_The Enemy Strikes_
As Dick's airship veered and side-slipped, he kicked hard on the left
rudder and brought the nose around. Furiously he sprayed the air with
a leaden hail from his quick-firer. He heard a rush of wind go past
him, and realized that his unseen antagonist had all but rammed him.
Yet nothing was visible at all, save the moon and the empty sky. He
had heard the rush of the prop-wash, but he had seen nothing, heard
nothing else. Incredible as it seemed, the pilot was flying a plane
that had attained not merely invisibility but complete absence of all
sound.
Dick side-slipped down, pancaked, and crashed. He emerged from a plane
wrecked beyond hope of early repair, yet luckily with no injury beyond
a few minor bruises. He rushed toward the hangar, to encounter a bevy
of scared mechanics.
"Another plane! Rev one up quick!" he shouted.
Planes were already being wheeled out, pilots in flying suits and
goggles were striding beside them. Dick ordered one of them away,
stepped into his plane, and in a moment was in the air again.
In the minute or two that had elapsed since the encounter, the enemy
had been active. Crash after crash was resounding from various parts
of Washington. Buildings were rocking and toppling, débris strewed the
streets, fires were springing up everywhere. A thousand feet aloft,
Dick could see the holocaust of destruction that was being wrought by
the infernal missiles.
Bombs of such power had been the unattained ambition of every
government of the world--and it had been left to the men of the
Invisible Emperor to attain to them. Whole streets went into ruin at
each discharge and from everywhere within the city the wailing cry of
the injured went up, in a resonant moan of pain.
In the central part of the city, the district about F Street and the
government buildings, nothing was standing, except those buildings
fashioned of structural steel, and these showed twisted girders like
the skeletons of primeval monsters, supporting sections of sagging
floors. Houses, hotels had melted into shapeless heaps of rubble,
which filled the streets to a depth of a dozen yards, burying
everything beneath them. Yet here and there could be seen the forms of
dead pedestrians, motor-cars emerging out of the débris, lying in
every conceivable position; horses, horribly mangled, were shrieking
as they tried to free themselves. And yet, despite this ruin, the
general impression upon Dick's mind, as he beat to and fro, signaling
to his flight to spread, was that of a vast, empty desolation.
* * * * *
Further away: where the ruin had not yet fallen, thousands of human
beings were milling in a mass, those upon the fringes of the crowd
perpetually breaking away, other swarms approaching them, so that the
entire agglomeration resembled a seething whirlpool turning slowly
upon itself.
Then of a sudden the strains of the national anthem floated up to
Dick's ears. A band was playing in the White House grounds. The tune
was ragged, and the drum came in a fraction of a second late, but an
immense pride and elation filled Dick's soul.
"They'll never beat us!" he thought, intensely, "with such a spirit
as that!"
He had signaled his flight to spread, and search the air. He could see
the individual ships darting here and there over the immensity of the
city, but none knew better than he how fruitless their effort was. And
the marauders had not ceased their deadly work.
A bomb dropped near the Washington Monument, sending up a huge spout
of dust that veiled it from his eyes. Instinctively Dick shot toward
the scene. Slowly the dust subsided, and then a yell of exultation
broke from Dick's lips. The noble shaft still stood, a slim taper
pointing to the skies.
It was an omen of ultimate success, and Dick took heart. No, they'd
never beat the grim, unconquerable tenacity of the American people.
Yet the damage was proceeding at a frightful rate. A bomb dropped
squarely on the Corcoran Gallery and resolved it into a heap of silly
stones. A bomb fell in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the
houses on either side collapsed like houses of cards, falling into a
sulphurous, fiery pit. And still there was nothing visible but the sky
and the moon.
* * * * *
Dick gritted his teeth and swore as he circled over the site of
destruction, out of which tiny figures were struggling. He heard the
clang of the fire bells as the motor trucks came roaring toward the
scene. Then crash! again. Five blocks northward another dense cloud of
dust arose, and the new area of destruction, spreading as swiftly as
ripples over a pond, joined the former one, leaving a huge, irregular
open space, piled up with masonry and brick in a number of flat-topped
pyramids.
