CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The palm-dotted island fell silently away. Ahead lay the blue channel; to the right the open sea. To George the flight--the first of any duration he had taken--was exhilarating. It was soundless; the absence of any rush of air against him made it totally unlike flying in a plane. He seemed to be wafting forward as though the air were his native element.

Loto was just ahead of him. Behind him came the army, maintaining its arc-like formation. A little in front, and at a slightly lower level, were the two squads of girls. They were all slim, graceful creatures, most of them under twenty. The black gauze--loose trousers and blouse--showed the white of their limbs beneath. Their heads were bound in deep-red rubber cloth, tight over the forehead and tied in back with flowing ends. With cylinders extended from the left hand they slid gracefully forward through the air.

Though George felt no rush of air, he found he could not talk to Loto, even though no more than twenty feet separated them. The rushing wind between them tore away the words.

Soon they were over the channel. The girls were drifting much lower now. Loto darted down a few feet; then as though he had changed his mind, he came up again. He reached for a mouthpiece that dangled under his chin and fitted it to his lips. His voice, magnified to a stentorian roar, rolled out.

"_Azeela! Dee! Come higher! You must not go so low!_"

Obediently the two girls rose to the higher level, their little squads following them. When they were over the mouth of the channel, George saw Toroh's barges--tiny dark smudges on the water some miles up the coast and a mile or so off shore. His heart leaped, began pounding in spite of his efforts to quiet it.

Following Loto he swept diagonally upward and forward. Presently he could count six barges. They were tremendous things, crowded with men and dogs and mechanical apparatus. Spread over each was a huge caging of flashing silver metal. One barge was some distance in the lead; the others straggled out irregularly behind it for about a mile. All the Noth vessels were being drawn slowly through the water by ranks of harnessed dogs.

Loto momentarily shut off his cylinder; his speed was slackening. George overtook him, put an arm on his shoulder. The nearest of the barges was now less than a mile ahead.

An upward flash from the leading barge was followed in a few seconds by a crack of thunder. The bolt dissipated harmlessly into the air. But obviously it was powerful, with an effective range of two thousand feet--twice that of the Anglese defense.

Toroh's plan now became apparent. He would batter the Anglese coast projectors while still beyond reach of them, and then make his landing. The cages over the barges were for protection from the smaller thunderbolts of the attacking aerial army.

George knew the cages were only partially effective. A bolt was difficult to aim, but it did queer things when it struck. From a short distance--a hundred feet or less--the barges could be set on fire and sunk. Their thin metal hulls were not protected. They could be pierced. The wooden super-structure could be fired; the swimming dogs struck and killed.

In hurried whispers Loto was constantly talking with Fahn back in the cavern. The Scientist's orders he repeated with his electrically magnified voice that could be heard easily by every one of the little aerial army.

For a time they circled about, above the barges, but keeping well beyond the two-thousand foot range. Against the blue of the sky their figures must have shown plainly to the Noths. Occasionally a bolt would flash up, but they were harmless at that distance. And the barges pushed steadily forward.

At last Fahn decided the moment for attack had arrived. Loto repeated the order. George's division and Mogruud's separated from the rest. One hundred turned seaward, the others toward land. They dropped swiftly; straight down, like divers, heavily laden with lead, dropping through water. And then a darting, twisting swarm of insects--from every side at once they attacked the leading barge.

In the depths of the cavern at Anglese City, Fahn sat in his room of mirrors. A metal band about his head held a receiver to his ear. A black mouthpiece hung against his chest and by lowering his head he could bring his lips to it. Rogers was at his side. The mirrors in every part of the room were lighted, giving the viewpoints of the coast towers near the mouth of the channel. In several of the mirrored scenes, over the distant water and in the air, black specks were visible; the enemy and Fahn's army above them.

But these were not the vital crystal mirrors. A small one--a foot square perhaps--stood on the table before Fahn. He and Rogers were gazing into it intently. The mirror was connected with a tiny lens strapped to Loto's forehead; it gave Loto's viewpoint of the battle, showed the scene exactly as Loto saw it.

Fahn was silent; a stern, anxious old man, with all his science around him, sitting in seclusion to direct this warfare upon which the fate of his people depended. Occasionally he would murmur something to Rogers, and the other man would speak into a mouthpiece--an order for the operator of the broadcasted aerial voices, controlled from another part of the cavern. Then throughout the island, cheering words to the Bas would resound, news of the progress of the battle. But Fahn's gaze never wavered from the little mirror.

George's and Mogruud's divisions descended upon the leading barge. The barge spat forth its bolts, but it could discharge only one or two against a hundred of the tiny ones from its attackers. Looking down, from Loto's viewpoint overhead, the barge was assailed on every side by the pencils of electrical flame. Figures dropped, inert, into the water; others, wounded, wavered upward. The wire cage over the barge was sizzling and crackling; the swimming dogs, a dozen or more of them, crumpled in the water and were dragged forward in their harness by the others.

The engagement had lasted no more than a minute when the air about the barge was suddenly plunged into blackness. Everything down there was blotted out--a patch of solid ink on the sea. The Noth vessel had exploded a bomb whose etheric vibration absorbed all light over a radius of five hundred feet.

Fahn smiled grimly. The darkness there would pass presently. His own leaders, Loto, George, Mogruud and the two girls, had the same equipment. Each of them could discharge such a bomb; a puff of darkness, cloaking everything around them in temporary invisibility.

Fahn heard his own orders roared by Loto. The attacking figures came up. But there were not two hundred of them now: about twenty lay down there in the water; a dozen more were wounded; a few were moving slowly homeward through the air.

The darkness still hung around the attacked Noth vessel. But it was thinning out; now the vague outlines of the barge could be seen. Within a minute the dark patch was gone. One end of the barge was blazing, but the Noths were extinguishing the flames. Other figures were cutting loose the dead dogs in the water, while new dogs were leaping overboard to take their places.

The attacked barge presently moved onward; slowly, inexorably, they were all coming down the coast. They were no more than a mile or two now from the estuary of the channel-mouth.

Three times more Fahn ordered a division down at the same barge. The Noth tactics were repeated. The barge discharged a few of its bolts and then enveloped itself in blackness--an absence of light that even the thunderbolts could not illumine.

These brief engagements were largely a matter of individual action. Warfare was new to the Anglese, but they were learning. The huge bolts from the barge could not parallel the water level for long; inevitably they turned downward to discharge themselves. Close to the water the attackers were comparatively safe.

When the Anglese came up after these attacks and reformed themselves in orderly array, there were only ten more of their number missing. But it was fifty in all, and a score of wounded.

The attacked barge was blazing end to end. Its crowded deck was a turmoil of figures. They were plunging overboard--men and dogs--to avoid the flames. In a moment the barge tilted upward at its stern. Its torn bow was admitting the water; it slid downward, hissing, and disappeared beneath the surface. Figures bobbed up from the swirl, inert, charred figures; others among them, still alive, swam about in aimless confusion.

One barge! But there were five more. And these others had all pushed forward until now they were almost down to the channel. Fahn realized that there were five hundred Noths and as many dogs crowded into each of them. They could take to the water while they were still beyond range of his coast projectors and come forward individually, each man mounted upon his swimming dog. The coast defense could strike down no more than a few of them if they came in that fashion. Twenty-five hundred men and their giant brutes, landing on the island.

Azeela and Dee were hovering close to Loto; they were asking their father's permission to try a new plan. The battle could not be maintained as it was going; the hand thunderbolt globes held but ten charges each, and the equipment of each individual was only three globes. A third of the thunderbolts were already exhausted in sinking one barge.

Fahn's expression did not change; only the grip of his fingers as he clenched them and the rising muscles under his thin cheeks betokened his emotion. His voice was steady, grim as always, when he ordered his daughters to their desperate venture.

Azeela and Dee, with their twenty-six comrades, selected the barge that had replaced the leader. In a closely knit group they hovered above it. Thunderbolts shot up, but could not reach them. The girls aimed a pure-white beam of light downward--twenty-six tiny rays blending into one. Rogers, bending over Fahn to gaze into the little mirror, was amazed. Unlike any beam of light he had ever seen, this one was curved; It descended in a slightly bent bow, ending at the barge.

Fahn whispered a swift explanation to Rogers. To the Noths, looking upward along the beam, it would not appear curved, but straight. The figures of the girls, by an optical illusion, would be seen, not where they actually were, but to one side.

The girls held their curved ray steady. And plunging down the beam, following its slightly curved path, were the figures of Azeela and Dee.

The Noths saw them coming; a dozen bolts leaped into the air, one upon the other, but they flashed harmlessly to one side of their mark.

Within twenty seconds the two girls were close to the barge; yellow-red spurts of flame leaped from their weapons--flame that could be hurled thirty feet but no farther. It enveloped the barge with licking, seething, burning liquid gases that withered everything they touched. A puff of darkness, which the retreating girls had left behind them, blotted out the scene. An instant later Azeela and Dee emerged from the darkness, safe. The shaft of light from the girls above was extinguished as the two rose to join them.

When light shone again around the barge, it was sinking. Soon the swirling water held nothing but black, twisted figures.

The maneuver could not be repeated successfully. From the other barges the Noths would have seen the curved beam, understood it and made allowances for it. Azeela and Dee, triumphant and flushed with their success, pleaded to try it again, but Fahn would not let them.

The afternoon was waning; the western sky was red and overhead clouds were gathering. And then Fahn ordered a general attack on all the barges.

The sun had set; the twilight deepened into night--a night of flashing lights, crackling, artificial thunder, spurts of lurid flame and the hissing of fire against water. At intervals, rockets came up; bursting, they cast a blue-white glare that for the space of a minute clearly outlined the menacing, darting figures for the Noths.

The atmospheric disturbance of the past hours suddenly brought forth an electrical storm. Nature, more powerful than man, shot forth her own bolts to add to the din. They were, in character, very different from the harnessed, man-made lightning; forked, jagged, crackling with their nearness, they leaped downward out of the low-hanging clouds.

