it? 125th Street and the long bridge swung into view, then Riverside Drive and the procession of docks with the rusting liners lying beside them. Ben waggled the machine-gun, tried to adjust its sights and squeezed the trigger. A little line of smoke-puffs leaped forth. Tracer bullets--but nowhere near the birds. On and on--lower New York--the Battery. Wham! The water beneath and behind them boiled. Ben looked up. The birds were above them, too high to be reached, dropping bombs.

“All right, old soaks,” he muttered, “keep that up. You’ll never hit us that way.”

Again something struck the water beneath them. The airplane pitched and swerved as the pilot changed course to disturb the aim of the bombers. In the distance the form of the cruiser could be seen now, heading toward them. As he watched, there was a flash from her foredeck. Up in the blue above them appeared the white burst of a shell, then another and another.

One of the dodos suddenly dived out of the formation, sweeping down more swiftly than Ben would have believed possible. He swung the gun this way and that, sending out streams of tracers, but the bird did not appear to heed. Closer--closer--and then with a crash something burst right behind him. The airplane gyrated; the water rushed upward. The end? he thought, and wondered inconsequentially whether his teeth would rust. The next moment the water struck them.

When Ben Ruby came to, he beheld a ceiling which moved jerkily to and fro and stared lazily at it, wondering what it was. Then memory returned with a snap; he sat up and looked about him. He was in one of those cubby-holes which are called “cabins” on warships, and alone. Beneath him he could hear the steady throb of the engines; at his side was a small table with a wooden rack on it, in one compartment of which stood a glass, whose contents, on inspection, proved to be oil. He drank it, looked at and felt of himself, and finding nothing wrong, got out of the hammock and stepped to the door. A seaman was on guard in the corridor.

“Where is everybody?”

“On deck, sir. I hope you are feeling all right now sir.”

“Top of the world, thanks. Is the aviator O.K.?”

“Yes, sir. This way.”

He ascended to the bridge, to be greeted riotously by the assembled company. The Brisbane was steaming steadily along in the open sea, with no speck of land in sight and no traces of the giant birds.

“What happened?” Ben asked. “Did you get rid of ‘em?”

“I think so. We shot down two and the rest made off after trying to bomb us. What did you two find out?”

Ben briefly described their experiences. “I thought there was something wrong with one of your wingtips,” said the captain, “but your plane sank so quickly after being hit that we didn’t have time to examine it. That light-ray cannon of theirs sounds serious. Do you suppose the dodos managed it?”

“Can’t tell,” said Ben. “From what I could make out through the glasses, it didn’t look like birds that were handling it.”

“But what could it be?”

“Ask me! Delirium tremens, I guess. Nothing in this world is like what it ought to be any more. Where did those birds come from; how did we get this way, all of us; who is it up there in the Catskills that don’t like us? Answer me those and I’ll tell you who was handling the gun.”

“Message, sir,” said a sailor, touching his cap, and handing a folded paper. The captain read it, frowning.

“There you are--” he extended the sheet to Ben. “My government is recalling all ships. Our sister-ship, the Melbourne, has been attacked off San Francisco and severely damaged by bomb-dropping dodos, and they have made a mass descent on Sumatra. Gentlemen, this has all the characteristics of a formal war.” He strode off to give the necessary orders to hurry the cruiser home, but Walter Beeville, who had joined the group at the bridge, said under his breath:

“If those birds have enough intelligence to plan out anything like that I’ll eat my hat.”

“If you were not before my eyes,” said Sir George Graham Harris, president of the Australian Scientific Commission, “as living proof of what you say, and if our biological and metallurgical experts did not report that your physiology is utterly beyond their comprehension, I do not know but that I would believe you were some cleverly constructed machines, actuated in some way by radio. However, that is not the point ... I have here a series of reports from different quarters on such explorations as have been made since the arrival of the comet and our recovery from its effects. We are, it appears, confronted with a menace of considerable seriousness in the form of these birds.

“In the light of your closer acquaintance with them and with conditions generally in the devastated areas, they may be more suggestive to you than to us.” He stopped and ruffled over the papers piled beside him at the big conference table. He was a kindly old gentleman, whose white Van Dyke and pale blue lips contrasted oddly with the almost indigo tint of his visage (before the comet it had been a rich wine-red, the result of a lifelong devotion to brandy and soda). Smiling round the table at his scientific colleagues and at Ben, Murray, Gloria and Beeville, who occupied the position of honor, he went on: