The Finger of Doom
As we crossed the Hudson River, a few miles north of the city, we
dropped several units of the Yellow Intelligence Division, with full
instrumental equipment. Their apparatus cases were nicely balanced at
only a few ounces weight each, and the men used their chute capes to
ease their drops.
We recrossed the river a little distance above and began dropping White
Intelligence units and a few long and short range gun units. Then we
held our position until we began to get reports. Gradually we ringed the
territory of the Sinsings, our observation units working busily and
patiently at their locators and scopes, both aloft and aground, until
Garlin finally turned to me with the remark:
"The map circle is complete now, Boss. We've got clear locations all the
way around them."
"Let me see it," I replied, and studied the illuminated viewplate map,
with its little overlapping circles of light that indicated spots proved
clear of the enemy by ultroscopic observation.
I nodded to Bill Hearn. "Go ahead now, Hearn," I said, "and place your
barrage men."
He spoke into his ultrophone, and three of the ships began to glide in a
wide ring around the enemy territory. Every few seconds, at the word
from his Unit Boss, a gunner would drop off the wire, and slipping the
clasp of his chute cape, drift down into the darkness below.
Bill formed two lines, parallel to and facing the river, and enclosing
the entire territory of the enemy between them. Above and below,
straddling the river, were two defensive lines. These latter were merely
to hold their positions. The others were to close in toward each other,
pushing a high-explosive barrage five miles ahead of them. When the two
barrages met, both lines were to switch to short-vision-range barrage
and continue to close in on any of the enemy who might have drifted
through the previous curtain of fire.
In the meantime Bill kept his reserves, a picked corps of a hundred men
(the same that had accompanied Hart and myself in our fight with the Han
squadron) in the air, divided about equally among the "kite-tails" of
four ships.
A final roll call, by units, companies, divisions and functions,
established the fact that all our forces were in position. No Han
activity was reported, and no Han broadcasts indicated any suspicion of
our expedition. Nor was there any indication that the Sinsings had any
knowledge of the fate in store for them. The idling of rep-ray
generators was reported from the center of their camp, obviously those
of the ships the Hans had given them--the price of their treason to
their race.
Again I gave the word, and Hearn passed on the order to his
subordinates.
Far below us, and several miles to the right and left, the two barrage
lines made their appearance. From the great height to which we had
risen, they appeared like lines of brilliant, winking lights, and the
detonations were muffled by the distances into a sort of rumbling,
distant thunder. Hearn and his assistants were very busy: measuring,
calculating, and snapping out ultrophone orders to unit commanders that
resulted in the straightening of lines and the closing of gaps in the
barrage.
The White Division Boss reported the utmost confusion in the Sinsing
organization. They were, as might be expected, an inefficient, loosely
disciplined gang, and repeated broadcasts for help to neighboring gangs.
Ignoring the fact that the Mongolians had not used explosives for many
generations, they nevertheless jumped at the conclusion that they were
being raided by the Hans. Their frantic broadcasts persisted in this
thought, despite the nervous electrophonic inquiries of the Hans
themselves, to whom the sound of the battle was evidently audible, and
who were trying to locate the trouble.
At this point, the swooper I had sent south toward the city went into
action as a diversion, to keep the Hans at home. Its "kite-tail" loaded
with long-range gunners, using the most highly explosive rockets we had,
hung invisible in the darkness of the sky and bombarded the city from a
distance of about five miles. With an entire city to shoot at, and the
object of creating as much commotion therein as possible, regardless of
actual damage, the gunners had no difficulty in hitting the mark. I
could see the glow of the city and the stabbing flashes of exploding
rockets. In the end, the Hans, uncertain as to what was going on, fell
back on a defensive policy, and shot their "hell cylinder," or wall of
upturned disintegrator rays into operation. That, of course, ended our
bombardment of them. The rays were a perfect defense, disintegrating our
rockets as they were reached.
If they had not sent out ships before turning on the rays, and if they
had none within sufficient radius already in the air, all would be well.
