_Suicide?_
Gordon Smith, sometimes known as Smithy, was to remember little of the
happenings that followed the crash of the big Army dreadnought. It was
Colonel Culver who dragged him from the pilot-room wreckage, Colonel
Culver and one of the pilots whom he had restored to consciousness.
They lowered Smithy carefully to the ground, then explored the rest of
the ship.
Their hands were red when they returned--and empty. Captain Farrell
and the rest of the crew had ceased to be units of the United States
Army Air Force; henceforth they would be only names on a casualty list
grown ominously long.
"Stood plumb on her tail," said the pilot, staring at the wreck. "They
hit us just once, and the left wing crumpled like cardboard. Last I
remember was pulling her up off the trees." He stared at the mass of
twisted metal and the center section where the wing had torn loose; it
stood upright, almost vertical, resting on the crushed tail.
"Funny," said the pilot in the same flat, level tone that seemed the
only voice he had since that last pull on a whipping wheel. "Damn
funny--mostly we get it first up there."
"Come here!" snapped Colonel Culver. "Lend a hand here with Smith;
we've got to carry him. And don't talk so loud--those red devils will
be out here any minute."
* * * * *
Smithy was taking a more active interest in his surroundings when he
sat a week later in the Governor's office.
"There's a detachment moving in there from the south," said the
Governor. "We're going to follow your advice, to some extent at least.
We're sending troops to Tonah Basin. If the top of that dead crater is
closed they will blast it open; then a scouting party's going down.
Call it a reconnaissance, call it suicide--one name's just as good as
the other. Colonel Culver, here, is going. But you know the lay of the
land there; you could be of great help. How about it?"
"Are you asking me?" Smithy inquired.
He stood up, flexed his arms, while he grinned at Colonel Culver.
"Hinges all greased and working! As a flier, Colonel, you're a darn
good first-aid man. I'll say that! When do we start?"
Which explains why Smithy, some time later, hidden under the grotesque
disguise of a gas mask, was one of fifty, similarly attired, who stood
waiting about the black open maw in the great cinder-floored crater of
one of the peaks that surrounded Tonah Basin.
Night. And the big stars that hang so low in the black desert sky
should have been brilliant. They were lost now in the white glare that
streamed upward. The crater was a fortress. Around the circle of the
entire rim, on the inner side of the rough crags, men of the 49th
Field Artillery stood by their guns. Lookouts trailed their telephone
wire to the higher peaks, where they perched as shapeless as huddled
owls; and, like owls, their eyes swept the mountain's slopes and the
desert at its base, where the searchlight crews played long fingers of
light incessantly--and where nothing moved.
But the empty silence of the desert was misleading, as the men in the
crater knew.
* * * * *
They had begun arriving with the earliest light of morning. Smithy had
come in with the first lot. And when the first big auto-gyro transport
had settled and risen again from the crater, another had taken its
place, and another and many others after that.
That first crew had been a machine-gun battalion, and Smithy had
smiled with grim satisfaction at the unhurried way in which their
young captain had snapped them into position without the loss of a
second. And their guns, Smithy noticed, were trained inward upon the
crater itself.
Inside that protecting circle the other transports landed one by one:
men, mobile artillery, ammunition cases, big searchlights, and a
dozen engine-generator outfits. The last transports brought in strange
cargo--short sections of aluminum struts with bolts and splice plates
to join them together: blocks, and tackle and sheaves; then spools of
steel alloy cable at least ten miles in length.
From the last ship they took a hoisting engine and an assortment of
aluminum plates and bars which were bolted together by waiting
mechanics, and which grew magically to a crude but exceedingly
substantial elevator, on which fifty men, by considerable crowding,
could stand.
Only a floor of bolted plates, with corner posts and diagonal bracing
and a single guard rail running around the four sides--but for the
first time Smithy began to feel that he was actually going down; that
this was not all make-believe, or a futile gesture. He would stand on
that platform; he would go down where Dean had gone. And then.... But
what would come after he knew he could never imagine.
* * * * *
A little crane swung the first metal work into position above the
shaft. One end of the assembled framework of aluminum alloy dragged
loosely on the ground; the other end swung out and projected above the
shaft, swayed for an instant--and then came the first direct knowledge
of the enemy's presence. The end of a metal strut, though nothing
visible was touching it, grew suddenly white hot, sagged, then broke
into a shower of molten, dazzling drops that rained down into the pit.
"Good," said Colonel Culver, who was standing beside Smithy. "Now we
know they are there--but it means we will have to go down there with
our gas masks on."
To Smithy it was not immediately apparent how gas masks were to
protect them from the deadly invisible ray. He got the connection of
thoughts when a bomb was slid over the edge. The dull thud of the
explosion quickly came back to them.
"They popped that one off in the air--hit it with their heat ray,"
said a cheerful voice beside them. "But the phosgene will keep on
going down. Give them another!"
The interval this time was longer. "Now for a dirty crack," said the
cheerful voice. "Time this one."
* * * * *
A youngster nearby snapped a stop-watch as the bomb was released. He
held some printed tables in his hands. Odd receivers from which no
wire led were clamped over his ears. This time the dull thud was long
in coming. It was hardly perceptible when the young man with the stop
watch announced: "Fifty thousand feet, sir."
"Give 'em another. Time it again." A second high explosive bomb was
released.
"Fifty thousand feet, sir."
"Good. That measures it. And those last bombs have knocked the devil
out of whatever machinery they've got down there. Now we'll give them
a real taste of gas. Two of the green ones there, men. Put ten miles
of cable on the drums. Get that hoisting frame into place."
But night had come, though searchlights outside the crater and
floodlights within had robbed the night of its terror, when Smithy,
with Culver beside him, climbed over the guard rail of the lift that
hung waiting just over the pit.
A gas mask covered his entire face. Through its round eye plates he
looked at the others who crowded about him. Grotesque, almost
ludicrous--twenty men, armed with clumsy sub-machine guns; the others
would follow later. A searchlight was on a tripod at the center, and a
spool of electric cable.
The light sizzled into life and swung slowly about. Then the platform
jarred, and the spool of cable began slowly to unwind. Beside him
Colonel Culver was returning the salute of an officer outside on the
ashy ground. Smithy raised his hand, but the brink of that pit had
moved swiftly up--there was nothing before him but a glassy wall.
Reconnaissance? Suicide? One word was as good as another. But he was
going down--down where Dean Rawson had gone--down where there was a
debt to be paid.