The Earth-Tube (25 page)

Pushing through the little knot of persons near the entrance, King and Diane made swiftly and directly for the protecting curb. Almost it appeared that they would reach it unmolested. But even as they began to cross the last bare space before the curbing, two police rushed out at them. They raised a detaining shout.

“Come on,” said Diane, her voice tense. “Let’s run for it!”

The curb was about five feet high, and more than twice as broad at the top. As they reached it King saw one of the police draw his pistol. With a quick motion the American aimed the weapon which he had taken from the Mui Salvo and fired it point-blank. A tremendous burst of blinding light followed. Where the police had stood there was instantly nothing.

But from all around there went up an enraged shout. The slaves and their drivers, the guards of all the chamber, and the thousands of bystanders had recognized King at last as an American, despite the disguise, and Diane as a chosen woman who was thus desecrating herself by walking with a forbidden man.

There was no time to lose. King helped Diane up the curb and followed her. Hastily she attached herself to him with the strong silk strips she had brought with her. The wind was roaring upward from the earth with a velocity of hundreds of miles an hour. Leaping into it would be almost like jumping against a tree at such a speed. But if they succeeded in being caught up, they would most certainly be borne up out of the city of Tiplis, as a shell is carried out of a gun.

There was no means of telling, in that moment, whether or not they had arrived in time. whether the air-blast was still cool enough to receive them with safety, or whether it would roast them instantly as they leaped.

“It is our only chance,” shouted Diane, signifying that she was ready.

King cast off his black cloak, and glanced once more at the huge, gleaming metal room, the dome overhead, and at the menacing crowd which was closing in rapidly. It was leap or be annihilated by the pistols of the Asians.

“Are you afraid?” he asked Diane.

She shook her head. Their lips met in a last kiss. Drawing his breath, King thrust himself outward powerfully into the air-jet, in the manner of a swimmer. Diane, as he leaped, took hold of him firmly to aid the silken lashings with which she had bound herself. They struck the rushing, upward blast, clinging together.

They did not hear the great shout which went up from ten thousand Asian throats. They heard nothing, nor could they tell, so terrific was the impact of that gushing wind, whether they were borne upward and out or cast back into the Asian room or plunged downward, despite the blast, into the molten pit which led to Tanlis and the approaching car.

CHAPTER VII

OUT OF THE SEA

I

DR. SCOTT struck savagely upon the mocking gate of gleaming undulal, which like the lid of a great and sleeping eye was closed and firm against invasion from the sea. Six planes of a rescue party bobbed upon the water a few hundred yards away, their powerful searchlights playing on the spot before the sea-gate of Tiplis, where a dozen men were congregated. They had come to save King Henderson from whatever fate had assailed him in the metal city, and now were baffled to find that there was no way to enter it. With flashlights and beacons they had gone all around the wall, and only one orifice had they found which was open. the hole in the top.

It was now only a little more than an hour until midnight. All day they had wandered near the island, surveying and investigating it. In the afternoon they had beat with hammers upon the metal gate, seeking to attract the attention of the Asians within, to take them by surprise if they opened the gate.

But nothing happened. The hammers clanged im-potently upon the metal surface; the gate did not move. No Asian head appeared to shoot at; no voice replied to all the shouts which left the American throats. The sun had fallen westward and settled into the sea. The night had come, but still the vigil had kept up, aided by the searchlights of the giant aircraft of the rescue fleet. Awed still by the tremendous forces which the Asians had harnessed to their use, the Americans had at length heard the earth-car coming, bellowing its approach through the great metal mouth above, jetting its blast of expelled wind into the sky.

“It looks,” said Dr. Scott at length, “as if it were hopeless. If he’s still in there, he’s lost as far as we are concerned.”

The others nodded assent. They had drawn boats up along the shore. They were getting into them for a return to the waiting seaplanes when one of the younger men, a technical expert in the Government employ, uttered a sharp exclamation. His sensitive, short-range radio receiver had begun to emit signals for aid. Adjusting it quickly, he stared about him at the assembled members of the rescue party.