The storm was as brief as it was severe. It swept away and the moon rose, blood-red, casting its lurid light over the water.

Another Noth vessel had been sunk. There were only three barges left afloat, and they were in distress. Many of their swimming dogs lay dead in harness. Aboard all three of them, figures were fighting the flames. They clustered in a group near the center of the channel.

Loto had withdrawn his forces, reduced now to half their original number. With ammunition almost exhausted, they hovered out of range above their adversaries. The wounded were still straggling back through the air; a few of them had already arrived at the cavern.

Again Fahn ordered his army down. It would be the last attempt.

In the cavern room, Fahn had not moved from his seat for hours. Often he could not see the battle plainly, for Loto, disobeying orders, had many times cast himself into the thick of it.

But now Loto was aloft; by the moonlight and the glare of the rockets and bombs, Fahn saw that another Noth vessel had appeared--a very small barge. It was close to shore, coming swiftly forward and little objects of gleaming silver were mounting from it. One after the other they came sailing up.

Fahn rasped an order; Loto's voice roared it out. The men and girls who were descending to the attack halted, circling about, wondering what had happened.

The first of the white objects came sailing slowly horizontally across the channel. It seemed to be a whirling white disc some foot or two in diameter.

Loto was still some distance away from it when a group of girls passed between him and the disc. The thing seemed to turn toward them. One of the girls became confused; it struck her and she fell. The disc, its rotation halted, fell also. Loto saw then what it was: broad, thin, crossed blades of steel, inclined to each other like the blades of a propeller. It had risen up and sustained itself in the air by rotation. Loto remembered the defeat of the flying thunderbolt platforms which Fahn had sent northward to Toroh's encampment. These whirling knives were what had destroyed them!

The newly arrived barge was now sending up, in every direction, a slow but steady stream of the whirling knives. They seemed so easy to avoid that the aerial army at first paid them little heed. Loto's warning from Fahn rang out, but it came almost too late. The knives sought out the figures in the air. They began falling--cut, mangled by the whirling blades. There was confusion. The army mounted higher, but other knives had been sent straight upward and were floating down. Uncannily, they seemed to single out their victims.

Fahn understood now. This was the weapon Toroh had procured from that time-world of the past. These whirling knives were strangely, powerfully magnetized; they followed the human bodies passing near them, seeking contact.

The Scientist leader had ordered his fighters to the sea level; the knives, as they came lower, seemed to have spent themselves. They could be avoided. But nearly forty of the Anglese had met death before the lesson was learned.

The three larger barges were again advancing toward the Anglese coast. Without warning, without orders from Fahn, the little remnant of girls led by Azeela and Dee, darted at them. It was a movement, not foolhardy, but well and swiftly planned. The girls, holding close to the surface, got themselves between two of the barges. The Noths could not fire, for they would have struck each other. A puff of inky darkness spread over the ships, and out of it, at close range, jets of fire sprang at the Noths; then the girls came back. One of the Noth vessels was a mass of flames; the other two wavered--and began retreating.

For a moment there was silence and darkness, lighted only by the moon and the flickering light from the blazing barge. The whirling blades were no longer being launched; the Anglese were again poised in the air.

Fahn had ordered that the small barge be attacked when, abruptly, a low hum sounded from it. George and Loto were hovering together at the moment; the barge was some five hundred feet below them and slightly off to one side. There didn't seem to be any dogs on it; only a few men under its wire cage, and a single large piece of apparatus.

The hum grew louder, more intense, as though some gigantic dynamo had been set into motion.

"What's that?" George demanded.

But Loto did not know.

Mogruud, with the remains of his division, was in the air half a mile away. He was on the other side of the small barge; his men, moving in scattered groups, began passing over it.

The hum was rising in pitch, up the scale until it became a shrill electrical scream. Mogruud's men wavered--struggled as though to avoid being pulled downward.

Then Loto realized that it must be the rest of the apparatus Toroh had secured out of the past--a giant electromagnet of some unknown variety. It was pulling at every figure in the air, drawing them irresistibly toward it.

Loto and George could feel the pull; invisible fingers were snatching at them. The girls near at hand were fighting against it. Mogruud was moving forward with an effort, like a swimmer struggling with the clutch of an undertow. Several of his men, closer to the barge, had been drawn to it, flattened helplessly against its wire caging. Fire was leaping through their bodies...they were electrocuted.

In the cavern Fahn sat tense, impotent. He could hear, as plainly as though he were out there over the sea, the scream of that uncanny thing that was reaching out its invisible electrical fingers to gather in its victims.

At his side, for the past hour, Rogers had been operating the larger mirrors, flashing into them scenes from the various towers along the coast. Now Fahn heard him give a sharp, horrified exclamation.

Rogers was staring at a mirrored scene from a coast tower near Orleen: moonlight, purple, starry sky and the deep purple of the channel; to one side, the dim outlines of the Orleen houses. And from the channel off Orleen, lights were flashing; a bomb burst and its glare shone on crowded barges close inshore! One of them, already at the beach, was disgorging its men and brutes!