I queried Garlin on this, but he assured me Yellow Intelligence reported
no indications of Han ships nearer than 800 miles. This would probably
give us a free hand for a while, since most of their instruments
recorded only imperfectly or not at all, through the death wall.
Requisitioning one of the viewplates of the headquarters ship, and the
services of an expert operator, I instructed him to focus on our lines
below. I wanted a close-up of the men in action.
He began to manipulate his controls and chaotic shadows moved rapidly
across the plate, fading in and out of focus, until he reached an
adjustment that gave me a picture of the forest floor, apparently 100
feet wide, with the intervening branches and foliage of the trees
appearing like shadows that melted into reality a few feet above the
ground.
I watched one man setting up his long-gun with skillful speed. His lips
pursed slightly as though he were whistling, as he adjusted the tall
tripod on which the long tube was balanced. Swiftly he twirled the knobs
controlling the aim and elevation of his piece. Then, lifting a belt of
ammunition from the big box, which itself looked heavy enough to break
down the spindly tripod, he inserted the end of it in the lock of his
tube and touched the proper combination of buttons.
Then he stepped aside, and occupied himself with peering carefully
through the trees ahead. Not even a tremor shook the tube, but I knew
that at intervals of something less than a second, it was discharging
small projectiles which, traveling under their own continuously reduced
power, were arching into the air, to fall precisely five miles ahead and
explode with the force of eight-inch shells, such as we used in the
First World War.
Another gunner, fifty feet to the right of him, waved a hand and called
out something to him. Then, picking up his own tube and tripod, he
gauged the distance between the trees ahead of him, and the height of
their lowest branches, and bending forward a bit, flexed his muscles and
leaped lightly, some twenty-five feet. Another leap took him another
twenty feet or so, where he began to set up his piece.
I ordered my observer then to switch to the barrage itself. He got a
close focus on it, but this showed little except a continuous series of
blinding flashes, which, from the viewplate, lit up the entire interior
of the ship. An eight-hundred-foot focus proved better. I had thought
that some of our French and American artillery of the 20th Century had
achieved the ultimate in mathematical precision of fire, but I had never
seen anything to equal the accuracy of that line of terrific explosions
as it moved steadily forward, mowing down trees as a scythe cuts grass
(or used to 500 years ago), literally churning up the earth and the
splintered, blasted remains of the forest giants, to a depth of from ten
to twenty feet.
By now the two curtains of fire were nearing each other, lines of
vibrant, shimmering, continuous, brilliant destruction, inevitably
squeezing the panic-stricken Sinsings between them.
Even as I watched, a group of them, who had been making a futile effort
to get their three rep-ray machines into the air, abandoned their
efforts, and rushed forth into the milling mob.
I queried the Control Boss sharply on the futility of this attempt of
theirs, and learned that the Hans, apparently in doubt as to what was
going on, had continued to "play safe," and broken off their power
broadcast, after ordering all their own ships east of the Alleghenies to
the ground, for fear these ships they had traded to the Sinsings might
be used against them.
Again I turned to my viewplate, which was still focussed on the central
section of the Sinsing works. The confusion of the traitors was entirely
that of fear, for our barrage had not yet reached them.
Some of them set up their long-guns and fired at random over the barrage
line, then gave it up. They realized that they had no target to shoot
at, no way of knowing whether our gunners were a few hundred feet or
several miles beyond it.
Their ultrophone men, of whom they did not have many, stood around in
tense attitudes, their helmet phones strapped around their ears,
nervously fingering the tuning controls at their belts. Unquestionably
they must have located some of our frequencies, and overheard many of
our reports and orders. But they were confused and disorganized. If they
had an Ultrophone Boss they evidently were not reporting to him in an
organized way.
They were beginning to draw back now before our advancing fire. With
intermittent desperation, they began to shoot over our barrage again,
and the explosions of their rockets flashed at widely scattered points
beyond. A few took distance "pot shots."
