Foreword
In 1935 the mighty genius of Moyen gripped the
Eastern world like a hand of steel. In a matter of months he had welded the
Orient into an unbeatable war-machine. He had, through the sheer magnetism of a
strange personality, carried the Eastern world with him on his march to
conquest of the earth, and men followed him with blind faith as men in the past
have followed the banners of the Thaumaturgists.
A strange name,
to the sound of which none could assign nationality. Some said his father was a
Russian refugee, his mother a Mongol woman. Some said he was the son of a
Caucasian woman lost in the Gobi and rescued by a mad lama of Tibet, who
became father of Moyen. Some said that his mother was a goddess, his father a
fiend out of hell.
But this all men knew about him: that he combined
within himself the courage of a Hannibal, the military genius of a Napoleon,
the ideals of a Sun Yat Sen; and that he had sworn to himself he would never
rest until the earth was peopled by a single nation, with Moyen himself in the
seat of the mighty ruler.
Madagascar was
the seat of his government, from which he looked across into United Africa, the
first to join his confederacy. The Orient was a dependency, even to that
forbidden land of the Goloks, where outlanders sometimes went, but whence they
never returned—and to the wild Goloks he was a god whose will was absolute, to
render obedience to whom was a privilege accorded only to the Chosen.
In a short year
his confederacy had brought under his might the millions of Asia, which he had
welded into a mighty machine for further conquest.
And because the
Americas saw the handwriting on the wall, they sent out to see the man Moyen,
with orders to penetrate to his very side, as a spy, their most trusted Secret
Agent—Prester Kleig.
Only the ignorant
believed that Moyen was mad. The military and diplomatic geniuses of the world
recognized his genius, and resented it.
But Prester
Kleig, of the Secret Service of the Americas, one of the few men whose
headquarters were in the Secret Room in Washington, had reached Moyen.
Now he was coming
home.
He came home to
tell his people what Moyen was planning, and to admit that his investigations
had been hampered at every turn by the uncanny genius of Moyen. Military plans
had been guarded with unbelievable secrecy. War machines he knew to exist, yet
had seen only those common to all the armies of the world.
And now, twenty-four
hours out of New York City, aboard the S. S. Stellar, Prester Kleig was
literally willing the steamer to greater speed—and in far Madagascar the
strange man called Moyen had given the ultimatum:
"The Western
World shall be next!"
CHAPTER I - The Hand of Moyen.
"Who is that
man?" asked a young lady passenger of the steward, with the imperious
inflection which tells of riches able to force obedience from menials who labor
for hire.
She pointed a
bejeweled finger at the slender, soldierly figure which stood in the prow of
the liner, like a figurehead, peering into the storm under the vessel's
forefoot.
"That
gentleman, milady?" repeated the steward obsequiously. "That is
Prester Kleig, head of the Secret Agents, Master of the Secret Room, just now
returning from Madagascar, via Europe, after a visit to the realm of
Moyen."
A gasp of terror
burst from the lips of the woman. Her cheeks blanched.
"Moyen!"
She almost whispered it. "Moyen! The half-god of Asia, whom men call
mad!"
"Not mad,
milady. No, Moyen is not mad, save with a lust for power. He is the conqueror
of the ages, already ruling more of the earth's population than any man has
ever done before him—even Alexander!"
But the young
lady was not listening to stewards. Wealthy young ladies did not, save when
asked questions dealing with personal service to themselves. Her eyes devoured
the slender man who stood in the prow of the Stellar, while her lips shaped,
over and over again, the dread name which was on the lips of the people of the
world:
"Moyen!
Moyen!"
Up in the prow,
if Prester Kleig, who carried a dread secret in his breast, knew of the young
lady's regard, he gave no sign. There were touches of gray at his temples, though
he was still under forty. He had seen more of life, knew more of its terrors,
than most men twice his age—because he had lived harshly in service to his
country.
He was thinking
of Moyen, the genius of the misshapen body, the pale eyes which reflected the
fires of a Satanic soul, set deeply in the midst of the face of an angel; and
wondering if he would be able to arrive in time, sorry that he had not returned
home by airplane.
He had taken the
Stellar only because the peacefulness of ocean liner travel would aid his
thoughts, and he required time to marshal them. Liner travel was now a luxury,
as all save the immensely wealthy traveled by plane across the oceans. Now
Prester Kleig was sorry, for any moment, he felt, Moyen might strike.
He turned and
looked back along the deck of the Stellar. His eyes played over the trimly
gowned figure of the woman who questioned the steward, but did not really see
her. And then....
"Great
God!" The words were a prayer, and they burst from the lips of Prester
Kleig like an explosion. Passengers appeared from the lee of lifeboats.
Officers on the bridge whirled to look at the man who shouted. Seamen paused in
their labors to stare. Aloft in the crow's-nest the lookout lowered his eyes
from scouring the horizon to stare at Prester Kleig—who was pointing.
All eyes turned
in the direction indicated.
Climbing into the
sky, a mile off the starboard beam, was an airplane with a bulbous body and
queerly slanted wings. It had neither wheels nor pontoons, and it traveled with
unbelievable speed. It came on bullet-fast, headed directly for the side of the
Stellar.
"Lower the
boats!" yelled Kleig. "Lower the boats! For God's sake lower the
boats!"
For Prester
Kleig, in that casual turning, had seen what none aboard the Stellar, even the
lookout above, had seen. The airplane, which had neither wheels nor pontoons,
had risen, as Aphrodite is said to have risen, out of the waves! He had seen
the wings come out of the bulbous body, snap backward into place, and the plane
was in full flight the instant it appeared.
Prester Kleig had
no hope that his warning would be in time, but he would always feel better for
having given it. As the captain debated with himself as to whether this lunatic
should be confined as dangerous, the strange airplane nosed over and dived down
to the sea, a hundred yards from the side of the Stellar. Just before it struck
the water, its wings snapped forward and became part of the bulbous body of the
thing, the whole of which shot like a bullet into the sea.
Prester Kleig
stood at the rail, peering out at the spot where the plane had plunged in with
scarcely a splash, and his right hand was raised as though he gave a final,
despairing signal.
Of all aboard the
Stellar, he only saw that black streak which, ten feet under water, raced like
a bolt of lightning from the nose of the submerged but visible plane, straight
as a die for the side of the Stellar. Just a black streak, no bigger than a
small man's arm, from the nose of the plane to the side of the Stellar.
From the
crow's-nest came the startled, terrific voice of the lookout, in the beginning
of a cry that must remain forever inarticulate.
The world, in
that blinding moment, seemed to rock on its foundations; to shatter itself to
bits in a chaotic jumble of sound and of movement, shot through and through
with lurid flames. Kleig felt himself hurled upward and outward, turned over
and over endlessly....
He felt the
storm-tossed waters close over him, and knew he had struck. In the moment he
knew—oblivion, deep, ebon and impenetrable, blotted out knowledge.
CHAPTER II - The Half-Dream
A roaring,
rushing river of chaotic sound, first. Jumbled sound to which Prester Kleig
could give no adequate name. But as he tried to analyze its meanings, he was
able to differentiate between sounds, and to discover the identity of some.
The river of
sound he decided to be the sound of a vibrational explosion of some
sort—vibrational because it had that quivery quality which causes a feeling of
uneasiness and fret, that feeling which makes one turn and look around to find
the eyes boring into one's back—yet multiplied in its intensity an uncounted
number of times.
Other sounds
which came through the chaotic river of sound were the terrified screaming of
the men and women who were doomed. Lifeboats were never lowered, for the reason
that with the disintegration of the Stellar, everything inanimate aboard her
likewise disintegrated, dropping men and women, crew and passengers, into the
freezing waters of the Atlantic.
Prester Kleig
dropped with them, only partially unconscious after the first icy plunge. He
knew when he floated on the surface, for he felt himself lifted and hurled by
the waves. In his half-dream he saw men and women being carried away into
wave-shrouded darkness, clawing wildly at nothingness for support, clawing at
one another, locking arms, and going down together.
The Stellar, in
the merest matter of seconds, had become spoil of the sea, and her crew and
passengers had vanished forever from the sight of men. Yet Prester Kleig lived
on, knew that he lived on, and that there was an element, too strong to be
disbelieved, of reality in his dream.
There was a
vibratory sense, too, as of the near activity of a noiseless motor. Noiseless
motor! Where had he last thought of those two words? With what recent
catastrophe were they associated? No, he could not recall, though he knew he
should be able to do so.
Then the sense of
motion to the front was apparent—an unnumbered sense, rather than concrete
feeling. Motion to front, influenced by the rising and falling motion of
mountainous waves.
So suddenly as to
be a distinct shock, the wave motion ceased, though the forward motion—and
upward!—not only continued but increased.
That airplane of
the bulbous body, the queerly slanted wings....
But the
glimmering of realization vanished as a sickishly sweet odor assailed his
nostrils and sent its swift-moving tentacles upward to wrap themself soothingly
about his brain. But the sense of flight, unbelievably swift, was present and
recognizable, though all else eluded him. He had the impression, however, that
it was intended that all save the most vagrant, most widely differentiated,
impressions elude him—that he should acquire only half pictures, which would
therefore be all the more terrible in retrospect.
The only
impressions which were real were those of motion to the front, and upward, and
the sense of noiseless machinery, vibrating the whole, nearby.
Then a distinct
realization of the cessation of the sense of flying, and a return, though in
lesser degree, of the rising and falling of waves. This latter sensation became
less and less, though the feeling of traveling downward continued. Prester
Kleig knew that he was going down into the sea again, down into it deeply....
Then that odor once more, and the elusive memory.
Forward motion at
last, in the depths, swift, forward motion, though Prester Kleig could not even
guess at the direction. Just swift motion, and the mutter of voices, the giving
of orders....
Prester Kleig
regained consciousness fully on the sands of the shore. He sat up stiffly,
staring out to sea. A storm was raging, and the sea was an angry waste. No ship
showed on the waters; the mad, tumbled sky above it was either empty of planes
or they had climbed to invisibility above the clouds that raced and churned
with the storm.
Out of the storm,
almost at Prester Kleig's feet, dropped a small airplane. Through the window a
familiar face peered at Kleig. A helmeted, begoggled figure opened the door and
stepped out.
