"_They Shall Not Pass!_"
Prester Kleig's heartfelt desire, as the American flyers closed with the
first of the aero-subs, was to go out with them and aid them in the
attack against the Moyenites. But he knew, and it was a tacit thing,
that he best served his country from the safe haven of the Secret Room.
As he watched the scenes unfold on the screen of Maniel's genius, with
occasional glances at the somewhat mysterious but profound and
concentrated labors of Maniel, Charmion Kane rose from her place and
came to his side.
Wide-eyed as she watched the joining of battle, she stood there, her
tiny hand encased in the tense one of Prester Kleig.
"You would like to be out there," she murmured. "I know it! But your
country needs you here--and I have already given Carlos!"
Prester Kleig tightened his grip on her hand.
* * * * *
There was deep, silent understanding between these two, and Prester
Kleig, in fighting against the Moyenites, realized, even above his
realization that his labors were primarily for the benefit of his
country, that he really matched wits with Moyen for the sake of
Charmion. Had anyone asked him whether he would have sacrificed her for
the benefit of his country, it would have been a difficult question to
answer.
He was glad that the question was never asked.
"Yes, beloved," he whispered, "I would like to be out there, but the
greatest need for me is here."
But even so he felt as though he was betraying those intrepid flyers he
was sending to sure death. Yet they had volunteered, and it was the only
way.
Maniel, a gnomelike little man with a Titan's brain, labored with his
calculations, made swiftly concrete his theories, while at the
Sound-and-Vision apparatus excitable General Munson ranged the aerial
battlefield to see how the tide of battle ebbed and flowed.
That neither side would either ask or give quarter was instantly
apparent, for they rushed head-on to meet each other, those vast
opposing winged armadas, at top speed, and not a single individual
swerved from his course, though at least the Americans knew that death
rode the skyways ahead.
Then....
The battle was joined. Moyen's forces were superior in armament. Their
sky-steeds were faster, more readily maneuverable, though the flying
forces of the Americas in the last five years had made vast strides in
aviation. But what the Americans lacked in power they made up for in
fearless courage.
* * * * *
The plan of battle seemed automatically to work itself out.
The first vanguard of American planes came into contact with the forces
of Moyen, and from the noses of countless aero-subs spurted that golden
streak which the Secret Agents knew and dreaded.
The first flight of planes, stretching from horizon to horizon, vanished
from the sky with that dreadful surety which had marked the passing of
the _Stellar_, and such of those warships as had felt the full force of
the visible ray.
From General Munson rose a groan of anguish. These convertible fighting
planes had been the pride of the heart of the old warrior. To do him
credit, however, it was the wanton, so terribly inevitable destruction
of the flyers themselves which affected him. It was so final, so
absolute--and so utterly impossible to combat.
"Wait!" snapped Prester Kleig.
For the intrepid flyers behind that vanguard which had vanished had
witnessed the wholesale disintegration of the leading element of the
vast armada, and the pilots realized on the instant that no headlong
rush into the very noses of the aero-subs would avail anything.
The vast American formation broke into a mad maelstrom of whirling,
darting, diving planes. Every third plane plummeted downward, every
second one climbed, and the remaining ships, even in the face of what
had happened to the vanished first flight, held steadily to the front.
In this mad, seemingly meaningless formation, they closed on the
aero-subs. Without having seen the fight, the Americans were aping the
action of that one nameless flyer who had charged the aero-sub that had
been destroyed.
* * * * *
Kleig remembered. A score of ships had been destroyed utterly above the
graveyard of dreadnoughts, yet only one aero-sub, and that quite by
chance, had been marked off in the casualty column.
Death rode the heavens as the American flyers went into action. For
head-on fights, flyers went in at top speed, their planes whirling on
the axes of fuselages, all guns going. Planes were armored against their
own bullets, and they were not under the necessity of watching to see
that they did not slay their own friends.
Even so, bullets were rather ineffective against the aero-subs, whose
apparently flimsy, almost transparent outer covering diverted the
bullets with amazing ease.
A whirling maelstrom of ships. The monsters of Moyen had drawn first
blood, if the expression may be used in an action where no blood at all
was drawn, but machines and men simply erased from existence.
Hundreds of planes already gone when the second flight of ships closed
with the aero-subs. Yellow streaks of death flashed from aero-sub
nostrils, but even as aero-sub operators set their rays into motion the
American flyers in head-on charge rolled, dived or zoomed, and kept
their guns going.
High above the first flight of aero-subs, behind which another flight
was winging swiftly into action, American flyers tilted the noses of
their planes over and dived under full power--to sure death by suicide,
though none knew it there at the moment.
