An Exploration
There was a moment's silence as the Australian captain steadied himself
against the roll of the vessel, staring incredulously at the group that
gathered round him.
"Are you--human?" he finally managed to gasp.
"If we aren't somebody's been kidding us," said Gloria, irreverently.
"But are you? You're all blue!"
"Of course," said the captain. "It was the comet. We knew it struck in
America somewhere but didn't know where or what it did. What's the
matter with your ship?" He indicated the wrecked and leaking bow. "She
seems to be down by the head."
"Oh, that was a valentine from the birds," said Ben. "Can you give us
quarters on your vessel? There aren't many of us."
Captain Entwhistle seemed to come out of a dream. "Of course, of course.
Come on. We can discuss things better in my cabin."
As they mounted to the deck of the _Brisbane_, even the trained sailors,
the light blue of their faces oddly at variance with the dark blue of
their uniforms, could not refrain from staring at the colonists. They
crowded into the captain's cabin past rows of eager blue faces.
"I suggest," said Captain Entwhistle, "that we begin by telling each
other how this happened. I can scarcely credit the fact that you are
human and can walk and talk. Would any of you care for a whiskey and
soda?"
"No, thanks," said Murray, the spirit of fun stirring in him, "but I'll
have a drink of lubricating oil if you can find any."
The naval officer looked at him, and remarked, a trifle stiffly,
"Certainly, if you wish. Williams--"
"Oh, don't mind him," Ben Ruby cut in. "Pardon me, Captain, he can drink
lubricating oil perfectly well, but he's just joking with you. You were
saying about the comet--"
"Why, you knew that the big comet struck the earth as predicted, didn't
you? It was on the morning of February sixteenth, last year--evening of
February fifteenth by American time. Even in our country, which is
around on the other side of the earth, it caused a good deal of damage.
The gases it set free put everybody to sleep and caused a lot of
wreckage. Our scientists say the gases of the comet in some unexplained
way altered the iron in the hæmoglobin of our blood to cobalt. It seems
to work just as well, but that's why we're all blue. I don't quite
understand it myself, but you know how these medical Johnnies are. Now
what happened to you people?"
"May I ask something first?" said Beeville. "What day is this?"
"August eighteenth, 1946," said the captain as though slightly baffled
by the question.
"Good God!" said the scientist. "Then we were there for over a year!"
"Yes," said Ben. "All of us you see here and several others returned to
consciousness about the same time, two months ago. We know nothing of
what the comet did to us or how this change occurred except that when we
woke up we were just what you see. Dr. Beeville has been experimenting
with a view to finding out what happened, but he hasn't made much
progress so far. All we know is that we're composed of metal that
doesn't rust easily, make our meals off electricity, and find the taste
of any kind of oil agreeable. And the birds--" he broke off with a
gesture.
"Oh, yes, the birds," said the captain. "Have they been annoying you,
too? That's one of the reasons, aside from exploration, why we're here.
I assume you mean the big four-winged birds that we call dodos down
under. We haven't seen much of them, but occasionally they come and fly
away with a sheep or even a man. One of our aviators chased one several
hundred miles out to sea recently and we had assumed they came from one
of the islands. Our scientists don't know what to make of them."
"Neither do ours, except that they're an unadulterated brand of hell,"
put in Murray. "We were all living in New York, snug as bugs in a rug,
when they began dropping incendiary bombs on us and carrying off anyone
they could get hold of."
"Including this insignificant person," said Yoshio, proudly.
"Incendiary bombs! Do you mean to tell me they have intelligence enough
for that?"
"I'll tell the cockeyed world they have! Did you see the prow of our
ship? That's where one of their little presents got home. If anyone had
been there, he wouldn't be anything but scrap iron now. If you really
want to find out what it's all about come on up to New York, but get
ready for the fight of your life."
The captain leaned back, sipping his drink meditatively. "Do you know,"
he said, "that's just what I was thinking of doing? Frankly your story
is all but incredible, but here you are as proof of it and you don't
seem to be robots, except in appearance."
"Oh, boy," whispered Murray to Gloria, "wait till these babies get after
the birds with their eight-inch guns. They'll wish they'd never heard of
us. I'm glad I'm going to be on hand to see the fun."
"Yeh, but maybe the birds will have something up their feathers, too,"
she replied. "I wouldn't like to place any bets. We thought we had them
licked when we got the destroyer and now look at us."