"Kleig, old
man," said the flyer, "you gave me the right dope all right, but I'll
swear there isn't a wireless tower within a hundred miles of this place! How
did you manage it?"
"Kane,
you're crazy, or I am, or...." But Prester Kleig could not go on with the
thought which had rushed through his brain with the numbing impact of a blow.
He grasped the hand of Carlos Kane, of the Domestic Service, and the yellow
flimsy Kane held out to him. It read simply:
"Shipwrecked.
Am ashore at—" There followed grid coordinate map readings. "Come at
once, prepared to fly me to Washington." It was signed "Kleig."
"Kane,"
said Kleig, "I did not send this message!"
What more was
there to be said? Horror looked out of the eyes of Prester Kleig, and was
reflected in those of Carlos Kane. Both men turned, peering out across the
tumbled welter of waters.
Somewhere out
there, tight-locked in the gloomy archives of the Atlantic, was the secret of
the message which had brought Carlos Kane to Prester Kleig—and the agency which
had sent it.
CHAPTER III - Wings of
To-morrow
As Prester Kleig
climbed into the enclosed passenger pit of the monoplane—a Mayther—his ears
seemed literally to be ringing with the drumming, mighty voice of Moyen. But
now that voice, instead of merely speaking, rang with sardonic laughter. He had
never heard the laughter of Moyen, but he could guess how it would sound.
That airplane of
the slanted wings, the bulbous, almost bulletlike fuselage, what of it? It was
simple, as Kleig looked back at his memoried glimpse of it. The submarine was a
metal fish made with human hands; the airplane aped the birds. The strange ship
which had caused the destruction of the Stellar, was a combination fish and
bird—which merely aped nature a bit further, as anyone who had ever traversed
tropical waters would have instantly recognized.
But what did it
portend? What ghastly terrors of Moyen roamed the deeps of the Atlantic, of the
Pacific, the oceans of the world? How close were some of these to the United
States?
The pale eyes of
Moyen, he was sure, were already turned toward the West.
Prester Kleig
sighed as he seated himself beside Carlos Kane. Then Kane pressed one of the
myriad of buttons on the dash, and Kleig lifted his eyes to peer through the
skylight, to where that single press of a button had set in motion the
intricate machinery of the helicopter.
A four-bladed fan
lifted on a slender pedestal, sufficiently high above the surface of the wing
for the vanes to be free of the central propeller. Then, automatically, the
vanes became invisible, and the Mayther lifted from the sandy beach as lightly,
and far more straightly, than any bird.
As the ship
climbed away for the skies, and through the transparent floor the beach and the
Atlantic fell away below the ship, a sigh of relief escaped Kleig. This was
living! Up here one was free, if only for a moment, and the swift wind of
flight brushed all cobwebs from the tired human brain. He watched the slender
needle of the altimeter, as it moved around the face of the dial as steadily as
the hands of a clock, around to thirty thousand, thirty-five, forty.
Then Carlos Kane,
every movement as effortless as the flight of the silvery winged Mayther,
thrust forth his hand to the dash again, pressed another button. Instantly the
propellers vanished into a blur as the vanes of the helicopter dropped down the
slender staff and the vanes themselves fitted snugly into their appointed
notches atop the wing.
For a second
Carlos Kane glanced at the tiny map to the right of the dash, and set his
course. It was a matter of moments only, but while Kane worked, Prester Kleig
studied the instruments on the dash, for it had been months since he had flown,
save for his recent half-dreamlike experience. There was a button which
released the mechanism of the deadly guns, fired by compressed air, all
operated from the noiseless motor, whose muzzles exactly cleared the tips of
Mayther's wings, two guns to each wing, one on the entering edge, one on the
trailing edge, fitted snugly into the adamant rigging.
Four guns which
could fire to right or left, twin streams of lead, the number of rounds
governed only by the carrying power of the Mayther. Prester Kleig knew them
all: the guns in the wings, the guns which fired through the three propellers,
and the guns set two and two in the fuselage, to right and left of the pits,
which could be fixed either up or down—all by the mere pressing of buttons. It
was marvelous, miraculous, yet even as Kleig told himself that this was so, he
felt, deep in the heart of him, that Moyen knew all about ships like these, and
regarded them as the toys of children.
Kane touched
Kleig on the shoulder, signaling, indicating that the atmosphere in the pits
had been regulated to their new height, and that they could remove their
helmets and oxygen tanks without danger.
With a sigh
Prester Kleig sat back, and the two friends turned to face each other.
"You
certainly look done in, Kleig," said Kane sympathetically. "You must
have been through hell, and then some. Tell me about this Moyen; that is, if
you think you care to talk about him."
"Talk about
him!" repeated Kleig. "Talk about him? It will be a relief! There has
been nothing, and nobody, on my mind save Moyen for weary months on end. If I
don't talk to someone about him, I'll go mad, if I'm not mad already. Moyen? A monster
with the face of an angel! What else can one say about him? A devil and a
saint, a brute whose followers would go with him into hell's fire, and sing him
hosannas as they were consumed in agony! The greatest mob psychologist the
world has ever seen. He's a genius, Kane, and unless something is done, the
Western world, all the world, is doomed to sit at the feet, listen to the
commands, of Moyen!
"He isn't an
Oriental; he isn't a European; he isn't negroid or Indian; but there is
something about him that makes one thing of all of these, singly and
collectively. His body is twisted and grotesque, and when one looks at his
face, one feels a desire to touch him, to swear eternal fealty to him—until one
looks into his pale eyes, eyes almost milky in their paleness—and gets the
merest hint of the thoughts which actuate him. If he has a failing I did not
find it. He does not drink, gamble...."
"And
women?" queried Kane, softly.
Kleig was madly
in love with the sister of Kane, Charmion, and this thing touched him nearest the
heart, because Charmion was one of her country's most famous beauties, about
whom Moyen must already have heard.
"Women?"
repeated Kleig musingly, his black eyes troubled, haunted. "I scarcely
know. He has no love for women, only because he has no capacity for any love
save self-love. But when I think of him in this connection I seem to see Moyen,
grown to monster proportions, sitting on a mighty throne, with nude women
groveling at his feet, bathed in tears, their long hair in mantles of sorrow,
hiding their shamed faces! That sounds wild, doesn't it? But it's the picture I
get of Moyen when I think of Moyen and of women. Many women will love him, and
have, perhaps. But while he has taken many, though I am only guessing here, he
has given himself to none. Another thing: His followers—well, he sets no limits
to the lusts of his men, requiring only that every soldier be fit for duty,
with a body strong for hardship. You understand?"
Kane understood;
and his face was very pale.
"Yes,"
he said, his voice almost a whisper, "I understand, and as you speak of
this man I seem to see a city in ruins, and hordes of men marching,
bloodstained men entering houses ... from which, immediately afterward, come
the screams of women ... terror-stricken women...."
He shuddered and
could not go on for the very horror of the vision that had come to him.
But Kleig stared
at him as though he saw a ghost.
"Great God,
Carl!" he gasped. "The same identical picture has been in my mind,
not once but a thousand times! I wonder...."
Was it an omen of
the future for the West?
Deep in his soul
Prester Kleig fancied he could hear the sardonic laughter of the half-god,
Moyen.
A tiny bell rang
inside the dash, behind the instruments. Kane had set direction finders, had
pressed the button which signaled the Washington-control Station of the
National Radio, thus automatically indicating the exact spot above land, by
grid-coordinates, where the Mayther should start down for the landing.
An hour later
they landed on the flat roof of the new Capitol Building, sinking lightly to
rest as a feather, nursed to a gentle landing by the whirring vanes of the
helicopter.
Prester Kleig,
surrounded by uniformed guards who tried to shield him from the gaze of
news-gatherers crowded there on the roof-top, hurried him to the stairway
leading into the executive chambers, and through these to the Secret Chamber
which only a few men knew, and into which not even Carlos Kane could follow
Prester Kleig—yet.
But one man, one
news-gatherer, had caught a glimpse of the face of Kleig, and already he raced
for the radio tower of his organization, to blazon to the Western world the
fact that Kleig had come back.
CHAPTER IV - A Nation Waits in
Dread
As Prester Kleig,
looking twice his forty years because of fatigue, and almost nameless terrors
through which he had passed, went to his rendezvous, the news-gatherer, who
shall here remain nameless, raced for the Broadcasting Tower.
As Prester Kleig
entered the Secret Room and at a signal all the many doors behind him, along
that interminable stairway, swung shut and were tightly locked, the
news-gatherer raced for the microphone and gave the "priority" signal
to the operator. Millions of people would not only hear the words of the
news-gatherer, but would see him, note the expressions which chased one another
across his face. For television was long since an accomplished, everyday fact.
"Prester
Kleig, of this government's Secret Service, has just returned to the United
Americas! Your informer has just seen him step from the monoplane of Carlos
Kane, atop the Capitol Building, and repair at once to the Secret Room, closely
guarded. But I saw his face, and though he is under forty, he seems twice that.
And you know now what this country has only guessed at before—that he has seen
Moyen. Moyen the half-man, half-god, the enigma of the ages. What does Prester
Kleig think of this man? He doesn't say, for he dares not speak, yet. But your
informer saw his face, and it is old and twisted with terror! And—"
That ended the
discourse of the news-gatherer, and it was many hours before the public really
understood. For, with a new sentence but half completed, the picture of the
news-gatherer faded blackly off the screens in a million homes, and his voice
was blotted out by a humming that mounted to a terrific appalling shriek! Some
terrible agency, about which people who knew their radio could only guess, had
drowned out the words of the news-gatherer, leaving the public stunned and
bewildered, almost groping before a feeling of terror which was all the more
unbearable because none could give it a name.
And the public
had heard but a fraction of the truth—merely that Kleig had come back. It had
been the intention of the government to deny the public even this knowledge,
and it had; but knowledge of the denial itself was public property, which
filled the hearts of men and women all through the Western Hemisphere with
nameless dread. And over all this abode of countless millions hovered the
shadow of Moyen.
The government
tried to correct the impression which the news-gatherer had given out.
