CHAPTER XI - The
World Set Free
They
waited two days at Settler's Station. To push along the line into the desert
would have been useless, and both men were convinced that an airplane would
arrive for them. But it was not until the second afternoon that the aviator
arrived, half-dead with thirst and fatigue, and almost incoherent.
His
was the last plane on the Australian continent. He brought the news of the
destruction of Adelaide, and of the siege of Melbourne and Sydney, as he termed
it. He told Dodd and Tommy that the two cities had been surrounded with
trenches and barbed wire. Machine guns and artillery were bombarding the
trenches in which the beetles had taken shelter.
"Has
any one been out on reconnaissance?" asked Tommy.
Nobody
had been permitted to pass through the barbed wire, though there had been
volunteers. It meant certain death. But, unless the beetles were sapping deep
in the ground, what their purpose was, nobody knew.
Tommy and Dodd led him to the
piles of smoking, stinking débris and told him.
That
was where the aviator fainted from sheer relief.
"The
Commonwealth wants you to take supreme command against the beetles," he
told Tommy, when he had recovered. "I'm to bring you back. Not that they
expect me back. But - God, what a piece of news! Forgive my swearing - I used
to be a parson. Still am, for the matter of that."
"How
are you going to bring us three back in your plane?" asked Tommy.
"I
shall stay here with Jimmydodd," said Haidia suavely. "There is not
the least danger any more. You must destroy the beetles before their shells
have grown again, that's all."
"Used
to be a parson, you say? Still are?" shouted Dodd excitedly. "Thank
God! I mean, I'm glad to hear it. Come inside, and come quick. I want you too,
Tommy!"
Then
Tommy understood. And it seemed as if Haidia understood, by some instinct that
belongs exclusively to women, for her cheeks were flushed as she turned and
smiled into Dodd's eyes.
Ten
minutes later Tommy hopped into the biplane, leaving the happy married couple
at Settler's Station. His eyes grew misty as the plane took the air, and he saw
them waving to him from the ground. Dodd and Haidia and he had been through so
many adventures, and had reached safety. He must not fail.
He
did not fail. He found himself at Sydney in command of thirty thousand men, all
enthusiastic for the fight for the human race, soldiers and volunteers ready to
fight until they dropped. When the news of the situation was made public, an
immense wave of hope ran through the world.
National
differences were forgotten, color and creed and race grew more tolerant of one
another. A new day had dawned - the day of humanity's true liberation.
Tommy's
first act was to call out the fire companies and have the beetles' trenches
saturated with petrol from the fire hoses. Then incendiary bullets, shot from
guns from a safe distance, quickly converted them into blazing infernos.
But
even so only a tithe of the beetle army had been destroyed. Two hundred planes
had already been rushed from New Zealand, and their aviators went up and
scoured the country far and wide. Everywhere they found trenches, and, where
the soil was stony, millions of the beetles clustered helplessly beneath great
mounds of discarded shells.
An
army of black trackers had been brought in planes from all parts of the
country, and they searched out the beetle masses everywhere along the course
that the invaders had taken. Then incendiary bombs were dropped from above.
Day
after day the beetle massacre went on. By the end of a week the survivors of
the invasion began to take heart again. It was certain that the greater portion
of the horde had been destroyed.
There
was only one thing lacking. No trace of Bram had been seen since his appearance
at the head of his beetle army in front of Broken Hill. And louder and more
insistent grew the world clamor that he should be found, and put to death in
some way more horrible than any yet devised.
The
ingenuity of a million minds worked upon this problem. Newspapers all over the
world offered prizes for the most suitable form of death. Ingenious Oriental
tortures were rediscovered.
The
only thing lacking was Bram.
A
spy craze ran through Australia. Five hundred Brams were found, and all of them
were in imminent danger of death before they were able to prove an alias.
And,
oddly enough, it was Tommy and Dodd who found Bram. For Dodd had been brought
back east, together with his bride, and given an important command in the Army
of Extermination.
Dodd
had joined Tommy not far from Broken Hill, where a swarm of a hundred thousand
beetles had been found in a little known valley. The monsters had begun to grow
new shells, and the news had excited a fresh wave of apprehension. The
airplanes had concentrated for an attack upon them, and Tommy and Dodd were
riding together, Tommy at the controls, and Dodd observing.
Dodd
called through the tube to Tommy, and indicated a mass that was moving through
the scrub - some fifty thousand beetles, executing short hops and evidently
regaining some vitality. Tommy nodded.
He
signalled, and the fleet of planes circled around and began to drop their
incendiary bombs. Within a few minutes the beetles were ringed with a wall of
fire. Presently the whole terrain was a blazing furnace.
Hours
later, when the fires had died away, Tommy and Dodd went down to look at the
destruction that had been wrought. The scene was horrible. Great masses of
charred flesh and shell were piled up everywhere.
"I
guess that's been a pretty thorough job," said Tommy. "Let's get
back, Jim."
"What's
that?" cried Dodd, pointing. Then, "My God, Tommy, it's one of our
men!"
It
was a man, but it was not one of their men, that creeping, maimed, half-cinder
and half-human thing that was trying to crawl into the hollow of a rock. It was
Bram, and recognition was mutual.
Bram
dropping, moaning; he was only the shell of a man, and it was incredible how he
had managed to survive that ordeal of fire. The remainder of his life, which
only his indomitable will had held in that shattered body, was evidently a
matter of minutes, but he looked up at Dodd and laughed.
"So
- you're - here, damn you!" he snarled. "And - you think - you've
won. I've - another card - another invasion of the world - beside which this is
child's play. It's an invasion -"
Bram
was going, but he pulled himself together with a supreme effort.
"Invasion
by - new species of - monotremes," he croaked. "Deep down in - earth.
Was saving to - prove you the liar you are. Monotremes - egg-laying platypus
big as an elephant - existent long before pleistocene epoch - make you recant,
you lying fool!"
Bram
died, an outburst of bitter laughter on his lips. Dodd stood silent for a
while; then reverently he removed his hat.
"He
was a madman and a devil, but he had the potentialities of a god, Tommy,"
he said.
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