THE HEART OF THE STORM.
Rain drummed on the roof and clattered on the windows. Wind shrieked
outside the little stone building. A mountain-flank had protected it
from the blast of air that Had blown all the day before, and the storm
that raged during the night was merely a gale such as uproots trees and
sinks ships at sea. But it was uncomfortable to listen to, with thunder
making the tumult of a bombardment.
The smoke of Schaaf's pipe floated about the room. The loud-speaker had
been turned off, Hines turned it on with an air of impatience.
"The lieutenant's been gone a long time. Do you suppose he was blown
away?"
Schaaf grunted.
"Of course not, Hines. He is a smart young man. He got to his tank, and
he has been gifing orders by radio to der other tanks that were left
behind when der bridge gafe way. Breston will see that there is a cat
at efery mouse-hole, in a little while."
"Preston probably has more than the six you marked down," said Hines
shortly, "but we have eleven tanks."
He was worried, though. Abominably worried. All but four of the
tank-force had been left behind early in the night, when one tank was
destroyed as a bridge gave way under it. Those land-warships had now
been ordered, separately, to make wide detours and somehow get to the
six spots Schaaf had indicated.
They would approach the stations from which Preston was transmitting
his darkness-waves. If the station did not cease to transmit, the
tank could ride it down and crush it, or bomb it with heavy bombs and
destroy it utterly.
Preston had undoubtedly planned to alternate in the use of his
transmitters for the precise purpose of preventing their location. But
if every station he had ready to transmit had a tank waiting to pounce
upon it--It was exactly like the posting of a cat at every mouse-hole.
If the mouse showed his head--if a known station emitted the waves that
produced the opacity of the air--the tank would pounce. But Hines was
worried. Preston was clever.
"I am thinking, Hines," said Schaaf placidly, "that it should be near
sunrise. I go and look."
For the third time he unfastened and opened a screen. For the third
time a seemingly solid mass of blackness stabbed into the room. Schaaf
disappeared into the tangible darkness. The noises of the outer air
were suddenly magnified as he opened a window.
And the outer noises were changing markedly. Rain still fell and
thunder still boomed. But the rain diminished. The drops became fewer
and less regular. Then the thunder dwindled.
The listeners in the laboratory realized that a steady, even wind was
blowing. It was a strong wind when they first noticed it. It gave forth
a low hum whose pitch rose in minutes. It became a scream, and then
a whistle that grew more and more shrill until human ears could not
detect it. And then a steady, regular roaring noise took its place. It
was the wind of the Storm That Had to be Stopped. On the second day of
the Storm it rose much more rapidly than on the first.
Hines and Kathryn looked at each other. Kathryn was pale, but she
smiled at Hines.
"We've got to get out to the tank!" he said harshly.
Schaaf popped magically out of the blackness.
"Of all der double-barreled imbeciles!" he said bitterly. "We haff to
reach der tank, and it is impossible! Der wind already is as strong as
it was at its worst yesterday. Nobody could liff in it a second! Der
laboratory nearly went yesterday! It will not stand another half hour
if der wind increases!"
* * * * *
The wind did increase. Shielded though the laboratory was by a
mountain-flank, and thick stone as its walls were, the beams that
upheld the roof began to creak. The walls quivered. Plaster fell from
the ceiling. Windows burst outward, suddenly, and all light and movable
things leaped toward them and vanished. Hines seized Kathryn and bore
her to the mountainward side of the laboratory.
"We haff," said Schaaf calmly, "maybe fife minutes. Maybe less. I
am sorry as der deffil, Hines, that we did not get that _verdammt_
Breston."
Then there was a vibration which seemed to shake the very flooring. And
suddenly a wall reeled and caved in, and a section of roof tore out.
Then, quite incredibly, the monstrous beak of a tank thrust its way
delicately into the laboratory and stopped. A door slid aside and the
tank-officer stood beckoning in the opening.
"I figured it was the only thing to do," he shouted above the wind-roar
as they struggled inside the tank. "The wind's unbelievable outside,
and if you were kept from blowing away, you'd strangle."
"As der poet says," observed Schaaf calmly, "you said a libraryfull.
What do we do now?"
"I've been getting reports from the other tanks," said the officer
cheerfully. "Three of them have reached position. They know they're
within a quarter of a mile of a darkness-transmitter, but each time it
has turned off. The others are going on. We'll carry out the rest of
the plan. All ready?"
The tank lurched backward. The laboratory collapsed, and instantly
there was a savage bombardment by the wind. Beams, sections of roofs,
stones, articles of furniture--everything the wind could wrench from
the shattered building it flung with maniacal fury upon the tank.
