"... which panic was enhanced by the destruction of a
second flight of fighting planes. However, the
destruction of Bendsboro completed civilian
demoralization.... A newscasting company re-broadcast
a private television contact with the town at the
moment the Wabbly entered it. Practically all the
inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast heard and saw the
annihilation of the town--hearing the cries of '_Gas!_'
and the screams of the people, and hearing the
crashings as the Wabbly crushed its way inexorably
across the city, spreading terror everywhere....
Frenzied demands were made upon the Government for the
recall of troops from the front to offer battle to the
Wabbly.... It is considered that at that time the one
Wabbly had a military effect equal to at least half a
million men." (_Strategic Lessons of the War of
1941-43._--U. S. War College. Pp. 83-84.)
They did not enter the town. There was just enough of starlight to show
that the Wabbly had gone through it, and then crashed back and forth
ruthlessly. There was a great gash through the center of the buildings
nearest the edge, and there were other gashes visible here and there.
Everything was crushed down utterly flat in two eight-foot paths; and
there was a mass of crumbled debris four feet high at its highest in
between the tread-marks.
They looked, silently, and went on. They reached a railroad track, the
quadruple track of a branch-line from New York to Philadelphia. The
Wabbly was going along that right-of-way. There was no right-of-way left
where it had been. Rails were crushed flat. Culverts were broken
through. But the horses raced along the smoothed tread-trails. Once a
broken, twisted rail tore at Sergeant Walpole's sleeve. Somehow the last
great plate of a tread had bent it upward. Presently they saw a mass of
something dark off to the left. Flames were licking meditatively at one
of the wrecked cars.
Then they heard explosions far ahead. Flames lighted the sky.
"Our men in action!" said Sergeant Walpole hungrily.
He flogged his mount mercilessly. Then the sky became bright in the
distance. The horses, going down the crushed-smooth trail of the treads,
gained upon the din. Then they saw the cause of it, miles distant. A
train was burning luridly. Its forepart was wreckage, pure and simple.
The rest was going up in flames and detonations. Munitions, of course.
The Wabbly was off at one side, flame-lit and monstrous, sliding
smoothly out of sight.
* * * * *
"Ten miles of railroad," said the 'copter pilot calmly, "mashed out of
existence. That's going to scare our people into fits. They can drop
eggs till the cows come home, and every egg'll smash up a hundred yards
of right-of-way, and we can build it back up again in four hours with
mobile track-layers. But ten miles to be regraded and laid is different.
Half of America will be imagining all our railroads smashed and
starvation ahead."
A piercing light fell upon them.
"Shut it off!" roared Sergeant Walpole. "D'y'want to get us killed?"
He and the 'copter pilot swerved. There was a car there, a huge
two-wheeled car, whose gyroscopes hummed softly while its driver tried
to extract it from something it was tangled in.
"I commandeer this car," said the 'copter pilot. "Military necessity. We
have to trail that Wabbly."
Someone grunted. Lights flashed on within. The 'copter pilot and
Sergeant Walpole stiffened to attention. The stars of a major-general
shone on the collar of the stout man within.
"Beg pardon, sir," said the pilot, and was still.
"Umph," said the major-general. "There seem to be just four of us alive,
who've seen the thing clearly. I hit on it by accident, I'll admit. What
do you know about it?"
"It come on a tramp-steamer--" began Sergeant Walpole.
"Hm. You're Sergeant Walpole. Mentioned in dispatches to-morrow,
Sergeant. You, sir?"
"Its weapon against our planes, sir," said the 'copter man precisely,
"is a radio beam carrying several thousand horsepower of energy. When it
hits iron, sir, the energy is absorbed and the iron heats up and blows
up the ship. The Wabbly's working with a bomber well aloft, sir, which
spots planes from below by picking up their spark-plug flashes in a
directional loop. The bomber aloft, sir, drops eggs when the Wabbly's
attacked. Sergeant Walpole reports several planes disabled by their
fabric being blown off their wings."
* * * * *
"I know," said the major-general. "Dammit, the front takes every ship
that's fit to go aloft. We have only wrecks back here. You're sure about
that spark-plug affair?"
"Yes, sir," said the 'copter pilot. "My ship crashed, sir. I started the
motors again, trying to take off. Eggs began to drop about me
instantly."