"Prester
Kleig is back," said the radio, while the government speaker tried, for
the benefit of those who could see him, to smile reassuringly. "But there
is nothing to cause anyone the slightest concern. He has seen Moyen, yes, and
has heard him speak, but still there is nothing to distress anyone, and the whole
story will be given to you as soon as possible. Kleig has gone into the Secret
Room, yes, but every operative of the government, when discussing business
connected with diplomatic relations with foreign powers, is received in the
Secret Room. No cause for worry!"
It was so easy to
say that, and the speaker realized it, which was why he could but with
difficulty make his smile seem reassuring.
"Tell us the
truth, and tell us quickly," might have been the voiceless cries of those
who listened and saw the face and fidgeting form of the speaker. But the words
were not spoken, because the people sensed a hovering horror, a dread
catastrophe beyond the power of words to express—and so looked at one another
in silence, their eyes wide with dread, their hearts throbbing to suffocation
with nameless foreboding.
So eyes were
horror-haunted, and men walked, flew, and rode in fear and trembling—while,
down in the Secret Room, Prester Kleig and a dozen old men, men wise in the
ways of science and invention, wise in the ways of men and of beasts, of Nature
and the Infinite Outside, decided the fate of the Nation.
That Secret Room
was closed to every one. Not even the news-gatherers could reach it; not even
the all-seeing eye of the telephotograph emblazoned to the world its secrets.
But was it
secret?
Perhaps Moyen,
the master mobster, smiled when he heard men say so, men who knew in their
hearts that Moyen regarded other earthlings as earthlings regard children and
their toys. Did the eyes of Moyen gaze even into the depths of the Secret Room,
hundreds of feet below even the documentary-treasure vaults of the Capitol?
No one knew the
answer to the question, but the radio, reporting the return of Kleig, had given
the public a distorted vision of an embodied fear, and in its heart the public
answered "Yes!" And what had drowned out the voice of the
radio-reporter?
No wonder that,
for many hours, a nation waited in fear and trembling, eyes filled with dread
that was nameless and absolute, for word from the Secret Room. Fear mounted and
mounted as the hours passed and no word came.
In that room
Prester Kleig and the twelve old men, one of whom was the country's President,
held counsel with the man who had come back. But before the spoken counsel had
been held, awesome and awe-inspiring pictures had flashed across the screen,
invented by a third of the old men, from which the world held no secrets, even
the secrets of Moyen.
With this
mechanism, guarded at forfeit of the lives of a score of men, the men of the
Secret Room could peer into even the most secret places of the world. The old
men had peered, and had seen things which had blanched their pale cheeks anew.
And when they had finished, and the terrible pictures had faded out, a voice
had spoken suddenly, like an explosion, in the Secret Room.
"Well,
gentlemen, are you satisfied that resistance is futile?"
Just the voice;
but to one man in the Secret Room, and to the others when his numbing lips
spoke the name, it was far more than enough. For not even the wisest of the
great men could explain how, as they knew, having just seen him there, a man
could be in Madagascar while his voice spoke aloud in the Secret Room, where
even radio was barred!
The name on the
lips of Prester Kleig!
"Moyen!
Moyen!"
CHAPTER V - Monsters of the
Deep
"Gentlemen,"
said Prester Kleig as he entered the Secret Room, where sat the scientists and
inventive geniuses of the Americas, "we haven't much time, and I shall
waste but little of it. Moyen is ready to strike, if he hasn't already done so,
as I believe. We will see in a matter of seconds. Professor Maniel, we shall
need, first of all, your apparatus for returning the vibratory images of events
which have transpired within the last thirty-six hours.
"I wish to
show those of you who failed to see it the sinking of the Stellar, on which I
was a passenger and, I believe, the only survivor."
Professor Maniel
strangely mouse-like save for the ponderous dome of his forehead, stepped away
from the circular table without a word. He had invented the machine in
question, and he was inordinately proud of it. Through its use he could pick up
the sounds, and the pictures, of events which had transpired down the past
centuries, from the tinkling of the cymbals of Miriam to all the horror of the
conflict men had called the Great War, simply by drawing back from the ether,
as the sounds fled outward through space, those sounds and vibrations which he
needed.
His science was
an exact one, more carefully exact even than the measurement of the speed of
light, taking into consideration the dispersion of sound and movement, and the
element of time.
The interior of
the Secret Room became dark as Maniel labored with his minute machinery. Only
behind the screen on the wall in rear of the table was there light.
The voice of
Maniel began to drone as he thought aloud.
"There is a
matter of but a few minutes difference in time between Washington and the last
recorded location of the Stellar. The sinking occurred at ten-thirty last
evening you say, Kleig? Ah, yes, I have it! Watch carefully, gentlemen!"
So silent were
the Secret Agents one could not even have heard the breathing of one of them,
for on the screen, misty at first, but becoming moment by moment bolder of
outline, was the face of a storm-tossed sea. The liner was slower in forming,
and was slightly out of focus for a second or two.
"Ah,"
said Professor Maniel. "There it is!"
Through the sound
apparatus came the roaring and moaning of a storm at sea. On the screen the
Stellar rose high on the waves, dropped into the trough, while spumes of black
smoke spread rearward on the waters from her spouting funnels. Figures were
visible on her decks, figures which seemed carved in bronze.
In the prow,
every expression on his face plainly visible, stood Prester Kleig himself, and
as his picture appeared he was in the act of turning.
"Now,"
said Kleig himself, there in the Secret Room, "look off to the left,
gentlemen, a mile from the Stellar!"
A rustling sound
as the scientists shifted in their places.
They all saw it,
and a gasp burst from their lips as though at a signal. For, as the Stellar
seemed about to plunge off the shadowed screen into the Secret Room, a flying
thing had risen out of the sea—an airplane with a bulbous body and queerly
slanting wings.
At the same time,
out of the mouth of the pictured figure of Prester Kleig, clear and agonized as
the tones of a bell struck in frenzy, the words:
"Great God!
Lower the boats! Lower the boats! For God's sake lower the boats!"
In the Secret
Room the real Prester Kleig spoke again.
"When the
black streak leaves the nose of the plane, after it has submerged, Professor
Maniel," said Kleig softly, "slow your mechanism so that we can see
the whole thing in detail."
There came a
grunted affirmative from Professor Maniel.
The nose of the
pictured plane tilted over, diving down for the surface of the sea.
"Now!"
snapped Kleig. "Don't wait!"
Instantly the
moving pictures on the screen reduced their speed, and the plane appeared to
stop its sudden seaward plunge and to drop down as lightly as a feather. The
wings of the thing moved forward slowly, folding into the body of the dropping
plane.
"They fold
forward," said Kleig quietly, "so that the speed of the plane in the
take-off will snap them backward into position for flying!"
No one spoke,
because the explanation was so obvious.
Slowly the
airplane went down to the surface of the sea, with scarcely a plume of
spindrift leaping back after she had struck. She dropped to ten feet below the
surface of the water, a hundred yards off the starboard beam of the Stellar,
her blunt nose pointing squarely at the side of the doomed liner.
"Now,"
said Kleig hoarsely, "watch closely, for God's sake!"
The liner rose
and fell slowly. Out of the nose of the plane, which had now become a tiny
submarine, started a narrow tube of black, oddly like the sepia of a giant
squid. Straight toward the side of the liner it went. Above the rail the Secret
Agents could see the pictured form of Prester Kleig, hand upraised. The black
streak reached the side of the Stellar.
It touched the
metal plates, spreading upon impact, growing, enlarging, to right and left,
upward and downward, and where it touched the Stellar the black of it seemed to
erase that portion of the ship. In the slow motion every detail was apparent.
At regular speed the blotting out of the Stellar would have been instantaneous.
Kleig saw himself
rise slowly from the vanished rail, turning over and over, going down to the
sea. He almost closed his eyes, bit his lips to keep back the cries of terror when
he saw the others aboard the liner rise, turn over and over, and fly in all
directions like jackstraws in a high wind.
The ship was
erased from beneath passengers and crew, and passengers and crew fell into the
sea. Out of the depths, from all directions, came the starving denizens of the
sea—starving because liners now were so few.
"That's
enough of that, Professor," snapped Kleig. "Now jump ahead
approximately eight hours, and see if you can pick up that aero-sub after it
dropped me on the Jersey Coast."
The picture faded
out quickly, the screaming of doomed human beings, already hours dead, called
back to apparent living by the genius of Maniel died away, and for a space the
screen was blank.
Then, the sea
again, storm-tossed as before, shifting here and there as Maniel sought in the
immensity of sea and sky for the thing he desired.
"Two hundred
miles south by east of New York City," he droned. "There it is,
gentlemen!"
They all saw it
then, in full flight, eight thousand feet above the surface of the Atlantic,
traveling south by east at a dizzy rate of speed.
"Note,"
said Kleig, "that it keeps safely to the low altitudes, in order to escape
the notice of regular air traffic."
No one answered.
The eyes of the
Secret Agents were on that flashing, bulbous-bodied plane of the strange wings.
It appeared to be heading directly for some objective which must be reached at
top speed.
For fifteen
minutes the flight continued. Then the plane tilted over and dived, and at an
altitude still of three thousand feet, the wings slashed forward, clicking into
their notches in the sides of the bulbous body, with a sound like the ratchets
on subway turnstiles, and, holding their breath, the Secret Agents watched it
plummet down to the sea. It was traveling with terrific speed when it struck,
yet it entered the water with scarcely a splash.
Then, for the
first time, an audible gasp, as that of one person, came from the lips of the
Secret Agents. For now they could see the objective of the aero-sub. A monster
shadow in the water, at a depth of five hundred feet. A shadow which, as Maniel
manipulated his instruments, became a floating underwater fortress, ten times
the size of any submarine known to the Americas.
Sporting like
porpoises about this held-in-suspension fortress were myriads of other
aero-subs, maneuvering by squadrons and flights, weaving in and out like
schools of fish. The plane which had bourne Prester Kleig churned in between
two of the formations, and vanished into the side of the motionless monster of
the deep.
The striking of a
deep sea bell, muted by tons and tons of water, sounded in the Secret Room.
"Don't turn
it off, Maniel," said Kleig. "There's more yet!"
And there was,
for the sound of the bell was a signal. The aero-subs, darting outward from the
side of the floating fortress like fish darting out of seaweed, were plunging
up toward the surface of the Atlantic. Breathlessly the Secret Agents watched
them.
