"... The Wabbly made no attempt to do purely military
damage. The Enemy command realized that the destruction
of civilian morale was even more important than the
destruction of munitions factories. In this, the Enemy
displayed the same acumen that makes the war a fruitful
subject of study to the strategic student." (_Strategic
Lessons of the War of 1941-43._--U. S. War College.
Pp. 81-82.)
At nightfall the monster swerved suddenly and moved with greater speed.
It showed no lights. It did not even make very much noise. Then the
second flight of home-defense planes made their attack. Sergeant Walpole
heard them droning overhead. He lit a fire instantly. A little
helicopter dropped from the blackness above him and he began to heap
dirt desperately on the blaze.
"Who's there?" demanded a voice.
"Sergeant Walpole, Post Fourteen, Eastern Coast Observation," said the
Sergeant in a military manner. "Beg to report, sir, that the dinkus that
brought down the other ships is housed in that big bulge on top of the
Wabbly."
"Get in," said the voice.
The Sergeant obeyed. With a purring noise the helicopter shot upward.
Then something went off in mid-sky, miles ahead, where a faint humming
noise had announced the flight of attack-planes. A lurid, crackling
detonation lit up the sky. One of the ships of the night-flying
squadron. From the helicopter they could see the rest of the flight
limned clearly in the flash of the explosion. Instantly thereafter there
was another such flash. Then another.
"Three," said the voice beside Sergeant Walpole. Another flash.
"Four...." The invisible operator of the screw-lifted ship was very calm
about it. "Five. Six." The explosions lit the sky. Presently he said
grimly. "That's all of them. I'd better report it."
* * * * *
He was silent for a while. Sergeant Walpole saw his hand flicking a key
up and down in the faint light of radio bulbs.
"Now shoot the works," said the helicopter man evenly. "All the ships
that attacked this afternoon went down. One of them started to report,
but didn't get but two words through. What did that damned thing use on
them?"
"A dinkus on top, sir," said Sergeant Walpole formally. "I'd found a
monocycle, sir, and was trailing the thing. I'd come to the top of a
hill and seen it moving through a pine-wood, crashing down the trees in
front of it like they wasn't there. Then a egg came down from
Gawd-knows-where up aloft. I stopped up my ears, thinkin' it was aimin'
for me. Then I seen the ships. Two of 'em were fallin'. They landed, an'
I heard a coupla other explosions. Little ones, they sounded like."
The helicopter man's wrist was flicking up and down.
"Little ones!" he said sardonically. "Those ships were carrying
five-hundred-pound bombs! It was those you heard going off!"
"Maybe," conceded Sergeant Walpole. "There was twenty or thirty ships
flyin' in formation, goin' hell-for-leather for the Wabbly. They were
trailin' it from the air. They were comin', natural, for me, because I
was between them an' it. Then my pants caught on fire--"
"What?"
"My pants caught on fire," said Sergeant Walpole, woodenly. "I was
sittin' on the monocycle, tryin' to figure out which way to duck. An' my
pants caught on fire. The bike was gettin' hot. I climbed off it an' it
blew up. My rifle was hot, too, an' I chucked it away. Then I saw a ship
go down, on fire. The Wabbly'd stopped still an' it didn't fire a shot.
I'll swear to that. Just my monocycle got hot an' caught on fire, an'
then a ship busted out in flames an' went down. A couple more eggs come
down an' three ships dropped. Didn't hit 'em. The concussion blew the
fabric off 'em. Another one caught fire an' crashed. Then another one. I
looked, an' saw the next one catch. Then the next. It was like a
searchlight beam hittin' 'em. They flamed up, blew up, an' that was
that. The last two tried to get away, but they lit up an' crashed."
* * * * *
The pilot's hand flicked up and down, interminably. There was the steady
fierce down-beat of the slip-stream from the vertical propellers. The
helicopter swept forward in a swooping dash.
"The whole east coast's gone crazy," said the 'copter man drily. "Crazy
fools trying to run away. Roads jammed. Work stopped. It leaked out
about the planes being wiped out to-day, and everybody in three states
has heard those eggs going off. You're the only living man who's seen
that crawling thing and lived to tell about it. I've sent your stuff
back. What's that about the thing on top?"
