_Golden Oblivion_
"This," said Prester Kleig, as coldly precise as a judge pronouncing
sentence of death, "will precipitate the major engagement with Moyen's
forces. The fools, to rush in like this, when they have been warned! But
even so, they are magnificent!"
The pilots of the aero-subs must instantly have noticed the return of
the American pilots, for some of the aero-subs which had dropped to the
ocean's surface rose again almost instantly, and swept into battle
formation above the drifting hulks of the warships.
The Americans were wary. They drew together like frightened chickens
when a hawk hovers above them, and watched the activities of the
aero-subs, every move of each one being at the same time visible and
audible to the Secret Agents in the Capitol's Secret Room.
The aero-subs which had submerged singled out their particular prey
among the floating ships, and the Secret Agents, trying to see how each
separate act of destruction was accomplished, watched the aero-sub in
the foreground, which happened to be concentrating on the dreadnought
which had led the ghost-march of the warships out to sea.
* * * * *
The aero-sub circled the swaying dreadnought as a shark circles a wreck,
and through the walls of the aero-sub the watchers in the Secret Room
could see the four-man crew of the thing. Grim faced men, men of the
Orient they plainly were, coldly concentrating on the work in hand.
Their faces were those of men who are merciless, even brutal, with
neither heart nor compassion of any kind for weaker ones. One man
maneuvered the aero-sub, while the other three concentrated on the
apparatus in the nose of the hybrid vessel.
"See," spoke Prester Kleig again, "if you can tell what manner of ray
they use, and how it is projected. That's your province, General
Munson!"
From the particular Secret Agent named, who was expert for war in the
membership of the Secret Room, came a short grunt of affirmation. A few
murmured words.
"I'll be able to tell more about it when I see how they operate when
they are flying. That black streak under water ... well, I must see it
out of the water, and then...."
But here General Munson ended, for the aero-sub which they were
especially watching had got into action against the dreadnought.
The aero-sub was motionless and submerged just off the port bow of the
dreadnought. The three men inside the aero-sub were working swiftly and
efficiently with the complicated but minute machinery in the nose of
their transport.
"It can be controlled, then, this ray," said Munson, interrupting
himself. "Watch!"
* * * * *
From the nose of the aero-sub leaped, like a streak of black lightning,
that ebon agency of death. It struck the prow of the battleship--and the
prow, as far aft as the well-deck, simply vanished from sight,
disintegrated! It was as though it had never been, and for a second, so
swiftly had it happened, the water of the ocean held the impression that
portion of the warship had made--as an explosive leaves a crater in the
soil of earth!
Then a drumming roar as the sea rushed in to claim its own. The roaring,
as of a Niagara, as the waters claimed the ship, rushing down
passageways into the hold, possessing the warship with all the
invincible, speedy might of the sea.
Mingled with this roaring was the shivering, vibratory sound which
Prester Kleig had experienced in his half-dream. The sound was so
intense that it fairly rocked the Secret Room to its furthermost cranny.
For a second the dreadnought, wounded to death, seemed to shudder, to
hesitate, then to move backward as though wincing from her death blow.
It was the pound of the inrushing waters which did it. Then up came the
stern of the mighty ship, as she started her last long plunge into the
depths.
But attention had swung to another warship, on the starboard beam of
which another aero-sub had taken up position. Again the ebon streak of
death from her blunt nose, smashing in and through the warship, directly
amidships, cutting her in twain as though the black streak had been a
pair of shears, the warship a strip of tissue paper.
Up went the prow and the stern of this one, and together, the water
separating the two parts as it rushed into the gap, the broken warship
went down to its final resting place.
* * * * *
Abruptly Professor Maniel swung back to the American planes which had
come back to investigate the activities of the aero-subs, and on the
screen, in the midst of the battle formation into which the pilots had
swept to hurriedly, the Secret Agents could see the faces of those
pilots....
White as chalk with fear, mouths open in gasping unbelief. One man, a
pale-faced youth, was the first to recover. He stared around at his
compatriots, and plainly through the sound apparatus in the Secret Room
came his swift radio signals.
"Attack! Who will follow me against these people?"