They broke water
like flying fish, and their wings shot backward from their notches in the
myriad bulbous bodies to click into place in flying position as the scores of
aero-subs took the air above the invisible hiding places of the mother
submarine.
At eight thousand
feet the aero-subs swung into battle formation and, as though controlled by
word of command, they maneuvered there like one vast machine of a central
control—beautiful as the flight of swallows, deadly as anything that flew.
The Secret Agents
swept the cold sweat from their brows, and sighs of terror escaped them all.
At that moment
came the voice, loud in the Secret Room, which Kleig at least immediately
recognized:
"Well,
gentlemen, are you satisfied that resistance is futile?"
And Kleig
whispered the name, over and over again.
"Moyen!
Moyen!"
It was Prester
Kleig, Master of the Secret Room, who was the first to regain control after the
nerve-numbing question which, asked in far Madagascar, was heard by the Agents
in the Secret Room.
"No!"
he shouted. "No! No! Moyen, in the end we will beat you!"
Only silence
answered, but deep in the heart of Prester Kleig sounded a burst of sardonic
laughter—the laughter of Moyen, half-god of Asia. Then the voice again:
"The attack
is beginning, gentlemen! Within an hour you will have further evidence of the
might of Moyen!"
CHAPTER VI - Vanishing Ships
Prester Kleig,
ordered to Madagascar from the Secret Room, had been merely an operative,
honored above others in that he had been one of the few, at that time, ever to
visit the Secret Room. Now, however, because he had walked closer to Moyen than
anyone else, he assumed leadership almost by natural right, and the men who had
once deferred to him took orders from him.
"Gentlemen,"
he snapped, while the last words of Moyen still hung in the air of the Secret
Room, "we must fight Moyen from here. The best brains in the United
Americas are gathered here, and if Moyen can be beaten—if he can be beaten—he
will be beaten from the Secret Room!"
A sigh from the
lips of Professor Maniel. The President of the United Americas nodded his head,
as though he too mutely gave authority into the hands of Prester Kleig. The
other Secret Agents shifted slightly, but said nothing.
"I have been
away a year," said Kleig, "as you know, and many things have come
into regular use since I left. Professor Maniel's machine for example, upon
which he was working when I departed under orders. There will be further use
for it in our struggle with Moyen. Professor, will you kindly range the ocean,
beginning at once, and see how many of these monsters of Moyen we have to
contend with?"
Professor Maniel
turned back to his instruments, which he fondled with gentle, loving hands.
"We have
nothing with which to combat the attacking forces of Moyen," went on
Kleig, "save antiquated airplanes, and such obsolete warships as are
available. These will be mere fodder for the guns, or rays, or whatever it is
that Moyen uses in his aero-subs. Thousands, perhaps millions, of human lives
will be lost; but better this than that Moyen rule the West! Better this than
that our women be given into the hands of this mob as spoils of war!"
From the Secret
Agents a murmur of assent.
And then, that voice
again, startling, clear, with the slightest suggestion of some Oriental accent,
in the Secret Room.
"Do not
depend too much, gentlemen," it said, "upon your antiquated warships!
See, I am merciful, in that I do not allow you to send them against me loaded
with men to be slaughtered or drowned! Professor Maniel, I would ask you to
turn that plaything of yours and gaze upon the fleet of obsolete ships anchored
in Hampton Roads! In passing, Professor, I venture to guess that the secret of
how I am able to talk with you gentlemen, here in your Secret Room, is no
secret at all to you. Now look!"
The Secret Agents
gasped again, in consternation.
From the white
lips of mouselike Maniel came mumbled words, even as his hands worked with
lightning speed.
"His machine
is simply a variation of my own. And, gentlemen, compatriots, with it he could
as easily project himself, bodily, here into the room with us!"
Something like a
suppressed scream from one of the men present. A cold hand of ice about the
heart of Prester Kleig. But the words of Professor Maniel were limned on the
retina of his brain in letters of fire. Suppose Moyen were to project himself
into the Secret Room....
But he would not.
He was no fool, and even these Secret Agents, most of whom were old and no
longer strong, would have torn him limb from limb. But those words of Maniel
set whirling once more, and in a new direction, the thoughts of Prester Kleig.
"Mr.
President, gentlemen...." It was the voice of Professor Maniel.
All eyes turned
again to the screen upon which the professor worked his miracles, which today
were commonplaces, which yesterday had been undreamed of. Every Secret Agent
recognized the outlines of Hampton Roads, with Norfolk and its towering
buildings in the background, and the obsolete warships riding silently at
anchor in the roadstead.
For three years
they had been there, while a procrastinating Cabinet, Congress and Senate had
debated their permanent disposal. They represented millions of dollars in
money, and were utterly worthless. Prester Kleig, looking at them now, could
see them putting out to sea, loaded with brave-visaged men, volunteering to go
to sure destruction to feed the rapacity of Moyen's hordes. Men going out to
sea in tubs, singing....
But these ships
were silent. No plumes of smoke from their funnels. Like floating mausoleums,
filled with dead hopes, shells of past and departed glories.
The beating of
waves against their sides could plainly be heard. The anchor chains squeaked
rustily in the hawse-holes. Wind sighed through regal, towering
superstructures, and no man walked the decks of any one of them.
With bated breath
the Secret Agents watched.
Why had Moyen
bidden them turn their attention to these shells of erstwhile naval grandeur?
This time no
gasps broke from the lips of the Secret Agents. Not even the sound of breathing
could be heard. Just the sighing of wind through the superstructures of a
hundred ships, the whispering of waves against rusted bulkheads.
Almost
imperceptibly at first the towering dreadnought in the foreground began to
move! Slowly, the water swirling about her, she backed away from her anchor,
tightening the curve of the anchor chain! Water quivered about the point of the
chain's contact with the waves!
Quickly the eyes
of the Secret Agents swept along the street of ships. The same backward motion,
of dragging against their anchor chains, was visible at the bow of each
warship!
With not a soul
aboard them, the ships were waking into strange and awesome life, dragging at
their anchors, like hounds pulling at leashes to be free and away!
"How are
they doing it?" It was almost a whisper from the President.
"Some
electro-magnetic force, sir!" stated Prester Kleig. "Professor
Blaine, that is your province! Please note what is happening, and advise us at
once if you see how they are doing it!"
A grunt of
affirmation from surly, obese Professor Blaine.
All eyes turned
back again to the miracle of the moving ships. One by one, with crashes which
echoed and re-echoed through the Secret Room, the anchor chains of the
dreadnoughts parted. The ends of them swung from the prows of the warships,
while the severed portions splashed into the Roads, and the waters hid them
from view.
The great
dreadnought in the foreground swung slowly about until her prow was pointed in
the direction of the open sea, and though no sea was running, no smoke rose
from her funnels, she got slowly, ponderously under way, and started out the
Roads. Behind her, in formation, the other ships swung into line.
In a matter of
seconds, faster than any of these vessels had ever traveled before, they were
racing in column for the open Atlantic. And from the sound apparatus came wails
and shrieks of terror, the lamentations of men and women frightened as they had
never been frightened before.
The shores behind
the moving column of ships was moment by moment growing blacker with people—a
black sea of people, whose faces were white as chalk with terror.
But on, out to
sea, moved the column of brave ships.
A new note
entered into the picture, as from all sides airplanes of many makes swooped in,
and swept back and forth over the moving ships, while hooded heads looked out
of pits, and faces of pilots were aghast at what they saw.
A ghost column of
ships, moving out to sea, speed increasing moment by moment unbelievably. Even
now, five minutes after the first dreadnought had started seaward, the wake of
each ship spread away on either hand in the two sides of a watery triangle
whose walls were a dozen feet high—racing for the shores with all the sullen
majesty of tidal waves.
The crowds gave
back, and their screams rose into the air in a frightened roar of appalling
sound.
Even now, so
rapidly did the warships travel, many of the planes could throttle down, so
that they flew directly above the heaving decks of the runaway warships.
"Get word to
them!" cried Prester Kleig suddenly. "Get word to them that if they
follow the ships out to sea not a pilot will escape alive!"
One of the Secret
Agents rose and hurried from the Secret Room, traveling at top speed for the
first of the many doors enroute to the broadcasting tower from which all the
planes could be reached at once. Prester Kleig turned back to the magic screen
of Maniel.
The warships,
water thrown aside by the lifting thrust of their forefeet in mountains that
raced landward with ever-increasing fury, were clearing the Roads and swinging
south by east, heading into the wastes of the Atlantic. As they cleared the
land, and open water for unnumbered miles lay ahead, the speed of the mighty
ships increased to a point where they rode as high on the water as racing
launches, and the creaking and groaning of their rusty bolts and spars were a
continual paean of protest in the sound apparatus accompanying the showing of
the miracle on the screen.
"They're
heading straight for the spot where that super-submarine lies!" said the
President, and no one answered him.
Prester Kleig,
watching, was racing over in his mind what he could recall of his country's armament.
Warships were useless, as was being proved here before his eyes. But there
still remained airplanes, in countless numbers, which could be diverted from
ocean travel and from routine business, to battle this menace of Moyen.
But....
He shuddered as
he pictured in his mind's eye the meeting of his country's flower of flying
manhood with the monsters of Moyen.
His eyes, as he
thought, were watching the racing of those ocean greyhounds, out to sea. They
were now out of sight of land, and still some of the planes followed them.
A half hour
passed, and then....
The American
pilots, in obedience to the radio signals, turning back from this strange
phenomenon of the ghost column of capital ships.
Simultaneously,
out of the sky dead ahead, dropped the first flight of Moyen's aero-subs.
At the same
moment the mysterious power which had dragged the ships to sea was withdrawn,
and the warships, with no hands to guide them, swung whither they willed, and
floated in as many directions as there were ships, under their forward
momentum. There were a score of collisions, and some of the ships were in
sinking condition even before the aero-subs began their labors.
The remaining
ships floated high out of the water, because they carried no ballast, and from
all sides the aero-subs of Moyen settled to the task of destruction—destruction
which was simply a warning of what was to come: Moyen's manner of proving to
the Americas the fact that he was all-powerful.
"God, what
fools!" cried Prester Kleig.
