THE ATTACK.
"Halt! Who goes there?"
The challenge rang sharply on the night air, outside a small gate in the
barricade of the Monck Aviation Grounds.
"Liberty!" answered Gabriel, pausing as he gave the password.
"All right, come on," said a vague figure at the gate. The little group
approached. The gate opened. Silently they entered the enclosure.
Another man stepped from a hangar. In his hand he held an electric
flash, which he threw upon the newcomers, one by one.
"Right!" he commented, and took Gabriel by the hand. "This way!"
Ten minutes later, all of them were in the air, save only Gabriel, who
insisted on staying till his entire squad had made a clean getaway. Then
he too rose; and now in a long, swift line, the fighting squadron
straightened away to north-eastward, on the twenty-mile run to Niagara.
The night was foggy, chill and dark. All the aviators had instructions
to fly not less than 2,500 feet high, to keep a careful lookout lest
they collide, and to steer by the lights of the great Air Trust plant.
For, misty though the heavens were, still Gabriel could see the dim glow
of the tremendous aerial search-lights dominating Goat Island--lights
of 5,000,000 candle-power, maintained by current from the Falls,
incessantly sweeping the sky on the lookout for just such perils as now,
indeed, were drawing near.
Momently, as he flew, Gabriel perceived these huge lights growing
brighter, through the mist, and apprehension won upon him.
"Incredibly strong!" he muttered to himself, as he glanced from his
barometer to the shining fog ahead. "Even though the mist will be
thicker over the Falls than anywhere else, there's a good possibility
they may pierce it and pick us up--and _then_, look out for their
'planes and swift, fighting dirigibles!"
He rotated the rising-plane, and now soared to 2,800 feet. Below and on
either side of him, nothing but tenuous fog. Ahead, the
swiftly-approaching fan of radiance, white, dazzling, beautiful, that
seemed to gush from earth so far below and to the eastward. Already the
thunders of the Falls were audible.
"Where are the others?" Gabriel wondered, his thoughts seeming to hum
and roar in his head, in harmony with the shuddering diapason of the
muffler-deadened exhaust. "No way of telling, now. Each man for
himself--and each to do his best!"
And then his thoughts reverted to Catherine; and round his heart a
sudden yearning seemed to strengthen his stern, indomitable
resolve--"Victory or death!"
But now there was scant time for thought. The moment of action was
already close at hand. Far below there, hidden by night and dark and
mist, Gabriel knew a hundred thousand comrades, of the Fighting
Sections, were lying hidden, waiting for the signal to advance.
"And it's time, now!" he said aloud, thrilled by a wondrous sense of
vast responsibility--a sense that on this moment hung the fate of the
world. "It's time for the signal. Now then, up and at them!"
Taking the rocket--a powerful affair, capable of casting an intense,
calcium light--he touched the fuse to a bit of smouldering punk fastened
in a metal cup at his right hand. Then, as it flared, he launched the
rocket far into the void.
Below, came a quick spurt of radiance, in a long, vivid streak that shot
away with incredible rapidity. Gabriel followed it a moment, with his
gaze, then smiled.
"The Rubicon is crossed," said he. "The gates of the Temple of Janus are
open wide--and now comes War!"
He rose again, skimming to a still higher altitude as the glare of the
great Works drew closer and closer underneath. The wind roared in his
ears, louder than the whirling propellers. The whole fabric of the
aeroplane quivered as it climbed, up, up above the rushing, bellowing
cataract.
"Where are the others?" thought he, and reached for a thanatos
projectile, in the rack near the metal cup where the punk still
glowered.
All at once, a glare of light burst upward through the white-glowing
mist; and the 'plane reeled with the air-wave, as now a thunderous
concussion boomed across the empty spaces of the sky.
At the same moment, a faint, ripping noise mounted to Gabriel--a sound
for all the world like the tearing of stout canvas. Then followed a
chattering racket, something like distant mowing-machines at work; and
now all blent to a steady, determined uproar. Gabriel almost thought to
hear, as he launched his own projectile, far sounds as of the shouts and
cries of men; but of this he could not make sure.
"They're at it, anyhow!" he exulted. "At it, at last! By the way our men
have launched the attack, the first explosion must have breached a wall!
God! What wouldn't I give to be down there, in the thick of it, rather
than here! I--"
_Crash_!
Again a spouting geyser of light and uproar burst into mid-air.
"That was _my_ thanatos speaking!" cried Gabriel. "Now for another!"
Before he could drop it, as he circled round and round, directly over
the great, flailing beams of the Air Trust search-lights, a third
detonation shattered the heavens, nearly unseating him. Up sprang the
roar, with wonderful intensity, reflected from the earth as from a giant
sounding-board. And Gabriel noted, with keen satisfaction, that one of
the huge light-beams had gone dark.
"Put out _one_ of them, anyway, so far!" thought he, and swung again to
westward, and once more dropped a messenger of death to tyranny.