"Well, I'm willing to try an attack, or at least a reconnaissance of
them," said the captain. "Just now we're in the position of an armed
exploring party. The Australian government has sent out several ships to
see what it could find on the other continents. After the comet struck
all the cables went dead. We got into radio communication with the Dutch
colonial stations at Batavia and later with South Africa, but the rest
of the world is just being re-explored and my commission authorizes me
to resist unfriendly acts. I think you could call an incendiary bomb an
unfriendly act."
* * * * *
His eyes twinkled over this mild witticism, and the party broke up with
a scraping of chairs. A couple of hours later, the blue line of Sandy
Hook was visible, and then the vague cliffs of the New York skyscrapers.
The clouds had cleared away after the rain of the last few days; not
even a speck of mist hung in the air and everything stood out bright and
clear. The colonists felt a pang of emotion grip them as they watched
the tall towers of the city rise over the horizon, straight and
beautiful as they had always stood, but now without a sign of life or
motion, all the busy clamor of the place hushed forever.
Of the tetrapteryxes or "dodos" as the Australian had called them, there
was no sign. The sky bent high, unbrokenly blue, not a flicker of motion
in it. Murray Lee felt someone stir at his side and looked round.
"Oh, damn," said Gloria Rutherford, "it's so beautiful that I want to
cry. Did you ever feel like that?"
He nodded silently.... "And those birds--isn't it a shame somehow that
they should have the most beautiful city in the world?"
The shrill of a whistle cut off his words. With marvelous, machine-like
precision, the sailors moved about the decks. The _Brisbane_ lost way,
came to a halt, and there was a rush of steel as the anchor ran out.
Captain Entwhistle came down from the bridge.
"I don't see anything of your dodos yet," he said. "Do you think it
would be wise to send out a landing party, Mr. Ruby?"
"Most certainly not," said Ben. "You don't know what you're up against
yet. Wait till they come round. You'll have plenty to do."
The captain shrugged. Evidently he was not at all unwilling to match the
Australian navy against anything the dodos might do. "Very well, I'll
accept your advice for the present, Mr. Ruby. It is near evening in any
case. But if there is no sign of them in the morning, I propose to land
and look over the city."
But the landing was never accomplished.
For, in the middle of the night, as Ben, Murray and Gloria were seated
in the chartroom of the ship, chatting with the young lieutenant on duty
there, there came a quick patter of feet on the deck, and a shout of
"Light, ho!"
"There are your friends now, I'll wager," said the lieutenant. "Now
watch us go get 'em. If you want to see the fun, better go up on the
bridge. All we do here is wrestle slide-rules."
Hastily the three climbed the bridge, where a little group of officers
was clustered. Following the direction in which they were looking, they
saw, just above the buildings on the Jersey shore, what looked like a
tall electric sign, burning high in the air and some distance away, with
no visible means of support.
"What do you make of it?" asked Captain Entwhistle, turning and
thrusting a pair of glasses into Ben's hands. Through them he could read
the letters. Printed in capitals, though too small to be read from the
ship with the naked eye, he saw:
"SOFT MEN EXIT. HARD MEN ARE WORKERS BELONGING. MUST RETURN. THIS MEANS
YOU."
"Looks like a dumb joke by someone who doesn't know English very well,"
he opined, passing the glasses to Gloria. "I don't think those birds
would figure that out anyway."
"Wait a minute, though," said Gloria, as she read the letters. "Remember
they caught Dangerfield and Farrelly and the rest. Maybe they taught
them how to speak."
"Yes, but those two didn't know anything about 'soft men.' It's all
crazy, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. And what do they mean by
'belonging'? None of our gang thought up that bright remark."
"Look, sir," said one of the younger officers, "it's changing."
Abruptly the lights were blotted out, to reappear, amid a swimming of
colors, nearer and larger. "WARNING" they read this time, "FLY AWAY
ACCURSED PLACE."
"What beats me," said Ben, "is what makes that light. I'll bet a dollar
against a dodo-feather it isn't electrical and fireworks wouldn't hang
in the air like that. How do they do it?"
"Well, we'll soon find out," said the Captain, practically. "Mr.
Sturgis, switch on searchlights three and four and turn them on the
source of that light."
A few quick orders and two long beams of light leaped out from the ship
toward the source of the mysterious sky-writing--leaped, but not fast
enough, for even as the searchlights sought for their goal the lights
were extinguished and the long beams swung across nothing but the empty
heavens.