"Nasty!" said the major-general. "I was going to join my men. We've
flung a line of artillery ahead of the thing. Motor-driven, of course.
But if they can pick up motors by the spark-waves, the bomber knows all
about it. Nasty!"
He lit a cigar, calmly. The gyrocar shifted suddenly and backed away
from the thing it had been tangled in.
"Why ain't the bombers been shot down?" demanded Sergeant Walpole
angrily. "Dammit, sir, if it wasn't for them bombers--"
"Up to an hour ago," said the major-general, "we had lost sixty-eight
planes trying to get those bombers. You see, it works both ways. The
bombers drop eggs to help the Wabbly defend itself. And the Wabbly uses
that power-beam you spoke of to wipe the sky clean about the bombers. I
wondered how it was done, before you explained, sir. Do you men want to
come with me? Get on the running-board if you like. We shall probably be
killed."
The gyrocar purred softly away, with two horses left wandering and two
men clinging fast in a sweep of wind. They found a ribbon of concrete
road and the wind sang as the car picked up speed. Then, suddenly, it
bucked madly and went out of control, and, as suddenly, was passing
along the road again. The Wabbly had passed over the roadway here.
* * * * *
And then they heard gunfire ahead. Honest, malevolent gunfire. Flashes
lit the horizon. The gyrocar speeded up until it fairly hummed, and the
wind rushed into the nostrils and mouths of the men on the
running-boards. The cannonade increased. It reached really respectable
proportions, until it became a titanic din. As the road rose up a long
incline, a shell burst in mid-air in plain view, and the driver of the
gyrocar jammed on the brakes and looked down upon the strangest of
sights below.
There were other hills yet ahead, and from behind them came that faint,
indefinite glow which is the glow of the lights of a city. At the bottom
of a valley, a mile and a half distant, there was the Wabbly.
Star-shells flared near it, casting it into intolerable brightness and
clear relief. And other shells were breaking upon it and all about it.
From beyond the rim of hills came the flashes of guns. The air was full
of screamings and many crashes.
The Wabbly was motionless. It looked more than ever like a monstrous,
deadly centipede. It was under a rain of fire that would have shattered
a dreadnaught of the 1920's. Its monstrous treads were motionless. It
seemed queerly quiescent, abstracted; it seemed less defiant of the
shell-fire that broke upon it like the hail of hell, than indifferent to
it. Yes, it seemed indifferent!
Only the queer excrescence on its top moved, and that stirred vaguely.
Star-shells floated overhead and bathed it in pitiless light. And it
remained motionless.... Sergeant Walpole had a vague impression of
colossal detonations taking place miles above his head, but the sound
was lost in the drumfire of artillery nearer at hand.
* * * * *
Then a gun on the Wabbly moved. It spouted a flash of bluish flame, and
then another and another. It seemed to fire gas-shells into the town, at
this moment, ignoring the batteries playing upon it. It was still again,
while the queer excrescence on its back moved vaguely and shells burst
about it in a very inferno.
Then the treads moved, and with a swift celerity the Wabbly moved
smoothly forward and up the incline toward the cannonading guns. It went
over the top of the incline, and those in the gyrocar saw its reception.
Guns opened on it at point-blank range. Now the Wabbly itself went into
action. In the light of star-shells and explosions they saw its guns
begin to bellow. It went swiftly and malevolently forward, moving with
centipedean smoothness.
It dipped out of sight. The cannonade lessened. Two guns stopped.
Three.... Half a dozen guns were out of action. A dozen guns ceased to
fire.... One last weapon boomed desperately at its maximum rate of
fire....
That stopped. The night became strangely, terribly still. The
major-general put aside his radivision receiver. Though neither the
helicopter pilot nor Sergeant Walpole had noticed it, he had opened
communication the instant the gyrocar came to a stop. Now the
major-general was desperately, terribly white.
"The artillery is wiped out," he observed detachedly. "The Wabbly, it
seems, is going on into the town."
They did not want to listen, those men who waited futilely by the
gyrocar which had witnessed the invulnerability of the Wabbly to all
attack. They did not want to listen at all. But they heard the noises as
the Wabbly crashed across the town, and back and forth.
"Morale effect," said the major-general, through stiff lips. "That's
what it's for. To break down the morale behind the lines. Good God! What
hellish things mere words can mean!"