Into this, houses went crashing every moment, with a sound like the
clatter of falling crockery, but infinitely magnified.
"The devils! The swine!" shouted Dick. "And we gave Von Kettler the
privileges of an ambassador!"
And Fredegonde was the sister of this devil! The remembrance of that
struck a cold chill to Dick's heart again. He tried to blot out her
picture from his mind, but he still saw her as she had appeared that
day after the air ride, flushed, smiling, radiant in her dark beauty.
A murderess and a spy! He cursed her as he banked and circled back. He
was helpless. He could do nothing. And all Washington would be
destroyed by morning, if the supply of bombs kept up. But there was
more to come. Suddenly Dick became aware that two of his flight, at
widely separated distances, were going down in flames. Flaming comets,
they dropped plump into the destruction below. Another caught fire and
was going down. No need to question what was happening.
The invisible enemy was attacking his flight and picking off his men
one by one!
He drove furiously toward two of his planes whose erratic movements
showed that they were being attacked. As he neared them he saw one
catch fire and begin its earthward swoop. Then the fuselage crackled
beside him, and his instrument board dissolved into ruin.
Instinctively he went round in a tight bank and loosed his
machine-gun. Nothing there! Nothing at all! Yet his right wing went
ragged, and his own furious blasts into the sky, their echoes drowned
by the roar of his propeller, were productive of nothing.
* * * * *
He shot past the uninjured plane, signalling it to descend. He wasn't
going to let his men ride aloft to helpless butchery. Nothing could be
done until some means was discovered of counteracting the enemy's
terrific advantage.
He darted across the heart of the city to where another of the flight
was circling, waggling his wings to indicate to it to descend. Then on
to the next plane and the next, shepherding them. Thank God they
understood! They were bunching toward the hangar. Yet another took
fire and dropped, a burning wreck. Half his flight out of commission,
and not an enemy visible!
He was aloft alone now, courting death--instant, invisible death. He
wouldn't descend until that carnival of murder was at an end. But it
was not at an end. Another crash, far up Pennsylvania Avenue, showed
an attempt upon the Capitol. Again--again, and a smoking hell wreathed
the noble buildings so that it was no longer possible to see them. A
lull, and then a crash nearer the city's heart. Crash! Crash!
Invisible though the enemy was, it was easy to trace the movements of
this particular plane by the successive areas of destruction that it
left behind it. It was coming back over Pennsylvania Avenue, dropping
its bombs at intervals. It was methodically wiping out an entire
section of Washington.
Dick drove his plane toward it. There was one chance in a thousand
that, if he could accurately gauge the progress of his invisible
antagonist, he could crash him and go down with him to death. If he
could get close enough to feel his prop-wash! A wild chance, but
Dick's mind was keyed up to desperation. He shot like an arrow toward
the scene, with a view to intercepting the murderer.
Then of a sudden he became aware of a curious phenomenon. A black beam
was shooting across the sky. A black searchlight! It came from the
flat top of a large hotel that had somehow escaped the universal
destruction, and, with its gaunt skeleton of structural steel showing
in squares, towered out of the ruin all about it like an island.
* * * * *
It was from here that the black beam started. It spread fanwise across
the sky. But it was not merely blackness. It was utter and
impenetrable darkness, cleaving the sky like a knife. Where it
passed, the rays of the moon were extinguished as fire is extinguished
by water.
A beam of absolute blackness, that pierced the air like a widening
cone, and made the night seem, by contrast, of dazzling brightness
along either dark border.
High into the air that dark beam shot, moving to and fro in the sky.
Dick, darting toward the spot where he hoped to find his invisible
enemy, found himself caught in it.
In utter, inextinguishable darkness! Like a trapped bird he fluttered,
hurling himself this way and that till suddenly he found himself
blinking in the dazzling light of the moon again, and the black beam
was overhead.
Crash! Another widening sphere of ruin as the invisible marauder
dropped a bomb. Dick cursed bitterly. Trapped in that black beam, he
had lost his direction. The invisible plane had shot past the point
where he had hoped to intercept it.
