The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Invaders, by Raymond King Cummings
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Title: The White Invaders
Author: Raymond King Cummings
Release Date: February 10, 2007 [EBook #20551]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE INVADERS ***
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This etext was produced from "Astounding Stories" December
1931. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
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[Illustration]
The White Invaders
_A Complete Novelette_
By Ray Cummings
|----------------------------------------|
| Out of their unknown fourth |
| dimensional realm materializes a |
| horde of White Invaders with |
| power invincible. |
|----------------------------------------|
CHAPTER I
_A White Shape in the Moonlight_
The colored boy gazed at Don and me with a look of terror.
"But I tell you I seen it!" he insisted. "An' it's down there now. A
ghost! It's all white an' shinin'!"
"Nonsense, Willie," Don turned to me. "I say, Bob, what do you make
of this?"
"I seen it, I tell you," the boy broke in. "It ain't a mile from
here if you want to go look at it."
Don gripped the colored boy whose coffee complexion had taken on a
greenish cast with his terror.
[Illustration: _I fired at an oncoming white figure._]
"Stop saying that, Willie. That's absolute rot. There's no such
thing as a ghost."
"But I seen--"
"Where?"
"Over on the north shore. Not far."
"What did you see?" Don shook him. "Tell us exactly."
"A man! I seen a man. He was up on a cliff just by the golf course
when I first seen him. I was comin' along the path down by the Fort
Beach an' I looked up an' there he was, shinin' all white in the
moonlight. An' then before I could run, he came floatin' down at
me."
"Floating?"
"Yes. He didn't walk. He came down through the rocks. I could see
the rocks of the cliff right through him."
Don laughed at that. But neither he nor I could set this down as
utter nonsense, for within the past week there had been many wild
stories of ghosts among the colored people of Bermuda. The Negroes
of Bermuda are not unduly superstitious, and certainly they are more
intelligent, better educated than most of their race. But the little
islands, this past week, were echoing with whispered tales of
strange things seen at night. It had been mostly down at the lower
end of the comparatively inaccessible Somerset; but now here it was
in our own neighborhood.
"You've got the fever, Willie," Don laughed. "I say, who told you
you saw a man walking through rock?"
"Nobody told me. I seen him. It ain't far if you--"
"You think he's still there?"
"Maybe so. Mr. Don, he was standin' still, with his arms folded. I
ran, an'--"
"Let's go see if he's there," I suggested. "I'd like to have a look
at one of these ghosts."
* * * * *
But even as I lightly said it, a queer thrill of fear shot through
me. No one can contemplate an encounter with the supernatural
without a shudder.
"Right you are," Don exclaimed. "What's the use of theory? Can you
lead us to where you saw him, Willie?"
"Ye-es, of course."
The sixteen-year-old Willie was shaking again. "W-what's that for,
Mr. Don?"
Don had picked up a shotgun which was standing in a corner of the
room.
"Ain't no--no use of that, Mr. Don."
"We'll take it anyway, Willie. Ready, Bob?"
A step sounded behind us. "Where are you going?"
It was Jane Dorrance, Don's cousin. She stood in the doorway. Her
long, filmy white summer dress fell nearly to her ankles. Her black
hair was coiled on her head. In her bodice was a single red
poinsettia blossom. As she stood motionless, her small slight figure
framed against the dark background of the hall, she could have been
a painting of an English beauty save for the black hair suggesting
the tropics. Her blue-eyed gaze went from Don to me, and then to the
gun.
"Where are you going?"
"Willie saw a ghost." Don grinned. "They've come from Somerset,
Jane. I say, one of them seems to be right here."
"Where?"
"Willie saw it down by the Fort Beach."
"To-night?"
"Yes. Just now. So he says, though it's all rot, of course."
"Oh," said Jane, and she became silent.
* * * * *
She appeared to be barring our way. It seemed to me, too, that the
color had left her face, and I wondered vaguely why she was taking
it so seriously. That was not like Jane: she was a level-headed
girl, not at all the sort to be frightened by Negroes talking of
ghosts.
She turned suddenly on Willie. The colored boy had been employed in
the Dorrance household since childhood. Jane herself was only
seventeen, and she had known Willie here in this same big white
stone house, almost from infancy.
"Willie, what you saw, was it a--a man?"
"Yes," said the boy eagerly. "A man. A great big man. All white an'
shinin'."
"A man with a hood? Or a helmet? Something like a queer-looking hat
on his head, Willie?"
"Jane!" expostulated Don. "What do you mean?"
"I saw him--saw it," said Jane nervously.
"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "You did? When? Why didn't you tell us?"
"I saw it last night." She smiled faintly. "I didn't want to add to
these wild tales. I thought it was my imagination. I had been
asleep--I fancy I was dreaming of ghosts anyway."
"You saw it--" Don prompted.
"Outside my bedroom window. Some time in the middle of the night.
The moon was out and the--the man was all white and shining, just as
Willie says."
"But your bedroom," I protested. "Good Lord, your bedroom is on the
upper floor."
But Jane continued soberly, with a sudden queer hush to her voice,
"It was standing in the air outside my window. I think it had been
looking in. When I sat up--I think I had cried out, though none of
you heard me evidently--when I sat up, it moved away; walked away.
When I got to the window, there was nothing to see." She smiled
again. "I decided it was all part of my dream. This morning--well, I
was afraid to tell you because I knew you'd laugh at me. So many
girls down in Somerset have been imagining things like that."
* * * * *
To me, this was certainly a new light on the matter. I think that
both Don and I, and certainly the police, had vaguely been of the
opinion that some very human trickster was at the bottom of all
this. Someone, criminal or otherwise, against whom our shotgun would
be efficacious. But here was level-headed Jane telling us of a man
standing in mid-air peering into her second-floor bedroom, and then
walking away. No trickster could accomplish that.
"Ain't we goin'?" Willie demanded. "I seen it, but it'll be gone."
"Right enough," Don exclaimed grimly. "Come on, Willie."
He disregarded Jane as he walked to the door, but she clung to him.
"I'm coming," she said obstinately, and snatched a white lace scarf
from the hall rack and flung it over her head like a mantilla. "Don,
may I come?" she added coaxingly.
He gazed at me dubiously. "Why, I suppose so," he said finally. Then
he grinned. "Certainly no harm is going to come to us from a ghost.
Might frighten us to death, but that's about all a ghost can do,
isn't it?"
We left the house. The only other member of the Dorrance household
was Jane's father--the Hon. Arthur Dorrance, M.P. He had been in
Hamilton all day, and had not yet returned. It was about nine
o'clock of an evening in mid-May. The huge moon rode high in a
fleecy sky, illumining the island with a light so bright one could
almost read by it.
"We'll walk," said Don. "No use riding, Willie."
"No. It's shorter over the hill. It ain't far."
* * * * *
We left our bicycles standing against the front veranda, and, with
Willie and Don leading us, we plunged off along the little dirt road
of the Dorrance estate. The poinsettia blooms were thick on both
sides of us. A lily field, which a month before had been solid white
with blossoms, still added its redolence to the perfumed night air.
Through the branches of the squat cedar trees, in almost every
direction there was water visible--deep purple this night, with a
rippled sheen of silver upon it.
We reached the main road, a twisting white ribbon in the moonlight.
We followed it for a little distance, around a corkscrew turn,
across a tiny causeway where the moonlit water of an inlet lapped
against the base of the road and the sea-breeze fanned us. A
carriage, heading into the nearby town of St. Georges, passed us
with the thud of horses' hoofs pounding on the hard smooth stone of
the road. Under its jaunty canopy an American man reclined with a
girl on each side of him. He waved us a jovial greeting as they
passed.
Then Willie turned us off the road. We climbed the ramp of an open
grassy field, with a little cedar woods to one side, and up ahead,
half a mile to the right, the dark crumbling ramparts of a little
ancient fort which once was for the defense of the island.
Jane and I were together, with Willie and Don in advance of us, and
Don carrying the shotgun.
"You really saw it, Jane?"
"Oh, I don't know. I thought I did. Then I thought that I didn't."
"Well, I hope we see it now. And if it's human--which it must be if
there's anything to it at all--we'll march it back to St. Georges
and lock it up."
She turned and smiled at me, but it was a queer smile, and I must
admit my own feelings were queer.
"Don't you think you're talking nonsense, Bob?"
"Yes, I do," I admitted. "I guess maybe the whole thing is nonsense.
But it's got the police quite worried. You knew that, didn't you?
All this wild talk--there must be some basis for it."
Don was saying, "Take the lower path, Willie. Take the same route
you were taking when you saw it."
* * * * *
We climbed down a steep declivity, shadowed by cedar trees, and
reached the edge of a tiny, almost landlocked, lagoon. It was no
more than a few hundred feet in diameter. The jagged, porous
gray-black rocks rose like an upstanding crater rim to mark its
ten-foot entrance to the sea. A little white house stood here with
its back against the fifty-foot cliff. It was dark, its colored
occupants probably already asleep. Two rowboats floated in the
lagoon, moored near the shore. And on the narrow strip of stony
beach, nets were spread to dry.
"This way, Mister Don. I was comin' along here, toward the Fort."
Willie was again shaking with excitement. "Just past that bend."
"You keep behind me." Don led us now, with his gun half raised.
"Don't talk when we get further along, and walk as quietly as you
can."
The narrow path followed the bottom of the cliff. We presently had
the open sea before us, with a line of reefs a few hundred yards out
against which the lazy ground swell was breaking in a line of white.
The moonlit water lapped gently at our feet. The cliff rose to our
right, a mass of gray-black rock, pitted and broken, fantastically
indented, unreal in the moonlight.
"I seen it--just about there," Willie whispered.
Before us, a little rock headland jutted out into the water. Don
halted us, and we stood silent, gazing. I think that there is hardly
any place more fantastic than a Bermuda shorefront in the moonlight.
In these little eroded recesses, caves and grottoes one might expect
to see crooked-legged gnomes, scampering to peer at the human
intruder. Gnarled cedars, hanging precariously, might hide pixies
and elves. A child's dream of fairyland, this reality of a Bermuda
shorefront.
"There it is!"
* * * * *
Willie's sibilant whisper dispelled my roaming fancy. We all turned
to stare behind us in the direction of Willie's unsteady finger. And
we all saw it--the white shape of a man down near the winding path
we had just traversed. A wild thrill of fear, excitement,
revulsion--call it what you will--surged over me. The thing had been
following us!
We stood frozen, transfixed. The shape was almost at the water
level, a hundred feet or so away. It had stopped its advance; to all
appearances it was a man standing there, calmly regarding us. Don
and I swung around to face it, shoving Jane and Willie behind us.
Willie had started off in terror, but Jane gripped him.
"Quiet, Willie!"
"There it is! See it--"
"Of course we see it," Don whispered. "Don't talk. We'll wait; see
what it does."
We stood a moment. The thing was motionless. It was in a patch of
shadow, but, as though gleaming with moonlight, it seemed to shine.
Its glow was silvery, with a greenish cast almost phosphorescent.
Was it standing on the path? I could not tell. It was too far away;
too much in shadow. But I plainly saw that it had the shape of a
man. Wraith, or substance? That also, was not yet apparent.
Then suddenly it was moving! Coming toward us. But not floating, for
I could see the legs moving, the arms swaying. With measured tread
it was walking slowly toward us!
Don's shotgun went up. "Bob, we'll hold our ground. Is it--is he
armed, can you see?"
"No! Can't tell."
Armed! What nonsense! How could this wraith, this apparition, do us
physical injury!
"If--if he gets too close, Bob, by God, I'll shoot. But if he's
human, I wouldn't want to kill him."
* * * * *
The shape had stopped again. It was fifty feet from us now, and we
could clearly see that it was a man, taller than normal. He stood
now with folded arms--a man strangely garbed in what seemed a white,
tight-fitting jacket and short trunks. On his head was a black skull
cap surmounted by a helmet of strange design.
Don's voice suddenly echoed across the rocks.
"Who are you?"
The white figure gave no answer. It did not move.
"We see you. What do you want?" Don repeated.
Then it moved again. Partly toward us and partly sidewise, away from
the sea. The swing of the legs was obvious. It was walking. But not
upon the path, nor upon the solid surface of these Bermuda rocks! A
surge of horror went through me at the realization. This was nothing
human! It was walking on some other surface, invisible to us, but
something solid beneath its own tread.
"Look!" Jane whispered. "It's walking--_into the cliff_!"
There was no doubt about it now. Within thirty feet of us, it was
slowly walking up what must have been a steep ascent. Already it was
ten feet or more above our level. And it was behind the rocks of the
cliff! Shining in there as though the rocks themselves were
transparent!
Or were my senses tricking me? I whispered, "Is it back of the
rocks? Or is there a cave over there? An opening?"
"Let's go see." Don took a step forward; and called again:
"You--we see you. Stand still! Do you want me to fire at you?"
The figure turned and again stood regarding us with folded arms.
Obviously not Don's voice, but his movement, had stopped it. We left
the path and climbed about ten feet up the broken cliff-side. The
figure was at our level now, but it was within the rocks. We were
close enough now to see other details: a man's white face, with
heavy black brows, heavy features; a stalwart, giant figure, six and
a half feet at the least. The white garment could have been of woven
metal. I saw black, thread-like wires looped along the arms, over
the shoulders, down the sides of the muscular naked legs. There
seemed, at the waist, a dial-face, with wires running into it.
The details were so clear that they seemed substantial, real. Yet
the figure was so devoid of color that it could have been a
light-image projected here upon these rocks. And the contour of the
cliff was plainly visible in front of it.
* * * * *
We stood gazing at the thing, and it stared back at us.
"Can you hear us?" Don called.
Evidently it could not. Then a sardonic smile spread over the face
of the apparition. The lips moved. It said something to us, but we
heard no sound.
It was a wraith--this thing so visibly real! It was apparently close
to us, yet there was a limitless, intervening void of the unknown.
It stood still with folded arms across the brawny chest,
sardonically regarding us. The face was strangely featured, yet
wholly of human cast. And, above all, its aspect was strangely evil.
Its gaze suddenly turned on Jane with a look that made my heart leap
into my throat and made me fling up my arms as though to protect
her.
Then seemingly it had contemplated us enough; the folded arms swung
down; it turned away from us, slowly stalking off.
"Stop!" Don called.
"See!" I whispered. "It's coming out in the open!"
The invisible surface upon which it walked led it out from the
cliff. The figure was stalking away from us in mid-air, and it
seemed to fade slowly in the moonlight.
"It's going!" I exclaimed. "Don, it's getting away!"
Impulsively I started scrambling over the rocks; unreasoningly, for
who can chase and capture a ghost?
Don stopped me. "Wait!" His shotgun went to his shoulders. The white
shape was now again about fifty feet away. The gun blazed into the
moonlight. The buckshot tore through the stalking white figure; the
moonlit shorefront echoed with the shot.
When the smoke cleared away, we saw the apparition still walking
quietly forward. Up over the sea now, up and out into the moonlit
night, growing smaller and dimmer in the distance, until presently
it was faded and gone.
A ghost?
We thought so then.
CHAPTER II
_The Face at the Window_
This was our first encounter with the white invaders. It was too
real to ignore or treat lightly. One may hear tales of a ghost, even
the recounting by a most reliable eye-witness, and smile
skeptically. But to see one yourself--as we had seen this thing in
the moonlight of that Bermuda shorefront--that is a far different
matter.
We told our adventure to Jane's father when he drove in from
Hamilton about eleven o'clock that same evening. But he, who
personally had seen no ghost, could only look perturbed that we
should be so deluded. Some trickster--or some trick of the
moonlight, and the shadowed rocks aiding our own sharpened
imaginations. He could think of no other explanation. But Don had
fired pointblank into the thing and had not harmed it.
Arthur Dorrance, member of the Bermuda Parliament, was a gray-haired
gentleman in his fifties, a typical British Colonial, the present
head of this old Bermuda family. The tales or the ghosts, whatever
their origin, already had forced themselves upon Governmental
attention. All this evening, in Hamilton, Mr. Dorrance had been in
conference trying to determine what to do about it. Tales of terror
in little Bermuda had a bad enough local effect, but to have them
spread abroad, to influence adversely the tourist trade upon which
Bermuda's very existence depended--that presaged economic
catastrophe.
"And the tales are spreading," he told us. "Look here, you young
cubs, it's horribly disconcerting to have you of all people telling
me a thing like this."
Even now he could not believe us. But he sat staring at us,
eyeglasses in hand, with his untouched drink before him.
"We'll have to report it, of course. I've been all evening with the
steamship officials. They're having cancellations." He smiled
faintly at me. "We can't get along without you Americans, Bob."
I have not mentioned that I am an American. I was on vacation from
my job as radio technician in New York. Don Livingston, who is
English and three years my senior, was in a similar line of work--at
this time he was technician in the small Bermuda broadcasting
station located in the nearby town of St. Georges.
* * * * *
We talked until nearly midnight. Then the telephone rang. It was the
Police Chief in Hamilton. Ghosts had been seen in that vicinity this
evening. There were a dozen complaints of ghostly marauders prowling
around homes. This time from both white and colored families.
And there was one outstanding fact, frightening, indeed, though at
first we could not believe that it meant very much, or that it had
any connection with this weird affair. In the residential suburb of
Paget, across the harbor from Hamilton, a young white girl, named
Miss Arton, had vanished. Mr. Dorrance turned from the telephone
after listening to the details and faced us with white face and
trembling hands, his expression more perturbed and solemn than ever
before.
"It means nothing, of course. It cannot mean anything."
"What, father?" Jane demanded. "Something about Eunice?"
"Yes. You know her, Bob--you played tennis down there with her last
week. Eunice Arton."
I remembered her. A Bermuda girl; a beauty, second to none in the
islands, save perhaps Jane herself. Jane and Don had known her for
years.
"She's missing," Mr. Dorrance added. He flashed us a queer look and
we stared at him blankly. "It means nothing, of course," he added.
"She's been gone only an hour."
But we all knew that it did mean something. For myself I recall a
chill of inward horror; a revulsion as though around me were
pressing unknown things; unseeable, imponderable things menacing us
all.
"Eunice missing! But father, how missing?"
