Kane nodded, then tensed as another automobile rolled up and stopped.
"This one's O.K.," he said aloud. "Quick, now--get inside it!"
They went forward in a pellmell rush. Kane eased open a back door of
the car--a sedan with a lone man at the wheel--and all six of them
squeezed themselves into the back seat, pulling the door quietly to
after them. They held their breath, but there was no cry of surprise or
alarm. The soldiers went routinely but thoroughly through the ritual
of halberds. Any invisible man clinging to the outside of the vehicle
would have had to drop off or be dragged into the wicked blades.
* * * * *
The car rolled through the gate and picked up speed with the violent
surge of an electric motor. The man hunched in the front seat drove
with businesslike concentration, oblivious of his six unwanted
passengers. The raiders grinned at each other, shifted their cramped
positions a little and waited.
Presently the town's lights began to swim past. Kane, in a position
to see out the left-hand window, muttered: "We're passing the rocket
field--they've thrown a brand-new wall around it. If this guy would
just slow down--well, we've got to stop the car." He wriggled up until
he could lean over the front seat--and stiffened. All of them heard the
moan of a siren closing up behind.
"_Donnerwetter!_" growled their chauffeur, and clamped on the brakes. A
few feet behind loomed up a pair of headlights and a searchlight helped
bathe the car ahead in a merciless illumination.
"Out!" said Kane sharply, flinging open the left-hand door.
They sprawled out and ran, stooping instinctively, through the patch of
brilliance. Uniformed Germans were climbing out of the other vehicle
and starting to form a cordon.
Dugan, the last man out, halted a moment to close the car door, then
sprinted after the rest. They huddled against the forbidding wall that
had been built around the rocket port. Larrabie, eyes on the brightlit
scene, nervously hefted a bomb. Kane shook his head.
"Time enough to make big noises when we get inside," he advised. And to
the whole party, "I spotted an entrance a couple of hundred yards back.
Come on!"
They ran in single file under the frowning face of concrete. It might
have been possible to form a human chain and get over the wall; but
there was unquestionably alarms atop it, and ready guns.
Beyond the wall, a whistle began hooting. The field was being alerted.
Kane panted, "Don't know what tipped them off--but probably we were
photographed at that gate."
The entrance to the field was solidly blocked by a massive iron
grille. Beyond it, they could see men running and springing into
position behind a concrete redoubt, through which a machine gun thrust
menacingly, covering the opening in the wall.
"Damn!" said Kane. "No more time to be subtle. We'll have to knock that
out."
Eddie Dugan was already unhitching one of the home-made grenades from
his belt. "Stand out of line with the gate," he said grimly, "and I'll
get it for you." He gauged the distance and the weight of the bomb
and threw with trained precision. The missile rose in a high arc like
a mortar shell's, and hit the ground almost as Dugan did in his dive
for cover. Fragments of shattered concrete and metal clanged against
the grillework and whistled out into the street. A crash of glass and
frightened screams came from the houses across the way; and down the
street the patrol-car siren wailed suddenly into life again.
Kane sprang to his feet, verifying with a glance the emplacement's
destruction, and hurled another bomb at the gateway. Its explosion was
blinding, but a moment later they saw the way clear, the grille blown
off its hinges and twisted like spaghetti. Simultaneously a rattle
of shots, insignificant-sounding after the deafening blasts of high
explosive, told that the patrol-car, racing its motor up the street,
had opened fire on the entrance.
Clark was down on one knee, finger closing on the trigger of his
automatic. The oncoming car skidded and spun half around. Two men
spilled out and fled for cover; Clark dropped one and missed the other.
* * * * *
The big noises had begun, and speed was the big thing now. The raiders
dashed headlong through the wrecked gateway.
"Get clear!" shouted Kane, and on the heels of his cry came the sputter
of machine gun fire, first from one side of the entrance and then from
the other. Puffs of dust sprang out of the wall and ricochets whined
plaintively. Other guard posts were covering the breach, but the German
gunners must have hesitated before firing without a target, and they
were seconds too late.