He flung his soaring lever, and hung suspended in the air. An easy
mark for the enemy, if he chose to take the opportunity. No matter.
Death was all that Dick craved. He had seen half his flight wiped out,
and a hundred thousand human beings hurled to destruction. He wanted
to die.
Then suddenly a wild shout came to his ears, as if all Washington had
gone mad with triumph. And Dick heard himself shouting too, before he
knew it, almost before he knew why.
* * * * *
For overhead, where the inky finger searched the sky, a luminous shape
appeared, a silvery cigar, riding in the void. The finger missed it,
and again there was only the moonlight. It caught it again--and again
the whole devastated city rang with yells of derision, hate, and anger
as the black beam held it.
It held it! To and fro that silvery cigar scurried in a frantic
attempt to avoid detection, and remorselessly the black beam held it
down.
It held it down, and it outlined it as clearly as a figure on the
moving picture screen. Then suddenly there came a flash, followed by a
dull detonation, and a black cloud appeared, spreading into a flower
of death near the cigar, and at the edge of the black beam. The cheers
grew frantic. The anti-aircraft battery in the White House grounds had
grasped the situation, and was opening fire.
To and fro, like a trapped beast, the cigar-shaped airplane fled. Once
it seemed to escape. It faded from the edge of the black finger--faded
into nothingness amid a roar of execretion. Then it was caught and
held.
Truncated, bounded by an arc of sky, the black finger followed the
murderer in his flight remorselessly. And all around him the
anti-aircraft guns were placing a barrage of death.
He was trapped. No need for Dick to rush in to battle. To do so might
call off that deadly barrage that held the murderer in a ring of
death. Hovering, Dick watched. And then, perhaps panic-stricken,
perhaps rendered desperate, perhaps through sheer, wanton courage that
might have commanded admiration under nobler circumstances, the
airship turned and drove straight in the direction of the battery,
dropping another bomb as she did so.
* * * * *
It fell in a crowded street, swarming with spectators who had
clambered upon the fallen débris, and it wrought hideous destruction.
But this time there was hardly a cry--no unison of despair such as had
come to Dick's ears before. The suspense was too tense. All eyes
watched the airship as, seeming to bear a charmed life, she drove for
the White House itself, through a ring of shells that widened and
contracted alternately, with the object of placing a last bomb
squarely upon the building before going down in death. And all the
while the black searchlight held it.
Dick Rennell was to experience many thrilling moments afterward, but
there was never a period, measurable by seconds, yet seeming to extend
through all eternity--never a period quite so fraught with suspense
as, hovering there, he watched the flight of that silvery plane
speeding straight toward the executive mansion while all around it the
shells bloomed and spread. It was over the White House grounds. The
archies had failed; they were being outmaneuvered, they could not be
swung in time to follow the trajectory of the plane. Dick held his
breath.
Then suddenly the silvery ship dissolved in a blaze of fire, a shower
of golden sparks such as fly from a rocket, and simultaneously the
last bomb that she was to drop broke upon the ground below.
Down she plunged, instantly invisible as she escaped the finger of the
black beam; but she dropped into the vortex of ruin that she herself
had created. Into a pit of blazing fire, criss-crossed by falling
trees, that had engulfed the battery and a score of men.
Then suddenly Dick understood. He flung home the soaring lever,
banked, and headed, not for the White House, but for the flat roof of
the hotel from which the black searchlight was still projecting itself
through the skies. He hovered above, and dropped, light as a feather,
upon the rooftop.
* * * * *
There was only one person there--an old man dressed in a shabby suit,
kneeling before a great block of stone that had been dislodged upward
from the parapet and formed a sort of table. Upon this table the old
man had placed a large, square box, resembling an exaggerated kodak,
and it was from the lens of this box that the black beam was
projecting.
Dick sprang from his cockpit as the old man rose in alarm. He ran to
him and caught him by the arm.
"Luke Evans!" he cried. "Thank God you've come back in time to save
America!"