He put his arm around Jane. "Don't look so frightened, my dear
child."
He held her against him. If only all of us could have anticipated
the events of the next few days. If only we could have held Jane,
guarded her, as her father was affectionately holding her now!
* * * * *
Don exclaimed, "But the Chief of Police gave you details?"
"There weren't many to give." He lighted a cigarette and smiled at
his trembling hands. "I don't know why I should feel this way, but I
do. I suppose--well, it's what you have told me to-night. I don't
understand it--I can't think it was all your imagination."
"But that girl, Eunice," I protested.
"Nothing--except she isn't at home where she should be. At eleven
o'clock she told her parents she was going to retire. Presumably she
went to her room. At eleven-thirty her mother passed her door. It
was ajar and a bedroom light was lighted. Mrs. Arton opened the door
to say good night to Eunice. But the girl was not there."
He stared at us. "That's all. There is so much hysteria in the air
now, that Mr. Arton was frightened and called upon the police at
once. The Artons have been telephoning to everyone they know. It
isn't like Eunice to slip out at night--or is it, Jane?"
"No," said Jane soberly. "And she's gone? They didn't hear any sound
from her?" A strange, frightened hush came upon Jane's voice. "She
didn't--scream from her bedroom? Anything like that?"
"No, he said not. Jane, dear, you're thinking more horrible things.
She'll be found in the morning, visiting some neighbor or something
of the kind."
But she was not found. Bermuda is a small place. The islands are so
narrow that the ocean on both sides is visible from almost
everywhere. It is only some twelve miles from St. Georges to
Hamilton, and another twelve miles puts one in remote Somerset. By
noon of the next day it was obvious that Eunice Arton was quite
definitely missing.
* * * * *
This next day was May 15th--the first of the real terror brought by
the White Invaders. But we did not call them that yet; they were
still the "ghosts." Bermuda was seething with terror. Every police
station was deluged with reports of the ghostly apparitions. The
white figures of men--in many instances, several figures
together--had been seen during the night in every part of the
islands. A little band of wraiths had marched down the deserted main
street of Hamilton. It was nearly dawn. A few colored men, three or
four roistering visitors, and two policemen had seen them. They had
appeared down at the docks and had marched up the slope of the main
street.
The stories of eye-witnesses to any strange event always are
contradictory. Some said this band of ghostly men marched on the
street level; others said they were below it, walking with only
their heads above the road surface and gradually descending. In any
event the frightened group of onlookers scattered and shouted until
the whole little street was aroused. But by then the ghosts had
vanished.
There were tales of prowlers around houses. Dogs barked in the
night, frantic with excitement, and then shivered with terror,
fearful of what they could sense but not see.
In Hamilton harbor, moored at its dock, was a liner ready to leave
for New York. The deck watch saw ghosts walking apparently in
mid-air over the moonlit bay, and claimed that he saw the white
figure of a man pass through the solid hull-plates of the ship. At
the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse other apparitions were seen; and the St.
David Islanders saw a group of distant figures seemingly a hundred
feet or more beneath the beach--a group, heedless of being observed;
busy with some activity; dragging some apparatus, it seemed. They
pulled and tugged at it, moving it along with them until they were
lost to sight, faded in the arriving dawn and blurred by the white
line of breakers on the beach over them.
The tales differed materially in details. But nearly all mentioned
the dark helmets of strange design, the white, tightly fitting
garments, and many described the dark thread-like wires looped along
the arms and legs, running up into the helmet, and back across the
chest to converge at the belt where there was a clock-like
dial-face.
* * * * *
The ghostly visitors seemed not aggressive. But Eunice Arton was
missing; and by noon of May 15th it was apparent that several other
white girls had also vanished. All of them were under twenty, all of
prominent Bermuda families, and all of exceptional beauty.
By this time the little government was in chaos. The newspapers, by
government order, were suppressed. The cable station voluntarily
refused to send press dispatches to the outside world. Don, Jane and
I, through Mr. Dorrance's prominence, had all the reports; but to
the public it was only known by whispered, garbled rumor. A panic
was impending. The New York liner, that morning of May 15th, was
booked beyond capacity. An English ship, anchored out in the open
channel outside Hamilton harbor, received passengers up to its limit
and sailed.
The shops of St. Georges and Hamilton did not open that morning of
May 15th. People gathered in the streets--groups of whites and
blacks--trying to learn what they could, and each adding his own
real or fancied narrative to the chaos.
Although there had seemed so far no aggression from the ghosts--our
own encounter with the apparition being typical of them all--shortly
after noon of the 15th we learned of an event which changed the
whole aspect of the affair; an event sinister beyond any which had
gone before. It had occurred in one of the hotels near Hamilton the
previous night and had been suppressed until now.
A young woman tourist, living alone in the hotel, had occupied a
bedroom on the lower floor. The storm blinds and windows were open.
During the night she had screamed. Guests in nearby rooms heard her
cries, and they were also conscious of a turmoil in the woman's
room. Her door was locked on the inside, and when the night clerk
finally arrived with a pass-key and they entered, they found the
room disordered, a wicker chair and table overturned, and the young
woman gone, presumably out of the window. She had been a woman of
about twenty-five, a widow, exceptionally attractive.
* * * * *
Stolen by the ghosts? We could think of nothing else. Was that what
had happened to Eunice Arton? Did that explain the reported
disappearances of the several other girls? Did this ghostly activity
have some rational purpose--the stealing of young white women, all
of them of unusual beauty? The conclusion was forced upon us, and
with it the whole affair took on a complexion shudderingly sinister.
It was not a mere panic of the people with which Bermuda now had to
cope--not merely an unexplainable supernatural visitation, harmless
enough, save that it was terrorizing. This was a menace. Something
which had to be met with action.
It would be futile for me to attempt detailing the events of that
chaotic day. We had all ridden over to Hamilton and spent the day
there, with the little town in a turmoil and events seething around
us--a seemingly endless stream of reports of what had happened the
night before. By daylight no apparitions were seen. But another
night was coming. I recall with an inward sinking of heart I saw the
afternoon sun lowering, the sky-blue waters of the bay deepening
into purple and the chalk-white little stone houses taking on the
gray cast of twilight. Another night was coming.
The government was making the best preparations it could. Every
policeman of the island force was armed and ready to patrol through
the night. The few soldiers of the garrisons at St. Georges and
Hamilton were armed and ready. The police with bicycles were ready
to ride all the roads. The half dozen garbage trucks--low-geared
motor trucks--were given over to the soldiers for patrol use. The
only other automobiles on the islands were those few permitted for
the use of the physicians, and there were a few ambulance cars. All
of these were turned over to the troops and the police for patrol.
* * * * *
In the late afternoon an American newspaper hydroplane arrived from
New York. It landed in the waters of Hamilton harbor and prepared to
encircle the islands throughout the night. And the three or four
steamship tenders and the little duty boat which supplied the
government dockyards with daily provisions all had steam up, ready
to patrol the island waters.
Yet it all seemed so futile against this unknown enemy. Ghosts? We
could hardly think of them now as that. Throughout the chaotic day I
recall so many wild things I had heard others say, and had myself
thought. The dead come to life as living wraiths? A ghost could not
materialize and kidnap a girl of flesh and blood. Or could it?
Hysterical speculation! Or were these invaders from another planet?
Whatever their nature, they were enemies. That much we knew.
Night fell upon the crowded turmoil of the little city of Hamilton.
The streets were thronged with excited, frightened people. The
public park was jammed. The hotels and the restaurants were crowded.
Groups of soldiers and police on bicycles with electric torches
fastened to their handlebars were passing at intervals. Overhead the
airplane, flying low, roared past every twenty minutes or so.
The night promised to be clear. The moon would rise, just beyond the
full, a few hours after sunset. It was a warm and breathless night,
with less wind than usual. Most of the people crowding the streets
and the restaurants were in white linen--themselves suggesting the
white and ghostly enemy.
* * * * *
Mr. Dorrance was occupied at the Government House. Jane, Don and I
had supper in a restaurant on Queen Street. It was nearly eight
o'clock and the crowd in the restaurant was thinning out. We were
seated near the street entrance where large plate-glass windows
displayed a variety of bakery products and confections. Jane had her
back to the street, but Don and I were facing it. Crowds were
constantly passing. It was near the end of our meal. I was gazing
idly through one of the windows, watching the passing people when
suddenly I became aware of a man standing out there gazing in at me.
I think I have never had so startling a realization. It was a man in
white doeskin trousers and blue blazer jacket, with a jaunty linen
cap on his head. An abnormally tall, muscular man. And his
smooth-shaven, black-browed face with the reflection from the
restaurant window lights upon it, reminded me of the apparition we
had seen the night before!
"Don! Don't look up! Don't move! Jane, don't look around!" I
whispered, almost frantically.
I must have gone white for Don and Jane gaped at me in astonishment.
"Don't do that!" I murmured. "Someone outside, watching us!" I tried
to smile. "Hot night, isn't it? Did you get a check, Don?" I looked
around vaguely for the waitress, but out of the tail of my eyes I
could see the fellow out there still peering in and staring intently
at us.
"What is it?" Don whispered.
"Man watching us! See him out there--the right-hand window! Jane,
don't look around!"
"Good Lord!" murmured Don.
"Looks like him, doesn't it?"
"Good Lord! But I say--"
"What is it?" murmured Jane. "What is it?"
"Waitress!" I called. "Check, please. There's a man out there,
Jane--we're crazy, but he does look like that ghost we saw on the
Fort Beach."
If the fellow knew that we had spotted him he gave no sign. He was
still apparently regarding the bakery display in the window, but
watching us nevertheless. I was sure of that.
The waitress gave us our check. "Nine and six," Don smiled. "Thank
you. But didn't you forget that last coffee?"
The colored girl added the extra sixpence, and left us.
"You think that's the same--I say, good Lord--"
* * * * *
Don was speechless. Jane had gone white. The fellow moved to the
other window, and Jane had a swift look at him. We all recognized
him, or thought we did. What necromancy was this? Had one of the
apparitions materialized? Was that ghost we saw, this gigantic
fellow in doeskins and blazer who looked like a tourist standing out
there at the window? Were these ghosts merely human enemies after
all?
The idea was at once terrifying, and yet reassuring. This was a man
with whom we could cope with normal tactics. My hand went to the
pocket of my blazer where I had a little revolver. Both Don and I
were armed--permits for the carrying of concealed weapons had been
issued to us this same day.
I murmured, "Jane! There are the Blakinsons over there. Go join
them. We'll be back presently."
"What are you going to do?" Don demanded.
"Go out and tackle him--shall we? Have a talk. Find out who he is."
"No!" Jane protested.
"Why not? Don't you worry, Jane. Right here in the public
street--and we're both armed. He's only a man."
But was he only a man?
"We'll have a go at it," said Don abruptly. He rose from his seat.
"Come on, Jane, I'll take you to the Blakinsons."
"Hurry it up!" I said. "He's leaving! We'll lose him!"
The fellow seemed about to wander on along the street. Don brought
Jane over to the Blakinsons' table which was at the back of the
restaurant. We left our check with her and dashed for the street.
"Where is he? Do you see him?" Don demanded.
He had gone. But in a moment we saw him, his white cap towering
above the crowd down by the drugstore at the corner.
"Come on, Don! There he is!"
We half ran through the crowd. We caught the fellow as he was
diagonally crossing the street. We rushed up, one on each side of
him, and seized him by the arms.
CHAPTER III
_Tako, the Mysterious_
The fellow towered head and shoulders over Don, and almost that over
me. He stared down at us, his jaw dropping with surprise. My heart
was pounding; to me there was no doubt about it now; this
heavy-featured handsome, but evil face was the face of the
apparition at whom Don had fired as it hung in the air over the Fort
Beach path. But this was a man. His arm, as I clutched it, was
muscularly solid beneath the sleeve of his flannel jacket.
"I say," Don panted. "Just a minute."
With a sweep of his arms the stranger angrily flung off our hold.
"What do you want?"
I saw, within twenty feet of us, a policeman standing in the street
intersection.
"I beg your pardon," Don stammered. We had had no time to plan
anything. I put in:
"We thought you were a friend of ours. This night--so much
excitement--let's get back to the curb."
We drew the man to the sidewalk as a physician's little automobile
with two soldiers in it waded its way slowly through the crowd.
The man laughed. "It is an exciting night. I never have seen Bermuda
like this before."
Swift impressions flooded me. The fellow surely must recognize us as
we did him. He was pretending friendliness. I noticed that though he
seemed not over forty, his close-clipped hair beneath the white
linen cap was silver white. His face had a strange pallor, not the
pallor of ill health, but seemingly a natural lack of color. And his
voice, speaking good English, nevertheless marked him for a
foreigner--though of what nation certainly I could not say.
"We're mistaken," said Don. "But you look like someone we know."
"Do I, indeed? That is interesting."
"Only you're taller," I said. "You're not a Bermudian, are you?"
His eyes, beneath the heavy black brows shot me a look. "No. I am a
stranger; a visitor. My name----"
* * * * *
He hesitated briefly; then he smiled with what seemed an amused
irony. "My name is Tako. Robert Tako. I am living at the Hamiltonia
Hotel. Does that satisfy you?"
I could think of nothing to say. Nor could Don. The fellow added,
"Bermuda is like a little ship. I understand your inquisitiveness--one
must know everyone else. And who are you?"
Don told him.
"Ah, yes," he smiled. "And so you are a native Bermudian?"
"Yes."
"And you," he said to me, "you are American?"
"From New York, yes."
"That is more interesting. Never have I known an American. You are
familiar with New York City?"
"Of course. I was born there."
His contemplative gaze made me shiver. I wondered what Don was
planning as an outcome to this. The fellow seemed wholly at ease
now. He was lounging against the drug store window with us before
him. My eyes were level with the negligee collar of his blue linen
shirt, and abruptly I was galvanized into alertness. Just above the
soft collar where his movements had crushed it down I saw
unmistakably the loop of a tiny black thread of wire projecting
upward! Conclusive proof! This was one of the mysterious enemies!
One of the apparitions which had thrown all Bermuda into a turmoil
stood materialized here before us.
I think that Don had already seen the wire. The fellow was saying
nonchalantly,
"And you, Mr. Livingston--are you also familiar with New York City?"
"Yes," said Don. He had gone pale and tight-lipped. I caught his
warning glance to me. "Yes," he repeated. "I lived there several
years."
"I would like to know you two better. Much better--but not tonight."
He moved as though to take his leave of us. Then he added to Don,
"That most beautiful young lady with you in the restaurant--did I
not see you there? Is that your sister?"
Don made his decision. He said abruptly, "That's none of your
business."
It took the fellow wholly by surprise. "But listen--"
"I've had enough of your insolence," Don shouted.
The man's hand made an instinctive movement toward his belt, but I
seized his wrist. And I added my loud voice to Don's. "No, you
don't!"
* * * * *
A group of onlookers was at once collecting around us. The giant
tried to cast me off, but I clung to him with all my strength. And
suddenly we were struggling to keep the fellow from breaking away
from us. He muttered a strange-sounding oath.
"Let me go! You fools!"
"Not such fools," Don shouted. "Officer! I say--officer!"
Don's revolver was in his hand; people were pressing around us, but
when they saw the revolver they began scattering. The giant made a
lunge and broke away from us, heedless that Don might have shot him.
"What's all this? I say, you three, what are you up to?"
The policeman came on a run. A group of soldiers passing on
bicycles, flung the machines aside and came dashing at us. The giant
stood suddenly docile.
"Officer, these young men attacked me."
"He's a liar!" Don shouted. "Watch him! He might be armed--don't let
him get away from you!"
The law surrounded us. "Here's my weapon," said Don. "Bob, give up
your revolver."
In the turmoil Don plucked the policeman aside.
"I'm nephew of the Honorable Arthur Dorrance. Take us to your chief.
I made that uproar to catch that big fellow."
The name of the Honorable Arthur Dorrance was magic. The policeman
stared at our giant captive who now was surrounded by the soldiers.
"But I say--"
"Take us all in and send for Mr. Dorrance. He's at the Government
House."
"But I say--That big blighter--"
"We think he's one of the ghosts!" Don whispered.
"Oh, my Gawd!"
With the crowd following us we were hurried away to the police
station nearby.
* * * * *
The sergeant said, "The Chief will be here in a few minutes. And
we've sent for Mr. Dorrance."
"Good enough, Brown." It chanced that Don knew this sergeant very
well. "Did you search the fellow?"
"Yes. No weapon in his clothes."
I whispered, "I saw a wire under his collar."
"Sh! No use telling that now, Bob."
I realized it. These policemen were frightened enough at our
captive. Don added, "Before my uncle and the Chief arrive, let me
have a talk with that fellow, will you?"
They had locked him up; and in the excitement of our arrival at the
station both Don and I had completely forgotten the wire we had seen
at his collar. But we remembered it now, and the same thought
occurred to both of us. We had locked up this mysterious enemy, but
would the prison bars hold him?
"Good Lord!" Don exclaimed. "Bob, those wires--Sergeant, we
shouldn't have left that fellow alone! Is he alone! Come on!"
With the frightened mystified sergeant leading us we dashed along
the little white corridor to the windowless cell in which the giant
was confined. At the cell-door a group of soldiers lounged in the
corridor.
"Smooth talker, that fellow."
"Gor blime me, who is he?"
We arrived with a rush. "Is he in there?" Don shouted. "Open the
door, you fellows! See here, you watch him--we've got to get his
clothes off. He's got some mechanism--wires and things underneath
his clothes!"
"Get out of the way!" ordered the sergeant. "I'll open it!"
There was silence from behind the door. The prisoner had been in the
cell no more than a minute or two.
* * * * *
We burst open the door. The cell was dimly illumined. The figure of
the giant stood backed in its further corner. But at the sight of
him we all stood transfixed with horror. His shoes, trousers, shirt,
jacket and cap lay in a little pile at his feet. He stood revealed
in the short tight-fitting silvery garments. The wires were looped
about his arms and legs and he had pulled a mesh of them over his
head in lieu of a helmet.
He stood regarding us sardonically. And in that instant while we
were stricken with the shock of it, I saw that the figure was
fading. It was a solid human form no longer! A silvery cast had come
upon it. Another second passed; it was visibly growing tenuous,
wraithlike! It was melting while we stared at it, until in that
breathless instant I realized that the wall behind it was showing
through.