The Americans crouched, half-sheltered by the ruined emplacement. To
the right from a cluster of buildings, the warning whistle shrieked
hoarsely on, and they heard through the incessant gunfire the noises of
excited voices. Ahead of them stretched the wide, seared waste of the
rocket field, its boundaries invisible in the darkness.
"We're in," breathed Kane, "and there's the ship!"
Out on the field, far from all structures, it towered upright, its
blunt nose five hundred feet above the blackened earth. Even though
no light shone on or from it, they could recognize its lines as
those of the vessel whose stolen plans they had gone over point by
point--_Siegfried_, the dust ship.
"They must have raised it to launching position only tonight," said
Kane harshly. "Otherwise we could have seen it from across the river.
So--it must be loaded and ready to go!"
A thousand feet of open and empty field separated them from the space
ship. With straining eyes they could see tiny human figures scurrying
about its base in the moonlight, forming a protective circle. Then
floodlights went on all over the field and left not a shadow anywhere.
The Germans knew, or feared, that the invisible attackers had slipped
inside their citadel.
The rain of steel on the gateway had stopped; instead came dull
thudding concussions, and a creeping haze obscured the entrance. Gas.
They had prepared for that. But now a more formidable threat made
itself known; from near the buildings came a frenzied barking of dogs.
"We've got to get across the open," snapped Kane. "Better stick
together and run for it. If we can get among that gang around the
ship--neither dogs nor instruments can tell the difference between
visible and invisible men!"
They rose from their cover and pelted grimly across the endless-seeming
field. To the right, parties of men with dogs were fanning out, too
slowly to intercept the raiders. But they were only halfway to the
ship when the lights suddenly snapped off--for a moment they stumbled,
blinded, in darkness, and the lights flashed dazzlingly on again. A
couple of seconds later the puzzling action was repeated--
And from the cordon about the ship, so near now, a voice screamed
hysterically, "_Da lauft einer!_" On its heels came a thunder of
shooting, and bullets snapped past the hurrying Americans.
They flung themselves flat on the scorched ground. The lights flashed
again and again as if an insane hand were at the master switch. "What's
happened?" gasped Manning. "Did they see us?"
"They've learned or guessed one of our weaknesses," said Kane in his
ear. "When the whole field of vision is suddenly illuminated, the brain
may register an invisible object, especially if it's moving, for a
moment before it melts into the background." Something whimpered in
the air and burst with an ear-splitting bang only a few yards away,
showering the raiders with earth. "They've got our position. Get
going--_now_!" as the lights flashed on.
[Illustration: _They rose and charged toward the space ship._]
Kane's fingers had been busy fusing a bomb, and as he rose erect he
threw it straight into the cordon. The crash of the explosion was
followed by shrieks and then, as the lights flashed on again, by a
prolonged volley of shots.
Larrabie sprung around in midstride and rolled on the ground. The
long-legged Clark flung out his arm and pitched forward. "Get the--"
His voice choked off.
* * * * *
The survivors charged at the gap where the bomb had wrought bloody
havoc. The Germans were closing it from the sides. Manning caught a
glimpse of sweating faces, staring eyes glazed with fear of an enemy
they could not see; and he saw also the vast loom of the space ship
above him. He fumbled woodenly with a detonator cartridge.
Kane's fingers bit into his arm. "Into the ship!" he rasped. "You'd
never dent it." Nothing was between the invaders and the hull, where an
open airlock, high overhead, showed as a black disc.
Manning glanced over his shoulder, and in the nightmarishly flashing
illumination saw Larrabie's body sprawled in a frozen convulsion, and
standing over it, head thrown back, a huge hound. A black mass of
yelling men was closing in....
Then the four of them were clambering up the ladder that rose dizzily
to the space ship's lock forty feet above ground. Every flash of the
light silhouetted them so nakedly against the great hull that it
seemed impossible they should not be seen and picked off as they clung
helplessly. But Manning saw Dugan above him, disappear into the lock;
he heaved himself up and stumbled into the saving blackness, followed
by a panting bulk that must be Vzryvov.