“Signals for help,” he declared. “They seem to be coming from the air overhead! Certainly they are not localized in the metal city.”

The darkness was complete, save where the white beams of the airplane lights cut through it. There was a sense of stirring and mighty power in the night and in the little island underfoot. The air was dank with vapors which had come from God knows where. It was an eerie thing, receiving signals for aid out of the empty sky.

Dr. Scott questioned the expert impatiently. “Send out queries for more information,” he suggested. “Find out who wants help and where they are!”

The other men scattered along the narrow shore, tuning their instruments, noting the angles of direction from which the calls were coming. In a moment one of them, acting as a runner, came to Dr. Scott. “Sir,” he said, “the calls are coming from what appears to be a falling body, or a body in the sea, about two or three miles or more distant. They purport to be from Henderson.”

“Henderson!”

“Perhaps it’s a trick of the enemy,” suggested the expert.

Dr. Scott pondered this new phenomenon. If King were captive in the metal city he would try at any cost to escape, he reasoned. Yet how could any man escape when the mighty door, the only entrance, was as tightly closed as if the solid wall had joined it in a permanent embrace?

The earth-car, its mutterings underneath the sea growing steadily louder, still heralded its approach. The soft rushing sound, which first had signaled that the air in the earth-tube was on the move, had now become an overpowering roar. The air-blast. the air-blast! Dr. Scott recalled how it had looked that first day he had seen the dome of metal through the clouds. The air-blast then had had the power to tear the clouds apart. On the afternoon before it had even snatched a plane out of the sky, and rended it to pieces.

“The air-blast!” The exclamation escaped Dr. Scott as his mind hit upon the solution of the puzzle.

“He has escaped through the top of the shield!” he shouted. “Now he’s in the air, falling and calling for help. Locate him, you men, and get to your ships!”

The little motor boats put out quickly for the waiting airplanes, scuttling across the water with a vibrant sound while the technicians vainly tried again to pick up the signals which had announced King’s escape. One cried out in excitement shortly before the seaplanes were reached. He had picked up another call for help, he said. But he was mistaken. The signal died with a miserable sputter in his ear. The calls had ceased.

“Quickly! He is already in the water,” Dr. Scott shouted.

There was a roar of great motors; the giant mechanical birds rose in the air, their searchlights boring through the steamy darkness this way and that, playing on the restless heaving of the sea. Deployed over a broad front, they combed the surface of the water with their beams, but found only darkness and the shifting waves, which lapped up mockingly.

Dr. Scott, his glass pressed to his eyes, followed anxiously the efforts to locate the sender of the signals for help. Shouting his orders to the commander of the fleet, he directed the search.

The airplanes circled a great way off the island, on the down-wind side, but found nothing to reward their efforts. “I’m afraid we have missed him,” said Dr. Scott at length. “By no means could he have drifted as far as this.”

Even as he spoke, the plane farthest to the right signaled that an object had been sighted in the water.

Circling low, the technicians let down a long hook and scooped it from the sea. It was the water-soaked remnant of the parachute, torn and discarded. The cords which bound it to the wearer had been cut as with a knife.

“He is swimming, then,” said Dr. Scott. “He can’t be far. We’ll circle here and concentrate our lights.”

The center plane swung about in a gentle curve, and leading the group, began to retrace the route toward the island. As it came again into the wind, a great shout went up on board. The light, probing the wet atmosphere, had touched with a delicate finger two bobbing objects in the water, all but invisible in the murk. In a moment three more beams were playing on the spot, while the command plane settled into the water as near the struggling swimmers as it dared. The motor boat put out, and in a few minutes King and Diane, more dead than alive, were hauled aboard. Diane was laughing and crying by turns, hysterically. King was bruised and weak.

As quickly as it had alighted, the great plane arose from the water. Signaling to the others that all was well, it drove off through the wet night toward North America, with the eager fleet, in echelon, behind.