The rearmost of
the American aviators had looked back, had seen the first of the aero-subs drop
down among the doomed ships. Instantly he turned out to sea again, signalling
as he did so to the nearest other planes. And in spite of the radio warning a
hundred planes answered that signal and swept back to investigate this new
mystery.
"They're
going to death!" groaned the President.
"Yes,"
said Kleig, softly, "but it saves us ordering others to death. Perhaps we
may learn something of value as we watch them die!"
CHAPTER VII - Golden Oblivion
"This,"
said Prester Kleig, as coldly precise as a judge pronouncing sentence of death,
"will precipitate the major engagement with Moyen's forces. The fools, to
rush in like this, when they have been warned! But even so, they are
magnificent!"
The pilots of the
aero-subs must instantly have noticed the return of the American pilots, for
some of the aero-subs which had dropped to the ocean's surface rose again
almost instantly, and swept into battle formation above the drifting hulks of
the warships.
The Americans
were wary. They drew together like frightened chickens when a hawk hovers above
them, and watched the activities of the aero-subs, every move of each one being
at the same time visible and audible to the Secret Agents in the Capitol's
Secret Room.
The aero-subs
which had submerged singled out their particular prey among the floating ships,
and the Secret Agents, trying to see how each separate act of destruction was
accomplished, watched the aero-sub in the foreground, which happened to be
concentrating on the dreadnought which had led the ghost-march of the warships
out to sea.
The aero-sub
circled the swaying dreadnought as a shark circles a wreck, and through the
walls of the aero-sub the watchers in the Secret Room could see the four-man
crew of the thing. Grim faced men, men of the Orient they plainly were, coldly
concentrating on the work in hand. Their faces were those of men who are
merciless, even brutal, with neither heart nor compassion of any kind for
weaker ones. One man maneuvered the aero-sub, while the other three
concentrated on the apparatus in the nose of the hybrid vessel.
"See,"
spoke Prester Kleig again, "if you can tell what manner of ray they use,
and how it is projected. That's your province, General Munson!"
From the
particular Secret Agent named, who was expert for war in the membership of the
Secret Room, came a short grunt of affirmation. A few murmured words.
"I'll be
able to tell more about it when I see how they operate when they are flying.
That black streak under water ... well, I must see it out of the water, and
then...."
But here General
Munson ended, for the aero-sub which they were especially watching had got into
action against the dreadnought.
The aero-sub was
motionless and submerged just off the port bow of the dreadnought. The three
men inside the aero-sub were working swiftly and efficiently with the
complicated but minute machinery in the nose of their transport.
"It can be
controlled, then, this ray," said Munson, interrupting himself.
"Watch!"
From the nose of
the aero-sub leaped, like a streak of black lightning, that ebon agency of
death. It struck the prow of the battleship—and the prow, as far aft as the
well-deck, simply vanished from sight, disintegrated! It was as though it had
never been, and for a second, so swiftly had it happened, the water of the
ocean held the impression that portion of the warship had made—as an explosive
leaves a crater in the soil of earth!
Then a drumming
roar as the sea rushed in to claim its own. The roaring, as of a Niagara, as
the waters claimed the ship, rushing down passageways into the hold, possessing
the warship with all the invincible, speedy might of the sea.
Mingled with this
roaring was the shivering, vibratory sound which Prester Kleig had experienced
in his half-dream. The sound was so intense that it fairly rocked the Secret
Room to its furthermost cranny.
For a second the
dreadnought, wounded to death, seemed to shudder, to hesitate, then to move
backward as though wincing from her death blow. It was the pound of the
inrushing waters which did it. Then up came the stern of the mighty ship, as
she started her last long plunge into the depths.
But attention had
swung to another warship, on the starboard beam of which another aero-sub had
taken up position. Again the ebon streak of death from her blunt nose, smashing
in and through the warship, directly amidships, cutting her in twain as though
the black streak had been a pair of shears, the warship a strip of tissue
paper.
Up went the prow
and the stern of this one, and together, the water separating the two parts as
it rushed into the gap, the broken warship went down to its final resting place.
Abruptly
Professor Maniel swung back to the American planes which had come back to
investigate the activities of the aero-subs, and on the screen, in the midst of
the battle formation into which the pilots had swept to hurriedly, the Secret
Agents could see the faces of those pilots....
White as chalk
with fear, mouths open in gasping unbelief. One man, a pale-faced youth, was
the first to recover. He stared around at his compatriots, and plainly through
the sound apparatus in the Secret Room came his swift radio signals.
"Attack! Who
will follow me against these people?"
His signals were
very plain. So, too, were the answers of the other pilots, and the heart of
Prester Kleig swelled with pride as he listened to the answering signals—and
counted them, discovered that every last pilot there present elected to stay
with this youngster, to avenge their country for this contemptuous insult which
had been put upon her by the rape of Hampton Roads.
Into swift
formation they swept, and with these planes—all planes in use were required by
franchise of operating companies to be equipped for the emergencies of
war—swung into an echelon formation, the youthful pilot leading by mutual
consent.
They swept at
full speed toward the warships, four of which had by this time been sent to
destruction—one of which had appeared to vanish utterly in the space of a
single heartbeat, so quickly that for a second or two the shape of its bilge,
the bulge of its keel, was visible in the face of the deep—and openly
challenged the aero-subs.
Muzzles of
compressed air guns projected from the wing-tips of the planes. Buttons were
pressed which elevated the muzzles of guns arranged to fire upward from either
side the fighting pits, twin guns that were fired downward from the same
central magazine—the only guns in use in the Americas which fired in opposite
directions at the same time.
But for a few
moments the aero-subs refused combat. Their speed was terrific, dazzling. They
eluded the thrusts, the dives and plunges of the American ships as easily as a
swallow eludes the dive of a buzzard.
It came to
Prester Kleig, however, that the aero-subs were merely playing with the
Americans; that when they elected to move, the planes would be blasted from the
sky as easily as the warships were being erased from the surface of the
Atlantic.
One by one, as
methodically as machines, the aero-sub pilots blasted the warships into
nothingness. They had their orders, and they went about their performance with
a rigidity of discipline which astounded the Secret Agents. They had been
ordered to destroy the warships, and they were doing that first—would go on to
completion of this task, no matter how many American planes buzzed about their
ears.
But one by one as
the warships sank, the aero-subs which had either sunk or erased them made the
surface and leaped into space with a snapping back of wings that was horribly
businesslike as to sound, and climbed up to take part in the fight against the
American planes, which must inevitably come.
The last warship,
cut squarely in two from stem to stern along her center, as though split thus
by a bolt of lightning, fell apart like pieces of cake, and splashed down,
sinking away while the spume of her disintegration rolled back from her fallen
sides in white-crested waves.
"It
exemplifies the policies of Moyen," said Prester Kleig, "for his
conquest of the world is a conquest of destruction."
The last aero-sub
took to the sky, and the Americans rushed into battle with fine disregard for
what they knew must be certain death. They were not fools, exactly, and they
had seen, but not understood, the manner in which those gallant old hounds of
the sea had been erased from existence.
But in they went,
plunging squarely into the heart of the aero-subs' leading formation, which
formation consisted of three aero-subs, flying a wing and wing formation.
The young
American signaled with upraised hand, and the American pilots made their first
move. Every plane started rolling, at dazzling speed, on the axis of its
fuselage, while bullets spewed from the guns that fired through the propellers.
Bullets smashed
into the leading aero-subs, with no apparent effect, though for a second it
seemed that the central aero-sub of the leading formation hesitated for a
moment in flight.
Then, swift as
had that black streak flashed from the nose of aero-subs submerged, a streak
darted from the nose of the central aero-sub, and glistened in the sun like
molten gold!
It touched the
youngster who had called for volunteers for his attack against this strange
enemy. It touched his plane—and the plane vanished instantly, while for a
fraction of a second the pilot was visible in his place, in the posture of
sitting, hand on a row of buttons which did not exist, head forward slightly as
he aimed guns that had vanished.
Then the pilot,
still living, apparently unhurt, plunged down eight thousand feet to the sea.
The water geysered up as he struck, then closed over the spot, and the gallant
American youngster had become the first victim in battle of the monsters of
Moyen.
Victim of a
slender lancet of what seemed to be golden lightning.
"He could
have killed the pilot aloft there," came quietly from Munson, "but he
chose to pull his plane away from around him! Their control of the ray is
miraculous!"
As though to
confirm the statement of Munson, the leading aero-sub struck again, a second
plane. The plane vanished, but from the spot where it had flown, not even a bit
of metal or of man sufficiently large to be seen by the delicate recording
instruments of Maniel dropped out of the sky.
The ray of gold
was a ray of oblivion if the minions of Moyen willed.
CHAPTER VIII - Charmion
"Prester
Kleig," came suddenly into the Secret Room the voice of far distant Moyen,
"you will at once make a change in your rules regarding the admission of
other than Secret Agents to the Secret Room. You will at once see that Charmion
Kane, sister of your friend, is allowed to enter!"
"God
Almighty!" A cry of agony from the lips of Prester Kleig. He had not
forgotten Charmion, but simply had had to move so swiftly that he had put her
out of his mind. For a year he had not seen her, and an hour or two more could
not matter greatly.
"And her
brother Carlos," went on the voice, "see that he, too, is admitted. I
wish, for certain reasons, that Charmion come unharmed through the direct
attack I am about to make against your country. I confess that, save for this
ability to speak to you, I am unable to work any damage to the Secret Room,
which is therefore the safest place for Charmion Kane! Carlos Kane is being
spared because he is her brother!"
There was no
mistaking the import of this sinister command from Moyen. He had singled out
Charmion, the best beloved of Prester Kleig, for his attentions, and that he
was sure of the success of his attack against the United Americas was proved by
the calm assurance of his voice, and the fact that, concentrating on the attack
as he must be, he still found time for a thought of Charmion Kane.
The hand of ice
which had seldom been absent from the heart of Kleig since he had first seen
and heard the voice of Moyen gripped him anew. Blood pounded maddeningly in his
temples. Cold sweat bathed his body.
But the rest of
the Secret Agents, save to freeze into immobility when the hated voice spoke,
gave no sign. They had worries of their own, for no instructions had been given
that they bring their own loved ones into the sanctuary of the Secret Room.
