Chapter XXI

“Alan, will you be all right? Can you do it?’

“Yes. I must.” He set his jaw grimly. “I must.”

I touched his hand, where it rested on the projector; his fingers were cold, but steady. This forward gondola-cabin, hanging almost under the nose of the swift, small ship, was silent, with only a low thrum audible from the rear motors.

From wherewe sat, with Lea besideusat the projector, the wide transparent windows gave us an unobstructed view forward and down. We were rising now from the Hudson air-stage—a brief flight, andwewouldbeover the city roof. Sixty minutes! The world-power was off now; in sixty minutes it would flash on again and our weapon would be useless. Sixty minutes! A very little time! Yet, it can be an eternity.

The officials at the Hudson shops had said to Alan and me: “You know this girl—and she knows the weapon—its operation. The Council ordered that one of you operate it, with the girl beside you.”

I looked at Alan. My heart was pounding. I wanted Alan to speak, and he did not. It seemed that he never would. Then he said: “I’m older—I’ll do it, if—if they think I should.”

No executioner at his switch in the little room behind an electric chair of our day could ever have shuddered as Alan now must be shuddering. But he held himself firm when once we were in the ship’s cabin. The controls, with a white-faced young pilot seated at them, were near us. There were several other menin the cabin, with observation instruments; and at a bank of mirrors, receivers and audiphones three operators held us in close communication with the city authorities. Our commander moved quietly about; seldom speaking; but intent upon every detail.

Sixty minutes! Five of them were already gone when—with the world-power dead at the Trinight Hour—we hastily stripped our mechanism of its insulation and rose from the landing-stage. The gigantic city loomed into the sky before us. The night was still overcast.

We climbed steeply, then leveled, and presently we were over the city roof, a thousand feet over it perhaps; and beneath us it spread in the darkness like a great rolling expanse of soiled canvas. We had not heard Nanette’s voice again. Precautions were taken against the eavesdropping. What Turber personally may have learned of our plans we never knew. Nothing probably, until near the end. He had no warning that the world-power was to be shut off. The battle everywhere in the city was undiminished in its fury. It was raging down there now. Our mirrors, here in the cabin, occasionally shadowed it, but there was no other sign.

Turber had carried our tower Space. San was gone with the tower—with orders from Lea to swing slowly past at intervals. The Turberites, finding the tower was gone, left a guard there and swept on—fighting our troops northward. The Hoboken powerhouse still was surrounded, but holding out. The attack there seemed momentarily to have slackened as Turber concentrated on his northern drive. There was still nofightingonthe roof. Our lines had withdrawn northward as the Turber mobs swept north through the city. Most of this roof area seemed deserted. We could make out occasionally the dark forms of the Turberites patrolling this captured area. We crossed over the Turber wall. The roof from this height was very little different of aspect.

Our projector had not yet flashed. All our lights were carefully hooded. But we thought that by now some Turber ship would have come up to assail us. There had been occasional Turber patrol ships here all day, but none were here now.

I thought that the harbor with its lacework of causeways and islands must be beneath this area of the roof. It was difficult for me to estimate. Far off, ahead to the right where the roof ended beyond Staten Island, I could see the banks of lights that marked the great Turber wall enclosing this end of his rural territory. There was no ship in sight.

I murmured: “When do we turn it on, Alan?”

“Soon. When we get near where Turber houses the ship.”

“Yes, but where is that? I don’t know where we are.”

We had no idea where the ship was either; but our orders were to attack its usual housing place. The pilot heard us. He said: “Approximately approaching Staten. We have little information of the Turber city. But his ship is kept some two or three miles farther ahead.”

Our beam had an effective range of about fifteen hundred feet. From this present altitude we would have to direct it almost vertically downward.

Lea murmured something. We followed her gesture through the observation pane into the darkness of the sky. Our pilot saw it at the same instant—a black shape looming—a Turber patrol ship rushing at us!

With all my air experience, my senses reeled as we dropped. I gripped my bench. We made a forward loop—nose down.

I heard the rush of air as the Turber ship almost brushed us. We righted. The pilot muttered an oath. Somebody said: “Where did it go?” There was a flurry in the cabin.

We could see nothing but darkness. We flew onward. Then we made out the Turber ship, not following us, but flying north. As I turned to gaze behind us to the north, on the roof top fighting was beginning. Torchlight gleamed—waving, moving lights there.