A wraith! An apparition! The vision of a ghost standing there,
leering at us!
The soldiers had retreated back into the corridor behind us. The
sergeant gripped me, and his other hand, wavering with fright,
clutched a revolver.
"But it's--it's going!"
Don gasped, "Too late! Sergeant, give me that gun!"
"Wait!" I shouted. "Don't shoot at it!"
The shimmering glowing white figure was slowly moving downward as
though floating through the cell-floor. Its own invisible surface
was evidently not here but lower down, and it was beginning to drop.
I don't know what frenzied courage--if courage it could be
called--was inspiring me. I was wholly confused, but nevertheless I
struck Don and the sergeant aside and rushed at the thing.
* * * * *
It was a sensation most horrible. From the waist up it was still
above the floor of the cell. My wildly flailing arms went through
the chest! But I felt nothing. It was not even like waving aside a
mist. There was nothing. I saw my solid fist plunge through the
leering ghostly face. I fought wildly, with a panic upon me, against
the glowing phosphorescent nothingness of the apparition. My feet
were stamping on its chest and shoulders. Then, as it sank lower,
only the grinning face was down there.
Panting, and with the cold sweat of horror upon me, I felt Don
shoving me aside.
"Too late!"
And then the sergeant's shot rang out. The bullet clattered against
the solid stone floor of the cell. The acrid smoke of the powder
rolled over us; and cleared in a moment to show us the apparition
several feet below the floor level. It seemed to strike its solidity
of ground. I saw it fall the last little distance with a rush; land,
and pick itself up. And with a last sardonic grin upward at us, the
dim white figure ran. Dwindling smaller, dimmer, until in a moment
it was gone into the Unknown.
As though a light had struck upon me came the realization.
"Don, this is rational, this thing! Some strange science!"
All day we had been vaguely realizing it. Intangible, but rational
enemies were stealing white girls of Bermuda. Invaders from another
planet? We had thought it might be that. Certainly it was nothing
supernatural. These was not ghosts.
But now came a new realization. "Don! That's another world down
there! Another realm! The fourth dimension--that's what it is! These
things everybody's calling ghosts--it's the fourth dimension, Don!
People of the fourth dimension coming out to attack us!"
And already the real menace had come! At that moment, half a mile
away across the harbor on the slope of the little hill in Paget, an
army of the White Invaders suddenly materialized, with dull,
phosphorescent-green light-beams flashing around the countryside,
melting trees and vegetation and people into nothingness!
The attack upon Bermuda had begun!
CHAPTER IV
_Ambushed!_
The events which I have now to describe are world history, and have
been written in many forms and by many observers. I must, however,
sketch them in broadest outline for the continuity of this personal
narrative of the parts played by my friends and myself in the dire
and astounding affair which was soon to bring chaos, not only to
little Bermuda but to the great United States as well, and a near
panic everywhere in the world.
On this evening of May 15th, 1938, the White Invaders showed
themselves for the first time as rational human enemies. The
residential suburb of Paget lies across the little harbor from the
city of Hamilton. It is a mile or so by road around the bay, and a
few minutes across the water by ferry. The island in the Paget
section is a mere strip of land less than half a mile wide in most
places, with the sheltered waters of the harbor on one side, and the
open Atlantic with a magnificent pink-white beach on the other. The
two are divided by a razor-back ridge--a line of little hills a
hundred feet or so high, with narrow white roads and white stone
residences set on the hill-slopes amid spacious lawns and tropical
gardens; and with several lavish hotels on the bay shore, and others
over the ridge, fronting the beach.
The invaders landed on the top of the ridge. It seemed that, without
warning, a group of white-clad men were in a cedar grove up there.
They spread out, running along the roads. They seemed carrying small
hand-weapons from which phosphorescent-green light-beams flashed
into the night.
The first reports were chaotic. A few survivors appeared in Hamilton
who claimed to have been very close to the enemy. But for the most
part the descriptions came from those who had fled when still a mile
or more away. The news spread as though upon the wings of a gale.
Within an hour the hotels were emptied; the houses all along the
shore and the bayside hill-slope were deserted by their occupants.
Boats over there brought the excited people into Hamilton until no
more boats were available. Others came madly driving around the
harbor road, on bicycles, and on foot--and still others escaped
toward distant Somerset.
* * * * *
A thousand people or more came in within that hour. But there were
others who did not come--those who were living in the score or two
of houses up on the ridge in the immediate neighborhood of where the
invaders appeared....
Don and I met Mr. Dorrance at the police station within a few
minutes after the news of the Paget attack reached us. We hurried
back to the restaurant and found Jane still there with the
Blakinsons. Ten minutes later we were all in the Government House,
receiving the most authentic reports available.
From the windows of the second floor room where Mr. Dorrance sat
with a number of the officials, Don, Jane, and I could see across
the harbor and to the ridge where the enemy was operating. It was
not much over two miles from us. The huge, slightly flattened moon
had risen. The bay and the distant little hills were flooded with
its light. We could see, off on the ridge-top, the tiny flashing
green beams. But there was no sound save the turmoil of the excited
little city around us.
"They don't seem to be moving," Don murmured. "They're right where
they were first reported."
It seemed as though the small group of light-beams, darting back and
forth, nevertheless originated from one unshifting place. The beams,
we realized, must be extremely intense to be visible even these two
miles or so, for we could see that they were very small and of very
short range--more like a hand-flashlight than anything else. How
many of the enemy were there? They were men, we understood: solid,
human men garbed in the fashion of the apparitions which had been so
widely seen.
The patrolling airplane, connected with us here by wireless
telephone, gave us further details. There seemed to be some fifty of
the invaders. They stood in a group in what had been a small cedar
grove. It was a barren field now; the trees had melted and vanished
before the silent blasts of the green light-beams. They had, these
beams, seemingly a range of under a hundred feet. The invaders had,
at first, run with them along the nearby roads and attacked the
nearest houses. Part of those houses were still standing, save for
the wooden portion of them which had vanished into nothingness as
the green light touched it. The people, too, were annihilated. The
airplane pilot had seen a man running near the field trying to
escape. The light touched him, clung to him for a moment. There was
an instant as he fell that he seemed melting into a ghostly figure;
and then he was gone.
* * * * *
Fifty invaders. But they were human; they could be attacked. When
they first appeared, the nature of them still unrealized, a
physician's automobile, manned by three soldiers, had been coming
along the bay road at the foot of the ridge. The soldiers turned it
into a cross road and mounted the hill. Two of them left it,
scouting to see what was happening; the other stayed in the car. One
of the enemy suddenly appeared. His ray struck the car. Its tires,
its woodwork, and fabric and cushions melted and vanished, and the
man within it likewise disappeared. Everything organic vanished
under the assailing green beam. The other two soldiers fired at the
attacker. He was human. He fell as their bullets struck him. Then
others of his fellows came running. The two soldiers were driven
away, but they escaped to tell of the encounter.
The airplane pilot, half an hour later, flew low and fired down into
the group of enemy figures. He thought that one of them fell. He
also thought he was out of range of their beams. But a pencil-point
of the green light thinned and lengthened out. It darted up to his
hundred-and-fifty-foot altitude and caught one of his wings. The
plane fell disabled into the bay near the city docks, but the pilot
swam safely ashore.
I need not detail the confusion and panic of the government
officials who were gathered here in the room where Don, Jane and I
stood watching and listening to the excitement of the incoming
reports. For quiet little Bermuda the unprecedented situation was
doubly frightening. An attack would have to be made upon the
invaders. There were only fifty of the enemy; the soldiers and the
police could in a few hours be mobilized to rush them and kill them
all.
But could that be done? The thing had so many weird aspects, the
invaders still seemed so much in the nature of the supernatural,
that Mr. Dorrance advised caution. The enemy was now--this was about
ten o'clock in the evening--quietly gathered in the little field on
the ridge-top. They seemed, with their first attack over, no longer
offensive. But, if assailed, who could say what they would do?
* * * * *
And a thousand unprecedented things to do were pressing upon the
harassed officials. Panic-stricken crowds now surged out of all
control in the Hamilton streets. Refugees were coming in, homeless,
needing care. The soldiers and the police were scattered throughout
the islands, without orders of what to do to meet these new
conditions.
And new, ever more frightening reports poured in. The telephone
service, which links as a local call nearly every house throughout
the islands, was flooded with frantic activity. From nearly every
parish came reports of half-materialized ghosts. Fifty invaders?
There were that many gathered on the Paget hill, but it seemed that
there must be a thousand watching apparitions scattered throughout
the islands. Harmless, merely frightening, wraiths. But if that
little group in Paget were assailed, this other thousand might in a
moment cease to be harmless "ghosts."
The astounded Bermuda officials were forced now to accept the
realization that this was solid science. Incredible, fantastic,
unbelievable--yet here it was upon us. Some unknown, invisible realm
co-existed here in this same space. Its inhabitants had found a way
to come out.
The government wireless, and the Canadian cables, could no longer
withhold such news as this. Bermuda appealed now to Washington and
to London for help. Warships would be coming shortly. Passenger
liners on the high seas bringing holiday visitors, were turned
aside. The ships in the port of New York would not sail for Bermuda
tomorrow.
I think that the outside world would have had jeering publics amused
at little Bermuda hysterical over a fancied attack from the fabled
fourth dimension. But by midnight this night, the United States at
least was in no mood for jeering. A message came--reaching us soon
after eleven o'clock, Bermuda time--by cable, through Halifax from
Washington. The thing already had passed beyond the scope of the
Bermudas. White apparitions were seen on the Atlantic seaboard near
Savannah. And then at Charleston; and throughout the night at
several other points farther north. None materialized into solidity.
But the "ghosts" were seen, appearing, vanishing, and reappearing
always farther north.
It was a world menace!
* * * * *
At about midnight Mr. Dorrance joined Jane, Don and me where we
stood by the Government House windows watching the distant
motionless group of enemy lights. He was pale and harassed.
"No use for you to stay here," he told us. "Don, you and Bob take
Jane home. It's the safest place now."
The reports seemed to indicate that of all the parishes, St. Georges
was now most free of the apparitions.
"Go home," he insisted. "You and Bob stay with Jane. Take care of
her, lads." He smiled grimly. "We--all the government--may be moving
to St. Georges by morning."
"But, father," Jane protested, "what will you do? Stay here?"
"For a while. I'll drive over by daybreak. I'll keep the Victoria.
You have your cycles; you three ride over. Be careful, lads. You
have your revolvers?"
"Yes," said Don.
We had no time for leave-taking. He was at once called away from us.
We left the Government House shortly after that, got our bicycles
and started for the north shore road. Government Hill, where the
road climbed through a deep cut in the solid rock, was thronged with
carriages, and with cyclists walking up the hill. Most of the
traffic was going in one direction--refugees leaving this proximity
to the enemy.
We reached the top of the hill, mounted and began the long coast
down. In an hour and a half or less we would be home.... Ah, if one
could only lift the veil which hides even the immediate future, upon
the brink of which we must always stand unseeing!
The north-shore road had the rocky seacoast upon our left--calm
moonlit ocean across which in this direction lay the Carolinas some
seven hundred miles away. We had gone, perhaps three miles from
Hamilton. The road was less crowded here. A group of apparitions had
been seen in the neighborhood of the Aquarium, which was ahead of
us, and most of the refugees were taking the middle road along
Harrington Sound in the center of the island.
But we decided to continue straight on. It was shorter.
"And there will be more police along here," Don reasoned.
Heaven knows we did not feel in immediate danger. Cycling soldiers
passed us at frequent intervals, giving us the news of what lay
ahead. And we both had revolvers.
* * * * *
We came presently to the bottom of one of the many steep little
hills up which it is difficult to ride. We were walking up the
grade, pushing our machines with Jane between us. A group of
soldiers came coasting down the hill, but when we were half-way up
they had passed out of sight. It chanced at the moment that we were
alone on the road. No house was near us. The ocean to our left lay
at the bottom of a fifty-foot rocky cliff; to the right was a thick
line of oleander trees, heavy with bloom.
Ahead of us, to the right within the line of oleanders, the glowing
white figure of an apparition was visible. We stopped, out of breath
from the climb, and stood by the roadside.
"See it there?" Don murmured. "Let's wait and watch it a moment."
One may get used to anything. We were not frightened. The figure, no
more than twenty feet ahead of us, stood partly within a tree-trunk.
It could not materialize there. It was the figure of a man, with
helmet and looped wires.
"Not that fellow who called himself Tako," I whispered.
This one was smaller, no larger than Jane, perhaps. He raised his
arms as though warning us to stop. We stood gazing at him, undecided
whether to retreat or advance. An omnibus carriage coming from St.
Georges stopped at the brow of the hill. Its occupants climbed out
and began shouting at the apparition, at the same time flinging
stones, one of which came bounding past us.
"Hi!" I called. "Stop that! No sense to that!"
* * * * *
Suddenly I heard a rustling of the oleanders at my side. We had no
warning; our attention was wholly upon the apparition and the men by
the carriage on the brow of the hill flinging stones. There was a
rustling; the shadowed oleanders parted and figures leaped upon us!
I recall hearing Don shout, and Jane cry out. Our cycles clattered
to the road. I fired at an oncoming white figure, but missed. The
solid form of a man struck me and I went down, tangled in my wheel.
There was an instant when I was conscious of fighting madly with a
human antagonist. I was conscious of Don fighting, too. Jane stood,
gripped by a man. Four or five of them had leaped upon us.
I had many instant impressions; then as I fought something struck my
head and I faded into insensibility. I must have recovered within a
moment. I was lying on the ground, partly upon a bicycle.
Don was lying near me. White figures of men with Jane in their midst
were standing off the road, partly behind the bushes. They were
holding her, and one of them was swiftly adjusting a network of
wires upon her. Then, as I revived further, I heard shouts; people
were arriving from down the hill. I tried to struggle to my feet,
but fell back.
In the bushes the figures--and the figure of Jane--were turning
silvery; fading into wraiths. They drifted down into the ground.
They were gone.
CHAPTER V
_Into the Enemy Camp_
"But Bob, I won't go back to Government House," Don whispered.
"Lord, we can't do that--get in for theories and questions and plans
to gather a police squad. Every minute counts."
"What can we do?"
"Break away from these fellows--send Uncle Arthur a
message--anything at all; and say we'll be back in half an hour. I
tell you, Jane is gone--they've got her. You saw them take her. By
now probably, they've got her off there in Paget among them. We've
got to do something drastic, and do it now. If the police
attacked--suppose Jane is in that Paget group--the first thing
they'd do when the police came at them would be to kill her. We
can't go at it that way, I tell you."
We were trudging back up Government Hill with a group of soldiers
around us. I had revived to find myself not seriously injured; a
lump was on my head and a scalp wound where something had struck me.
Don had regained consciousness a moment later and was wholly
unharmed. His experience had been different from mine. Two men had
seized him. He was aware of a sudden puff of an acrid gas in his
face, and his senses had faded. But when they returned he had his
full strength almost at once.
We realized what had happened. Half a dozen of the enemy were lying
in ambush there on the roadside. It was young white girls they were
after, and when we appeared with Jane, one of the invaders showed
himself as an apparition to stop us, and then the others, fully
materialized and hiding in the oleanders, had leaped upon us. They
had had only time to escape with Jane, ignoring Don and me where we
had fallen. They seemed also not aware of the nature of our weapons
for they had not taken our revolvers.
* * * * *
Had they gone now with Jane into the other realm of the Unknown? Or
was she with them, over in Paget now in the little enemy camp there
which was defying Bermuda? We thought very possibly it was the
latter. The giant who had called himself Tako, who had escaped us in
the Police Station, had been driven from our minds by all the
excitement which followed. Was that Tako the leader of these
invaders? Had he, for some time perhaps, been living as he said in
the Hamiltonia Hotel? Scouting around Bermuda, selecting the young
girls whom his cohorts were to abduct?
The thoughts made us shudder. He had noticed Jane. He it was,
doubtless, who as an apparition had prowled outside Jane's room the
night before last. And last night he had followed us to the Fort
Beach. And again to-night in the restaurant he had been watching
Jane. These men who had captured Jane now might very well carry her
to Paget and hand her over to their leader, this giant Tako.
A frenzy of desperation was upon Don and me at the thought.
"But what shall we do?" I whispered.
"Get away from these soldiers, Bob. We've got our revolvers. We'll
ride over there to Paget--just the two of us. It's our best chance
that way. Creep up and see what's over there. And if Jane is there,
we've got to get her, Bob--get her some way, somehow."
We could plan no further than that. But to return to Government
House, to face Jane's father with the tale of what had happened, and
then become involved in an official attempt to attack with open
hostilities the enemy in Paget--that was unthinkable.
* * * * *
At the foot of Government Hill, with a trumped-up excuse, Don got us
away from our escort. The night was far darker now; a gray-white
mass of clouds had come up to obscure the moon. We cycled through
the outskirts of Hamilton to the harbor road and followed it around
the marshy end of the bay and into Paget. There had been at first
many vehicles coming in from the beach, but when we passed the
intersection and nothing lay ahead of us but the Paget ridge we
found the road deserted.
We had had our handle-bar flash-lights turned on, but now we shut
them off, riding slowly into the darkness. Don presently dismounted.
"Better leave our wheels here."
"Yes."
We laid them on the ground in a little roadside banana patch. We
were no more than a quarter of a mile from the enemy now; the glow
of their green beams standing up into the air showed on the
ridge-top ahead of us.
"We'll take the uproad," Don whispered. "Shall we? And when we get
to the top, follow some path, instead of a road."
"All right," I agreed.
We started on foot up the steep side road which led from the bay
shore to the summit of the ridge. The houses here were all dark and
deserted, their occupants long since having fled to Hamilton. It was
enemy country here now.
We reached the summit and plunged into a cedar grove which had a
footpath through it. The green light-beams seemed very close; we
could see them in a little group standing motionless up into the
darkness of the sky.
"Can't plan," Don whispered. "But we must keep together. Get up as
close as we can and see what conditions are."
And see if Jane were here.... It echoed through my head, and I knew
it was also Don's guiding thought.
