_Wings of To-morrow_
As Prester Kleig climbed into the enclosed passenger pit of the
monoplane--a Mayther--his ears seemed literally to be ringing with the
drumming, mighty voice of Moyen. But now that voice, instead of merely
speaking, rang with sardonic laughter. He had never heard the laughter
of Moyen, but he could guess how it would sound.
That airplane of the slanted wings, the bulbous, almost bulletlike
fuselage, what of it? It was simple, as Kleig looked back at his
memoried glimpse of it. The submarine was a metal fish made with human
hands; the airplane aped the birds. The strange ship which had caused
the destruction of the _Stellar_, was a combination fish and bird--which
merely aped nature a bit further, as anyone who had ever traversed
tropical waters would have instantly recognized.
But what did it portend? What ghastly terrors of Moyen roamed the deeps
of the Atlantic, of the Pacific, the oceans of the world? How close
were some of these to the United States?
The pale eyes of Moyen, he was sure, were already turned toward the
West.
* * * * *
Prester Kleig sighed as he seated himself beside Carlos Kane. Then Kane
pressed one of the myriad of buttons on the dash, and Kleig lifted his
eyes to peer through the skylight, to where that single press of a
button had set in motion the intricate machinery of the helicopter.
A four-bladed fan lifted on a slender pedestal, sufficiently high above
the surface of the wing for the vanes to be free of the central
propeller. Then, automatically, the vanes became invisible, and the
Mayther lifted from the sandy beach as lightly, and far more straightly,
than any bird.
As the ship climbed away for the skies, and through the transparent
floor the beach and the Atlantic fell away below the ship, a sigh of
relief escaped Kleig. This was living! Up here one was free, if only for
a moment, and the swift wind of flight brushed all cobwebs from the
tired human brain. He watched the slender needle of the altimeter, as it
moved around the face of the dial as steadily as the hands of a clock,
around to thirty thousand, thirty-five, forty.
Then Carlos Kane, every movement as effortless as the flight of the
silvery winged Mayther, thrust forth his hand to the dash again, pressed
another button. Instantly the propellers vanished into a blur as the
vanes of the helicopter dropped down the slender staff and the vanes
themselves fitted snugly into their appointed notches atop the wing.
* * * * *
For a second Carlos Kane glanced at the tiny map to the right of the
dash, and set his course. It was a matter of moments only, but while
Kane worked, Prester Kleig studied the instruments on the dash, for it
had been months since he had flown, save for his recent half-dreamlike
experience. There was a button which released the mechanism of the
deadly guns, fired by compressed air, all operated from the noiseless
motor, whose muzzles exactly cleared the tips of Mayther's wings, two
guns to each wing, one on the entering edge, one on the trailing edge,
fitted snugly into the adamant rigging.
Four guns which could fire to right or left, twin streams of lead, the
number of rounds governed only by the carrying power of the Mayther.
Prester Kleig knew them all: the guns in the wings, the guns which fired
through the three propellers, and the guns set two and two in the
fuselage, to right and left of the pits, which could be fixed either up
or down--all by the mere pressing of buttons. It was marvelous,
miraculous, yet even as Kleig told himself that this was so, he felt,
deep in the heart of him, that Moyen knew all about ships like these,
and regarded them as the toys of children.
Kane touched Kleig on the shoulder, signaling, indicating that the
atmosphere in the pits had been regulated to their new height, and that
they could remove their helmets and oxygen tanks without danger.
* * * * *
With a sigh Prester Kleig sat back, and the two friends turned to face
each other.
"You certainly look done in, Kleig," said Kane sympathetically. "You
must have been through hell, and then some. Tell me about this Moyen;
that is, if you think you care to talk about him."
"Talk about him!" repeated Kleig. "Talk about him? It will be a relief!
There has been nothing, and nobody, on my mind save Moyen for weary
months on end. If I don't talk to someone about him, I'll go mad, if I'm
not mad already. Moyen? A monster with the face of an angel! What else
can one say about him? A devil and a saint, a brute whose followers
would go with him into hell's fire, and sing him hosannas as they were
consumed in agony! The greatest mob psychologist the world has ever
seen. He's a genius, Kane, and unless something is done, the Western
world, all the world, is doomed to sit at the feet, listen to the
commands, of Moyen!
"He isn't an Oriental; he isn't a European; he isn't negroid or Indian;
but there is something about him that makes one thing of all of these,
singly and collectively. His body is twisted and grotesque, and when one
looks at his face, one feels a desire to touch him, to swear eternal
fealty to him--until one looks into his pale eyes, eyes almost milky in
their paleness--and gets the merest hint of the thoughts which actuate
him. If he has a failing I did not find it. He does not drink,
gamble...."
"And women?" queried Kane, softly.
* * * * *
Kleig was madly in love with the sister of Kane, Charmion, and this
thing touched him nearest the heart, because Charmion was one of her
country's most famous beauties, about whom Moyen must already have
heard.
"Women?" repeated Kleig musingly, his black eyes troubled, haunted. "I
scarcely know. He has no love for women, only because he has no capacity
for any love save self-love. But when I think of him in this connection
I seem to see Moyen, grown to monster proportions, sitting on a mighty
throne, with nude women groveling at his feet, bathed in tears, their
long hair in mantles of sorrow, hiding their shamed faces! That sounds
wild, doesn't it? But it's the picture I get of Moyen when I think of
Moyen and of women. Many women will love him, and have, perhaps. But
while he has taken many, though I am only guessing here, he has given
_himself_ to none. Another thing: His followers--well, he sets no limits
to the lusts of his men, requiring only that every soldier be fit for
duty, with a body strong for hardship. You understand?"
Kane understood; and his face was very pale.
"Yes," he said, his voice almost a whisper, "I understand, and as you
speak of this man I seem to see a city in ruins, and hordes of men
marching, bloodstained men entering houses ... from which, immediately
afterward, come the screams of women ... terror-stricken women...."
He shuddered and could not go on for the very horror of the vision that
had come to him.
But Kleig stared at him as though he saw a ghost.
"Great God, Carl!" he gasped. "The same identical picture has been in my
mind, not once but a thousand times! I wonder...."
Was it an omen of the future for the West?
Deep in his soul Prester Kleig fancied he could hear the sardonic
laughter of the half-god, Moyen.
* * * * *
A tiny bell rang inside the dash, behind the instruments. Kane had set
direction finders, had pressed the button which signaled the
Washington-control Station of the National Radio, thus automatically
indicating the exact spot above land, by grid-coordinates, where the
Mayther should start down for the landing.
An hour later they landed on the flat roof of the new Capitol Building,
sinking lightly to rest as a feather, nursed to a gentle landing by the
whirring vanes of the helicopter.
Prester Kleig, surrounded by uniformed guards who tried to shield him
from the gaze of news-gatherers crowded there on the roof-top, hurried
him to the stairway leading into the executive chambers, and through
these to the Secret Chamber which only a few men knew, and into which
not even Carlos Kane could follow Prester Kleig--yet.
But one man, one news-gatherer, had caught a glimpse of the face of
Kleig, and already he raced for the radio tower of his organization, to
blazon to the Western world the fact that Kleig had come back.