As though
answering the thoughts of the others, the hated voice spoke again.
"I regret
that I cannot arrange for sanctuary for the loved ones of all of you, for you
are gallant antagonists; why save the few, when the many must perish? For I
know you will not surrender, however much I have proved to you that I am
invincible. But Charmion Kane must be saved."
"God!"
whispered Kleig. "God!"
Then spoke
General Munson.
"I think
this ray which the Moyenites use is a variation of the principle used in the
intricate machinery of Professor Maniel, though how they render it visible I do
not know. But it doesn't matter, and may be only a blind! You'll note that when
the black streak, or the golden ray, strikes anything that thing instantly
disintegrates. A certain pitch of resonance will break a pane of glass. It's a
matter of vibration, solely, wherein the molecules composing any object animate
or inanimate, are hurled in all directions instantaneously.
"Professor
Maniel's apparatus, the Vibration-Retarder, is able to recapture the
vibrations, speeding outward endlessly through space, and to reconstruct, and
draw back to visibility the objects destroyed by this visible vibratory ray,
whatever it is. This problem, then, falls into the province of Professor
Maniel!"
Through the heart
and soul of Prester Kleig there suddenly flowed a great surge of hope.
"General
Munson, if you will operate the machinery of the Vibration-Retarder, I wish to
talk with Professor Maniel!"
Instantly,
efficiently, without a word in reply to the eager command of Prester Kleig,
General Munson relieved Professor Maniel at the apparatus which Maniel called
the Vibration-Retarder, his invention which he had combined with audible
teleview to complete this visual miracle of the Secret Room. Professor Maniel
stepped to where Prester Kleig was sitting.
Prester Kleig put
fingers to his lips for silence, and an expression of surprise crossed the
wrinkled dead-white face of the Professor.
Before Kleig
could speak, however, there came a signal from somewhere outside the Secret
Room, a signal which said that the doors were being opened and that a personage
was coming. The Secret Agents looked at one another in surprise, for every man
who had a right to be inside the Secret Room was already present.
"I
know," said Kleig, his face a mask of terror. "It is Charmion and
Carlos Kane! Moyen, the devil, has managed to make sure of obedience to his
orders!"
The Secret Agents
turned back to the screen, upon which the view of the first aerial brush of the
American flyers with the minions of Moyen, in their aero-subs, was drawing to a
terrible close.
For, as the
aero-sub commanders had played with the warships, which had no human beings
aboard them, so now did they play with the planes of the Americas.
One American
flyer, startled into a frenzy by the fate of his fellows, put his helicopter
into action, and leaped madly out of the midst of the battle. Instantly an
aero-sub zoomed, skyward after him. Again that golden streak of light from the
nose of an aero-sub, and the helicopter vanes and the slender staff upon whose
tip they whirled vanished, shorn short off above the vane-grooves in the top of
the wing!
The plane dropped
away, fluttering like a falling leaf for a moment, before the aviator started
his three propellers again.
A cheer broke
from the lips of Prester Kleig as he watched. The commander of that particular
aero-sub, apparently contemptuous of this flyer who had tried to cut out of the
fight, allowed him to fall away unmolested—and the American, driven berserk by
the casual, contemptuous treatment accorded him by this strange enemy, zoomed
the second his propellers whirred into top-speed action, and raced up the sky
toward the belly of the aero-sub.
"If only the
aero-sub has a blind spot!" cried Prester Kleig.
In that instant a
roaring crash sounded in the Secret Room as the American plane, going full
speed, crashed, propellers foremost, into the belly of the aero-sub.
And the aero-sub,
whose brothers had seemed until this moment invincible, did not escape the
wrath of the American—though the American went into oblivion with it!
For, welded
together, American plane and aero-sub started the eight thousand feet plunge
downward to the sea!
"Watch!"
shrieked Munson. "Watch!"
As the aero-sub
and the plane plunged down through the formation of fighters, the aero-sub
pilots saw it, and they fled in wild dismay and at top speed from their falling
compatriot. Why? For a moment it was not apparent. And then it was.
For out of the
body of the doomed aero-subs came sheets of golden flame! Not the flames of
fire, but the golden sheen of that streak which the aero-subs had used against
the American planes already out of the fight! The American flyer had crashed
into the container, whatever it was, that harnessed the agency through which
the minions of Moyen had destroyed the Stellar, and the battleships raped from
Hampton Roads!
"It is
liquid, then!" shrieked Munson.
And it seemed to
be. For a second the golden mantle, strange, awe-inspiring, bathed and rendered
invisible the aero-sub and the plane which had slain her. Then the golden flame
vanished utterly, instantly—and in the air where it had been there was nothing!
The aero-sub was gone, and the plane whose mad charge had erased her.
"Her own
death dealing agency destroyed her!" shrieked Munson. "And the other
aero-subs cut away from the fight to save themselves, because they too carry
death and destruction within them!"
Then the inner
door of the Secret Room opened and two people entered. One of them, a dazzling
beauty with glorious black hair and the tread of a princess, a picture of
perfection from jeweled sandals to coiffured hair, was Charmion Kane. Behind
her came her brother, whose face was chalky white. But Charmion, as she crossed
to Kleig and kissed him, while her eyes were luminous with love, held her head
proudly high, imperious.
"I
know," she said softly to Kleig, "and I am not afraid! I know you
will prevent it!"
Kleig waved the
two to chairs and turned again to Professor Maniel.
On a piece of
paper he wrote swiftly, using a mode of shorthand known only to the Secret
Agents.
"Professor,"
he wrote feverishly, "can you reverse the process used in your
Vibration-Retarder? Tell me with your eyes, for Moyen may even know this
writing, and I am sure he hears what we say here, may even be able to see
us?"
Professor Maniel
started and stared deeply into the eyes of Prester Kleig. His face grew
thoughtful. He brushed his slender hand over the massive dome of his brow. Hope
burned high in the heart of Prester Kleig.
Then, despite
Kleig's instructions to answer merely by the expression in his eyes, Professor
Maniel leaned forward and wrote quickly on the piece of paper Kleig had used.
"Two
hours!"
Nothing else, no
explanations; but Prester Kleig knew. Maniel believed he could do it, but he
needed two hours in which to perfect his theory and make it workable. Kleig
knew that had he been able to do it in two years, or two decades, it still
would have been in the nature of a miracle.
But two hours....
And Moyen had
said that he was preparing to attack at once.
In two hours
Moyen, unless the Americas fought against him with every resource at their
command, could depopulate half the Western World. Kleig looked back to the
screen.
There was not a
single American plane in the sky above the graveyard of those vanished
warships. And the aero-subs, swift flying as the wind, were racing back to the
mother ship, scores of miles away.
Munson worked
with the Vibration-Retarder, the Sound-and-Vision devices, ranging the sea off
the coast to either side of that huge, suspended fortress which was the mother
submarine of the aero-subs.
Gasps of terror,
though the sight was not unexpected, broke from the lips of every person in the
Secret Room.
For
super-monsters of Moyen were moving to the attack.
CHAPTER IX - Flowers of
Martyrdom
For a minute the
Secret Agents were appalled by the air of might of the deep-sea monsters of
Moyen, brought bodily, almost into the Secret Room by the activities of General
Munson at the Sound-and-Vision apparatus.
Off the coast,
miles away, yet looming moment by moment larger, indicating the deceptively
swift speed of the monsters, were scores of the great under-water fortresses,
traveling toward the coast of the United Americas in a far-flung formation,
each submarine separated from its neighbor to right and left by something like
a hundred miles, easy cruising radius for the little aero-subs carried inside
the monsters.
That each
submarine did carry such spawn of Satan was plainly seen, for as the great
submarines moved landward, scores of aero-subs sported gleefully about the
mother ships. There was no counting the number of them.
Two hours Maniel
needed for his labors, which meant that for two hours the flower of the
country's manhood must try to hold in check the mighty hordes of Moyen.
"Somewhere
there," stated Prester Kleig, "in one or the other of those monsters,
is Moyen himself. I know that since he wished Charmion saved for his
attentions! Do your work with your apparatus, Munson, while I go out to the
radio tower to broadcast an appeal for volunteers. Charmion—Carlos...."
But Prester Kleig
found that he could not continue. Not that it was necessary, for Charmion and
Carlos knew what was in his mind. Charmion was a lady of vast intelligence,
from whom life's little ironies had not been hidden—and Kane and Kleig had
already discussed the activities of Moyen where women were concerned.
Prester Kleig
hurried to the Central Radio Tower, and as he passed through each of the many
doors leading out to the roof of the new Capitol Building the guards at the
doors left to form a guard for him, at this moment the most precious man in the
country, because he knew best the terrible trials which faced her.
The country was
in turmoil. It seemed almost impossible that a whole day had passed since
Prester Kleig had returned and entered the Secret Room. In the meantime a fleet
of battleships had been drawn by some mysterious agency out to sea from Hampton
Roads, and a fleet of fighting planes which had followed the ghost column
outward had not returned.
News-gatherers
had spread the stories, distorted and garbled, across the western continents,
and throughout the western confederacy men, women and children lived in the
throes of the greatest fear that had ever gripped them. Fear held them most
because they could not give the cause of their fear a name—save one....
Moyen.... And the
name was on the lips of everyone, and frenzied woman stilled their squalling
babes with its mention.
No word yet from
the Secret Room, but Prester Kleig had scarcely appeared from it than someone
started the radio signal which informed the frenzied, waiting world of the west
that information, exact if startling, would now be forthcoming.
In millions of
homes, in thousands of high-flying planes, listeners tuned in at the clear-all
hum.
Prester Kleig
wasted no time in preliminaries.
"Prester
Kleig speaking. We are threatened by Moyen, with scores of monster submarines,
each a mother ship for scores of aero-subs, combinations of airplanes and miniature
submarines. They are moving up on our eastern coast, from some secret base
which we have not yet located. They are equipped with death dealing instruments
of which we have but the most fragmentary knowledge, and for two hours I must
call upon all flyers to combat the menace; until the Secret Agents, especially
Professor Maniel, have had opportunity to counteract the minions of Moyen.
