CHAPTER III

Clouds of Doom

Suddenly a red shape flashed over the great glass dome above us. In a moment I heard Bill call out, "Hey, Doc, comp'ny's come!"

Dr. Vernon and I hurried out of the room. He paused to double lock the door behind him, and we went down to the hall. We found Bill and Ellen both waiting at the front door, each holding a 30-30 carbine.

"There's one of the red ships out there!" the girl cried. Eager and flushed with excitement, she was very beautiful.

The Doctor unbuttoned his shirt and pulled out a slender tube of glass. It had a bulb at one end, with a metal shield behind it, and a pistol grip and trigger at the other. He examined it critically and turned a little dial. The tube lit up with a soft, beautiful scarlet glow. He pointed it at a vase of wild flowers, that Ellen must have gathered, on a side table. Their brilliant colors faded until leaf and petal were white.

"P-p-p-p-pocket edition of the Vernon Ray machine," he said.

He slipped it out of sight in his pocket, and Bill swung open the door. A strange red airplane was stopped twenty yards away. The fuselage was a thick, tapering, closed compartment, with dark circular windows. The wings were curiously short and thick, as if they were somehow folded up, and I thought the propeller very large.

An oval door in the side swung out, and a little, weazened man sprang out on the ground. An astounding person! He wore a uniform of brilliant red, decorated with a few miles of gold braid and several pounds of glittering medals. He had leathery black skin, sleek black hair, and furtively darting black eyes. A deep, livid red scar across his forehead and cheek gave his face a queer demoniac twist that was accented by his short black moustache.

"Vars! Herman Vars! After us again!" the Doctor muttered in evident amazement.

The dark little man walked briskly up to the door, and saluted the Doctor, with his medals rattling. "Good morning, Dr. Vernon," he said in a queer dry voice. "I trust that you are well--you and your beautiful daughter. I need not ask how work is progressing on your remarkable invention, for I know that it is completed," he laughed, or rather cackled, insanely. "Yes, Doctor, you have given the world a great weapon, one that it will never forget!"

He was laughing oddly again when the Doctor asked gruffly, "What do you want?"

"Why, a friend of yours and mine, who has been of service to us both, informs me that you have in this building quite a large supply of the rare radioactive metal, thorium, of which I think I have a greater need than you--"

"What? You mean Pablo--" Dr. Vernon cried, his face turning white.

"Pablo Ysan, your servant. Exactly. But I must have the thorium. I need a huge quantity. I am coming for it tomorrow. You need fear nothing for yourself or your daughter--I came to warn you so that you might feel no alarm. In fact, it would flatter me to have you as my guests. But remember that I am coming--in force!"

"You damn lu-lu-lu-lunatic!" the Doctor choked.

"No. Not a madman, begging your pardon. The future king of the world! Of two worlds, to be exact! But I must leave you. Remember! And _hasta luego_, as our friend Pablo would say."

Laughing strangely again, the little man hurried back and got in the machine. It left the ground at once, with the great propellers whirling slowly. The motors were oddly silent. I thought the red wings were somehow unfolded, or lengthened out a little.

As it rose, I glimpsed the pilot of the machine.

It was not a man!

It was a queer, gleaming purple shape, with many tentacles!

With strange horror grasping at my heart, I looked quickly at the others, but it seemed that they had not seen it. Then I remembered the Doctor's words of "creatures of the upper air" and I thought of what Ellen had said of the thing that had risen from the wrecked ship.

"That was Herman Vars," Ellen whispered to me. "We met him at the University. He had a warped mind--tinkered with radio and claimed he was getting in touch with beings of a plane above the earth. Then--once--" she paused, flushing a little, "--well, he came to me and told me that he was going to conquer the earth, and that he wanted me to--to go with him. That was why we left Austin. I thought he was only insane--but this!"

"And he must have been t-t-t-t-telling the t-t-t-t-truth!" the Doctor said. "And he is coming after my thorium! I wonder--Pablo--the blueprints--" Suddenly he left us and ran down the hall.

"Pablo Ysan was a Mexican who helped him sometimes in his experiments," Ellen told me. "He went away a month ago. He must have carried Dad's plans to Vars."

The Doctor came back with a grim look on his face. "They're g-g-g-g-gone!" he said. "That's why they want thorium. And I've got enough here to wipe out the earth, if they can use it--if they can use it," and a grim half-smile flickered over his face.