Now the bombardment became general. Trust aerial-gun projectiles began
bursting all about. Every second or two, terrible concussions leaped
toward the zenith; and the earth, hidden somewhere down there below the
fog-blanket, seemed flaming upward like a huge volcano. One by one the
search-lights, whipping the sky, went black; and now the glow of them
was fast diminishing, only to be replaced by a ruddier and more
intermittent glare.
"The plant's burning, at last," thought Gabriel. "Heaven grant the fire
may spread to the oxygen-tanks! If we can only get _those_--!"
Again he launched a projectile, and again he circled over the doomed
plant.
A swift black shape swooped by him. He had just time to exchange a yell
of warning, when it was gone. The near peril gripped his heart, but did
not shake it.
"Close call!" said he.
If that machine and his had met, good-bye forever! But after all, the
danger of collision in mid-air, or of being struck by a projectile from
some other machine, above, was no greater than his comrades on the
ground were facing. Not so great, perhaps. Many a one would meet his
death from the aerial attack. In a war like this, a thousand perils
threatened. Gabriel only hoped that Hargreaves, down below there, could
hold them back, away, till the walls should have been destroyed.
Circling, ever circling, now hearing some echoes of the earth-battle,
some grenade-volleys and rapid-fire clattering, now deafened and all but
blinded by the vast, up-belching explosions of the thanatos projectiles,
Gabriel flew among the drifting mists and vapors. Still was he guided by
one or two search-lights; but most of these were gone, now. Yet the
glare of the conflagration, below, was luridly shuddering through the
fog, painting it all a dull and awful red.
Red! Suddenly words came into Gabriel's mind--the words of his own poem:
... Red as blood, red as blood! The blood of the shattered miner,
Blood of the boy in the rifle pits, blood of the coughing child-slave,
Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the Carpenter shed!
"For your sake! For the world's sake, this!" he cried, and hurled
another thanatos. "If ever war of liberation was holy, this is that
war!"
Suddenly, through all the turmoil of shattering explosions, tossing
air-currents and drifting, acrid smoke, he became conscious of a sudden,
swift-flying pursuer.
By the light of the burning Plant, down there somewhere in the vapors of
the thunderous Falls, he saw a hawk-like 'plane that swooped toward him
with incredible velocity, savage and lean and black.
Off to the right, a sudden spattering of shots in mid-air told him the
battle in the sky was likewise being engaged. He saw vague, veiled
explosions, there, then a swift, falling trail of flame. A pang shot
through his heart. Had one of his companions fallen and been dashed to
death? He could not tell--he had no time to wonder, even, for already
the attacker was upon him, the swift Air Trust _épervier,_ one of the
dreaded air-fleet of the world-monopoly!
Gabriel had just time to swerve from the attack, and swoop
aloft--dropping his next to last projectile as he did so--when the
whirling shape zoomed past, swung round and once more charged. He saw,
vaguely, two men sat in it. One was the pilot, a "Gray" or Cosmos
mercenary. The other--could it be? Yes, there was no mistaking! The
other was Slade himself, commander of the hireling army of Plutocracy!
Out from the attacking 'plane jetted sadden spurts of fire. Gabriel
heard the zip-zip-zip of bullets; heard a ripping tear, as one of his
canvas wings was punctured--God help him, had that explosive bullet
struck a wire or a stay!
Then, maddened to despair; and burning with fierce rage against this
monster of the upper air that now was hurling death at him, he once more
"banked," brought his machine sharp round, and charged, full drive, at
the attacker!
This tactic for a second must have disconcerted the Air Trust
mercenaries. Gabriel's speed was terrific. With stupefying suddenness,
the _épervier_ loomed up ahead of him.
"Now!" he shouted. "Take this, from me!"
Half rising from his seat, he hurled his last remaining projectile full
at Slade, then wrenched his own 'plane off sharply to the left.
A thunderous concussion and a dazzling burst of light told him his
chance shot had been effective.
He got a second's vision of a shattered black mass, a tangle of girders,
wires, collapsed planes, that seemed to hang a moment in midair--of
whirling bodies--of wreckage indescribable. Then the broken debris
plunged with awful speed and vanished through the red-glowing mist.
Even as he shuddered, sickened at the terrible, though necessary deed,
the deed which alone could save him from swift death, an overwhelming
air-wave from the terrible explosion struck his speeding machine, the
machine captured in the Great Smokies from the Air Trust itself.
It heeled over like an unballasted yacht under the lash of a hurricane.
Vainly Gabriel jerked at wheel and levers; he could not right it.
As it seemed to come under control, a stay snapped. The 'plane swooped,
yawned forward and stuck its nose into an air-hole, caused by the vast,
uprising smoke and heat of the huge conflagration beneath.
Then, lost and beyond all guidance, it somersaulted, slid away down a
long drop and, whirling wildly over and over, plunged with Gabriel into
the glowing, smoking, detonating void!