THE RESCUING ARMY
I stood gaping, every sense within me shuddering at that soundless
scene of ruin and death. And then it came upon me that now I could
escape. Brutar had turned triumphantly to his underlings. I heard his
voice: "The first success! Now let us try the others!"
No one seemed to be noticing me. I turned and swept myself away into
the darkness....
I was aware of the grey outlines of New York floating by above me.... A
dim idea was in my mind that I must rejoin Will and Thone....
Out there beneath the Westchester hills the silent mob of Brutar's
ghostly followers still waited. Near them was the main body of his
army, inactive, waiting here while he with his chosen few were
experimenting upon New York!
Experimenting! This little experimental test, and it had brought down
the Woolworth Building! What then would they do with a general attack?
I passed around the mob--silent, fleeing spectres--and sped again into
darkness. With no conscious thought of passing time, or direction to my
flight. Yet there must have been some instinct to guide me. The thought
of Bee came strong. A growing triumph, a relief, told me I was nearing
her; and I think now that it was her thought of me which guided my
flight.
Darkness. But overhead lay the shadows of my own world. Winding grey
hills; towns that lay like grey, colorless pictures in a book, queerly
distorted as I looked, upward and through them....
Shadows like myself were advancing from the gloom in front of me! A
little group; behind them a vague sweep of shapes stretching out to
seem a throng, a multitude. Thone! Will and Bee--with the rescuing army
of the Big-City behind them!
The rescuing army....
* * * * *
There came upon me with that meeting a great surging knowledge of my
love for Bee. My love, born up there in my own world. And then, in the
realm of the Egos, stripped of the physical, a changed love which had
faded to a vague affection--a knowledge that she was dear to me, but
nothing more.
Now--in the Borderland once more, at least of half-material substance,
a very human love descended in a torrent. My arms went around her.
"Bee, my darling." And she responded to my caresses, kissing me with an
eagerness, a longing undisguised. "Rob! I've been so frightened, not
having you--" Murmured then that she loved me; and clung to me.... The
threshold of our own world.
But it was no time for love-making. I told Thone and Will what was
transpiring, what already had come to pass, down there in New York. And
with them we presently swept forward to the rescue.
Thone's army was at least as large as Brutar's; and it was not, like
his, burdened by those who could not fight. In orderly array it
advanced, and soon ahead of us we saw the shapes of Brutar's forces.
Strange ghostly battle into which now we plunged! I did not, could not
fully understand it at the time--but now I think I do. The very essence
of it a physical inactivity. Fighting! The word to our Earthly minds is
so full of movement! Yet a man battling with himself, pitting the good
against the evil within himself, may sit in his easy chair and fight a
fierce fight.
So it was here; unleashed forces of the mind, grappling silently--a
struggle without rules of combat in which no quarter could be given,
and which could only end by complete annihilation of one side or the
other. I knew all this, and standing with Bee, Thone and Will on a dark
eminence above the scene, I watched, breathlessly.
We were under that same little Westchester town. Its streets and
houses lay shadowy above us. Ghostly people were up there--thronging
the streets--gazing down with fear and awe at these flowing masses of
ghosts advancing to battle.
The mob of Brutar's followers, frightened now, were huddled compactly.
In area, they spread under perhaps half the village. And around them in
a great concentric ring, Brutar's fighters massed. This movement Thone
did not disturb.
"Let them," he said. "It's what I wish, to have them massed like that."
From our eminence--we were poised not very far beneath the ground
level--we could see over the whole area of the battle which was
proceeding below us. The central mob who could not fight; the ring of
Brutar's soldiers; and surrounding that, at a distance of some five
hundred feet, another ring, Thone's fighters who now were massing to
the attack.
"What will they do?" I murmured. But no one answered me, and soon I
was answered by the scene itself. From both sides--Thone's army and
Brutar's--little waves of the Thought-substance were flowing out over
that segment between the opposing rings. Like slow-floating wisps of
grey smoke from the heads of the fighters. Flowing across the space
between the lines. Materializing steadily. Solidifying until I could
almost imagine it might become a grey wall. But this was an illusion.
It was merely thought-antagonistic which would grip and hold like a
net, no more.
The two opposing streams met in the center of that circular No-man's
land between the lines. A chaos of blurred formless color was there.
Not grey now. An angry red. The visible substances holding each other
immovable. A boiling cauldron of red, with livid, lurid tongues like
flame darting from it.
No sound. But I could feel it. A mental distress, as even at this
distance its influence swept me. An uneasiness; a depression; a vague
sense within me of a growing panic.
It seemed a deadlock. And then began movement; strategic movement.
From one portion of his line Thone suddenly withdrew a number of
his thinkers. They came sweeping around to our side. With this
reinforcement we became stronger over here, and the red chaos surged
inward. I saw it flow almost to engulf the crouching Brutar fighters
who were here opposing it. Saw a few of them fall--ghostly shells lying
inert--and above them a something luminous, the Ego-mind deranged,
unhinged, hovering, then winging away into death....
A shape hurriedly approached us; a man with harried, anxious face.
"Thone! We are too weak now upon the other side. The Red Death is
almost upon us there! They want the thinkers back."
Thone ordered them back. He turned to me. "We will win, Rob."
But I could not see it so.
"Look!" He gestured. "There is a haze above the red. It passes
inward--can't you see that? And they cannot stop it. They have not been
trained, for they do not know what it is."
Above the red seething ring, where the opposing thoughts were meeting,
I saw as he said, a haze. It seemed a dim purple. It was floating
up and inward. Very tenuous, hardly to be noticed. An imponderable
something.
Thone said, "A quality of our thought which they cannot combat since
they do not know what it is--or realize perhaps its presence. But its
influence will reach them in time."
He swung upon the attentive shapes near us. "Ohl--give orders not to
hasten. Hold the deadlock. Keep them there. Do not hasten. We must
drive up the others if we can. Brutar and the others--"
Brutar! His few picked men down there in New York working death and
destruction! I had forgotten them completely. Thone issued other
orders. "If thoughts of distress come from here--let the thoughts out.
They may reach Brutar--bring him back to help his battle here. Let out
their thoughts that way." He gestured toward New York. "And if we drive
Brutar and his men up here, let them in."
Other orders. A hundred or two of our fighters withdrew from the line.
One here and there, ceasing to fight, coming toward Thone, forming
behind us. A picked force with which we were to descend into New York.
And soon, leaving the scene here, we sped under the grey shadows of
Westchester, southward toward the city. And in time, came upon it. New
York! Splendid giant. Like some great helpless lion standing harried.
Cuffed, wounded, stricken. Unable to fight back. Amazed, bewildered,
yet undaunted, ready to fight.
But helpless.