* * * * *
Another ten minutes. We were advancing with the utmost caution. The
cedar grove was almost black. Then we came to the end of it. There
was a winding road and two white houses a hundred feet or so apart.
And beyond the houses was a stretch of open field, strangely denuded
of vegetation.
"There they are, Bob!" Don sank to the ground with me beside him. We
crouched, revolvers in hand, gazing at the strange scene. The field
had been a cedar grove, but all the vegetation now was gone, leaving
only the thin layer of soil and the outcropping patches of Bermuda's
famous blue-gray rock. The houses, too, had been blasted. One was on
this side of the field, quite near us. Its walls and roof had
partially fallen; its windows and door rectangles yawned black and
empty, with the hurricane shutters and the wooden window casements
gone and the panes shattered into a litter of broken glass.
But the house held our attention only a moment. Across the
two-hundred-foot field we could plainly see the invaders--forty or
fifty men's figures dispersed in a little group. It seemed a sort of
encampment. The green light beams seemed emanating from small hand
projectors resting now on the ground. The sheen from them gave a
dull lurid-green cast to the scene. The men were sitting about in
small groups. And some were moving around, seemingly assembling
larger apparatus. We saw a projector, a cylindrical affair, which
half a dozen of them were dragging.
"Bob! Can you make out--back by the banana grove--captives? Look!"
* * * * *
The encampment was at the further corner of the naked field. A
little banana grove joined it. We could see where the enemy light
had struck, partially melting off some of the trees so that now they
stood leprous. In the grove were other figures of men, and it seemed
that among them were some girls. Was Jane there among those
captives?
"We've got to get closer," I whispered. "Don, that second house--if
we could circle around and get there. From the corner of it, we'd be
hidden."
"We'll try it."
The farther house was also in ruins. It stood near the back edge of
the naked field and was within fifty feet of the banana grove. We
circled back, and within ten minutes more were up against the broken
front veranda of the house.
"No one here," Don whispered.
"No, evidently not."
"Let's try getting around the back and see them from the back
corner."
We were close enough now to hear the voices in the banana grove. The
half-wrecked house against which we crouched was a litter of stones
and broken glass. It was black and silent inside.
"Don, look!"
Sidewise across the broken veranda the group of figures in the field
were partly visible. We saw ghostly wraiths now among them--apparitions
three or four feet above the ground. They solidified and dropped to
earth, with their comrades gathering over them. The babble of voices
in a strange tongue reached us. New arrivals materializing!
But was Jane here? And Tako, the giant? We had seen nothing of
either of them. These men seemed all undersized rather than
gigantic. We were about to start around the corner of the veranda
for a closer view of the figures in the grove, when a sound near at
hand froze us. A murmur of voices! Men within the house!
* * * * *
I pulled Don flat to the ground against the stone steps of the
porch. We heard voices; then footsteps. A little green glow of light
appeared. We could see over the porch floor into the black yawning
door rectangle. Two men were moving around in the lower front room,
and the radiation from their green lights showed them plainly. They
were small fellows in white, tight-fitting garments, with the black
helmet and the looped wires.
"Don, when they come out--" I murmured it against his ear. "If we
could strike them down without raising an alarm, and get those
suits--"
"Quiet! They're coming!"
They extinguished their light. They came down the front steps, and
as they reached the ground and turned aside Don and I rose up in the
shadows and struck at them desperately with the handles of our
revolvers. Don's man fell silently. Mine was able to ward off the
blow; he whirled and flashed on his little light. But the beam
missed me as I bent under it and seized him around the middle,
reaching up with a hand for his mouth. Then Don came at us, and
under his silent blow my antagonist wilted.
We had made only a slight noise; there seemed no alarm.
"Get them into the house," Don murmured. "Inside; someone may come
any minute."
We dragged them into the dark and littered lower room. We still had
our revolvers, and now I had the small hand-projector of the green
light-beam. It was a strangely weightless little cylinder, with a
firing mechanism which I had no idea how to operate.
In a moment we had stripped our unconscious captives of their white
woven garments. In the darkness we were hopelessly ruining the
mechanism of wires and dials. But we did not know how to operate the
mechanism in any event; and our plan was only to garb ourselves like
the enemy. Thus disguised, with the helmets on our heads, we could
get closer, creep among them and perhaps find Jane....
The woven garments which I had thought metal, stretched like rubber
and were curiously light in weight. I got the impression now that
the garments, these wires and disks, the helmet and the belt with
its dial-face--all this strange mechanism and even the green-ray
projector weapon--all of it was organic substance. And this
afterward proved to be the fact.[1]
[1] As we later learned, the scientific mechanism by which
the transition was made from the realm of the fourth
dimension to our own earthly world and back again, was only
effective to transport organic substances. The green
light-beam was of similar limitation. An organic substance
of our world upon which it struck was changed in vibration
rate and space-time co-ordinates to coincide with the
characteristics with which the light-current was endowed.
Thus the invaders used their beams as a weapon. The light
flung whatever it touched of organic material with horrible
speed of transition away into the Unknown--to the fourth,
fifth, or perhaps still other realms. In
effect--annihilation.
The mechanism of wires and dials (and small disks which were
storage batteries of the strange current) was of slower,
more controllable operation. Thus it could be used for
transportation--for space-time traveling, as Earth
scientists later came to call it. The invaders, wearing this
mechanism, materialized at will into the state of matter
existing in our world--and by a reversal of the co-ordinates
of the current, dematerialized into the more tenuous state
of their own realm.
We were soon disrobed and garbed in the white suits of our enemies.
The jacket and trunks stretched like rubber to fit us.
"Can't hope to get the wires right," Don whispered. "Got your
helmet?"
"Yes. The belt fastens behind, Don."
"I know. These accursed little disks, what are they?"
We did not know them for storage batteries as yet. They were thin
flat circles of flexible material with a cut in them so that we
could spring the edges apart and clasp them like bracelets at
intervals on our arms and legs. The wires connected them, looped up
to the helmet, and down to the broad belt where there was an
indicator-dial in the middle of the front.[2]
[2] We were soon to learn also that they were bringing into
our world weapons, food, clothing and a variety of equipment
by encasing the articles in containers operated by these
same mechanisms of wires carrying the transition current.
The transportation was possible because all the articles
they brought with them were of organic substance.
* * * * *
We worked swiftly and got the apparatus on somehow. The wires,
broken and awry, would not be noticed in the darkness.
"Ready, Don?"
"Yes. I--I guess so."
"I've got this light cylinder, but we don't know how to work it."
"Carry it openly in your hand. It adds to the disguise." There was a
note of triumph in Don's voice. "It's dark out there--only the green
glow. We'll pass for them, Bob, at a little distance anyway. Come
on."
We started out of the room. "You can hide your revolver in the
belt--there seems to be a pouch."
"Yes."
We passed noiselessly to the veranda. Over our bare feet we were
wearing a sort of woven buskin which fastened with wires to the
ankle disks.
"Keep together," Don whispered. "Take it slowly, but walk openly--no
hesitation."
My heart was pounding, seemingly in my throat, half-smothering me.
"Around the back corner of the house," I whispered. "Then into the
banana grove. Straighten."
"Yes. But not right among them. A little off to one side, passing by
as though we were on some errand."
"If they spot us?"
"Open fire. Cut and run for it. All we can do, Bob."
Side by side we walked slowly along the edge of the house. At the
back corner, the small banana grove opened before us. Twenty feet
away, under the spreading green leaves of the trees a dozen or so
men were working over apparatus. And in their center a group of
captive girls sat huddled on the ground. Men were passing back and
forth. At the edge of the trees, by the naked field, men seemed
preparing to serve a meal. There was a bustle of activity
everywhere; a babble of strange, subdued voices.
* * * * *
We were well under the trees now. Don, choosing our route, was
leading us to pass within ten or fifteen feet of where the girls
were sitting. It was dark here in the grove; the litter of rotted
leaves on the soft ground scrunched and swished under our tread.
There was light over by the girls. I stared at their huddled forms;
their white, terrified faces. Girls of Bermuda, all of them young,
all exceptionally pretty. I thought I recognized Eunice Arton. But
still it seemed that Jane was not here.... And I saw men seated
watchfully near them--men with cylinder weapons in their hands.
Don occasionally would stoop, poking at the ground as though looking
for something. He was heading us in a wide curve through the grove
so that we were skirting the seated figures. We had already been
seen, of course, but as yet no one heeded us. But every moment we
expected the alarm to come. My revolver was in the pouch of my belt
where I could quickly jerk it out. I brandished the useless light
cylinder ostentatiously.
"Don!" I gripped him. We stopped under a banana tree, half hidden in
its drooping leaves. "Don--more of them coming!"
Out in the empty field, apparitions of men were materializing. Then
we heard a tread near us, and stiffened. I thought that we were
discovered. A man passed close to us, heading in toward the girls.
He saw us; he raised a hand palm outward with a gesture of greeting
and we answered it.
* * * * *
For another two or three minutes we stood there, peering, searching
for some sign of Jane.... Men were distributing food to the girls
now.
And then we saw Jane! She was seated alone with her back against a
banana tree, a little apart from the others. And near her was a
seated man's figure, guarding her.
"Don! There she is! We can get near her! Keep on the way we were
going. We must go in a wide curve to come up behind her."
We started forward again. We were both wildly excited; Jane was at
the edge of the lighted area. We could come up behind her; shoot her
guard; seize her and dash off.... I saw that the mesh of wires,
disks and a helmet were on Jane....
Don suddenly stumbled over something on the ground. A man who had
been lying there, asleep perhaps, rose up. We went sidewise, and
passed him.
But his voice followed us. Unintelligible, angry words.
"Keep on!" I murmured. "Don't turn!"
It was a tense moment. The loud words brought attention to us. Then
there came what seemed a question from someone over by the girls. We
could not answer it. Then two or three other men shouted at us.
Don stopped, undecided.
"No!" I whispered. "Go ahead! Faster Don! It's darker ahead."
We started again. It seemed that all the camp was looking our way.
Voices were shouting. Someone called a jibe and there was a burst of
laughter. And from behind us came a man's voice, vaguely familiar,
with a sharp imperative command.
Should we run? Could we escape now, or would a darting green beam
strike us? And we were losing our chance for Jane.
Desperation was on me. "Faster, Don!"
The voice behind us grew more imperative. Then from nearby, two men
came running at us. An uproar was beginning. We were discovered!
* * * * *
Don's revolver was out. It seemed suddenly that men were all around
us. From behind a tree-trunk squarely ahead a figure appeared with
leveled cylinder. The ground leaves were swishing behind us with
swiftly advancing footsteps.
"Easy, Bob!"
Don found his wits. If he had not at that moment we would doubtless
have been annihilated in another few seconds. "Bob, we're
caught--don't shoot!"
I had flung away the cylinder and drawn my revolver; but Don shoved
down my extended hand and held up his own hand.
"We're caught!" He shouted aloud. "Don't kill us! Don't kill us!"
It seemed that everywhere we looked was a leveled cylinder. I half
turned at the running footsteps behind us. A man's voice called in
English.
"Throw down your weapons! Down!"
Don cast his revolver away, and mine followed. I was aware that Jane
had recognized Don's voice, and that she was on her feet staring in
our direction with horrified eyes.
The man from behind pounced upon us. It was the giant, Tako.
"Well, my friends of the restaurant! The American who knows New York
City so well! And the Bermudian! This is very much to my liking. You
thought your jail would imprison me, did you not?"
He stood regarding us with his sardonic smile, while our captors
surrounded us, searching our belts for other weapons. And he added,
"I was garbed like you when we last met. Now you are garbed like me.
How is that?"
* * * * *
They led us into the lighted area of the grove. "The American who
knows New York City so well," Tako added. "And the Bermudian says he
knows it also. It is what you would call an affair of luck, having
you here."
He seemed highly pleased. He gazed at us smilingly. We stood silent
while the men roughly stripped the broken wires and disks from us.
They recognized the equipment. There was a jargon of argument in
their strange guttural language. Then at Tako's command three of
them started for the house.
Jane had cried out at sight of us. Her captor had ordered her back
to her seat by the tree.
"So?" Tako commented. "You think silence is best? You are wise. I am
glad you did not make us kill you just now. I am going to New York
and you shall go with me; what you know of the city may be of help.
We are through with Bermuda. There are not many girls here. But in
the great United States I understand there are very many. You shall
help us capture them."
Don began, "The girl over there----"
"Your sister? Your wife? Perhaps she knows something of New York and
its girls also. We will keep her close with us. If you three choose
to help me, you need have no fear of harm." He waved aside the men
with imperious commands. "Come, we will join this girl of yours. She
is very pretty, is she not? And like you--not cowardly. I have not
been able to make her talk at all."
The dawn of this momentous night was at hand when, with the networks
of wires and disks properly adjusted upon us, Tako took Jane, Don
and me with him into the Fourth Dimension.
Strange transition! Strange and diabolical plot which now was
unfolded to us! Strangely fantastic, weird journey from this Bermuda
hilltop through the Unknown to the city of New York!
CHAPTER VI
_The Attack upon New York_
I must sketch now the main events following this night of May 15th
and 16th as the outside world saw them. The frantic reports from
Bermuda were forced into credibility by the appearance of
apparitions at many points along the Atlantic seaboard of the
southern States. They were sporadic appearances that night. No
attacks were reported. But in all, at least a thousand wraithlike
figures of men must have been seen. The visitations began at
midnight and ended with dawn. To anyone, reading in the morning
papers or hearing from the newscasters that "ghosts" were seen at
Savannah, the thing had no significance. But in Washington, where
officials took a summary of all the reports and attempted an
analysis of them, one fact seemed clear. The wraiths were traveling
northward. It could almost be fancied that this was an army,
traveling in the borderland of the Unknown. Appearing momentarily as
though coming out to scout around and see the contour and the
characteristics of our realm; disappearing again into invisibility,
to show themselves in an hour or so many miles farther north.
The reports indicated also that it was not one group of the enemy,
but several--and all of them traveling northward. The most northerly
group of them by dawn showed itself up near Cape Hatteras.
The news, when it was fully disseminated that next day, brought a
mingling of derision and terror from the public. The world rang with
the affair. Remote nations, feeling safe since nothing of the kind
seemed menacing them, were amused that distant America, supposedly
so scientifically modern, should be yielding to superstition worthy
only of the Middle Ages. The accounts from Bermuda were more
difficult to explain. And England, with Bermuda involved, was not
skeptical; as a matter of fact, the British authorities were
astonished. Warships were starting for Bermuda; and that morning of
May 16th, with the passenger lines in New York not sailing for
Bermuda, American warships were ordered to Hamilton. The menace,
whatever it was, would soon be ended.
* * * * *
That was May 16th. Another night passed, and on May 17th the world
rang with startled horror and a growing terror. Panics were
beginning in all the towns and cities of the American seaboard north
of Cape Hatteras. It was no longer a matter of merely seeing
"ghosts." There had been real attacks the previous night.
There had been a variety of incidents, extraordinarily
horrifying--so diverse, so unexpected that they could not have been
guarded against. It was a dark night, an area of low pressure with
leaden storm-clouds over all the Atlantic coastal region, from
Charleston north to the Virginia Capes. A coastal passenger ship off
Hatteras sent out a frantic radio distress call. The apparitions of
men had suddenly been seen in mid-air directly in the ship's course.
The message was incoherent; the vessel's wireless operator was
locked in his room at the transmitter, wildly describing an attack
upon the ships.
The white apparitions--a group of twenty or thirty men--had been
marching in mid-air when the ship sighted them directly over its
bow. In the darkness of the night they were only a hundred feet
ahead when the lookout saw them. In a moment the vessel was under
them, and they began materializing.... The account grew increasingly
incoherent. The figures materialized and fell to the deck, picked
themselves up and began running about the ship, attacking with
little green light-beams. The ship's passengers and crew vanished,
obliterated; annihilated. It seemed that young women among the
passengers were being spared. The ship was melting--the wooden
decks, all the wooden super-structure melting.... A few moments of
fantastic horror, then the distress call died into silence as
doubtless the green light-beams struck the operator's little cabin.
* * * * *
That vessel was found the next day, grounded on the shoals off
Hatteras. The sea was oily and calm. It lay like a gruesome shell,
as though some fire had swept all its interior. Yet not fire either,
for there were no embers, no ashes. Diseased, leprous, gruesomely
weird with parts of its interior intact and other parts obliterated.
And no living soul was upon it save one steward crouching in a lower
cabin laughing with madness which the shock of what he had seen
brought upon him.
On land, a railroad train in Virginia had been wrecked, struck
apparently by a greenish ray. And also in Virginia, during the early
evening in a village, an outdoor festival at which there were many
young girls was attacked by apparitions suddenly coming into
solidity. The report said that thirty or more young girls were
missing. The little town was in chaos.
And the chaos, that next day, spread everywhere. It was obvious now
that the enemy was advancing northward. In Washington, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, panics were beginning. New York City was seething with
excitement. People were leaving all the towns and cities of the
area. An exodus north and westward. In New York, every steamship,
airplane and railroad train was crowded with departing people. The
roads to Canada and to the west were thronged with outgoing
automobiles.
But it was only a small part of the millions who remained. And the
transportation systems were at once thrown into turmoil, with the
sudden frantic demands threatening to break them down. And then a
new menace came to New York. Incoming food supplies for its millions
crowded into that teeming area around Manhattan, were jeopardized.
The army of men engaged in all the myriad activities by which the
great city sustained itself were as terrified as anyone else. They
began deserting their posts. And local communication systems went
awry. The telephones, the lights, local transportation--all of them
began limping, threatening to break.
* * * * *
Tremendous, intricate human machine by whose constant activity so
many millions are enabled to live so close together! No one could
realize how vastly interwoven are a million activities which make
life in a great city comfortable and safe until something goes
wrong! And one wrong thing so swiftly affects another! As though in
a vastly intricate mechanism little cogs were breaking, and the
breaks spreading until presently the giant fly-wheels could no
longer turn.
If the startled Federal and State officials could have foreseen even
the events of the next forty-eight hours they would have wanted New
York City deserted of the population. But that was impossible. Even
if everyone could have been frightened into leaving, the chaos of
itself would have brought death to untold thousands.