Gloria shivered. "I think I want to go away from this place," she said.
"There's too much we don't know about around here. We'll be getting
table-tappings next."
"Apparently someone wants us to clear out," said Captain Entwhistle
cheerfully. "Mr. Sturgis, get steam on three boilers and send the men to
reserve action stations. We may have something doing here before
morning."
Orders were shouted, iron doors were slammed and feet pattered in the
interior of the warship. From their station on the bridge Ben, Gloria
and Murray could see the long shafts of the turret guns swing upward to
their steepest angle, then turn toward the Jersey shore. The _Brisbane_
was preparing for emergencies.
But there was to be no fight that night, though all night long the weary
sailors stood or slept beside their guns. The dark skies remained
inscrutable; the mysterious lights did not reappear.
At four o'clock, Captain Entwhistle had retired, reappearing at eight,
fresh as though he had slept through the whole night. The colonists, of
course, did not need sleep, but while the sailors stared at them,
submitted themselves to an electric meal from one of the ship's dynamos.
Morning found them gathering about the upper decks, eager for action,
particularly McAllister, who had spent most of the night engaged in
highly technical discussions of the _Brisbane's_ artillery with one of
the turret-captains.
"What do you suggest?" asked the captain. "Shall we land a party?"
"I hate to go without taking a poke at those birds," said Ben, "but
still I don't think it would be safe--"
"What's the matter with that airplane?" asked Gloria, pointing to the
catapult between the funnels, where a couple of blue-visaged sailors had
taken the covering from a seaplane and were giving it a morning bath.
The captain looked at Ben. "There may be something in that idea. What do
you say to a scout around? I'll let you or one of your people go as an
observer."
"Tickled to death," Ben replied. "We never got beyond the upper part of
the city ourselves. The dodos were too dangerous. I'd like to find out
what it's all about."
"How about me?" offered Gloria.
"Nothing doing, kid. You get left this time. If those birds get after us
we may land in the bay with a bump and I don't want this party to lose
its little sunshine."
"Up anchor!" came the command. "Revolutions for ten knots speed.... I'm
going to head down the bay," he explained to the colonists. "If anything
happens I want to have sea-room, particularly if they try bombing us."
Fifteen minutes later, with the _Brisbane_ running into the morning
land-breeze in an ocean smooth as glass, the catapult let go and Ben and
the pilot--a lad whose cheeks would have been rosy before the comet, but
were now a vivid blue--were shot into the air.
Beneath them the panorama of New York harbor lay spread; more silent
than it had been at any day since Hendrick Hudson brought his
high-pooped galleys into it. As they rose, Ben could make out the line
of the river shining through the pearly haze like a silver ribbon; the
towers of the city tilted, then swung toward them as the aviator swept
down nearer for an examination. Everything seemed normal save at the
north and east, where a faint smoky mist still lingered over the
buildings they had occupied. Of birds, or of other human occupation than
their own, there was no slightest sign.
A faint shout was borne to his ears above the roar of the motor and he
saw the pilot motioning toward a set of earphones.
"What do you say, old chap?" asked the pilot when he had clamped them
on. "What direction shall we explore?"
Ben glanced down and around. The cruiser seemed to hang in the water, a
tiny droplet of foam at her bow the only sign she was still in motion.
"Let's go up the Hudson," he suggested. "They seemed to come from that
direction."
"Check," called the pilot, manipulating his controls. The airplane
climbed, swung and went on. They were over Yonkers; Ben could see a
river steamer at the dock, where she had made her last halt.
"Throw in that switch ahead of you," came through the earphones. "The
one marked RF. That's the radiophone for communicating with the ship. We
may need it."
"O.K.," said Ben.... "Hello.... Yes, this is Ruby, in the airplane.
Nothing to report. Everything serene. We're going to explore farther up
the river."
In the distance the Catskills loomed before them, blue and proud. Ben
felt a touch on his back and looked round. The pilot evidently wished
to say something else. He cut in and heard, "What's that off on the
left--right in the mountains? No, there."
Following the indicated direction Ben saw something like a scar on the
projecting hillside--not one of the ancient rocks, but a fresh cut on
the earth, as though a wide spot had been denuded of vegetation.
"I don't know," he answered. "Never saw it before. Shall we go see?...
Hello, _Brisbane_. Ruby reporting. There is a mysterious clearing in the
Catskills. We are investigating."