CHAPTER XII

Prelude to Battle

There are some grave disadvantages in being invisible. So, at least, Gates concluded as he went groping through the woods in the effort to find his bearings. It is disconcerting, to say the least, to ask a passer-by the way, and to be greeted with a shriek, and watch the man turn and dash away frantically, as from a ghost. It is aggravating to reach an automobile road and find every car trying to drive full-tilt through one. Gates felt like a man returning from the dead as he picked his way out of the woods, and, reaching a village, began to make a few civil inquiries.... Inevitably, he found, his hearers would flee the vicinity of his voice; and the harder he tried to call them back the faster they would run.

He passed the night in an open field under a haystack--which, considering the heat, was not at all a hardship. In the morning, driven by hunger, he strolled into a farmhouse; and while the family stampeded like sheep from the sound of his footsteps, he calmly helped himself to some ham and biscuits from the kitchen table. Having thus satisfied his needs, he wandered away along a railroad track, and after about an hour's walk reached a junction, where a sign on the station showed him that he was two hundred miles from home. "God! How'm I ever going to make the distance?" he wondered, reflecting that he had not a penny in his pockets.

Twenty minutes later, while he still stood there baffled, a train puffed into the station--one of the few still running in those disorganized days. Several people stepped aboard; and, without hesitation, he joined them, trusting to his invisibility to save him from the demands of the ticket-taker.

As there was no unoccupied seat, he stood in the vestibule, which caused not a little confusion, as people kept brushing against him as they went by, greatly to their consternation. Long before they had reached their destination, in fact, half the passengers were ready to swear that the train was haunted. This view was furthered by Buck Johnson, one of the colored waiters in the dining car, who testified that while his back was turned the better part of the contents of a tray disappeared--and that he turned about just in time to see a sausage go floating down the passageway, although nobody was in sight!

It was fortunate, Gates thought, that the train was air-conditioned; the cool, fresh atmosphere made it easier for him to think. And, certainly, he needed to think as never before. What would he do upon getting back home? Obviously, go as soon as possible to Dunbar's apartment, to check that traitor's vile designs, if there were still time! And to rescue Eleanor from his clutches! But was it not already too late? Gates gravely feared so. Besides, how prevail against Dunbar, protected as he was by the overweening power of the Saturnians?

"Well, at least," Gates reflected, "I can't be seen--that's one strategic advantage." But it would take more than his invisibility to win the battle. He must have weapons--weapons of unrivalled power. And where could such be found?

* * * * *

At this thought he remembered a certain invention he had toyed with months before. This was a knife which he called the Electric Blade: a folding strip of metal, small and compact, and short enough to be carried in a man's hip pocket, yet capable of being extended to the length of one's forearm, when it would cut with the sharpness of a sword. To it was attached a minute but powerful storage battery which Gates had perfected: a battery that made it possible for the blade to slash back and forth with such swiftness that the eye could hardly follow its motions. The inventor had believed that the weapon might prove valuable for close combat work in warfare; but had lost interest in it temporarily while working on that still more important device, the Infra-Red Eye.

It was, however, with the greatest of enthusiasm that he thought now of the Electric Blade. Might this not be just what he needed in the conflict with Dunbar? Knowing something of the prowess of the Saturnians, he was far from sure; nevertheless, he swore a bitter oath, "I'll have a try at it, even if they hack me to mincemeat!"--which, he realized, they were only too likely to do.

The Electric Blade, he recalled, had been left in his locker at the Merlin Research Institute. Accordingly, it was to this spot that he must hasten immediately upon returning to the city.

It was night by the time he had reached the building; and the front door was locked. But seeing a light inside, he rapped. As no answer came, he rapped again, this time more loudly; and then rapped once more, still more loudly. It was only after the fourth or fifth summons that he heard shuffling footsteps warily approaching. "What the devil!" he muttered to himself. "Do they think I want to steal the building?"

"Who's there?" a voice from within demanded, huskily.

"It's I! Ronald Gates! An employee of the Institute!"

There was a momentary hesitation. He heard two men conferring in whispers; then the door opened a few inches, and he stared into the muzzle of a revolver, behind which glowered the grim, determined face of a uniformed man.

"Don't be scared, Officer," he began, slightly amused. "I can establish my identity--"

Instantly there rang out a yell from the uniformed man. Savagely the door banged to a close. "By God! It's one of them devils from Saturn!"

Almost simultaneously, he heard another voice taking up the cry. "Run, Miss, run! Quick! Ain't no time to waste! One of them fiends is after you again!"

From within, he heard a woman's scream. "Out this way! This way!" And all other sounds were lost amid the scurrying of feet.

But had those tones not had a familiar ring? Could it be--or was his heated imagination only playing tricks?

* * * * *

He lost no time, however, in useless questionings. Realizing that the fugitives must leave by the rear exit, on another street, he raced around the block, in such haste that he bowled over two pedestrians, who were never to know what had hit them. As he approached the rear door, he saw five figures hurriedly emerge, among them a young woman, the sight of whom caused his heart to pound furiously.

"Eleanor!" he shouted. "Eleanor!"

The girl glanced toward him, and shrieked. Even if she recognized his voice, she thought that it was merely one of the Saturnians imitating him.

"Eleanor! Eleanor!" he repeated. "It's I, Ronald! It's I!"

But it was doubtful if she even heard. Preceding the four policemen--pushed and shoved by them, for he had never seen men in more frantic haste--she was lost to view inside a black sedan. A moment later, the car had spurted from sight around the corner.

Greatly shaken, Gates returned to the Institute. It was much--very much--to know that Eleanor was alive, and apparently not in Dunbar's hands. But to have her flee him as though he were a plague-bearer; to be mistaken by her for one of the Saturnians--that was a new and totally unexpected experience. Now, as never before, he began to curse his invisibility.

But there was work to be done--work from which he must not be deterred even by the thought of Eleanor. And at this point, as if by way of compensation, his invisibility served him to excellent purpose. How, considering that the doors were all locked, could he get into the Institute? Contemplatively he strolled around the building, and saw that the one possible entry was by means of an open window facing the fire escape on the third floor. To hoist himself up to the fire escape was, to be sure, no great task for one of his agility; but as it gave upon a main street, where many people were passing, it would have been impossible for any ordinary man to accomplish the feat without detection. As it was, however, he managed the entry with ease.

Once within, he felt his way down to the locker room, where he switched on the lights, and turned to his own locker--the combination of which, fortunately, had not been altered. A moment later, the door rattled open. He saw that the interior had been disturbed, as though somebody had entered during his absence and fumbled among the contents; but his pulses leapt with excitement when, safely hidden in a corner, he located a steel-sheathed apparatus of about the size of a large pistol.

"Thank heaven!" he muttered. "This little blade may hold the world's destiny!"

He placed the instrument carefully beneath his garments, so that it too became invisible; closed the locker; and started away, with the knowledge that he hastened to a battle that could end only in victory or death.