THE COMING OF THE CROSS
I stood with a small group of our men beneath the dome, where Lembken’s
gardens had been. The havoc that had been wrought is almost
indescribable. The beauty molded by the most cunning hands in Europe had
been obliterated in one short hour. The gardens were a waste of uprooted
trees and trampled earth, while from the broken conduit a dozen muddy
streams were pouring like high waterfalls upon the courts below. The
Palace was a mass of wreckage, in which the mob still moved, shouting
for fire to finish the work of destruction.
I had been recognized at last, and we were searching for our men among
the rabble, gathering the nucleus of a force to render aid to our party,
hard-pressed, below. I had managed to achieve something at last: I had
detailed a dozen men with Ray rods to guard the women. That was all I
could accomplish.
The ground about the Temple was already strewn with blackened, twisted
figures. From the conical Ray guns on the enclosing walls swept sheets
of blinding flame, a soundless cannonade that pecked at the interstices
in the walls of the Temple and of the Airscouts’ Fortress, seeking for
some unpainted spot between the blocks of stone, some small, abraded
surface where the cold Rays might find lodgment. I heard the crumbling
of disintegrating mortar and saw fragments of stone flying from cornice
and pediment. Soon gaps would open and the whole splendid pile tumble
into a heap of shapeless ruins.
The Rays flashed to and fro like brilliant lightning. I was half
blinded; all I could discern was that Sanson still held the Science
Wing, from whose windows the Guard were picking off our men beneath
them. I surmised from the shouting that we were attacking the Wing from
the ground floor of the Temple.
We had gathered most of our men together, and we plunged for the
elevator shafts and scrambled down. My pulses hammered with fear as I
entered the corridor below. But there stood David, and Elizabeth kneeled
beside him, with Esther’s head in her lap. She looked at me and smiled
with so brave an effort that I realized her own anxiety. Somewhere in
the deadly tumult Paul was fighting, unless, indeed, he lay among those
shapeless masses that strewed the courts.
Our men swept by me and poured along the corridor toward the bridge.
“I have fulfilled my promise, Arnold,” said David. “Now I must take
Elizabeth within the shelter of the Airscouts’ Fortress, and you will
follow with Esther. Then each of us must do his best to rally parties to
the assault. All is not going well, Arnold. Our Ray rods are emptying
fast, and the storage batteries within the Airscouts’ Fortress have been
destroyed, so that we cannot recharge them; the attack upon the lower
level of the Wing has failed. Sanson has placed a Ray gun there. All
hangs upon the battleplanes, and they have not returned.”
He put his arm about his daughter and hurried her toward the bridge,
while I picked up Esther, still plunged in that first sleep, and
followed him. I saw him lead Elizabeth to safety, but as I was about to
follow, a sheet of purple light swept past me, tearing a stanchion from
the bridge and knocking down a part of the brick house on the wall
above, where Lembken had taken me that night of our first meeting.
A gun was playing on the bridge. It was impossible to cross at present.
I drew back, waiting.
Then a babel of cries broke out on the opposite side, so fierce and wild
that, grasping Esther more tightly, I rushed to a window at the further
end of the corridor, commanding a view of the exterior courts. The long
bridges were packed with our men, making a mad sortie to scale the
enclosing walls. Streaks of light, pitiably thin, flashed from their Ray
rods, and, with exultant shouts, the Guard sprang forward to meet them.
They were dragging lighter Ray guns behind them. For an instant it
seemed as if the revolutionists would scale the walls before the heavy
Ray artillery could be reaimed at them. The foremost files of the
opposing forces clashed and surged and swayed in a rain of meteor
flashes. The blackened corpses heaped the bridges, hung, toppled over,
and went to swell the heaps below. Then, with a renewed outburst of
shouting, the Guard drove back the attack and placed their guns.
The blinding flashes swept the bridges, playing like ribands of silvery
blue along the course of their discharge. Everywhere along the bridges
swarmed the stampede of flight, checked where the Rays caught the
fugitives and twisted them into charred lumps, sweeping away the
superstructure also, and the bridge rails. I saw one bridge go down, as
a deflected Ray wrenched it from its piers. It spewed its burden upon
the stones below, and from among the dead, little figures leaped up and
began to run for refuge toward the Council Wing; and there a blast from
a Ray gun found them, and the heavy doors crumbled upon them, and wood
and men were ground into the same pulpy blackness. The Ray had found the
weak spots of the great buildings, and from the Temple top huge stones
came crashing down, rebounding along the courts and splintering into
fragments. Clouds of dust rose up like smoke from conflagrations.
The flowing tide of the Guard’s victory rolled on unchecked. Their
shouts were frightful. They held the courts, now piled with debris from
the buildings above them. I ran with Esther back toward the bridge,
crossed it, and gained the shelter of the Airscouts’ Fortress. Before me
was a flight of stone steps; I ran up, shouting. Nobody answered me. I
gained the summit and found myself alone there.
Looking down from the roof I saw that the Guard were swarming in the
Temple. They had regained that; they had driven our men from the
Airscouts’ Fortress, on which I stood, trapped, since it was impossible
to cross the courts. Where were our forces? I saw the locust cloud of
attack break against the doors of the offices beneath the Council Hall.
That was our last stronghold. The Ray flashes played on the walls, but
they held fast.
Then out of the south a flock of giant birds came wheeling. They swooped
toward us and resolved themselves into the airplane fleet. They dipped
their luminous wings and circled around us, and a mazy pattern of light
shot downward upon the ranks of the Guard.
The battleplanes had settled their differences, and three-fourths of
them had returned to fight for us.