* * * * *
These aero-subs could not be driven from the sky by usual means, and
could destroy American ships even before those planes could come to
handgrips; but they, the flyers plainly believed, could be crashed out
of the sky and so, never guessing what besides death in resulting
crashes they faced, the flyers above the aero-subs, even as aero-subs in
rear flashed in to prevent, dived down straight at the backs of the
aero-subs.
In a hundred places the dives of the Americans worked successfully, and
American planes crashed full and true, full power on, into the backs of
the "flying fish." In some aero-subs the container of the Moyen-dealing
agency apparently remained untouched, and airplanes and aero-subs,
welded together, plunged down the invisible skylanes into the sea.
Under water, some of the aero-subs were seen to keep in motion, limping
toward the nearest mother submarines.
"I hope," said Prester Kleig, "the American flyers in such cases are
already dead, for Moyen will be a maniac in his tortures. Munson, do you
hurriedly examine the mother-subs and see if you can locate Moyen."
* * * * *
However, only a scattered aero-sub here and there went down without the
strange substance of the yellow ray being released. In most cases, upon
the contact of plane with aero-sub, the aero-subs and planes were
instantly blotted from view by the yellow, golden flames from the heart
of the winged harbingers of Moyen.
Golden flames, blinding in their brightness, dropping down, mere
shapeless blotches, then fading out to nothingness in a matter of
seconds--with aero-sub and airplane totally erased from action and from
existence.
The American flyers saw and knew now the manner of death they faced. Yet
all along the battle front not an American tried to evade the issue and
draw out of the fight. A sublime, inspiring exhibition of mass courage
which had not been witnessed down the years since that general
engagement which men of the time had called the Great War.
Prester Kleig turned to look at Maniel. Drops of perspiration bathed the
cheeks of the master scientist, but his eyes were glowing like coals of
fire. His face was set in a white mask of concentration, and Prester
Kleig knew that Maniel would find the answer to the thing he sought if
such answer could be found.
Would the American flyers be able to hold off the minions of Moyen until
Maniel was ready? The fight out there above the waters was a terrible
thing, and the Americans fought and died like men inspired, yet
inexorably the winged armada of Moyen, preceded by those licking golden
tongues, was moving landward.
"Great God!" cried Munson. "Look!"
* * * * *
There was really no need for the order, for every Secret Agent saw as
soon as did Munson. Under the sea, just off the coast, the mother-subs
had touched their blunt nose against the upward shelving of the sea
bottom--had touched bottom, and were slowly but surely following the
underwater curve of the land, up toward the surface, like unbelievable
antediluvian monsters out of some nightmare.
"Yes," said Kleig quietly, "those monsters of Moyen can move on land,
and the aero-subs can operate from them as easily on land as under
water."
Kleig regarded the time, whirled to look at Professor Maniel.
One hour and forty minutes had passed since Maniel had begged for two
hours in which to prepare some mode of effectively combatting the might
of Moyen. Twenty minutes to go; yet the mother-subs would be ashore,
dragging their sweating, monstrous sides out of the deep, within ten
minutes!
Ten minutes ashore and there was no guessing the havoc they could cause
to the United Americas!
"Hurry, Maniel! Hurry! Hurry!" said Prester Kleig.
But he spoke the words to himself, though even had he spoken them aloud
Maniel would not have heard. For Maniel, for two hours, had closed his
mind to everything that transpired outside his own thoughts, devoted to
foiling the power of Moyen.
"I've found him!" snapped Munson.
* * * * *
He pointed with a shaking forefinger to one of the mother-subs crawling
up the slant of the ocean bed, twisted one of the little nubs of the
Sound-and-Vision apparatus, and the angelic face and Satanic eyes, the
twisted body, of Moyen came into view.
The face was calm with dreadful purpose, and Moyen stood in the heart of
one of his monsters, his eyes turned toward the land. With a gasp of
terror, dreadfully afraid for the first time, Prester Kleig turned and
looked into the eyes of Charmion....
"No," she said. "It will never happen. I have faith in you!"
There were still ten minutes of the two hours left when the mother-subs
broke water and started crawling inland, swiftly, surely, without
faltering in the slightest as they changed their element from water to
land.
As though their appearance had been the signal, the aero-subs in action
against the first line of American planes broke out of the one-sided
fight and dived for their mother ships, while a mere handful of the
American planes started back for home to prepare anew to continue the
struggle.
Prester Kleig gave the signal to the second monster armada which had
remained in reserve.
"Do everything in your power to halt the march of Moyen's amphibians!"
Ten minutes to go, and Professor Maniel still labored like a Titan.