"Flyers of
the United Americas! In the name of our country I ask that volunteers gather on
the eastern coast, each flyer proceeding at once to the nearest coast-landing,
after dropping all passengers. Your commanders have already been named by your
various organizations, as required by franchise, and orders for the movement of
the entire winged armada will come from this station. However, the orders will
simply be this: Hold Moyen's forces at bay for a period of two hours! And know
that many of you go to certain death, and make your own decisions as to whether
you shall volunteer!"
This ended,
Prester Kleig, excitement mounting high, hurried back to the Secret Room.
Now the public
knew, and as the American public is given to doing, it steadied down when it
knew the worst. Fear of the unknown had changed the public into a myriad-souled
beast gone berserk. Now that knowledge was exact men grew calm of face,
determined, and women assumed the supporting role which down the ages has been
that of brave women, mothers of men.
A period of
silence for a time after Prester Kleig's pronouncement.
As he entered the
first door leading into the Secret Room, Carlos Kane met and passed him with a
smile.
"You called
for winged volunteers, did you not, Kleig?" he asked quietly.
Kleig nodded.
"You are going?" he said.
"Yes. It is
my duty."
No other words
were necessary, as the men shook hands. Prester Kleig going on to the Secret
Room, Carlos Kane going out to join the mighty armada which must fight against
the minions of Moyen.
The words of
Prester Kleig were heard by the pilots of the sky-lanes. The passenger pits,
equipped with self-opening parachutes which dropped jumpers in series of long
falls in order to acquire swift but accurate and safe landing—they opened at
intervals in long falls of two thousand feet, stayed the fall, then closed again,
so that drops were almost continuous until the last four hundred feet—and
pilots, swiftly making up their minds, dropped their passengers, banked their
planes, and raced into the east.
All over the
Americas pilots dropped their passengers and their loads if their franchises
called for the carrying of freight, and banked about to take part in the first
skirmish with the Moyenites.
Dropping figures
almost darkened the sky as passengers plunged downward after the startling
signal from Washington. Flowers, which were the umbrellas of chutes, opened and
closed like breathing winged orchids, letting their burdens safely to earth.
And clouds and
fleets of airplanes came in from all directions to land, in rows and rows which
were endless, wing and wing, along the eastern coast.
Prester Kleig had
scarcely entered the Secret Room than the hated voice of Moyen again broke upon
the ears of the machinelike Secret Agents.
"This is
madness, gentlemen! My people will annihilate yours!"
But, since time
for speech had passed, not one of the Secret Agents made answer or paid the
slightest heed to the warning, though deep in the heart of each and every one
was the belief that Moyen spoke no more than the truth.
Too, there was a
growing respect for the half-god of Asia, in that he was good enough to warn
them of the holocaust which faced their country.
By hundreds and
thousands, wing and wing, airplanes dropped to the Atlantic coast at the
closest point of contact, when the signal reached them. At high altitudes,
planes crossing the Atlantic turned back and returned at top speed, dropping
their passengers as soon as over land. That Moyen made no move to prevent the
return of flyers out over the ocean, and now coming back, was an ominous
circumstance.
It seemed to show
that he held the American flyers, all of them, in utter contempt.
Prester Kleig
regarded the time. It had been half an hour since Moyen had spoken of attack,
half an hour since the monsters of the deep had started the inexorable move
toward land. On the screen the submarines were bulking larger and larger as the
moments fled, until it seemed to the Secret Agents that the great composite
shadow of them already was sweeping inland from the coast.
As the coast came
close ahead of the monster subs the little aero-subs, to the surprise of the
Secret Agents, all vanished into their respective mother ships.
"But they
have to use them," groaned Munson. "For their submarines are useless
in frontal attack against our shores!"
"I am not so
sure of that," said Prester Kleig. "For I have a suspicion that those
submarines have tractors under their keels, and that they can come out on land!
If this is so the monsters can, guarded by armour-plate, penetrate to the very
heart of our most populated areas before their aero-subs are released."
None of the
Secret Agents as yet had stopped to ponder how the monsters had reached their
positions, and why Moyen was attacking from the east, when the Pacific side of
the continents would have appeared to be the obvious point of attack, and would
have obviated the necessity of long, secret under-sea journeys wherein
discovery prematurely must have been one of the many worries of the submarine
commanders.
The mere fact of
the presence of the monsters was enough. What had preceded their presence was
unimportant, save that their presence, and their near approach to the shore
undetected, further proved the executive and planning genius of Moyen.
Two miles, on an
average, off the eastern coast the submarines laid their eggs—the aero-subs,
which darted from the sides of the mother ships in flights and squadrons, made
the surface, and leaped into the sky.
Five minutes
later and the signal went forth to the phalanx of the volunteers.
"Take off!
Fly east and engage the enemy, and hold him in check, and the God of our
fathers go with you!"
One hour had
passed since Moyen's ultimatum when the first vanguard of the American flyers,
obeying the peremptory signal, took the air and darted eastward to meet the
winged death-harbingers of Moyen.
CHAPTER X - "They Shall
Not Pass!"
Prester Kleig's
heartfelt desire, as the American flyers closed with the first of the
aero-subs, was to go out with them and aid them in the attack against the
Moyenites. But he knew, and it was a tacit thing, that he best served his
country from the safe haven of the Secret Room.
As he watched the
scenes unfold on the screen of Maniel's genius, with occasional glances at the
somewhat mysterious but profound and concentrated labors of Maniel, Charmion
Kane rose from her place and came to his side.
Wide-eyed as she
watched the joining of battle, she stood there, her tiny hand encased in the
tense one of Prester Kleig.
"You would
like to be out there," she murmured. "I know it! But your country
needs you here—and I have already given Carlos!"
Prester Kleig
tightened his grip on her hand.
There was deep,
silent understanding between these two, and Prester Kleig, in fighting against
the Moyenites, realized, even above his realization that his labors were
primarily for the benefit of his country, that he really matched wits with
Moyen for the sake of Charmion. Had anyone asked him whether he would have
sacrificed her for the benefit of his country, it would have been a difficult
question to answer.
He was glad that
the question was never asked.
"Yes,
beloved," he whispered, "I would like to be out there, but the
greatest need for me is here."
But even so he
felt as though he was betraying those intrepid flyers he was sending to sure
death. Yet they had volunteered, and it was the only way.
Maniel, a gnomelike
little man with a Titan's brain, labored with his calculations, made swiftly
concrete his theories, while at the Sound-and-Vision apparatus excitable
General Munson ranged the aerial battlefield to see how the tide of battle
ebbed and flowed.
That neither side
would either ask or give quarter was instantly apparent, for they rushed
head-on to meet each other, those vast opposing winged armadas, at top speed,
and not a single individual swerved from his course, though at least the
Americans knew that death rode the skyways ahead.
Then....
The battle was
joined. Moyen's forces were superior in armament. Their sky-steeds were faster,
more readily maneuverable, though the flying forces of the Americas in the last
five years had made vast strides in aviation. But what the Americans lacked in
power they made up for in fearless courage.
The plan of
battle seemed automatically to work itself out.
The first
vanguard of American planes came into contact with the forces of Moyen, and
from the noses of countless aero-subs spurted that golden streak which the
Secret Agents knew and dreaded.
The first flight
of planes, stretching from horizon to horizon, vanished from the sky with that
dreadful surety which had marked the passing of the Stellar, and such of those
warships as had felt the full force of the visible ray.
From General
Munson rose a groan of anguish. These convertible fighting planes had been the
pride of the heart of the old warrior. To do him credit, however, it was the
wanton, so terribly inevitable destruction of the flyers themselves which
affected him. It was so final, so absolute—and so utterly impossible to combat.
"Wait!"
snapped Prester Kleig.
For the intrepid
flyers behind that vanguard which had vanished had witnessed the wholesale
disintegration of the leading element of the vast armada, and the pilots
realized on the instant that no headlong rush into the very noses of the aero-subs
would avail anything.
The vast American
formation broke into a mad maelstrom of whirling, darting, diving planes. Every
third plane plummeted downward, every second one climbed, and the remaining
ships, even in the face of what had happened to the vanished first flight, held
steadily to the front.
In this mad,
seemingly meaningless formation, they closed on the aero-subs. Without having
seen the fight, the Americans were aping the action of that one nameless flyer
who had charged the aero-sub that had been destroyed.
Kleig remembered.
A score of ships had been destroyed utterly above the graveyard of
dreadnoughts, yet only one aero-sub, and that quite by chance, had been marked
off in the casualty column.
Death rode the
heavens as the American flyers went into action. For head-on fights, flyers
went in at top speed, their planes whirling on the axes of fuselages, all guns
going. Planes were armored against their own bullets, and they were not under
the necessity of watching to see that they did not slay their own friends.
Even so, bullets
were rather ineffective against the aero-subs, whose apparently flimsy, almost
transparent outer covering diverted the bullets with amazing ease.
A whirling
maelstrom of ships. The monsters of Moyen had drawn first blood, if the
expression may be used in an action where no blood at all was drawn, but
machines and men simply erased from existence.
Hundreds of
planes already gone when the second flight of ships closed with the aero-subs.
Yellow streaks of death flashed from aero-sub nostrils, but even as aero-sub
operators set their rays into motion the American flyers in head-on charge
rolled, dived or zoomed, and kept their guns going.
High above the
first flight of aero-subs, behind which another flight was winging swiftly into
action, American flyers tilted the noses of their planes over and dived under
full power—to sure death by suicide, though none knew it there at the moment.
These aero-subs
could not be driven from the sky by usual means, and could destroy American
ships even before those planes could come to handgrips; but they, the flyers
plainly believed, could be crashed out of the sky and so, never guessing what
besides death in resulting crashes they faced, the flyers above the aero-subs,
even as aero-subs in rear flashed in to prevent, dived down straight at the
backs of the aero-subs.
In a hundred
places the dives of the Americans worked successfully, and American planes
crashed full and true, full power on, into the backs of the "flying
fish." In some aero-subs the container of the Moyen-dealing agency
apparently remained untouched, and airplanes and aero-subs, welded together,
plunged down the invisible skylanes into the sea.
Under water, some
of the aero-subs were seen to keep in motion, limping toward the nearest mother
submarines.