As it was, May 17th and 18th showed New York in a growing chaos.
Officials now were wildly trying to stem the panics, trying to keep
organized the great machines of city life.
It is no part of my plan for this narrative to try and detail the
events in New York City as the apparitions advanced upon it. The
crowded bridges and tunnels; the traffic and transportation
accidents; the failure of the lights and telephones and broadcasting
systems; the impending food shortage; the breaking out of disease
from a score of causes; the crushed bodies lying in the streets
where frantic mobs had trampled them and no one was available to
take them away. The scenes beggar description.
* * * * *
And in all this the enemy had played no part save that of causing
terror. Warships gathered in New York harbor were impotent. State
troops massed in New Jersey, across the Hudson from New York, and in
Putnam and Westchester Counties, were powerless to do more than try
and help the escaping people since there was no enemy of tangible
substance to attack. Patrolling airplanes, armed with bombs, were
helpless. The white apparitions were gathering everywhere in the
neighborhood of New York City. But they remained only apparitions,
imponderable wraiths, non-existent save that they could be dimly
seen. And even had they materialized, no warships could shell the
city, for millions of desperate people were still within it trying
to get away.
The news from little Bermuda was submerged, unheeded, in this
greater catastrophe. But on the night of May 17th when the American
warships arrived off Hamilton, the Paget invaders were gone.
The menace in Bermuda was over; it was the great New York City which
was menaced now. The apparitions which had advanced from the south
were suddenly joined by a much more numerous army. On the night of
May 19th it had reached New York. Two or three thousand glowing
white shapes were apparent, with yet other thousands perhaps
hovering just beyond visibility. They made no attack. They stood
encamped on the borderland of the Unknown realm to which they
belonged. Busy with their preparations for battle and watching the
stricken city to which already mere terror had brought the horror of
disease and death.
It seemed now that this Fourth Dimension terrain co-existing within
in the space of New York City, must be a tumbled, mountainous region
of crags and spires, and yawning pits, ravines and valley depths.
Jagged and precipitous indeed, for there were apparitions encamped
in the air above Manhattan and harbor--higher in altitude than the
Chrysler or the Empire State towers. Other wraiths showed in a dozen
places lower down--some within the city buildings themselves. And
yet others were below ground, within the river waters, or grouped
seemingly a hundred feet beneath the street levels.
Fantastic army of wraiths! In the daylight they almost faded, but at
night they glowed clearly. Busy assembling their weapons of war.
Vanishing and reappearing at different points. Climbing or
descending the steep cliffs and crags of their terrain to new points
of vantage; and every hour with their numbers augmenting. And all so
silent! So grimly purposeful, and yet so ghastly silent!
It was near midnight of May 19th when the wraiths began
materializing and the attack upon New York City began!
CHAPTER VII
_The Invisible World_
Tako showed us how to operate the transition mechanism. The little
banana grove on the Bermuda hilltop began fading. There was a
momentary shock; a reeling of my head; a sudden sense of vibration
within me. And then a feeling of lightness, weightlessness; and
freedom, as though all my earthly life I had been shackled, but now
was free.
The thing was at first terrifying, gruesome; but in a moment those
feelings passed and the weightless freedom brought an exuberance of
spirit.
Don and I were sitting with Jane between us, and the figure of Tako
fronting us. I recall that we clung together, terrified. I closed my
eyes when the first shock came, but opened them again to find my
head steadying. Surprising vista! I had vaguely fancied that Tako,
Jane and Don would be sitting here dissolving into apparitions. But
my hands on Jane's arm felt it as solid as before. I stared into her
face. It was frightened, white and set, but smiling at me.
"You all right, Bob? It's not so difficult, is it?"
She had endured this before. She reached out her hands, one to Don
and one to me.
"We're dropping. I don't think it's far down, but be careful.
Straighten your legs under you."
We seemed unchanged; Don and Jane were the same in aspect as before,
save the color of their garments seemed to have faded to a gray. It
was the Bermuda hilltop which to our vision was changing. The grove
was melting, turning from green and brown to a shimmering silver. We
now looked upon ghostly, shadowy trees; fading outlines of the
nearby house; the nearby figures of Tako's men and the group of
captive girls--all shadowy apparitions. The voices were fading; a
silence was falling upon us with only the hum of the mechanism
sounding in my ears.
* * * * *
I felt with a shock of surprise that I was no longer seated on the
ground. I seemed, for an instant floating, suspended as though
perhaps immersed in water. The sweep of the ground level was a vague
shadowy line of gray, but my legs had dropped beneath it. I was
drifting down, sinking, with only Jane's hand to steady me.
"Thrust your feet down," she murmured. "A little fall. We want to
land on our feet."
The imponderable ground of the banana grove was rising. We dropped,
as though we were sinking in water. But we gathered speed; we felt a
weight coming to our bodies. At last we fell; my feet struck a solid
surface with a solid impact. Don and I lost our balance, but Jane
steadied us. We were standing upon a dark rock slope, steeply
inclined.
"Off with the current!" came Tako's voice. "The belt switch--throw
it back!"
I found the little lever. The current went off. There had been a
moment when the spectral shadows of my own world showed in the air
above me. But we passed their visible limits and they faded out of
sight.
We were in the realm of the Fourth Dimension. Outdoors, in a region
of glowing, phosphorescent night....
* * * * *
"This way," said Tako. "It is not far. We will walk. Just a moment,
you three. I would not have you escape me."
Our revolvers were gone. Being metal, they could not, of actuality,
be carried into the transition. We had no light-beam cylinders, nor
did we as yet know how to use them. Tako stood before us; he reached
to the operating mechanisms under the dial-face at our belts, making
some disconnections which we did not understand.
His smile in the semi-darkness showed with its familiar irony. "You
might have the urge to try some escaping transition. It would lose
you in the Unknown. That would be death! I do not want that."
I protested, "We are not fools. I told you if you would spare us,
return us safely to Bermuda when this is over--"
"That you might be of help to me," he finished. "Well, perhaps you
will. I hope so. You will do what you can to help, willingly or
otherwise; that I know." His voice was grimly menacing. And he
laughed sardonically. "You are no fools, as you say. And Jane--" His
glance went to her. "Perhaps, before we are through with this, you
may even like me, Jane."
Whatever was in his mind, it seemed to amuse him.
"Perhaps," said Jane.
We three had had only a moment to talk together. There had been no
possibility of escape. It was obvious to us that Tako was the leader
of these invaders; and, whatever they were planning, our best chance
to frustrate it was to appear docile. Safety for us--the possibility
of later escaping--all of that seemed to lie in a course of
docility. We would pretend friendliness; willingness to help.
Tako was not deceived. We knew that. Don, in those two or three
hours we were with Tako before starting upon the transition, had
said:
"But suppose we do help you in your scheme, whatever it is? There
might be some reward for us, eh? If you plan a conquest, riches
perhaps--"
Tako had laughed with genuine amusement. "So? You bargain? We are to
be real friends--fellow conquerors? And you expect me to believe
that?"
* * * * *
Yet now he seemed half to like us. And there was Jane's safety for
which we were scheming. Tako had been interested in Jane. We knew
that. Yet she was at first little more to him than one of the girl
captives. He might have left her with those others. But she was with
us now, to stay with us upon this journey, and it was far
preferable.
"This way," said Tako. "We will walk. It is not far to my encampment
where they are preparing for the trip."
It seemed that a vast open country was around us. A rocky, almost
barren waste; a mountainous region of steep gray defiles, gorges and
broken tumbled ravines. A void of darkness hung overhead. There were
no stars, no moon, no light from above. Yet I seemed presently to
see a great distance through the glowing deep twilight. The glow was
inherent to the rocks themselves; and to the spare, stunted,
gray-blue vegetation. It was a queerly penetrating, diffused, yet
vague light everywhere. One could see a considerable distance by it.
Dim colors were apparent.
We trod the rocks with a feeling of almost normal body weight. The
air was softly warm like a night in the tropics, with a faint breeze
against our faces. It seemed a trackless waste here. We mounted an
ascending ramp, topped a rise with an undulating plateau ahead of
us.
Tako stood a moment for us to get our breath. The air seemed
rarefied; we were panting, with our cheeks tingling.
"My abode is there." He gestured to the distant lowland region
behind us. We were standing upon a gray hilltop. The ground went
down a tumbled broken area to what seemed a lowland plain. Ten miles
away--it may have been that, or twice that--I saw the dim outline of
a great castle or a fortress. A building of gigantic size, it seemed
strangely fashioned with round-shaped domes heaped in a circle
around a tower looming in the center. A wall, or a hedge of giant
trees, I could not tell, but it seemed as gigantic as the wall of
China, and was strung over the landscape in an irregular circle to
enclose an area of several square miles, with the castle-fortress in
its center. A little city was there, nestled around the fortress--a
hundred or two small brown and gray mounds to mark the dwellings. It
suggested a little feudal town of the Middle Ages of our own Earth,
set here in this trackless waste.
* * * * *
And I saw, down on the plain, a shining ribbon of river with thick
vegetation along its banks. And within the enclosing wall there, was
the silvery sheen of a lake near the town; patches of trees, and
brownish oval areas which seemed to be fields under cultivation.
"My domain," Tako repeated. There was a touch of pride in his voice.
"I rule it. You shall see it--when we are finished with New York."
Again his gaze went to Jane, curiously contemplative. We started
walking over the upper plateau level, seemingly with nothing in
advance of us save empty luminous darkness. A walk of an hour.
Perhaps it was that long. Time here had faded with our Earthly
world. It was difficult to gauge the passing minutes--as difficult
as to guess at the miles of this luminous distance.
As though the sight of his fortress--his tiny principality, whose
inhabitants he ruled with absolute sway--had awakened in Tako new
emotions, he put Jane beside him and began talking to us with
apparent complete frankness. It must have been an hour, during which
he explained this world of his, of which we were destined to have so
brief a glimpse, and told us upon what diabolical errand he and his
fellows were embarked. I recall that as he talked Jane gripped me in
horror. But she managed to smile when Tako smiled at her. He was
naively earnest as he told us of his coming conquest. And Jane, with
woman's intuition knew before Don and I realized it, that it was to
herself, a beautiful girl of Earth, he was talking, seeking her
admiration for his prowess.
Tako was what in Europe of the Middle Ages would have amounted to a
feudal prince. He was one of many here in this realm; each had his
little domain, with his retainers cultivating his land, paying fees
to him so that the overlord lived in princely idleness.
* * * * *
Scattered at considerable distances, one from the other, these
rulers of their little principalities were loosely bound into a
general government; but at home each was a law unto himself. They
lived in princely fashion, these lords of the castle, as they were
called. Among the retainers, monogamy was practiced. The workers had
their little families--husband, wife and children. But for the
rulers, more than one wife was the rule. Within each castle was a
harem of beauties, drawn perforce from the common people. The most
beautiful girls of each settlement were trained from childhood to
anticipate the honor of being selected by the master for a life in
the castle.
They were connoisseurs of woman's beauty, these overlords. By the
size of his harem and the beauty and talent of its inmates was an
overlord judged by his fellows.
Out of this had grown the principal cause for war in the history of
the realm. Beautiful girls were scarce. Raids were made by one lord
upon the village and harem of another.
Then had come to Tako the discovery of the great world of our Earth,
occupying much of this same space in another state of matter.
"I discovered it," he said with his gaze upon Jane.
"How?" Don demanded.
"It came," he said, "out of our scientific method of transportation,
which very soon I will show you. We are a scientific people. Hah!"
He laughed ironically. "The workers say that we princes are
profligate--that we think only of women and music. But that is not
so. Once, many generations ago, we were a tremendous nation, and
skilled in science far beyond your own world--and with a population
a hundred times what we have now. The land everywhere must have been
rich and fertile. There were big cities--the ruins of them are still
to be seen.
* * * * *
"And then our climate changed. There was, for us, a world
catastrophe, the cause and the details of which no one now knows
very clearly. It sent our cities, our great civilizations into
ruins. It left us with this barren waste with only occasional
lowland fertile spots which now by heredity we rulers control, each
to possess his own.
"But that past civilization gave us a scientific knowledge. Much of
it is lost--we are going down hill. But we have some of it left, and
we profligate rulers, as the workers call us, cherish it. But what
is the use of teaching it to the common people? We do very little of
that. And our weapons of war we keep to ourselves--except when there
is a raid and our loyal retainers go forth with us to do battle."
"So you discovered how to get into our Earth world?" Don repeated.
"Yes. Some years ago, and it was quite by chance. At first I
experimented alone--and then I took with me a young girl."
Again he smiled at Jane. "Tolla is her name. She is here in our camp
where our army is now, starting for New York. You will meet her
presently. She loves me very much, so she says. She wants some day
to lead my harem. I took her with me into the Unknown--into that
place you call Bermuda. I have been there off and on for nearly a
year of your Earth time, making my plans for what now is at last
coming to pass."
"So that's how you learned our language?" I said.
"Yes. It came easy to me and Tolla. That--and we were taught by two
girls whom a year ago I took from Bermuda and brought in here."
"And what became of them?" Jane put in quietly.
"Oh--why, I gave them away," he replied calmly. "A prince whose
favor I desired, wanted them and I gave them to him. Your Earth
girls are well liked by the men of my world. Their fame has already
spread."
* * * * *
He added contemplatively, "I often have thought how strange it is
that your great world and mine should lie right here together--the
one invisible to the other. Two or three minutes of time--we have
just made the transition. Yet what a void!"
"The scientists of your past civilization," I said, "strange that
they did not learn to cross it."
"Do you know that they did not?" he demanded. "Perhaps with secret
visitations--"
It brought to us a new flood of ideas. We had thought, up there in
St. Georges, that this Tako was a ghost. How could one say but that
all or most manifestations of the occult were not something like
this. The history of our Earth abounds with superstition.
Ghosts--things unexplained. How can one tell but that all occultism
is merely unknown science? Doubtless it is. I can fancy now that in
the centuries of the past many scientists of this realm of the
Fourth Dimension ventured forth a little way toward our world. And
seeing them, we called them ghosts.
What an intrepid explorer was this Tako! An enterprising scoundrel,
fired with a lust for power. He told us now, chuckling with the
triumph of it, how carefully he had studied our world. Appearing
there, timidly at first, then with his growing knowledge of English,
boldly living in Hamilton.
His fame in his own world, among his fellow rulers, rapidly grew.
The few Earth girls he produced were eagerly seized. The fame of
their beauty spread. The desire, the competition for them became
keen. And Tako gradually conceived his great plan. A hundred or more
of the overlords, each with his hundred retainers, were banded
together for the enterprise under Tako's leadership. An army was
organized; weapons and equipment were assembled.
Earth girls were to be captured in large numbers. The most desirable
of them would go into the harems of the princes. The others would be
given to the workers. The desire for them was growing rapidly,
incited by the talk of the overlords. The common man could have more
than one wife--two, even three perhaps--supported by the princely
master. And Tako was dreaming of a new Empire; increased population;
some of the desert reclaimed; a hundred principalities banded
together into a new nation, with himself as its supreme leader.
* * * * *
And then the attack upon Earth had begun. A few Earth girls were
stolen; then more, until very quickly it was obvious that a wider area
than Bermuda was needed. Tako's mind flung to New York--greatest
center of population within striking distance of him.[3] The foray
into Bermuda--the materialization of that little band on the Paget
hilltop was more in the nature of an experiment than a real attack.
Tako learned a great deal of the nature of this coming warfare, or
thought he did.
[3] The extent of the Fourth Dimensional world was never
made wholly clear to us. Its rugged surface was coincident
with the surface of our earth at Bermuda, at New York City,
and at many points along the Atlantic seaboard of the United
States. For the rest, there is no data upon which one may
even guess.
As a matter of actuality, in spite of his dominating force, the
capacity for leadership which radiated from him, there was a very
naive, fatuous quality to this strange ruler. Or at least, Don and I
thought so now. As the details of his plot against our Earth world
unfolded to us, what we could do to circumvent him ran like an
undercurrent across the background of our consciousness. He knew
nothing, or almost nothing of our Earth weapons. What conditions
would govern this unprecedented warfare into which he was
plunging--of all that he was totally ignorant.
* * * * *
But, we were speedily to learn that he was not as fatuous as he at
first seemed. These two worlds--occupying the same space and
invisible to each other--would be plunged into war. And Tako
realized that no one, however astute, of either world could predict
what might happen. He was plunging ahead, quite conscious of his
ignorance. And he realized that there was a vast detailed knowledge
of the Earth world which we had and he did not. He would use us as
the occasion arose to explain what might not be understandable to
him.
I could envisage now so many things of such a character. The range
of warships and artillery. The weapons a plane might use. The
topography of New York City and its environs.... And the more Tako
needed us, the less we had to fear from him personally. We would
have the power to protect Jane from him--if we could sufficiently
persuade him he needed our good will. Ultimately we might plunge his
enterprise into disaster, and with Jane escape from him--that too I
could envisage as a possibility.
The mind flings far afield very rapidly! But I recall that it
occurred to me also that I might be displaying many of the fatuous
qualities I was crediting to Tako, by thinking such thoughts!
I have no more than briefly summarized the many things Tako told us
during that hour while we strode across the dim rocky uplands toward
his mobilized army awaiting its departure for the scene of the main
attack. Some of his forces had already gone ahead. Several bands of
men were making visual contact with the seacoast of the southern
United States. It was all experimentation. They were heading for New
York. They would wait there, and not materialize until this main
army had joined them.
We saw presently, in the distance ahead of us, a dim green sheen of
light below the horizon. Then it disclosed itself to be quite
near--the reflection of green light from a bowl-like depression of
this rocky plateau.
We reached the rim of the bowl. The encampment of Tako's main army
lay spread before us.
CHAPTER VIII
_The Flight through the Fourth Dimension_
"This is the girl, Tolla," said Tako quietly. "She will take care of
you, Jane, and make you comfortable on this trip."