Kane's voice came, surprisingly steady, from deeper in the tunnel-like
lock, where as their eyes adjusted a faint glow was evident, seeping
no doubt from a passage beyond. "This was the main loading lock, and
I guess still is. They've apparently torn out all the freight decks
and replaced them with a lead-lined tank for the dust bin and they've
been loading it through a hatch just across the peripheral walk. But
the hatch is sealed now." He did not need to add what that meant. The
_Siegfried_ had its deadly cargo and was ready to take off.
"Then," said Vzryvov matter-of-factly, "let us blast open the tank
and scatter it with our remaining bombs. That will make it impossible
for the Germans to salvage the ship, or even use this field, until
the dust had burned itself out in a year or so." When Kane did not
answer, the Russian growled impatiently, "We _must_ do it, and quickly.
Our comrades' bodies are out there, and with them the secret of
invisibility. We must make this area unapproachable!"
"Wait," said Kane with a curious tense urgency. Manning wondered
fleetingly if the underground leader recoiled from the suicidal action
which the other urged; then he realized that Kane was listening, and
listened too.
The babble of voices from the ground outside had fallen to a mutter;
and through it cut an incisive voice of authority.
"_Es waren ihrer nur zwei?_"
Another voice answered, "_Ja, Herr Oberst--wenigstens haben wir nur
einen oder zwei bei der Blitzbeleuchtung gesehen_--"
"_Ihr habt gar nichts Verlassliches gesehen. Aber wieviel zeigen die
Photos?_"
"_Zwei, Herr Oberst._"
They could almost hear the commander's gusty sigh of relief. "_Nun, so
haben wir sie vor uns liegen, und die Sache ist erledigt. Noch dazu
werde ich ein schones Geschenk nach Deutschland schicken konnen._..."
"You see," said Kane, "they think they've got us all. Evidently their
cameras never caught more than two of us at once, and hooded we all
looked alike. So we're reasonably safe."
"Safe!" stormed Vzryvov. He clambered awkwardly to his feet in the
curved mouth of the lock. "If you have gone crazy or have got cold
feet, I will go and blow up the dust compartment alone."
"Wait!" snapped Kane. "Listen, Igor. You don't seem to realize that
luck--and the sacrifice of two of our best men--have given us a better
chance than we ever hoped for. The _Siegfried_ is just waiting for the
crew to come aboard. If we lie low until the ship's in space--then take
care of the crew and seize control--Well, the invisibility unit will be
in German hands, sure. But what good will that do them if there isn't
any Germany?"
* * * * *
They could hear each other's breathing in the airlock. Then Vzryvov
said, "I see. Forgive my stupidity."
Manning asked carefully, "You mean to turn the dust against Germany?
Wipe out the whole country?"
"Certainly. It'll be easy, once we take over the ship; a few degrees
change in course--"
"Even your allies there?"
"Germans are Germans," growled Vzryvov. "At best, they are confused
dreamers who think they could repay their debt to the world with a
gesture."
Manning could not see Kane's face; but the other's voice held solemn
earnestness. "We'll only be doing to them what they're trying to do to
America.... Oh, hell, that's no valid argument. But, Manning, you come
from an age when there weren't any atomic weapons, and such things were
unthinkable because they were impossible. You can't think as we do,
who've lived all our lives with the knowledge of what is possible--of
how little human life is worth.
"And you don't have a hundred years of slavery behind you. We were
as great a people as the Germans in your day, I think, but we've been
trampled into the mud until we've not got much civilization or pride or
decency left. And we won't have, for a long time, even if Germany is
destroyed. But if it isn't we, and the other nations of the world, will
never have those things again--the things that make human beings worth
something.
"I sometimes wonder what would happen if history had taken a different
turning--if we, instead of the Germans, had been the ones to discover
atomic energy. Would we have been any better than they were? Or would
we have used the power to make ourselves the masters of Earth and to
monopolize civilization, just as Germany did?"
"You would have," snorted Vzryvov. "Russia would have. Any nationalism
of that time, given such a power, would have behaved the same."
"I don't know," faltered Manning. "You may be right, but I can't
imagine...."
"Anyway," Kane's tone grew bitter, "the Germans have made the world
into what they wanted, and they've made us what we are. And now we're
going to smash their world. Maybe something better will come out of its
destruction. Maybe not. If not--revenge will have to be enough for us."