We caught some close details on our mirrors. Our troops had come up and were assailing the Turber patrol lines. The Turberites were falling back; but beneath us, in a moment, lines of reinforcements appeared. There were tracks here on the Turber-owned roof. We saw spots of illumination where cars were loading with fighters to be rushed north. Our image-finders showed the Turber ship. It had been rushing north—like ourselves, without lights—to meet this roof attack. A rain of missiles dropped from it. Our commander said suddenly:

“Now, Tremont! Start here—ten degrees off the vertical, to the left about another ten. Hold the course as you have it, Pierson.”

Our ordersto flash the beam! Alan and I set the range-dials. Lea with nimble fingers made the last adjustments, wound the firing tensions, and then crouched on the floor by the battery to handle the gauges of its current-flow.

The projector-face swung downward through an open aperture in the window-shield. I focused it at the agreed-upon spreading of the beam. From our instrument table someone rang out: “Eleven hundred feet altitude here, Williams. Roof ahead averages nine to eleven hundred under us—”

I made the adjustments; the beam would strike with a circle of light about a hundred feet in diameter. Alan’s voice: “All ready, Ed?”

“Yes!”

He added: “Lea?”

In the dimness of our cabin interior I saw her white arm go up in answer from where she crouched. She said: “Yes—ready.”

Alan snapped on the current.

I sat back; I was limp and cold all over. There was nothing for me to do. Nothing but watch—and listen. The light-beam grew very slowly into being. A low whirring—a trembling; it purred, this diabolic thing, like a smug cat licking its lips. Purred, and then seemed to hiss as its anger grew. Whirring, tiny vibrations of sound; they went up the scale in pitch; always soft—higher until the thing was screaming with its microscopic voice. Higher, faster until it faded away, too rapid for audibility. But the low hiss and sputter of the current remained. And the light-beam grew. Darkness at first; then a radiance of faint dull red, streaming down from our projector; red and then up through the spectrum to violet; then white. Cold white—nothing but the mingling of all colors made too rapid for separate visibility.

A minute of this process. Our ship was hovering—horizontal propellers holding us poised. Someone said:

“His vehicle ought to be about here.”

Beneath us now was the same Space which in my Time held the Turber Sanatorium! I gazed down our white, slightly spreading beam.Itfell onthe roof here withahundred foot circle of white illumination. It showed a small metal house on the roof-structure, with a group of Turberites on guard along a railed trestleway near it. They had evidently been lounging about; they were on their feet now, surprised by the light.

I stared, cold with fascination. I heard Alan murmur: “God!”

The men stood with upflung hands against the dazzling light. Stood transfixed—and then tried to run. I saw one fall; another turn, waver and crumple. Others, stronger, tried to stagger— weirdly swaying with arms flinging wildly and legs bending, crum-pling—they did not lie mercifully still at once, but writhed gruesomely.

The figures were strewn in a moment. Some, near the edge of the circle, got out of it and away. Confusion—horror down there. Other figures came like frightened animals running into the light; stood stricken and fell—or managed to get back.

Lea appeared beside me. She bent over Alan—showed him other adjustments. The circle of light narrowed upon the small house.

I had been aware of a sound from below.

A throbbing—a rhythmic throb. The house and all this immediate section of the roof was vibrating—trembling—shaking—

It grew louder. Likeapendulum, whereatthe endof each swing your fingers give it an added push, the impulse of our beam was shaking this little building—rocking this roof-segment. A corner of the building split off and fell; a crack seemed to open in the roof; the little house broke apart and slithered through the crack. The human figures spilled down.

A jagged hole was here. The light bored down into it. A ragged broken cross-section of the great city-structure. Our glimpse went down through rending, clattering walls, falling ceilings, collapsing floors and tiers. Human figures engulfed. A turmoil of sound and movement. The destruction seemed to spread inward. One tier brought down another. A widening jagged wound was here in the metallic city. It extended a hundred or two hundred feet down from the roof level. But our range from this altitude could go no deeper. Was the ship down there in some fortified room underneath this tangled wreckage? Nanette, down there perhaps, still alive—

“Move us along, Pierson. Tremont, spread the beam! We’ll go down to five hundred feet.”

The roof broke in larger fragments as the light widened and intensified with our descent. This whole section of the city must have been quivering now; we could hear its ragged pulse, mingled with the rending of metal, the crash and crack of trembling, collapsing interior walls. With the first breaking of the roof insulation-barrage, our mirrors began picking up interior images. I did not see them—I sat at the projector with Alan, watching the widening break in the roof as our beam bore down from this lower altitude. But I heard the comments of the men behind me in the cabin. The panic of defeat was spreading throughout the Turber-owned city. Mobs of Turberites, soon in a wild rush to come this way; against all reason, rushing in a panic of terror toward this quaking, falling area! Because the Time-ship was near here!