In the dull green sheen which enveloped the encampment, this girl of
the Fourth Dimension stood before us. She had greeted Tako quietly
in their own language, but as she gazed up into his face it seemed
that the anxiety for his welfare turned to joy at having him safely
arrive. She was a small girl; as small as Jane, and probably no
older. Her slim figure stood revealed, garbed in the same white
woven garments as those worn by the men. At a little distance she
might have been a boy of Earth, save that her silvery white hair was
wound in a high conical pile on her head, and there were tasseled
ornaments on her legs and arms.
Her small oval face, as it lighted with pleasure at seeing Tako, was
beautiful. It was delicate of feature; the eyes pale blue; the lips
curving and red. Yet it was a curious face, by Earth standards. It
seemed that there was an Oriental slant to the eyes; the nose was
high-bridged; the eyebrows were thin pencil lines snow-white, and
above each of them was another thin line of black, which evidently
she had placed there to enhance her beauty.
Strange little creature! She was the only girl of this world we were
destined to meet; she stood beside Jane, seemingly so different, and
yet, we were to learn, so humanly very much the same. Her quiet gaze
barely touched Don and me; but it clung to Jane and became
inscrutable.
"We will travel together," Tako said. "You make her comfortable,
Tolla."
"I will do my best," she said; her voice was soft, curiously limpid.
"Shall I take her now to our carrier?"
"Yes."
It gave me a pang to see Jane leave with her; Don shot me a sharp,
questioning glance but we thought it best to raise no objection.
"Come," said Tako. "Stay close by me. We will be in the carrier
presently."
* * * * *
There was an area here in the bowl-like depression of at least half
a mile square upon which an assemblage of some five thousand or more
men were encamped. It was dark, though an expanse of shifting
shadows and dull green light mingled with the vague phosphorescent
sheen from the rocks. The place when we arrived was a babble of
voices, a confusion of activity. The encampment, which obviously was
temporary--perhaps a mobilization place--rang with the last minute
preparations for departure. Whatever habitations had been here now
were packed and gone.
Tako led us past groups of men who were busy assembling and carrying
what seemed equipment of war toward a distant line of oblong objects
into which men were now marching.
"The carriers," said Tako. He greeted numbers of his friends,
talking to them briefly, and then hurried us on. All these men were
dressed similarly to Tako, but I saw none so tall, nor so commanding
of aspect. They all stared at Don and me hostilely, and once or
twice a few of them gathered around us menacingly. But Tako waved
them away. It brought me a shudder to think of Jane crossing this
camp. But we had watched Tolla and Jane starting and Tolla had
permitted none to approach them.
"Keep your eyes open," Don whispered. "Learn what you can. We've got
to watch our chance--" We became aware that Tako was listening. Don
quickly added, "I say, Bob, what does he mean--carriers?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. Ask him."
We would have to be more careful; it was obvious that Tako's hearing
was far keener than our own. He was fifteen feet away, but he turned
his head at once.
"A carrier you would call in Bermuda a tram. Or a train, let us
say." He was smiling ironically at our surprise that he had
overheard us. He gestured to the distant oblong objects. "We travel
in them. Come, there is really nothing for me to do; all is in
readiness here."
* * * * *
The vehicles stood on a level rocky space at the farther edge of the
camp. I think, of everything I had seen in this unknown realm, the
sight of these vehicles brought the most surprise. The glimpse we
had had of Tako's feudal castle seemed to suggest primitiveness.
But here was modernity--super-modernity. The vehicles--there were
perhaps two dozen of them--were all apparently of similar character,
differing only in size.
They were long, low oblongs. Some were much the size and shape of a
single railway car; others twice as long; and several were like a
very long train, not of single joined cars, but all one structure.
They lay like white serpents on the ground--dull aluminum in color
with mound-shaped roofs slightly darker. Rows of windows in their
sides with the interior greenish lights, stared like round goggling
eyes into the night.
When we approached closer I saw that the vehicles were not of solid
structure, but that the sides seemingly woven of wire-mesh--or woven
of thick fabric strands.[4]
[4] The vehicles were constructed of a material allied in
character to that used for garments by the people of this
realm. It was not metal, but an organic vegetable substance.
The army of white figures crowded around the vehicles. Boxes, white
woven cases, projectors and a variety of disks and dials and wire
mechanisms were being loaded aboard. And the men were marching in to
take their places for the journey.
Tako gestured. "There is our carrier."
It was one of the smallest vehicles--low and streamlined, so that it
suggested a fat-bellied cigar, white-wrapped. It stood alone, a
little apart from the others, with no confusion around it. The
green-lighted windows in its sides goggled at us.
* * * * *
We entered a small porte at its forward pointed end. The control
room was here, a small cubby of levers and banks of dial-faces.
Three men, evidently the operators, sat within. They were dressed
like Tako save that they each had a great round lens like a monocle
on the left eye, with dangling wires from it leading to dials
fastened to the belt.
Tako greeted them with a gesture and a gruff word and pushed us past
them into the car. We entered a low narrow white corridor with dim
green lights in its vaulted room. Sliding doors to compartments
opened from one side of it. Two were closed; one was partly open. As
we passed, Tako called softly:
"All is well with you, Tolla?"
"Yes," came the girl's soft voice.
I met Don's gaze. I stopped short and called:
"Are you all right, Jane?"
I was immensely relieved as she answered, "Yes, Bob."
Tako shoved me roughly. "You presume too much."
The corridor opened into one main room occupying the full ten-foot
width of the vehicle and its twenty-foot middle section. Low soft
couch seats were here, and a small table with food and drink upon
it; and on another table low to the floor, with a mat-seat beside
it, a litter of small mechanical devices had been deposited. I saw
among them two or three of the green-light hand weapons.
Tako followed my gaze and laughed. "You are transparent. If you knew
how to use those weapons, do you think I would leave them near you?"
We were still garbed in the white garments, but the disks and wires
and helmet had been taken from us.
"I say, you needn't be so suspicious," Don protested. "We're not so
absolutely foolish. But if you want any advice from us on how to
attack New York, you've got to explain how your weapons are used."
* * * * *
Tako seated us. "All in good time. We shall have opportunity now to
talk."
"About the trip--" I said. "Are we going to New York City?"
"Yes."
"How long will it take?"
"Long? That is difficult to say. Have you not noticed that time in
my world has little to do with yours?"
"How long will it seem?" I persisted.
He shrugged. "That is according to your mood. We shall eat once or
twice, and get a little sleep."
One of the window openings was beside us with a loosely woven mesh
of wires across it. Outside I could see the shifting lights. Men
were embarking in the other vehicles; and the blended noise from
them floated in to us.
Questions flooded me. This strange journey, what would it be like? I
could envisage the invisible little Bermuda in the void of darkness
over us now; or here in this same space around us. No, we had
climbed from where we landed in the space close under the Paget
hilltop. And we had walked forward for perhaps an hour. The space of
Bermuda would be behind us and lower down. This then was the open
ocean. I gazed at the solid rocky surface outside our window. Nearly
seven hundred miles away must be New York City. We were going there.
How? Would it be called flying? Or following this rocky surface?
As though to answer my thoughts Tako gestured to the window. "See.
The first carrier starts away."
The carrier lay like a stiff white reptile on the ground. Its doors
were closed, and watching men stood back from it.
Don gasped, "Why--it's fading! A transition!"
* * * * *
It glowed along all its length and grew tenuous of aspect, until in
a moment that solid thing which had been solidly resting there on a
rock was a wraith of vehicle. A great oblong apparition--the ghost
of a reptile with round green spots on its sides. A fading wraith.
But it did not quite disappear. Hovering just within visibility, it
slowly, silently slid forward. It seemed, without changing its
level, to pass partly through an upstanding crag which stood in its
path. Distance dimmed it, dwindled it; and in a moment it was gone
into the night.
"We will start," said Tako abruptly. "Sit where you are. There will
be a little shock, much like the transition coming in from your
world." He called, "Tolla, we start."
A signal-dial was on the room wall near him. He rose and pressed its
lever. There was a moment of silence. Then the current went on. It
permeated every strand of the material of which the vehicle was
constructed. It contacted with our bodies. I felt the tingle of it;
felt it running like fire through my veins. The whole interior was
humming. There was a shock to my senses, swiftly passing, followed
by a sense of weightless freedom. But that lightness was an
illusion, a comparison with externals only, for the seat to which I
clung remained solid, and my body pressed upon it with a feeling of
normal weight.
Outside the window, the dark scene of rocks and vehicles and men was
fading; turning ghostly, shadowy, spectral. But it did not quite
vanish; it held its wraithlike outlines, and in a moment began
sliding silently backward. It seemed that we also passed through a
little butte of rocks. Then we emerged again into the open; and, as
we gathered speed, the vague spectral outlines of a rocky landscape
slid past us in a bewildering panorama.
We were away upon the journey.[5]
[5] What we learned of the science of the invisible realm
was perforce picked piecemeal by us from all that we saw,
experienced, and what several different times Tako was
willing to explain to us. And it was later studied by the
scientists of our world, whose additional theories I can
incorporate into my own knowledge. Yet much of it remains
obscure. And it is so intricate a subject that even if I
understood it fully I could do no more than summarize here
its fundamental principles.
The space-transition of these vehicles, Tako had already
told us, was closely allied to the transition from his world
to ours. And the weapons were of the same principles. The
science of space-transition, limited to travel from one
portion of the realm to another, quite evidently came first.
The weapons, the forcible, abrupt transition of material
objects out of the realm into other dimensions--into the
Unknown--this principle was developed from the traveling.
And from them both Tako himself evolved the safe and
controlled transition from his world to ours.
Concerning the operation of these vehicles: Motion, in our
Earth-world or any other, is the progressive change of a
material object in relation to its time and space. It is
here now, but it _was there_. Both space and time undergo a
simultaneous change; the object itself remains unaltered,
save in its _position_.
In the case of the vehicles, the current I have already
mentioned (used in the mechanism for the transition from
Earth to the other realm) that current, circulating in the
organic material of which the vehicle was composed, altered
the state of matter of the carrier and everything within the
aura of the current's field. The vehicle and all its
contents, with altered inherent vibratory rate of its
molecules, atoms and electrons, was in effect projected into
another world. A new dimension was added to it. It became an
imponderable wraith, resting dimly visible in a sort of
borderland upon the fringe of its own world.
Yet it had not changed _position_. It still remained
quiescent. Then the current was further altered, and the
time and space co-ordinates set into new combinations. This
change of the current was a _progressive_ change. Controlled
and carefully calculated by what intricate theoretic
principles and practical mechanisms no scientist of our
world can yet say.
It is clear, however, that as this progressive change in
space-time characteristics began, the vehicle perforce must
move slightly in space and time to reconcile itself to the
change.
There never has been a seemingly more abstruse subject for
the human mind to grasp than the theories involving a true
conception of space-time. Yet, doubtless, to those of Tako's
realm, inheriting, let me say, the consciousness of its
reality, there was nothing abstruse about it.
An analogy may make it clearer. The vehicle, hovering in the
borderland, might be called in a visible but gaseous state.
A solid can be turned to gas merely by the alteration of the
vibratory rate of its molecules.
This unmoving (gaseous) vehicle, is now further altered in
space-time characteristics. Suppose we say it is very
slightly thrown out of tune with its _spatial_ surroundings
at the time which is its _present_. Nature will allow no
such disorganization. The vehicle, as a second of _time_
passes, is impelled by the force of nature to be in a
_different place_. This involves motion. A small change in
the first second. Then the current alters it progressively
faster. The change, of necessity, is progressively greater,
the motion more rapid.
And this, controlled as to direction, became transportation.
The determination of direction at first thought seems
amazingly intricate. In effect, that was not so. With
space-time factors set as a destination, i. e., the place
where the vehicle must end its change at a certain time, all
the intermediate changes become automatic. With every
passing second it must be at a reconcilable place--the
direction of its passage perforce being the shortest path
between the two.
With this in mind, the transition from one world to another
becomes more readily understandable. No _natural_ change of
space is involved, merely the change of the state of matter.
It was the same change as that which carried the vehicles
into a shadowy borderland, and then pushed further into new
dimensional realms.
The green light-beam weapons were merely another application
of the same principle. The characteristics of the green
light current, touching organic matter, altered the
vibratory rate of what was struck to coincide with the
light. A solid cake of ice under a blow-torch becomes steam
by the same principle. The light-beams were swift and
violent in their action. The change in them was progressive
also--but it was so swiftly violent a change that nothing
living could survive the shock of the enforced transition.
* * * * *
There was little to see during this strange flight. Outside our
windows gray shadows drifted swiftly past--a shadowy, ghostly
landscape of gray rocks. Sometimes it was below us, so that we
seemed in an airship winging above it. Then abruptly it would rise
over us and we plunged into it as though it were a mere light-image,
a mirage.
Hours passed. For the most part the shadowy void seemed a jagged
mountainous terrain, a barren waste. There were great plateau
uplands, one of which rose seemingly thousands of feet over us. And
there was perhaps an hour of time when the surface of the world had
dropped far away, so far down that it was gone in the distance. Like
a projectile we sped level, unswerving. And at last the shadows of
the landscape came up again. And occasionally we saw shadowy
inhabited domains--enclosing walls around water and vegetation, with
a frowning castle and its brood of mound-shaped little houses like
baby chicks clustered around the mother hen.
Tako served us with a meal; it was strange food, but our hunger made
it palatable. Jane and Tolla remained in their nearby cabin. We did
not see them, but occasionally Don or I, ignoring Tako's frown,
called out to Jane, and received her ready answer.
Occasionally also, we had an opportunity to question Tako. He had
begun tell us the general outline of his plans. The important fact
was that the army would mobilize just within visibility of New York.
"Nothing can touch us then," Tako said. "You will have to explain
what weapons will be used against me. Particularly the long-range
weapons are interesting. But you have no weapons which could
penetrate into the shadows of the borderland, have you?"
"No," said Don. "But your weapons--" He tried not to seem too
intent. "Look here, Tako, I don't just understand how you intend to
conquer New York."
"Devastate it," Tako interrupted. "Smash it up, and then we can
materialize and take possession of it. My object is to capture a
great number of young women--beautiful young women."
"How?" I demanded. "By smashing up New York? There are thousands of
young women there, but you would kill them in the process. Now if
you would try some other locality. For instance, I could direct you
to open country--"
* * * * *
He understood my motive. "I ask not that kind of advice. I will
capture New York; devastate it. I think then your rulers will be
willing voluntarily to yield all the captives I demand. Or, if not,
then we will plan to seize them out of other localities."
Don said, "Suppose you tell us more clearly just how you expect to
smash New York, as you call it. First, you will gather, not
materialized, but only visible to the city."
"Exactly. That will cause much excitement, will it not?
Panics--terror. And if we are only wraiths, no weapons of your world
can attack us."
"Nor can yours attack the city. Can they?"
He did not at first answer that; and then he smiled. "Our hand
light-projectors could not penetrate out from the borderland without
losing their force. But we have bombs. You shall see.[6] The bombs
alone will devastate New York, if we choose to use them. I have also
a long-range projector of the green light-beam. It is my idea, when
the city is abandoned by the enemy that we can take possession of
some prominent point of vantage. A tall building, perhaps." He
smiled again his quiet grim smile. "We will select one and be
careful to leave it standing. I will materialize with our giant
projector, dominate all the region and then we can barter with your
authorities. It is your long-range guns I most fear. When the
projector is materialized--and we are ready to bargain--then your
airplanes, warships lying far away perhaps, might attack. Suppose
now you explain those weapons to me."
[6] Materialization bombs, we afterward called them; they
played a diabolical part in the coming events. They were of
many sizes and shapes, but most of them were small in size
and shape, like a foot-long wedged-shaped brick, or the head
of an ax. They were constructed of organic material, with a
wire mesh of the transition mechanism encasing them, and an
automatic operating device like the firing fuse of a bomb.
* * * * *
For an hour or more he questioned us. He was no fool, this fellow;
he knew far more of the conditions ahead of him than we realized. I
recall that once I said:
"You have never been in New York?"
"No. Not materialized. But I have observed it very carefully."
As a lurking ghost!
"We have calculated," he went on, "the space co-ordinates with great
precision. That is how we have been able to select the destination
for this carrier now. You cannot travel upon impulse by this method.
Our engineers, as you might call them, must go in advance with
recording apparatus. Nothing can be done blindly."
It brought to my mind the three pilots now operating our vehicle. I
mentioned the lens on their left eyes like a monocle.
"With that they can see ahead of us a great distance. It flings the
vision--like gazing along a beam of light--to space-time factors in
advance of our present position. In effect, a telescope."
* * * * *
There were a few hours of the journey when Don and I slept,
exhausted by what we had been through. Tako was with us when we
dozed off, and I recall that he was there when we awakened. How much
time passed we could not tell.
"You are refreshed?" he said smilingly. "And hungry again, no doubt.
We will eat and drink--and soon we will arrive at the predestined
time and place."
We were indeed hungry again. And while we were eating Tako gestured
to the window. "Look there. Your world seems visible a little."
Just before we slept it had seemed that mingled with the shadows of
Tako's world was the gray outline of an ocean surface beneath us. I
gazed out at the dim void now. Our flight was far slower than
before. We were slackening speed for the coming halt. And I saw now
that the shadows outside were the mingled wraiths of two spectral
worlds, with us drifting forward between and among them. The terrain
of Tako's world was bleaker, more desolate and more steeply
mountainous than ever. There were pits and ravines and gullies with
jagged mountain spires, cliffs and towering gray masses of rock.
And mingled with it, in a general way coincidental with it in the
plane of the same space, we could see now the tenuous shapes of our
own world. Vague, but familiar outlines! We had passed Sandy Hook!
The ocean lay behind us. A hundred feet or so beneath us was the
level water of the Lower Bay.
"Don!" I murmured. "Look there! Long Island off there! And that's
Staten Island ahead of us!"
"Almost at our destination," Tako observed. And in a moment he
gestured again. "There is your city. Have a good look at your dear
New York."
* * * * *
Diagonally ahead through the window we saw the spectres of the great
pile of masonry on lower and mid-Manhattan. Spectres of the giant
buildings; the familiar skyline, and mingled with it the ghostly
gray outlines of the mountains and valley depths of Tako's world.
All intermingled! The mountain peaks rose far higher than the
tallest of New York's skyscrapers; and the pits and ravines were
lower than the waters of the harbor and rivers, lower than the
subways and the tubes and the tunnels.