I saw the Guard race back for their sheltering walls. The Ray artillery
shot upward to meet the challenge of the battleplanes. To and fro
overhead wheeled the great shining birds in soundless duel. The conflict
appeared the more frightful because of this silence. Only those at the
guns knew what was happening.
But presently, as the flock wheeled, I saw one tower like a shot
pheasant and then tumble. It plunged into the court and lay, a shapeless
mass, upon the stones. The Ray gun had found its defenseless parts as it
maneuvered. A second battleplane came hurtling down. It struck the
Temple wall, seemed to cling there like a bat, and, fluttering like a
dying thing, plunged to the stones beside its shattered mate.
The Guard was winning. The enclosing walls stood fast. Our last hope
seemed to be gone. The sun was dipping into the west.
I dared not carry Esther through that fire-swept zone. It was my plan,
should Sanson’s men reoccupy the Airscouts’ Fortress, to seek refuge
within the little, half-secret room where Jones had hidden us. Meanwhile
I waited on the roof, behind the glow-painted shield of a single empty
airplane that was resting there. Twilight fell, and the soundless fight
went on. The battleplanes were circling higher, and their fire was
utterly ineffective. I judged, from its growing infrequency, that their
solar batteries were becoming emptied. Meanwhile our men, pent in the
council offices, waited for the finale.
Hourly our situation grew more desperate. Another battleplane went down.
The game was in Sanson’s hands after all. Our only chance had been in
the surprise, and the mad rush to the People’s House and the confusion
in the Temple had spoiled all plans and allowed our enemy to concentrate
his men. Where was he, I wondered.
Suddenly shouts broke out again from the walls, and were caught up and
echoed back from the Council Hall. Southward, high in the sky,
pin-points of light appeared, like vagrant stars, which became larger,
wheeled, extended.
The Guard cheered frantically. I heard the cry “America!”
If this was the Mormon fleet, come to aid Lembken, there was no doubt
with which side it would join. Perhaps the Guard knew already that
Sanson had outwitted Lembken and outbid him for its support.
The airfleet shot upward, drew together, and a single light, detaching
itself, flew like a rocket upward, moving in the direction of the
oncoming battleplanes, which seemed to hang poised above, like a new
group of Pleiades. The rocket’s apparent speed dwindled, until it seemed
to move as slowly as any star. I saw a second light shoot downward,
detaching itself from those clustered orbs, to meet it. I held my
breath, as all must have done, for not a Ray was fired, nor was there
any sound as the fate of the world hung upon those nearing points. They
circled about each other, a binary star; they moved together; and
suddenly they plunged downward, the whole oncoming fleet following them,
and the roar of a thousand throats rang from the Council Hall:
“The Russians! The Russians! The Tsar! The Tsar!”
The lights grew larger and resolved themselves into the glow
parallelograms again, and the great fleet of battleplanes descended
toward the wall. Again the pattern of light interplayed with the
answering fire from the Ray artillery of the Guard.
The new squadron was armed with Rays almost as strong, taken in
Stockholm, and worked by Swedish gunners. Searchlights and glow rays
blended in heliotrope and pink and blue, playing about the walls,
carrying the most murderous death that man had ever devised. And it
appeared incredible that death lay hidden within that warp and woof of
color that intercrossed through space, blending and twisting, and
forming a thousand patterns upon the night. Once a battleplane, caught
as she wheeled, came crashing down; but the next moment the persistent
Ray found an unprotected place in the walls at last, and hammered at it,
dislodging mortar and stones, till, with a mighty roar, a tower fell
toppling into the court, leaving a great breach in the Guard’s fortress.
Instantly two battleplanes lit like great birds, and behind their
shields a score of men swarmed out, carrying swords and Ray shields,
interlocked. The line swept onward, to encounter the Ray rods of the
defense. I saw it crumple and twist. But other battleplanes had alighted
along the breach, and everywhere small groups were forming between the
Ray guns, which could not be aimed before they were attacked, the
gunners sabered, and the great conical machines made useless. The valor
which had overthrown the Federation’s troops before Tula was not
helpless here.
But from each wing a blast of fire caught the downward swooping
battleplanes and crumpled them. No attack could live before that
devastating crossfire. I saw the groups of swordsmen wither, fall back,
until the bodies heaped before them, on which they planted their glow
shields, formed an impregnable rampart. But the artillery was retaken,
the battleplanes, surprised and broken in the ebb-tide of defeat, were
piled in indistinguishable heaps within the courts. The Guard turned the
artillery upon the stubborn line that mounted the breach. Once more the
fortune of the day was turning.
[Illustration:
Upon the walls the Guard were swarming toward the defenders. Out of
their midst the Ray artillery belched
]
I saw the ragged figures of our men run from the Council Hall across the
courts. Then the Guard about Sanson in the Science Wing streamed forth
to meet them. The Ray rods flashed, and the ghastly murder began once
more.
Upon the walls the Guard were swarming toward the defenders. Out of
their midst the Ray artillery belched. It found the chinks among the
shields, and a sheet of white flame swept through the Russians’ ranks.
Their wall of interlocked shields had carried them into death’s jaws,
but now the jaws were closing. I closed my eyes in anguish.
I opened them in darkness.
There was no flash from the conical guns, which glittered in impotence
upon the walls. For an instant I did not understand. The next I knew.
Jones had cut the supply cables in the Vosges Mountains. He had kept his
promise, and in the moment of defeat.
The same mad exultation seized all. I heard the new note of victory as
our men from the Council Hall bore back the defeated remnants of
Sanson’s army. I saw the Russians leap from behind their shields and
swarm into the fortress; saw the flash of their swords against the
spurting fire of the Ray rods; saw the defeated Guard fly through the
courts, to meet death there.
Then I stood face to face with Sanson.