His signals were very plain. So, too, were the answers of the other
pilots, and the heart of Prester Kleig swelled with pride as he listened
to the answering signals--and counted them, discovered that every last
pilot there present elected to stay with this youngster, to avenge their
country for this contemptuous insult which had been put upon her by the
rape of Hampton Roads.
Into swift formation they swept, and with these planes--all planes in
use were required by franchise of operating companies to be equipped for
the emergencies of war--swung into an echelon formation, the youthful
pilot leading by mutual consent.
They swept at full speed toward the warships, four of which had by this
time been sent to destruction--one of which had appeared to vanish
utterly in the space of a single heartbeat, so quickly that for a second
or two the shape of its bilge, the bulge of its keel, was visible in the
face of the deep--and openly challenged the aero-subs.
* * * * *
Muzzles of compressed air guns projected from the wing-tips of the
planes. Buttons were pressed which elevated the muzzles of guns arranged
to fire upward from either side the fighting pits, twin guns that were
fired downward from the same central magazine--the only guns in use in
the Americas which fired in opposite directions at the same time.
But for a few moments the aero-subs refused combat. Their speed was
terrific, dazzling. They eluded the thrusts, the dives and plunges of
the American ships as easily as a swallow eludes the dive of a buzzard.
It came to Prester Kleig, however, that the aero-subs were merely
playing with the Americans; that when they elected to move, the planes
would be blasted from the sky as easily as the warships were being
erased from the surface of the Atlantic.
One by one, as methodically as machines, the aero-sub pilots blasted the
warships into nothingness. They had their orders, and they went about
their performance with a rigidity of discipline which astounded the
Secret Agents. They had been ordered to destroy the warships, and they
were doing that first--would go on to completion of this task, no matter
how many American planes buzzed about their ears.
But one by one as the warships sank, the aero-subs which had either sunk
or erased them made the surface and leaped into space with a snapping
back of wings that was horribly businesslike as to sound, and climbed up
to take part in the fight against the American planes, which must
inevitably come.
* * * * *
The last warship, cut squarely in two from stem to stern along her
center, as though split thus by a bolt of lightning, fell apart like
pieces of cake, and splashed down, sinking away while the spume of her
disintegration rolled back from her fallen sides in white-crested waves.
"It exemplifies the policies of Moyen," said Prester Kleig, "for his
conquest of the world is a conquest of destruction."
The last aero-sub took to the sky, and the Americans rushed into battle
with fine disregard for what they knew must be certain death. They were
not fools, exactly, and they had seen, but not understood, the manner in
which those gallant old hounds of the sea had been erased from
existence.
But in they went, plunging squarely into the heart of the aero-subs'
leading formation, which formation consisted of three aero-subs, flying
a wing and wing formation.
The young American signaled with upraised hand, and the American pilots
made their first move. Every plane started rolling, at dazzling speed,
on the axis of its fuselage, while bullets spewed from the guns that
fired through the propellers.
Bullets smashed into the leading aero-subs, with no apparent effect,
though for a second it seemed that the central aero-sub of the leading
formation hesitated for a moment in flight.
Then, swift as had that black streak flashed from the nose of aero-subs
submerged, a streak darted from the nose of the central aero-sub, and
glistened in the sun like molten gold!
* * * * *
It touched the youngster who had called for volunteers for his attack
against this strange enemy. It touched his plane--and the plane vanished
instantly, while for a fraction of a second the pilot was visible in his
place, in the posture of sitting, hand on a row of buttons which did not
exist, head forward slightly as he aimed guns that had vanished.
Then the pilot, still living, apparently unhurt, plunged down eight
thousand feet to the sea. The water geysered up as he struck, then
closed over the spot, and the gallant American youngster had become the
first victim in battle of the monsters of Moyen.
Victim of a slender lancet of what seemed to be golden lightning.
"He could have killed the pilot aloft there," came quietly from Munson,
"but he chose to pull his plane away from around him! Their control of
the ray is miraculous!"
As though to confirm the statement of Munson, the leading aero-sub
struck again, a second plane. The plane vanished, but from the spot
where it had flown, not even a bit of metal or of man sufficiently large
to be seen by the delicate recording instruments of Maniel dropped out
of the sky.
The ray of gold was a ray of oblivion if the minions of Moyen willed.