II

Dr. Scott was in the plane which carried the rescued pair. There was also a man who understood a little about medicine. Without delay they hustled King and Diane into two airy cabins, and with the aid of such advice as they could get, gave treatment for shock and immersion.

“They’ll have to rest,” the attendant warned the scientist. “No talking now for several hours!”

“For several hours!” exclaimed Dr. Scott. “Why man, I’ve got to talk to King. “

The medical man barred the way.

“You can’t,” he said. “At least not until morning. They’ll be taken care of; you needn’t worry about that. But you must let them alone.”

The planes flew northward all night long, driving into the darkness over the tropical countries while Dr. Scott, through the radio, acquainted the President and the rest of America with the success of his trip. When the sunrise came the aged scientist was at King’s door. He found the younger man already awake and ready to talk about his experiences.

Dr. Scott embraced King like a father. “My boy, my boy, we thought you were gone,” he said.

King smiled wearily; the strain of the escape was still upon him.

“How is Diane?” he asked. “Is she being cared for?”

“She’ll be all right,” returned Dr. Scott. “The doctor reported to me only half an hour ago. You’ll both be well as ever after a few more hours.”

He was so overjoyed at King’s return that he had not asked whether or not the young scientist had succeeded in his mission. But King did not forget. As soon as he had assured himself that Diane was being properly cared for, he went with Dr. Scott into the main cabin of the ship, where the two men talked of the invasion.

“Naturally, I have had no news since I left,” King said. “Have they moved far northward?”

Dr. Scott nodded gloomily. “The last three days have been particularly bad,” he said. “We dug a channel across the Isthmus, which was sufficient to stop the advance of their tanks for two days. The country went wild with celebrations; the President announced that the invasion had stopped. All of North America was like a madhouse. whistles, shouting, dancing in the streets, fireworks. And in the midst of it came the ruinous news that the Asians, like industrious earthworms, had burrowed under the new Isthmian canal with some new digging machine, and that their tanks were again on the march.

“As we were leaving day before yesterday in these fast planes to try to make a rescue, it was reported that the tanks were already closing in upon Mexico City. No longer do they find even the show of resistance. The country is in a furore. all the crowd emotions of terror have been following each other for days through the population of North America. Now the stream of deserters and refugees, seeking haven in Europe, has begun to pour eastward to New York and other parts. The ships cannot carry them away as fast as they apply. Into the holds they go like cattle or stowed about upon the decks or in the cargo-spaces. America, they say, is doomed, for these monstrous tanks, running with automobile speed and as impregnable as the side of a mountain, are winging northward, day and night to capture and enslave the continent.”

“But have you been unable to allay their fears with new promises? Have you worked out nothing in the laboratory which bears even the promise of success against the invaders?”

“Nothing, King. nothing. And, furthermore, the Americans can never again be deluded by promises, The Secretary of War, who is at present suspended, and the President have worn out that avenue of safety. If you say to an American to-day. ‘We have a new invention which will stop the Asians,’ he will laugh at you as people once laughed at patent devices for perpetual motion.”

“What about the banks, the financial systems of the country, and industry?”

“They have been hurt, of course. But business men have so far shown their faith in the ultimate success of the Government; the banks are strong and well organized, and industry, though working under the greatest difficulties, seems still to be on its feet.”

“Well, then,” said King, “if we can get factories to make the devices I have already drawn up plans for, in my mind, we will destroy the Asians.”

When Diane came upon them half an hour later, in the luxurious flying cabin, she found both men engrossed in detailed plans for the defense. The face of Dr. Scott was hopeful and happy. King was visibly excited as he drew diagrams upon a sheet of paper before him.

Seeing Diane, both men rose.

“North America, thanks to your help, is as good as saved,” said Dr. Scott.

“The Asians have many resources,” replied Diane quietly. “No one wants their defeat more than I, and for that reason I wish you to be warned. Undulal is not the limit, even though it is the mainstay, of their offensive. If you succeed in combating undulal, then look out for other weapons!”