Oddly enough it was our own forces that suffered the first casualties in
the battle. Some of these distance shots by chance registered hits,
while our men were under strict orders not to exceed their barrage
distances.
Seen upon the ultroscope viewplate, the battle looked as though it were
being fought in daylight, perhaps on a cloudy day, while the explosions
of the rockets appeared as flashes of extra brilliance.
The two barrage lines were not more than five hundred feet apart when
the Sinsings resorted to tactics we had not foreseen. We noticed first
that they began to lighten themselves by throwing away extra equipment.
A few of them in their excitement threw away too much, and shot suddenly
into the air. Then a scattering few floated up gently, followed by
increasing numbers, while still others, preserving a weight balance,
jumped toward the closing barrages and leaped high, hoping to clear
them. Some succeeded. We saw others blown about like leaves in a
windstorm, to crumple and drift slowly down, or else to fall into the
barrage, their belts blown from their bodies.
However, it was not part of our plan to allow a single one of them to
escape and find his way to the Hans. I quickly passed the word to Bill
Hearn to have the alternate men in his line raise their barrages and
heard him bark out a mathematical formula to the Unit Bosses.
We backed off our ships as the explosions climbed into the air in
stagger formation until they reached a height of three miles. I don't
believe any of the Sinsings who tried to float away to freedom
succeeded.
But we did know later, that a few who leaped the barrage got away and
ultimately reached Nu-yok.
It was those who managed to jump the barrage who gave us the most
trouble. With half of our long-guns turned aloft, I foresaw we would not
have enough to establish successive ground barrages and so ordered the
barrage back two miles, from which positions our "curtains" began to
close in again, this time, however, gauged to explode, not on contact,
but thirty feet in the air. This left little chance for the Sinsings to
leap either over or under it.
Gradually, the two barrages approached each other until they finally
met, and in the grey dawn the battle ended.
Our own casualties amounted to forty-seven men in the ground forces,
eighteen of whom had been slain in hand to hand fighting with the few of
the enemy who managed to reach our lines, and sixty-two in the crew and
"kite-tail" force of swooper No. 4, which had been located by one of
the enemy's ultroscopes and brought down with long-gun fire.
Since nearly every member of the Sinsing Gang had, so far as we knew,
been killed, we considered the raid a great success.
It had, however, a far greater significance than this. To all of us who
took part in the expedition, the effectiveness of our barrage tactics
definitely established a confidence in our ability to overcome the Hans.
As I pointed out to Wilma:
"It has been my belief all along, dear, that the American explosive
rocket is a far more efficient weapon than the disintegrator ray of the
Hans, once we can train all our gangs to use it systematically and in
co-ordinated fashion. As a weapon in the hands of a single individual,
shooting at a mark in direct line of vision, the rocket-gun is inferior
in destructive power to the dis ray, except as its range may be a little
greater. The trouble is that to date it has been used only as we used
our rifles and shot guns in the 20th Century. The possibilities of its
use as artillery, in laying barrages that advance along the ground, or
climb into the air, are tremendous.
"The dis ray inevitably reveals its source of emanation. The rocket gun
does not. The dis ray can reach its target only in a straight line. The
rocket may be made to travel in an arc, over intervening obstacles, to
an unseen target.
"Nor must we forget that our ultronists now are promising us a perfect
shield against the dis ray in inertron."
"I tremble though, Tony dear, when I think of the horrors that are ahead
of us. The Hans are clever. They will develop defenses against our new
tactics. And they are sure to mass against us not only the full force of
their power in America, but the united forces of the World Empire. They
are a cowardly race in one sense, but clever as the very Devils in Hell,
and inheritors of a calm, ruthless, vicious persistency."
"Nevertheless," I prophesied, "the Finger of Doom points squarely at
them today, and unless you and I are killed in the struggle, we shall
live to see America blast the Yellow Blight from the face of the Earth."
THE END.
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ August 1928.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note.
End of Project Gutenberg's Armageddon--2419 A.D., by Philip Francis Nowlan