We realized it. But no Turber mob ever reached the vehicle. We found later that it was fortified with metallic barriers. They shut off the mob which tried for safety—barred those few who got past or around the falling area.

The panic spread up north to the battle lines. The tide of the fighting abruptly turned. The Turberite wolves, suddenly stricken with rumors of defeat, began trying to withdraw. Our troops pursued them. Soon it was a rout. I heard no orders—no talk of the taking of prisoners. Like wolves, trying to run, the Turberites were hunted down.

Lea plucked at me. I turned again to look back toward Manhattan. There were torches everywhere on the roof to the north— our police troops, suddenly heartened, were surging up triumphant and sweeping the enemy back. In the glare of the lights the black Turber ship up there showed as it winged away. Escaping—and in a moment one of our ships rose up and took after it. Someone said: “Look! The Turber Jersey landing stage!”

Far ahead, where the city ended beyond the Staten Island section, a group of Turber ships came up. Coming to attack us! The thought flashed to me. But it was not so. Turber ships—escaping. They sped off to the south, over the Turberite rural district.

I prayed that one of them might be carrying Nanette.

Someone said: “Forty minutes; twenty left!”

Had this all been only forty minutes?

“Pierson! Lower! There it is!”

We dropped nearly down to the roof level. The roof structure was gone now over a segment of fully a mile. The beam, with Alan oscillating it, bathed the whole shattered area in white light. Indescribable scene of ruin! A vast honeycomb of metal city; shaken into ruins as though by some persistent earthquake; girders of metal piled in a tangled mass like jackstraws. Stone and mortar; plaster; wood—all the innumerable shattered substances strewn in a wreck inconceivable. Fires were starting in a dozen places; lurid glare of red-yellow flames; black smoke rolling up. And sounds inconceivable—a torrentof crashes—explosions— and, I think, an undertone built with the myriad screams of the dead and dying.

As we descended almost to the level of the hole where a huge slice of the roof was dangling, our light struck into an open area of the city. There was less wreckage here; we could see down to the ground level. It was not very far down—a rise of ground was here; a hill—and it seemed an open park-like space of metal pavement surrounded by high metallic barriers.

They crumbled, these barriers, within a moment as the white beam caught them. There had been a low roof over the park, but it was fallen.

The ship stood exposed, but still unharmed. It rested motionless on the pavement. Our beam touched it. Horror surged at me. I gasped: “Alan—” He swung the beam away. What he said I do not know. But he had seen it—as I saw it; the white light always showed everything with intense clear detail; the figure of Nanette standing in the ship doorway! We could even seen her now, dim but distinguishable—standing there—wavering from the shock of the light as it had so briefly struck her.

“Alan—don’t!” An anguished cry that sounded like my voice, and our commander’s voice: “On the vehicle, Tremont! God, don’t let it get away!” The walls around the park were falling. There was a mingled glare of our beam and the yellow light of the burning ruins nearby. It showed a man’s figure appearing in the ship doorway; he jerked Nanette backward into the interior. He stood for a moment in the doorway: Bluntnose, the Indian! He flung up his arm like a signal. And other figures showed, running forward. Turber and Josefa. Trapped somewhere in the city and just now arriving at the waiting Time-vehicle. Turber, with his knowledge of the city labyrinth just now able to get here. His figure, and the woman who clung to him, avoided our circle of light; Alan in his confused horror had swung it farther away.

Instant impressions. A second or two while we sat cold and stricken. Our commander’s voice:

“Tremont! Good God, man! Is that Turber?”

The commander bent over Alan and seized the projector. The light swung to Turber and the woman. They staggered, but kept on. Then the woman fell. She lay twitching. Turber left her. He stumbled; fell, but got up. Gruesomely contorted—staggering with twitching steps. Almost at the ship’s entrance he fell again. Relief surged over me. The ship, bathed in the white and yellow glare, went thin as a ghost. An apparition—with the solid broken figure of Turber lying huddled. A wraith of the vehicle. It was gone!

But only for a moment! Why, what was this? The horror surged back to me. Unimaginable horror! The ship had gone. But had gone only a moment into our future, and then had stopped. And in that moment we had caught up with it.

As we stared at the empty space, with that passing moment the Time-ship materialized again. It lay in a tangled, disintegrating heap of metal with lurid green tongues of gas-flames licking at it!