"I'll run down to Durango on the rail car," Bill said. "I can have a train load of troops up here by night. Mendoza is one of my _amigos_--once I did him a good turn--" The Doctor nodded. "And if anything happens while I'm gone, you have your ray, and Bob can take up the Camel-back."

The Battle

He went out. In a few minutes I heard the sputter of a gasoline engine, and the ringing of the little car's wheels on the rails, as it sped down the narrow track. The machine dwindled to a black speck on the desert's rim, and dropped out of sight.

Dr. Vernon spent the evening tinkering with his tube. I went over with Ellen, to look at the mine. The men had been frightened by the red ships, a few days before, and had left on the train. The place was deserted. We peered down the silent black shaft, and went back. But most of the time I spent watching the sky for a sight of the red planes, ready to warn the Doctor and to go up to meet them.

Four trains pulled in before midnight, carrying one of those mobile military units with which the Montoya government so effectively nipped in the bud the revolutionary movements of 1933 and 1935. There was a battery of eight French seventy-fives and a heavier railway gun, four light tanks, a dozen battle planes and two bombing planes, and about four hundred infantry.

Before dawn, El Tigre looked like a military encampment. In the glare of great searchlights, men were digging trenches, leveling a landing field for the planes, and planting the battery. The Doctor had his ray machine ready for use.

I was much surprised at the discipline and efficiency of the well-trained Mexican troops.

With the rising of the sun, a sentry's hail proclaimed the appearance of a score of dark specks above the grim outline of Mocolynatal--a fleet of red planes, coming to the attack!

In a moment the camp was alive. The gun crews got to their posts, airplane engines were started, infantry were lined up in the freshly dug trenches, with machine guns and rifles ready. I saw the gleaming tip of the Doctor's great tube projecting above the huge glass dome.

In a few minutes the planes were taking the air, flying to meet the coming ships. I was with them, in the Camel-back.

I had often dreamed of the thrills of war in the air, and I was eager enough for the encounter. But, as it turned out, I was to play no noble part.

The red machines flew toward us with astonishing speed. In a few minutes they were upon us. Because of the greater speed of my ship, I was flying a little ahead of the formation of Mexican planes. That circumstance probably saved my life, as things turned out.

I was firing a burst to warm up my gun when there was a puff of smoke from the foremost machine of the red ships. I watched the tiny black projectile that came toward us, saw it pass far below me and burst into a thick cloud of gleaming purple vapor that rolled and coiled like a strange creature of the air.

And the wings of my machine no longer caught the air! The controls were useless. I was drifting up. The radiation of that shining cloud had negated the gravity of the machine!

Half a dozen more of the strange bombs burst behind me, and I saw the other ships drifting up, even more rapidly than mine, for they had been nearer the clouds. I kept firing for a minute, but I believe I hit none of the red ships. Soon they had passed beneath, in the direction of the mine.

Helpless, I drifted on into the sky!

I had a clear view of the battle at the mine. As the red machines came within range, the railway gun and the camouflaged seventy-fives began firing. One of the red ships suddenly went down in flames, and then two more. Whether they were hit, or were victims of the Vernon Ray, I do not know.

But in a few minutes the vicinity of the mine was dotted with the coiling hills of purple gas from the gravity-destroying bombs. I saw railway cars and engines, guns and tanks, and even the railroad rails and the mining machinery, torn from their places and plunging into the air. Suddenly the huge glass dome was shattered, and a great object shot up through it--Dr. Vernon's terrible instrument!

[Illustration: But in a few minutes the vicinity of the mine was dotted with the coiling hills of purple gas. I saw railway cars and engines, guns and tanks, and even the railroad rails and the mining machinery, torn from their places and plunging into the air.]

What can men do against instruments that hurl them off the earth?

By that time I was so high that the whole plain about the mine was but a tiny brownish patch, and soon that was veiled in the mists of distance. I grew very cold, and beat my arms against my sides to warm them. My breath grew short, and presently my nose began to bleed. The blue sky grew darker until a few stars broke into view, and then many. The flaming sun seemed to give no heat. Intense cold crept over my limbs.