"Another carrier!" Don said abruptly. "See it off there!"
It showed like a great gray projectile coming in level with us. And
then we saw two others in the distance behind us. Fantastic, ghostly
arrival of the enemy! Weird mobilization here within the space of
the doomed New York.
"Can they see us?" I murmured. "Tako, the people down there on
Staten Island--can they see us?"
"Yes," he smiled. "Don't you think so? Look! Are not those ships of
war? Hah! Gathered already--awaiting our coming!"
I have already given a brief summary of the events of the days and
nights just past here in New York. The terror at the influx of
apparitions. The panic of the city's teeming millions struggling too
eagerly to escape.
It was night now--the night of May 19th. The city was in chaos, but
none of the details were apparent to us as we arrived. But we could
see, as we drifted with slow motion above the waters of the harbor,
that there were warships anchored here, and in the Hudson River.
They showed as little spectral dots of gray. And in the air, level
with us at times, the wraiths of encircling airplanes were visible.
"They see us," Tako repeated.
They did indeed. A puff of light and up-rolling smoke came from one
of the ships. A silent shot. Perhaps it screamed through us, but we
were not aware of it.
Tako chuckled. "They get excited, do they not? We strike terror--are
they going to fight like excited children?"
* * * * *
We were under sudden bombardment. Fort Wadsworth was firing; puffs
showed from several of the warships; and abruptly a group of ghostly
monoplanes dove at us like birds. They went through us, emerged and
sped away. And in a moment the shots were discontinued.
"That is better," said Tako. "What a waste of ammunition."
Our direction was carrying us from mid-Manhattan. The bridges to
Brooklyn were visible. Beyond them, over New York, mingled with
teeming buildings was a mountain slope of Tako's realm. I saw one of
our carriers lying on a ledge of it.
A sudden commotion in our car brought our attention from the scene
outside. The voices of girls raised in anger. Tolla's voice and
Jane's! Then came the sound of a scuffle!
"By what gods!" Tako exclaimed.
We all leaped to our feet. Tako rushed for the door of the
compartment with us after him. We burst in upon the girls. They were
standing in the center of the little room. One of the chairs was
overturned. Jane stood gripping Tolla by the wrists, and with
greater strength was forcibly holding her.
As we appeared, Jane abruptly released her, and Tolla sank to the
floor and burst into wild sobs. Jane faced us, red and white of
face, and herself almost in tears.
"What's the matter?" Don demanded. "What is it?"
But against all our questionings both girls held to a stubborn
silence.
CHAPTER IX
_A Woman Scorned_
Jane afterward told us just what happened in that compartment of the
carrier, and I think that for the continuity of my narration I had
best relate it now.
The cubby room was small, not much over six feet wide, and twelve
feet long. There was a single small door to the corridor, and two
small windows. A couch stood by them; there were two low chairs, and
a small bench-like table.
Tolla made Jane as comfortable as possible. Food was at hand; Tolla,
after an hour or two served it at the little table, eating the meal
with Jane, and sitting with her on the couch where they could gaze
through the windows.
To Jane this girl of another world was at once interesting,
surprising and baffling. Jane could only look upon her as an enemy.
In Jane's mind there was no thought save that we must escape, and
frustrate Tako's attack upon New York; and she was impulsive,
youthful enough to think something might be contrived.
At all events, she saw Tolla in the light of an enemy who might be
tricked into giving information.
Jane admits that her ideas were quite as vague as our own when it
came to planning anything definite.
She at first studied Tolla, who seemed as young as herself and
perhaps in her own world, was as beautiful. And within an hour or
two she was surprised at Tolla's friendliness. They had dined
together, gazed through the windows at the speeding shadows of the
strange world sliding past; they had dozed together on the couch.
During all this they could have been schoolgirl friends. Not captor
and captive upon these strange weird circumstances of actuality, but
friends of one world. And in outward aspect Tolla could fairly well
have been a cultured girl of our Orient.
* * * * *
Then Jane got a shock. She tried careful questions. And Tolla
skillfully avoided everything that touched in any way upon Tako's
future plans. Yet her apparent friendliness, and a certain girlish
volubility continued.
And then, at one point, Tolla asked:
"Are you beautiful in Bermuda?"
"Why, yes," said Jane. "I guess so."
"I am beautiful in my world. Tako has said so."
"You love him, don't you?" Jane said abruptly.
"Yes. That is true." There was no hint of embarrassment. Her pale
blue eyes stared at Jane, and she smiled a little quizzically. "Does
it show so quickly upon my face that you saw it at once? I am called
Tolla because I am pledged soon to enter Tako's harem."
Upon impulse Jane put her arm around the other girl as they sat on
the couch. "I think he is very nice."
But she saw it was an error. The shadow of a frown came upon Tolla's
face; a glint of fire clouded her pale, serene eyes.
"He will be the greatest man of his world," she said quietly.
* * * * *
There was an awkward silence. "The harem, I am told," Jane said
presently, "is one of your customs." She took a plunge. "And Tako
told us why they want our Earth girls. There was one of my friends
stolen from Bermuda--"
"And yet you call him very nice," Tolla interrupted with sudden
irony. "Girls are frank in our world. But you are not. What did you
mean by that?"
"I was trying to be friendly," said Jane calmly. "You had just said
you loved him."
"But you do not love him?"
It took Jane wholly back. "Good Heavens, no!"
"But he--might readily love you?"
"I hope not!" Jane tried to laugh, but the idea itself was so
frightening to her that the laugh sounded hollow. She gathered her
wits. This girl was jealous. Could she play upon that jealousy?
Would Tolla perhaps soon want her to escape? The idea grew. Tolla
might even some time soon come to the point of helping her escape.
Jane said carefully, "I suppose I was captured with the idea of
going into someone's harem. Was that the idea?"
"I am no judge of men's motives," said Tolla curtly.
"Tako said as much as that," Jane persisted. "But not necessarily
into his harem. But if it should be his, why would you care? Your
men divide their love--"
"I would care because Tako may give up his harem," Tolla interrupted
vehemently. "He goes into this conquest for power--for wealth--because
soon he expects to rule all our world and band it together into a
nation. He has always told me that I might be his only wife--some
day--"
* * * * *
She checked herself abruptly and fell into a stolid silence. It made
Jane realize that under the lash of emotion Tolla would talk freely.
But Jane could create no further opportunity then, for Tako suddenly
appeared at their door. The girls had been together now some hours.
Don and I were at this time asleep.
He stood now at the girl's door. "Tolla, will you go outside a
moment? I want to talk to this prisoner alone." And, interpreting
the look which both girls flung at him, he added, "The door remains
open. If she wants you back, Tolla, she will call."
Without a word Tolla left the compartment. But Jane saw on her face
again a flood of jealousy.
Tako seated himself amiably. "She has made you comfortable?"
"Yes."
"I am glad."
He passed a moment of silence. "Have you been interested in the
scene outside the window?" he added.
"Yes. Very."
"A strange sight. It must seem very strange to you. This traveling
through my world--"
"Did you come to tell me that?" she interrupted.
He smiled. "I came for nothing in particular. Let us say I came to
get acquainted with you. My little prisoner--you do not like me, do
you?"
She tried to meet his gaze calmly. This was the first time Jane had
had opportunity to regard Tako closely. She saw now the aspect of
power which was upon him. His gigantic stature was not clumsy, for
there was a lean, lithe grace in his movements. His face was
handsome in a strange foreign fashion. He was smiling now; but in
the set of his jaw, his wide mouth, there was an undeniable cruelty,
a ruthless dominance of purpose. And suddenly she saw the
animal-like aspect of him; a thinking, reasoning, but ruthless,
animal.
"You do not like me, do you?" he repeated.
* * * * *
She forced herself to reply calmly, "Why should I? You abduct my
friends. There is a girl named Eunice Arton whom you have stolen.
Where is she?"[7]
[7] Neither Eunice Arton, nor any of the stolen girls, have
ever been heard from since. Like the thousands of men, women
and children who met their death in the attack upon New
York, Eunice Arton was a victim of these tragic events.
He shrugged. "You could call that the fortunes of war. This is
war--"
"And you," she said, "are my enemy."
"Oh, I would not go so far as to say that. Rather would I call
myself your friend."
"So that you will return me safely? And also Bob Rivers, and my
cousin, Don--you will return us safely as you promised?"
"Did I promise? Are you not prompting words from my lips?"
Jane was breathless from fear, but she tried not to show it.
"What are you going to do with us?" she demanded. There is no woman
who lacks feminine guile in dealing with a man; and in spite of her
terror Jane summoned it to her aid.
"You want me to like you, Tako?"
"Of course I do. You interest me strangely. Your beauty--your
courage--"
"Then if you would be sincere with me--"
"I am; most certainly I am."
"You are not. You have plans for me. I told Tolla I supposed I was
destined for someone's harem. Yours?"
It startled him. "Why--" He recovered himself and laughed. "You
speak with directness." He suddenly turned solemn. He bent toward
her and lowered his voice; his hand would have touched her arm, but
she drew away.
"In very truth, ideas are coming to me, Jane. I will be, some day
soon, the greatest man of my world. Does that attract you?"
"N-no," she said, stammering.
"I wish that it would," he said earnestly. "I do of reality wish
that it would. I will speak plainly, and it is in a way that Tako
never spoke to woman before. I have found myself, these last hours,
caring very much for your good opinion of me. That is surprising."
* * * * *
She stared at him with sudden fascination mingled with her fear. He
seemed for this moment wholly earnest and sincere. An attractive
sort of villain, this handsome giant, turned suddenly boyish and
naive.
"That is surprising," Tako repeated.
"Is it?"
"Very. That I should care what any woman thinks of me, particularly
a captive girl--but I do. And I realize, Jane, that our marriage
system is very different from yours. Repugnant to you, perhaps. Is
it?"
"Yes," she murmured. His gaze held her; she tried to shake it off,
but it held her.
"Then I will tell you this: I have always felt that the glittering
luxury of a large harem is in truth a very empty measure of man's
greatness. For Tako there will be more manly things. The power of
leadership--the power to rule my world. When I got that idea, it
occurred to me also that for a man like me there might be some one
woman--to stand alone by my side and rule our world."
His hand touched her arm, and though she shuddered, she left it
there. Tako added with a soft vibrant tenseness. "I am beginning to
think that you are that woman."
There was a sound in the corridor outside the door--enough to cause
Tako momentarily to swing his gaze. It broke the spell for Jane;
with a shock she realized that like a snake he had been holding her
fascinated. His gaze came back at once, but now she shook off his
hand from her arm.
"Tolla told me you--you said something like that to her," Jane said
with an ironic smile.
It angered him. The earnestness dropped from him like a mask. "Oh,
did she? And you have been mocking me, you two girls?"
* * * * *
He stood up, his giant length bringing his head almost to the
vaulted ceiling of the little compartment. "What degradation for
Tako that women should discuss his heart."
His frowning face gazed down at Jane; there was on it now nothing to
fascinate her; instead, his gaze inspired terror.
"We--we said nothing else," she stammered.
"Say what you like. What is it to me? I am a man, and the clatter of
women's tongues is no concern of mine."
He strode to the door. From over his shoulder he said, "What I shall
do with you I have not yet decided. If Tolla is interested, tell her
that."
"Tako, let me--I mean you do not understand--"
But he was gone. Jane sat trembling. A sense of defeat was on her.
Worse than that, she felt that she had done us all immeasurable
harm. Tako's anger might react upon Don and me. As a matter of fact,
if it did he concealed it, for we saw no change in his attitude.
Tolla rejoined Jane within a moment. If Tako spoke to her outside
Jane did not know it. But she was at once aware that the other girl
had been listening; Tolla's face was white and grim. She came in,
busied herself silently about the room.
Jane turned from the window. "You heard us, Tolla?"
"Yes, I heard you! You with your crooked look staring at him--"
"Why, Tolla, I did not!"
"I saw you! Staring at him so that he would think you beautiful!
Asking him, with a boldness beyond that of any woman I could ever
imagine--asking him if he planned you for his harem!"
* * * * *
She stood over Jane, staring down with blazing eyes. "Oh, I heard
you! And I heard him telling you how noble are his motives! One
woman, just for him!"
"But, Tolla--"
"Do not lie to me! I heard him sneering at me--telling you of this
one woman just for him! And you are that woman! Hah! He thinks that
now, does he? He thinks he will make you love him as I love him. As
I love him! And what does he know of that! What woman's love can
mean!"
"Tolla! Don't be foolish. I didn't--I never had any desire to--"
"What do your desires concern me? He thinks he will win you with
tales of his conquests! A great man, this Tako, because he will
devastate New York!"
This was the fury of a woman scorned. She was wholly beside herself,
her words tumbling, incoherent, beyond her will, beyond her
realization of what she was saying.
"A great conquest to make you love him! With his giant projector he
will subdue New York! Hah! What a triumph! But it is the weapon's
power, not his! He and all his army--these great brave and warlike
men--why I alone with that weapon could turn--"
She stopped abruptly. The red flush of frenzied anger drained from
her cheeks.
Jane leaped to her feet. "What do you mean? With that giant
projector--"
But Tolla was standing frozen, with all her anger gone and horror at
what she had said flooding her.
"What do you mean, Tolla?" insisted Jane, seizing her. "What could
you do with that giant projector?"
"Let me go!" Tolla tried to jerk away.
"I won't let you go! Tell me what you were going to say!"
"Let me go!" Tolla got one hand loose and struck Jane in the face.
But Jane again seized the wrist. In the scuffle they overturned a
chair.
"I won't let you go until you--"
And then Tako, Don and I, hearing the uproar, burst in upon them.
Jane let go her hold, and Tolla broke into sobs, and sank to the
floor.
And both of them were sullen and silent under our questioning.
CHAPTER X
_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.
"Tolla told me something about the giant projector! Something about
how it--"
She could say almost nothing but that. "The projector, Bob, if you
can only learn how it--"
Tolla was upon us, calling to attract Tako's attention, and Jane
moved away.
* * * * *
The giant projector! We had it with us now; a dozen men had
laboriously carried it up here. Not yet assembled, it stood here on
the ledge--a rectangular gray box about the size and shape of a
coffin, encased now in the mesh of transition mechanism. Tako
intended to materialize us and that box into the city when the time
came, unpack and erect the projector, and with its long range
dominate all the surrounding country.
Tolla had almost told Jane something about it! Jane was trying to
learn that secret. Or she thought we might learn it from Tako. But
of what use if we did? We were helpless, every moment under the eyes
of guards whose little hand-beams could in a second annihilate us.
When, leaving the carrier, Jane had appeared garbed like the rest of
us and we had all been equipped with the transition mechanism which
we knew well how to use now, the thought came to me of trying to
escape. But it was futile. I could set the switches at my belt to
materialize me into New York. But as I faded, the weapons of the
guards would have been quick enough to catch me. How could Jane, Don
and I simultaneously try a thing like that.
"Impossible!" Don whispered. "Don't do anything wrong. Some chance
may come, later."
But with that slight transition over, Tako at once removed from our
belts a vital part of the mechanism in order to make it impotent.
An hour passed, here on the ledge, with most of the activity of
Tako's men incomprehensible to us.
"You shall see very soon," he chuckled grimly, "I can give the
signal to attack--all at once. Look there! They grow very bold,
these New York soldiers. They have come to inspect us."
* * * * *
It was night in New York City--about two A.M. of the night of May
19th and 20th. Our mountain ledge was within a store on the east
side of Fifth Avenue at 36th Street. We seemed to be but one story
above the pavement. The shadowy outlines of a large rectangular room
with great lines of show-cases dividing it into wide aisles. I
recognized it at once--a jewelry store, one of the best known in the
world. A gigantic fortune in jewelry was here, some of it hastily
packed in great steel safes nearby, and some of it abandoned in
these show-cases when the panic swept the city a few days
previously.
But the jewelry of our world was nothing to these White Invaders.
Tako never even glanced at the cases, or knew or cared what sort of
a store this was.
The shadowy street of Fifth Avenue showed just below us. It was
empty now of vehicles and people, but along it a line of soldiers
were gathered. Other stores and ghostly structures lay along Fifth
Avenue. And five hundred feet away, diagonally across the avenue,
the great Empire State Building, the tallest structure in the entire
world, towered like a ghostly Titan into the void above us.
This ghostly city! We could see few details. The people had all
deserted this mid-Manhattan now. The stores and hotels and office
buildings were empty.
A group of soldiers came into the jewelry store and stood within a
few feet of us, peering at us. Yet so great was the void between us
that Tako barely glanced at them. He was giving orders constantly
now. For miles around us his men on the mountains and in the valleys
were feverishly active.
* * * * *
But doing what? Don and I could only wonder. A tenseness had gripped
upon Tako. The time for his attack was nearing.
"Very presently now," he repeated. He gestured toward the great
apparition of the Empire State Building so near us.
"I am sparing that. A good place for us to mount the projector--up
there in that tall tower. You see where our mountain slope cuts
through that building? We can materialize with the projector at that
point."
The steep ramp of the mountainside upon which we were perched sloped
up and cut midway through the Empire State Building. The building's
upper portion was free of the mountain whose peaks towered to the
west. We could climb from our ledge up the ramp to the small area
where it intersected the Empire State at the building's sixtieth to
seventieth stories.
The apparitions of New York's soldiers stood in the jewelry store
with futile leveled weapons.
"They are wondering what we are doing!" Tako chuckled.
A dozen of Tako's men, unheeding the apparitions, were now busy
within a few hundred feet of us down the rocky slope. We saw at
close view, what Tako's army was busy doing everywhere. The men had
little wedge-shaped objects of a gray material. The materialization
bombs! They were placing them carefully at selected points on the
rocks, and adjusting the firing mechanisms. This group near us,
which Don and I watched with a fascinated horror, were down in the
basement of the jewelry store, among its foundations. There for a
moment; then moving out under Fifth Avenue, peering carefully at the
spectral outlines of the cellars of other structures.
Then presently Tako called an order. He stood for a moment on the
ledge with arms outstretched so that his men, and Don and I and
Jane, and the wondering apparitions of the gathered soldiers and New
York Police could see him. His moment of triumph! It marked his face
with an expression which was utterly Satanic.