"I hid," said Sergeant Walpole, woodenly. "The Wabbly sent over
gas-shells where the ships landed. Then it went on. Headin' west. It's
got a crazy-lookin' dinkus on top like a searchlight. That moved, while
the ships were catchin' fire an' crashin'. Just like a searchlight, it
moved an' the ships went down. But the Wabbly didn't fire a shot."
The helicopter man's wrist flexed swiftly....
"Gawd!" said Sergeant Walpole in sudden agony. "Drop! Quick!"
The helicopter went down like a stone. A propeller shrieked away into
space. Metalwork up aloft glowed dully red. Then there were whipping,
lashing branches closing swiftly all around the helicopter. A jerk. A
crash. Stillness. The smell of growing things all about.
"Well?" said the 'copter pilot.
"They turned it on us--whatever it is," said Sergeant Walpole. "They
near got us, too."
* * * * *
A match scratched. A cigarette glowed. The Sergeant fumbled for a smoke
for himself.
"I'm waiting for that metal to cool off," said the helicopter pilot.
"Maybe we can take off again. They located us with a loop while I was
sending your stuff. Damn! I see what they've got!"
"What?"
"A way of transmitting real power in a radio beam," said the 'copter
man. "You've seen eddy-current stoves. Everybody cooks with 'em
nowadays. A coil with a high-frequency current. You can stick your hand
in it and nothing happens. But you stick an iron pan down in the coil
and it gets hot and cooks things. Hysteresis. The same thing that used
to make transformer-cores get hot. The same thing happens near any beam
transmitter, only you have to measure the heating effect with a
thermo-couple. The iron absorbs the radio waves and gets hot. The chaps
in the Wabbly can probably put ten thousand horsepower in a damned beam.
We can't. But any iron in the way will get hot. It blows up a ship at
once. Your monocycle and your rifle too. Damn!"
He knocked the ash off his cigarette.
"Scientific, those chaps. I'll see if that metal's cool."
Something whined overhead, rising swiftly to a shriek as it descended.
Sergeant Walpole cowered, with his hands to his ears. But it was not an
earth-shaking concussion. It was an explosion, yes, but subtly different
from the rending snap of hexynitrate.
"Gas," said the Sergeant dully, and fumbled for his mask.
"No good," said the 'copter man briefly. "Vesicatory. Smell it? I guess
they've got us. No sag-suits. Not even sag-paste."
The Sergeant lit a match. The flame bent a little from the vertical.
"There's a wind. We got a chance."
"Get going, then," said the 'copter man. "Run upwind."
* * * * *
Sergeant Walpole slid over the side and ran. A hundred yards. Two
hundred. Pine-woods have little undergrowth. He heard the helicopter's
engines start. The ship tried to lift. He redoubled his speed. Presently
he broke out into open ploughed land.
In the starlight he saw a barn, and he raced toward that. Someone else
plunged out of the woods toward him. The helicopter-engine was still
roaring faintly in the distance. Then a thin whine came down from
aloft....
When the echoes of the explosion died away the pilot was grinning
queerly. The helicopter's engine was still.
"I said it could be done! Pack of fat-heads at Headquarters!"
"Huh?"
"Picking up a ship by its spark-plugs, with a loop. They're doing that
up aloft. There's a ship up there, forty thousand feet or so. Maybe half
a dozen ships. Refueling in air, I guess, and working with the thing you
call a Wabbly. When I started the 'copter's engine they got the
spark-impulses and sighted on them. We'd better get away from here."
"Horses in here," said Sergeant Walpole. "The Wabbly came by. No people
left."
They brought the animals out. The horses reared and plunged as there
were other infinitely sharp, deadly explosions of the eggs coming down
eight miles through darkness.
"Let's go. After the Wabbly?" said the 'copter man.
"O' course," said Sergeant Walpole. "Somebody's got to find out how to
lick it."
They went clattering through darkness. It was extraordinary what
desolation, what utter lack of human life they moved through. They came
to a town, and there was a taint of gas in the air. No lights burned in
that town. It was dead. The Wabbly had killed it.