"I
hope," said Prester Kleig, "the American flyers in such cases are
already dead, for Moyen will be a maniac in his tortures. Munson, do you hurriedly
examine the mother-subs and see if you can locate Moyen."
However, only a
scattered aero-sub here and there went down without the strange substance of
the yellow ray being released. In most cases, upon the contact of plane with
aero-sub, the aero-subs and planes were instantly blotted from view by the
yellow, golden flames from the heart of the winged harbingers of Moyen.
Golden flames,
blinding in their brightness, dropping down, mere shapeless blotches, then
fading out to nothingness in a matter of seconds—with aero-sub and airplane
totally erased from action and from existence.
The American
flyers saw and knew now the manner of death they faced. Yet all along the
battle front not an American tried to evade the issue and draw out of the
fight. A sublime, inspiring exhibition of mass courage which had not been
witnessed down the years since that general engagement which men of the time
had called the Great War.
Prester Kleig
turned to look at Maniel. Drops of perspiration bathed the cheeks of the master
scientist, but his eyes were glowing like coals of fire. His face was set in a
white mask of concentration, and Prester Kleig knew that Maniel would find the
answer to the thing he sought if such answer could be found.
Would the
American flyers be able to hold off the minions of Moyen until Maniel was
ready? The fight out there above the waters was a terrible thing, and the
Americans fought and died like men inspired, yet inexorably the winged armada
of Moyen, preceded by those licking golden tongues, was moving landward.
"Great
God!" cried Munson. "Look!"
There was really
no need for the order, for every Secret Agent saw as soon as did Munson. Under
the sea, just off the coast, the mother-subs had touched their blunt nose
against the upward shelving of the sea bottom—had touched bottom, and were
slowly but surely following the underwater curve of the land, up toward the
surface, like unbelievable antediluvian monsters out of some nightmare.
"Yes,"
said Kleig quietly, "those monsters of Moyen can move on land, and the
aero-subs can operate from them as easily on land as under water."
Kleig regarded
the time, whirled to look at Professor Maniel.
One hour and
forty minutes had passed since Maniel had begged for two hours in which to
prepare some mode of effectively combatting the might of Moyen. Twenty minutes
to go; yet the mother-subs would be ashore, dragging their sweating, monstrous
sides out of the deep, within ten minutes!
Ten minutes
ashore and there was no guessing the havoc they could cause to the United
Americas!
"Hurry,
Maniel! Hurry! Hurry!" said Prester Kleig.
But he spoke the
words to himself, though even had he spoken them aloud Maniel would not have
heard. For Maniel, for two hours, had closed his mind to everything that
transpired outside his own thoughts, devoted to foiling the power of Moyen.
"I've found him!"
snapped Munson.
He pointed with a
shaking forefinger to one of the mother-subs crawling up the slant of the ocean
bed, twisted one of the little nubs of the Sound-and-Vision apparatus, and the
angelic face and Satanic eyes, the twisted body, of Moyen came into view.
The face was calm
with dreadful purpose, and Moyen stood in the heart of one of his monsters, his
eyes turned toward the land. With a gasp of terror, dreadfully afraid for the
first time, Prester Kleig turned and looked into the eyes of Charmion....
"No,"
she said. "It will never happen. I have faith in you!"
There were still
ten minutes of the two hours left when the mother-subs broke water and started
crawling inland, swiftly, surely, without faltering in the slightest as they
changed their element from water to land.
As though their
appearance had been the signal, the aero-subs in action against the first line
of American planes broke out of the one-sided fight and dived for their mother
ships, while a mere handful of the American planes started back for home to
prepare anew to continue the struggle.
Prester Kleig
gave the signal to the second monster armada which had remained in reserve.
"Do
everything in your power to halt the march of Moyen's amphibians!"
Ten minutes to
go, and Professor Maniel still labored like a Titan.
CHAPTER XI - Caucasia Falls
Silent
As the scores of
amphibian monsters came lumbering forth upon dry land it became instantly
apparent why the aero-subs had returned to the mother ships. For a few moments,
out of the water, the amphibians were almost helpless, with practically no way
of attack or defense—as helpless as huge turtles turned legs up.
But as each
aero-sub entered its proper slot in the side of the mother amphibian, it was
turned about and the nose thrust back into the opening, which closed down to
fit tightly about the nose of the aero-sub, so that those flame-breathing
monsters protruded from the sides of the amphibians in many places—transforming
the amphibians into monsters with hundreds of golden, licking tongues!
As, with each and
every aero-sub in place, the amphibians started moving inland, Professor Maniel
made his first move. With the tiny apparatus upon which he had been working, he
stepped to the table before the Sound-and-Vision apparatus and spoke softly to
his compatriots.
"Gentlemen,"
he said, "I have finished, and it will work effectively!"
Though Maniel
spoke softly, it was plain to be seen that he was proud of his accomplishment,
which remained only to be attached to start performance.
A matter of
seconds....
Yet during those
seconds was the real might, the real power for utter devastation, of Moyen
fully exposed!
The amphibians
got under way as the airplanes of the Americas swept into the fight.
From the sides of
the monsters licked out those golden tongues of flame—and from the front.
Half a dozen
amphibians slipped into New York from the harbor side and started into the
heart of the city. And between the time when Maniel had said he was ready and
the moment when he made his first active move against Moyen, a half-dozen
skyscrapers vanished into nothingness, the spots where they had stood swept as
clear of debris as though the land had never been reclaimed from Nature!
None was ever
destined to know how many lives were lost in that first attack of the monsters
of the golden, myriad tongues; but the monsters struck in the midst of a
working day when the skyscrapers were filled with office workers.
And resolve
struck deep into the hearts of the Secret Agents: if Moyen were turned back, he
must be made to pay for the slaughter.
A matter of
seconds....
Then a moment of
deathly silence as Munson gave way at the screen for the gnomelike little
Professor Maniel.
"Now,
gentlemen!" snapped Maniel. "If my theory is correct,"
manipulating instruments with lightning speed as he talked, "the reversion
of the principle of my Vibration-Retarder—which captures vibrations speeding
outward from the earth and transforms them once again into sound and pictures
audible and visible to the human ear—this apparatus will disintegrate the
monsters as our boats and planes were disintegrated!
"In this I
have even been compelled to manipulate in the matter of time! I must not only
defeat and annihilate the minions of Moyen, but must work from a mathematical
absurdity, so that at the moment of impact that moment itself must become part
of the past, sufficiently remote to remove the monsters at such distance from
the earth that not even the mighty genius of Moyen can return them!"
The whirring,
gentle as the whirring of doves' wings. In the center of the picture on the
screen were those half-dozen amphibians laying waste Manhattan. Maniel set his
intricate, delicate machinery into motion.
Instantly the
amphibians there seemed to become misty, shadowy, and to lift out of Manhattan
up above the roof-tops of skyscrapers still remaining, nebulous and wraithlike
as ghost-shrouds—yet swinging outward from the earth with speed almost too
swift for the eye to detect.
But where the
amphibians had rested there stood, reclined—in all sorts of postures,
surprising and even a bit ridiculous—the men of Moyen who had operated the
monsters of Moyen!
From the Central
Radio tower went forth a mighty voice of command to the planes which had been
engaging the aero-subs off the coast.
"Slay!
Slay!"
Down flashed the
planes of the Americas, and their guns were blazing, inaudibly, but none the
less deadly of aim and of purpose, straight into the midst of the men of Moyen
who had thus been left marooned and almost helpless with the vanishing of their
amphibians.
And, noting how
they fell in strangled, huddled heaps before the vengeful fire of the American
planes, the Secret Agents sighed, and Maniel, his face alight with the pride of
accomplishment, switched to another point along the coast.
And as a new
group of the monsters of Moyen came into view, and Maniel bent to his labors
afresh, the hated voice of the master mobster broke once more in the Secret
Room.
"Enough,
Kleig! Enough! We will surrender to save lives! I stipulate only that my own
life be spared!"
To which Prester
Kleig made instant reply.
"Did you
offer us choice of surrender? Did you spare the lives of our people which, with
your control of your golden rays, you could easily have done? No! Nor will we
spare lives, least of all the life of Moyen!"
The whirring
again, as of the whirring of doves' wings. More metal monsters, even as golden
tongues spewed forth from their many sides, vanished from view, leaping skyward,
while the operators of them were left to the mercies of the remaining airmen of
the Americans.
Voicelessly the
word went forth:
"Slay!
Slay!"
It was Charmion
who begged for mercy for the vanquished as, one by one, as surely as fate, the
monsters with their contained aero-subs were blotted out, leaving pilots and
operators behind them. Down upon these dropped the airmen of the West, slaying
without mercy....
"Please,
lover!" Charmion whispered. "Spare them!"
"Even...?"
he began, thinking of Moyen, who would have taken Charmion. He felt her shudder
as she read his mind, understood what he would have asked.
"There he
is!" came softly from Munson.
An amphibian had
just been disintegrated, had just climbed mistily, swiftly, into invisibility
in the skies. And there in the midst of the conquerors left behind, his angel's
face set in a moody mask, his pale eyes awful with fear, his misshapen body
sagging, terrible in its realization of failure, was Moyen!
Even as Kleig
prepared to give the mercy signal, a plane dived down on the group about Moyen,
and the Secret Agents could see the hand of the pilot, lifted high, as though
he signaled.
The plane was a
Mayther! The pilot was Carlos Kane!
Just as Kane went
into action, and the noiseless bullets from his ship crashed into that twisted
body, causing it to jump and twitch with the might of them, Prester Kleig gave
the signal.
Even as the
figure of Moyen crashed to the soil and the man's soul quitted its mortal
casement, Kleig commanded:
"Spare all
who surrender! Make them prisoners, to be used to repair the damage they have
done to our country! Guards will be instantly placed over the amphibians and
the aero-subs—for the day may come when we shall need to know their secrets!"
And, as men,
hands lifted high in token of surrender, quitted the now motionless amphibians,
and flyers dropped down to make them prisoners, Maniel sighed, pressed various
buttons on his apparatus, and the mad scene of carnage they had witnessed for
hours faded slowly out, and darkness and silence filled the Secret Room.
But darkness is
the joy of lovers, and in the midst of silence that was almost appalling by
contrast, Kleig and Charmion were received into each other's arms.