The metal monster shuddered and clanged and reeled, and then turned
about and slid on downhill with a ponderous clanking of its mighty
treads. But the noise of the wind sounded even above the internal
roaring of the tank's machinery.
There were hootings, unbelievably faint, and the tank-officer shook his
head. He spoke curtly into a speaking-tube, and turned apologetically
to Hines.
"Sound-signals are useless, sir. We are having to use radio again.
We'll have quite a time of it anyhow. Better find seats of some sort.
Or you can come up in the control-room."
The control-room was a tiny cubby-hole. There was room for the man who
steered the cumbersome war-engine, and normally there was bare space
for the commander of the tank. Now Hines squeezed in between them
for the second time, and there was only the light of the dimly-lit
instrument-board and a curious fuzzy appearance about the vision-slits
where the darkness came a little way into the tank's metal interior.
"Six of the tanks are going to their posts. The other four are
following us," said the officer in Hines's ear. "We're going to try to
keep hundred-yard intervals, but we're all blind."
And the tank went crawling on.
* * * * *
The instruments gave their varying indications. The wind roared
without. In the dead blackness the air had assumed not only the
appearance but the solidity of a substance. It pressed upon the
forty-ton tank with such force that even the monstrous engine was edged
steadily to one side.
The line of tanks, crawling through blackness, was following a concrete
road by map and the feel of the treads.
There was no one in the tanks who did not think in shuddering horror
of what the blinded monsters might be doing as they lurched and swayed
across a place that had been inhabited. There might be people yet
living who would be crushed beneath the tanks' broad treads.
But they went on. Their destination was a spot which Hines had chosen.
The located transmitters of darkness formed an irregular circle,
and Hines guessed that the form was not an accident. And if it were
intentional, and if the transmitters were governed by remote control,
then sheer efficiency would dictate that the controlling spot should be
in the center of the circle. If anywhere, Preston would be at a spot
nearly equidistant from all his transmitters.
Hines watched the vision-slits of the control-room. They were narrow
slits in a bullet-proof steel wall. Wind came in them so fiercely
that it stung exploring fingers. And the darkness crept in. The
walls near the vision-slits looked fuzzy on the side nearest the
darkness-transmitter then in action. A man outside could have taken the
station-bearing accurately, while this method was rough at best; and no
man could live outside now.
Hines craned his neck suddenly to look behind. The blurry little bands
of darkness had vanished before him. Now they reappeared at the back of
the control-room.
Hines clutched at the tank-officer's arm.
"A transmitter, behind us!" he barked in the officer's ear. "Have that
last tank turn back and try to smash it!"
A snapped order went down the speaking-tube. The trailing tank
turned about. Its steersman had but little to do save keep a certain
disgusting fuzzy appearance at vision-slits exactly before him. The
tank went blundering into heaps of still-standing masonry where the
town had been. It surmounted or destroyed them. It careened and
teetered upon the edge of a cellar, plunged boldly into it, crashed
blindly to the other side and reared upward clumsily to crawl out.
The officer in command of the trailing tank saw that the fuzziness had
vanished from the control-slits ahead. It had reappeared behind. As
near as this, even the roughest of observations would serve. He yelled
an order down below. A monstrous, misshapen egg went rolling down from
the back of the tank. The monster went blundering on.
Thirty seconds, forty. There was a concussion which drowned out even
the roar of the storm. Vast fragments of masonry struck the tank.
Suddenly there was a light outside the vision-slits. There had been a
transmitter of darkness in the destroyed town. Deep in a sub-cellar,
evidently, and sending out darkness from a buried a rial. Two hundred
pounds of TNT had gone off above it. The transmitter might be
destroyed, or it might be merely jammed. But for a space, there was
light.
Those in the tank could see that there was a valley all about, and
hill-sides rearing up on either hand. Except for the inevitable motion
of objects past the tank, and four slug-like monsters crawling up a
ribbon of concrete road, the tank-officer's main impression was that of
utter deadness and lack of motion.
Wind blew upon his own machine with an unbearable, terrible force, but
there was no sign of movement outside. There was no dust, no flying
débris; there were no clouds. The wind blew with an awful force which
had already demolished all things that could be destroyed, and now it
kept up a horrible steady pressure that held all things immovable.
The sun shone down from a brazen sky, giving forth no heat, and wind
blew and blew and blew.
Utter blackness fell again. Another transmitter of darkness had taken
up the work of the one destroyed. And the wandering tank swung about
and went crawling after the others on the now-blotted out concrete road.