Then he dropped his arms for the signal to attack.
CHAPTER XI
_The Devastation of New York_
That night of May 19th and 20th in New York City will go down in
history as the strangest, most terrible ever recorded. The panics
caused by the gathering apparitions of the previous days were nearly
over now. The city was under martial law, most of it deserted by
civilians, save for the dead who still lay strewn on the streets.
Lower and mid-Manhattan were an empty shell of deserted structures,
and silent, littered streets, which at night were dark, and through
which criminals prowled, braving the unknown terror to fatten upon
this opportunity.
Soldiers and police patrolled as best they could all of Manhattan,
trying to clear the streets of the crushed and trampled bodies;
seeking in the deserted buildings those who might still be there,
trapped or ill, or hurt so that they could not escape; protecting
property from the criminals who en masse had broken jail and were
lurking here.
Warships lay in the harbor and the rivers. The forts on Staten
Island and at Sandy Hook were ready with their artillery to attack
anything tangible. Airplanes sped back and forth overhead. Troops
were marching from outlying points--lines of them coming in over all
the bridges.
By midnight of May 19th and 20th there were groups of ghosts visible
everywhere about the city. They lurked in the buildings, permeating
the solid walls, stalking through them, or down through the
foundations; they wandered upon invisible slopes of their own world,
climbing up to gather in groups and hanging in mid-air over the city
rooftops. In the Hudson River off Grant's Tomb two or three hundred
of the apparitions were seemingly encamped at a level below the
river's surface. And others were in the air over the waters of the
upper bay.
* * * * *
Toward midnight, from the open ocean beyond Sandy Hook spectral
vehicles came winging for the city. Rapidly decreasing what had at
first seemed a swift flight, they floated like ghostly dirigibles
over the bay, heading for Manhattan. The forts fired upon them;
airplanes darted at them, through them. But the wraiths came on
unheeding. And then, gathering over Manhattan at about Washington
Square, they faded and vanished.
Within thirty minutes, though the vehicles never reappeared, it was
seen that the spectral invaders were now tremendously augmented in
numbers. A line of shapes marched diagonally beneath the city
streets. Patrolling soldiers in the now deserted subways saw them
marching past. The group in the air over the harbor was augmented.
In Harlem they were very near the street levels, a mass of a
thousand or more strung over an area of forty blocks.
In mid-Manhattan soldiers saw that Tiffany's jewelry store housed
the lurking shapes. Some were lower, others higher; in this section
around Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street the apparitions were at
tremendously diverse levels. There were some perched high in the air
more than half way up the gigantic Empire State Building; and still
others off to the west were in the air fifteen hundred feet or more
above the Pennsylvania Station.
* * * * *
At Tiffany's--as indeed in many other places--the soldiers made
close visual contact with the apparitions. A patrolling group of
soldiers entered Tiffany's and went to the second floor. They
reported a seated group of "ghosts," with numbers of white shapes
working near them at a lower level which brought them into Tiffany's
basement.
The soldiers thought that what was seated here might be a leader.
Apparitions rushed up to him, and away. And here the soldiers saw
what seemed the wraiths of two girls, seated quietly together,
helmeted and garbed like the men. And men seemed watching them.
By one-thirty there was great activity, constant movement of the
apparitions everywhere. Doing what? No one could say. The attack, so
closely impending now, was presaged by nothing which could be
understood.
There was one soldier who at about one-thirty A.M. was watching the
spectres which lurked seemingly in the foundations of Tiffany's. He
was called to distant Westchester where the harried Army officials
had their temporary headquarters this night. He sped there on his
motorcycle and so by chance he was left alive to tell what he had
seen. The wraiths under Tiffany's were placing little wedge-shaped
ghostly bricks very carefully at different points. It occurred to
this soldier that they were putting them in spaces coincidental with
the building's foundations.
And then came the attack. The materialization bombs--as we knew them
to be--were fired. Progressively over a few minutes, at a thousand
different points. The area seemed to be from the Battery to
Seventy-second Street. Observers in circling airplanes saw it
best--there were few others left alive to tell of it.
* * * * *
The whole thing lasted ten minutes. Perhaps it was not even so long.
It began at Washington Square. The little ghostly wedges which had
been placed within the bricks of the arch at the foot of Fifth
Avenue began materializing; turning solid. From imponderability they
grew tangible; demanded free empty space of their own. Wedged and
pushed with solidifying molecules and atoms, each demanding its
little space and finding none. Encountering other solidity.
Outraged nature! No two material bodies can occupy the same space at
the same time!
The Washington Arch very queerly seemed to burst apart by a
strangely silent explosion. The upper portion toppled and fell with
a clatter of masonry littering the avenue and park.
Then a house nearby went down; then another. Everything seemed to be
crumbling, falling. That was the beginning. Within a minute the
chaos spread, running over the city like fire on strewn gasoline.
Buildings everywhere came crashing down. The street heaved up,
cracking apart in long jagged lines of opening rifts as though an
earthquake were splitting them. The subways and tubes and tunnels
yawned like black fantastic chasms crossed and littered by broken
girders.
The river waters heaved with waves lashed white as the great bridges
fell into them; and sucked down and closed again with tumultuous
whirlpools where the water had rushed into the cracked tunnels of
the river bed.
* * * * *
Of the towering skyscrapers the Woolworth was the first to crumble;
it split into sections as it fell across the wreckage which already
littered City Hall. Then the Bank of Manhattan Building, crumbling,
partly falling sidewise, partly slumping upon the ruins of itself.
Simultaneously the Chrysler Building toppled. For a second or two it
seemed perilously to sway. Breathless, awesome seconds. It swayed
over, lurched back like a great tree in a wind. Then very slowly it
swayed again and did not come back. Falling to the east, its whole
giant length came down in a great arc. The descent grew faster,
until, in one great swoop it crashed upon the wreckage of the Grand
Central Station. The roar of it surged over the city. The crash of
masonry; the clatter of its myriad windows, the din of its rending,
breaking girders.
The giant buildings were everywhere tumbling like falling giants;
like Titans stricken by invisible tumors implanted in their vitals.
It lasted ten minutes. What infinitude of horror came to proud and
lordly Manhattan Island in those momentous ten minutes!
Ten thousand patrolling soldiers and police, bands of lurking
criminals, and men, women and children who still had not left the
city, went down to death in those ten minutes. Yet no observer could
have seen them. Their little bodies, so small amid these Titans of
their own creation, went into oblivion unnoticed in the chaos.
* * * * *
The little solidifying bombs of the White Invaders did their work
silently. But what a roar surged up into the moonlit night from the
stricken city! What tumult of mingled sounds! What a myriad of
splintering, reverberating crashes, bursting upward into the night;
echoing away, renewed again and again so that it all was a vast
pulsing throb of terrible sound. And under it, inaudible, what faint
little sounds must have been the agonized screams of the humans who
were entombed!
Then the pulse of the great roaring sound began slowing. Soon it
became a dying roar. A last building was toppling here and there.
The silence of death was spreading over the mangled litter of the
strewn city. Dying chaos of sound; but now it was a chaos of color.
Up-rolling clouds of plaster dust; and then darker, heavier clouds
of smoke. Lurid yellow spots showed through the smoke clouds where
everywhere fires were breaking up.
And under it, within it all, the vague white shapes of the enemy
apparitions stood untouched, still peering curious, awed triumphant
at what they had done.
Another ten minutes passed; then half an hour, perhaps. The
apparitions were moving now. The many little groups were gathering
into fewer, larger groups. One marched high in the air, with faint
lurid green beams slanting down at the ruins of the city; not as
weapons this time, but as beams of faint light, seemingly to
illuminate the scene, or perhaps as signals to the ghostly army.
The warships in the Hudson were steaming slowly toward the Battery
to escape. Searchlights from them, from the other ships hovering
impotent in the bay, and from a group of encircling planes, flashed
their white beams over the night to mingle with the glare of the
fires and the black pall of smoke which was spreading now like a
shroud.
* * * * *
There were two young men in a monoplane which had helplessly circled
over mid-Manhattan. They saw the city fall, and noticed the lurking
wraiths untouched amid the ruins and in the air overhead. And they
saw, when it was over, that one great building very strangely had
escaped. The Empire State, rearing its tower high into the serene
moonlight above the wreckage and the rising layers of smoke, stood
unscathed in the very heart of Manhattan. The lone survivor,
standing there with the moonlight shining upon its top, and the
smoke gathering black around its spreading base.
The two observers in the airplane, stricken with horror at what they
had seen, flew mechanically back and forth. Once they passed within
a few hundred feet of the standing giant. They saw its two hundred
foot mooring mast for dirigibles rising above the eighty-five
stories of the main structure. They saw the little observatory room
up there in the mooring mast top, with its circular observation
platform, a balcony around it. But they did not notice the figures
on that balcony.
Then, from the top of the Empire State Building--from the circular
observation platform--a single, horribly intense green light-beam
slanted out into the night! A new attack! As though all which had
gone before were not enough destruction, now came a new assault. The
spectral enemies were tangible now!
* * * * *
The single green light-beam was very narrow. But the moonlight could
not fade it; over miles of distance it held visible. It struck first
a passing airplane. The two observers in the monoplane were at this
time down near the Battery. They saw the giant beam hit the
airplane. A moment it clung, and parts of the plane faded. The plane
wavered, and then, like a plummet, fell.
The beam swung. It struck a warship lying in the upper bay.
Explosions sounded. Puffs of light flared. The ship, with all its
passengers vanished and gone, lay gutted and empty.
The source of the light moved rapidly around the circular balcony.
The light darted to every distant point of the compass. The
surprised distant ships and forts, realizing that here for the first
time was a tangible assailant, screamed shots into the night. But
the green beam struck the ships and forts and instantly silenced
them.
Now the realization of this tangible enemy spread very far. Within a
few minutes, planes and radio communication had carried the news.
From distant points which the light could not or did not reach,
long-range guns were firing at the Empire State. A moment or two
only. The base of the building was struck.
Then, frantically, observing planes sent out the warning to stop
firing. The green beam had for a minute or two vanished. But now it
flashed on again. What was this? The spectral wraiths of ten
thousand of the enemy were staring. The observers in the planes
stared and gasped. What fantasy! What new weird sight was this,
stranger than all that had preceded it!
CHAPTER XII
_On the Tower Balcony_
Upon the little observatory balcony at the top of the Empire State
some twelve hundred feet above the stricken city, Don and I were
with Tako as he erected the giant projector. In the midst of the
silent shadowy outline of the stricken city falling around us, we
had carried the projector up the mountain slope. The spectre of the
Empire State Building was presently around us; we were in a hallway
of one of the upper stories. Slowly, we materialized with our
burden. I recall, as the dark empty corridor of the office building
came to solidity around me, with what surprise I heard for the first
time the muffled reverberations from the crumbling city....
We climbed the dark and empty stairs, upward into the mooring mast.
Don and I toiled with the box, under the weapons of our two guards.
It was only a few minutes while Tako assembled and mounted the
weapon. It stood a trifle higher than the parapet top. It rolled
freely upon a little carriage mounted with wheels. Don and I peered
at it. We hovered close to Tako with only one thought in our minds,
Jane's murmured words--if we could learn something about this
projector....
* * * * *
Then the horror dulled us. We obeyed orders mechanically, as though
all of it were a terrible dream, with only a vague undercurrent of
reiterated thought: some chance must come--some fated little chance
coming our way.
I recall, during those last terrible minutes when Tako flung the
projector beam to send all his distant enemies hurtling into
annihilation, that I stood in a daze by the parapet. Don had ceased
to look. Tako was rolling the projector from one point to another
around the circular balcony. Sometimes he was out of sight on the
other side, with the observatory room in the mast hiding him.
We had been ordered not to move. The two guards stood with hand
weapons turned on so that the faint green beams slanted downward by
their feet, instantly ready, either for Don or me.
And I clung to the balcony rail, staring down at the broken city. It
lay strewn and flattened as though, not ten minutes, but ten
thousand years of time had crumbled it into ruins.
Then shots from the distant warships began screaming at us. With a
grim smile, Tako silenced them. There was a momentary lull.
And then came our chance! Fate, bringing just one unforeseen little
thing to link the chain, to turn the undercurrent of existing
circumstances--and to give us our chance. Or perhaps Jane, guided by
fate, created the opportunity. She does not know. She too was dazed,
numb--but there was within her also the memory of what Tolla had
almost said. And Tolla's frenzy of jealousy....
* * * * *
Tako appeared from around the balcony, rolling the projector. Its
beam was off. He flung a glance of warning at the two guards to
watch us. He left the projector, flushed, triumphant, all his senses
perhaps reeling with the realization of what he had done. He saw the
two girls huddled in the moonlight of the balcony floor. He stooped
and pushed Tolla roughly away.
"Jane! Jane, did you see it? My triumph! Tako, master of everything!
Even of you--is it not so?"
Did some instinct impel her not to repulse him? Some intuition
giving her strength to flash him a single alluring moonlit glance?
But suddenly he had enwrapped her in his arms. Kissing her,
murmuring love and lust....
This was our chance. But we did not know it then. A very chaos of
diverse action so suddenly was precipitated upon this balcony!
Don and I cried out and heedlessly leaped forward. The tiny beams of
the guards swung up. But they did not reach us, for the guards
themselves were stricken into horror. The shot from a far-distant
warship screamed past. But that went almost unheeded. Tako had
shouted, and the guards impulsively turned so that their beams
missed Don and me.
Tolla had flung herself upon Tako and Jane. Screaming, she tore at
them and all in an instant rose to her feet. Tako's cylinder, which
she had snatched, was in her hand. She flashed it on as Don and I
reached her.
* * * * *
The guards for that instant could not fire for we were all
intermingled. Don stumbled in his rush and fell upon Tako and Jane,
and in a moment rose as the giant Tako lifted him and tried to cast
him off.
My rush flung me against Tolla. She was babbling, mouthing frenzied
laughs of hysteria. Her beam pointed downward, but as she reeled
from the impact of my rush, the beam swung up; missed me, narrowly
missed the swaying bodies of Tako and Don, and struck one of the
guards who was standing, undecided what to do. It clung to him for a
second or two, and then swung to the other guard.
The guards in a puff of spectral light were gone. Tolla stood
wavering; then swung her light toward Tako and Don. But I was upon
her.
"Tolla! Good God--"
"Get back from me! Back, I tell you."
I heard Jane's agonized warning from the floor. "Bob!"
Tolla's light missed my shoulder. Tako had cast Don off and stood
alone as he turned toward us. Then Tolla's light-beam swung on him.
I heard her eery maddened laugh as it struck him.
A wraith of Tako was there, stricken as though numbed by
surprise.... Then nothingness....
Shots from the distant warships were screaming around us. One struck
the base of the building.
I clung to my scattering senses. I gripped Tolla.
"That projector--what was it you almost told Jane?"
* * * * *
She stood stupidly babbling. "Told Jane? That projector--"
She laughed wildly, and like a tigress, cast me off. "Fools of men!
Tako--the fool!"
She swung into a frenzy of her own language. And then back into
English. "I will show you--Tako, the fool! All those fools out there
under the ground and in the sky. I will show them!"
She stooped over the projector and fumbled with the mechanism.
Don gasped, "Those apparitions--is that what you're going to
attack?"
"Yes--attack them!"
The beam flashed on. But it was a different beam now. Fainter, more
tenuous; the hum from it was different.
It leaped into the ground. It was a spreading beam this time. It
bathed the white apparitions who were peering up at the city.
Why, what was this? Weird, fantastic sight! There was a moment of
Tolla's frenzied madness; then she staggered away from the
projector. But Don and I had caught the secret. We took her place.
We carried it on.
We were hardly aware that the far-off warships had ceased firing. We
hardly realized that Tolla had rushed for the parapet; climbed,
screaming and laughing--and that Jane tried to stop her.
"Oh, Tolla, don't--"
But Tolla toppled and fell.... Her body was almost not recognized
when it was later found down in the ruins.
Don and I flung this new beam into the night. We rolled the
projector around the platform, hurling the beam in every direction
at the white apparitions....
* * * * *
It had caught first that group which lurked in the ground near the
base of the Empire State. Tolla had turned the beam to the reverse
co-ordinates from those Tako used. It penetrated into the
borderland, reached the apparitions and forcibly materialized them!
A second or two it clung to that group of white men's shapes in the
ground. They grew solid; ponderable. But the space they now claimed
was not empty! Solid rock was here, yielding no space to anything!
Like the little materialization bombs, this was nature outraged. The
ground and the solid rock heaved up, broken and torn, invisibly
permeated and strewn with the infinitesimal atomic particles of what
a moment before had been the bodies of living men.
We caught with the beam that marching line of apparitions beneath
the ground surface--a section of Tako's army which was advancing
upon Westchester. The city streets over them surged upward. And some
we caught under the rivers and within the waters of the bay, and the
waters heaved and lashed into turmoil.
Then we turned the beam into the air. The apparitions lost contact
with their invisible mountain peaks. And with sudden solidity, the
gravity of our world pulled at them. They fell. Solid men's bodies,
falling with the moonlight on them. Dark blobs turning end over end;
plunging into the rivers and the harbor with little splashes of
white to mark their fall; and yet others whirling down, crashing
into the wreckage of masonry, into the pall of smoke and the lurid
yellow flames of the burning city.
The attack of the White Invaders was over.
* * * * *
A year has passed. There has been no further menace; perhaps there
never will be. And again, the invisible realm of which Don, Jane and
I were vouchsafed so strange a glimpse, lies across a void
impenetrable. Earth scientists have the projector, with its current
batteries apparently almost exhausted. And they have the transition
mechanism which we three were wearing. But of those, the vital
element had been removed by Tako--and was gone with him. Many others
were found on the bodies, and upon the body of poor Tolla. But all
were wrecked by their fall.
Perhaps it is just as well. Yet, often I ponder on that other realm.
What strange customs and science and civilization I glimpsed.
Out of such thoughts one always looms upon me: a contemplation of
the vastness of things to be known.
And the kindred thought: what a very small part of it we really
understand!
End of Project Gutenberg's The White Invaders, by Raymond King Cummings
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