As I was floating upward to my doom, I thought of the impending fate of the earth. The red fleets might sweep over the world, sending armies, battleships, cities and factories into the frozen night of space. That madman, Vars, with his incredible allies that we had glimpsed, with the negative gravity bombs and Dr. Vernon's ray machine, could realize his mad dream of world dominion. Humanity would be helpless against his insane power.

Amid those speculations of the horror to come, my consciousness faded.

The Camp in the Crater

The next I knew, it was late in the evening. The sun was low over the black hills in the west. My machine was still perhaps two miles high, and floating slowly down. I started the motor, and got the machine under control.

I found that I had drifted far to the east of the mine. By the time the red sun set, I was back over it. I landed in a terrible scene of wreckage. All objects of iron--machines and weapons--were gone. Trenches, shelters, and buildings were stripped ruins. Here and there were dead men, singly and in piles. They showed no wounds; either they had been killed by the intense radioactivity of the gravity bombs, or by a Vernon Ray machine carried on the red planes.

I landed by the ruined residence, near two dead men in uniform. In fearful anticipation, I hurried through the silent rooms. The doors were broken down and the walls were bullet-splintered--there had been fighting in the hall. I searched the empty rooms in which the precious thorium had been stored. Three more cold bodies I found, but they were of the Mexican soldiery. I found no trace of Ellen, Bill, or the Doctor.

Had they been swept away into space? Or had the triumphant lunatic, Vars, taken them captive and carried them to his stronghold in the crater of Mocolynatal?

I did not find the Doctor, but in his laboratory, in the inside pocket of a coat carelessly thrown aside, I found the compact little ray tube with which he had bleached the flowers on the day before. I examined it curiously, and put it in my pocket.

Darkness had fallen when I went out to the Camel-back, got in, and started the turbine motor. I rose into the night and flew northward over the starlit mountain wilderness. At last I made out the shape of Mocolynatal ahead, and climbed far above it. I sailed over, and came upon a strange scene.

Indeed, the mountain had a crater! Below me was a great bowl, perhaps two miles across, brilliantly lit by rows of electric lights. I made out long lines of buildings--huge structures of sheet iron, gleaming in the light. Toward the south rim seemed to be a landing field, with broad beams of intense light pouring out over the hundreds of red planes lined up across it. North of that was a lake, and I saw scores of red seaplanes moored by brightly lit docks at the edge.

There was movement below me. I saw the headlights of moving trucks upon smooth gravel roads about the lake, and there were men at work on the docks and at the landing field. Dense smoke, a luminous white in the glare of the lights, was rising from some of the buildings that must have been factories.

The lunatic had indeed made thorough preparation for his planned attack against the world!

I cut off the engine of my machine, set the motor to whirling, and dropped silently toward the circle of darkness about the rim of the crater. In fifteen minutes more I had landed it on a bare, rocky slope. I waited a moment, but there was no sign that my coming had been observed, so presently I left the plane, with my automatic in my hand, wishing I knew how to operate the strange weapon in my pocket.

I spent several hours slipping about in the shadows among the fallen boulders on the bank of talus about the rim, looking down into the brightly lit crater. At last, I came down in the shadow of an isolated building of gray concrete, with slender masts rising above it--the hidden radio station.

In an open space before it, flooded with light, I saw a strange machine. It was like one of the red airplanes, but the closed fuselage was so large that it looked almost like a small dirigible balloon, while the short wings were no larger than those of the ordinary machines. It occurred to me that the "negative-gravity" gas was probably used to lift it.

As I stood watching it, I saw a party coming aboard. There were a dozen soldiers, in red uniform. Among them I recognized the short figure of Vars, the maniac, if he was a maniac. And behind him were three closely guarded figures, one of them evidently a woman. Were they my three lost friends? I had every reason to think they were. Vars had promised not to injure Ellen or the Doctor, had implied that he wished to take them with him.

I was still watching when I heard a light footstep behind me. I whirled quickly, only to receive the sharp point of a bayonet against my chest.

"Drop it!" a sharp voice commanded as I tried to raise my automatic. The pressure back of the keen blade was somewhat increased, and I obeyed.

"Where did you come from, anyway?" the voice inquired.

I said nothing.

"Then I'll give you a chance to tell somebody else, Pard."

A dark-faced man in red uniform stepped out of the shadow of the building. He searched me, and discovered the Doctor's little weapon. "What's this, Pard?" he asked quickly.

Desperately I cudgeled my brain. "It's--er--a patent radium cigarette lighter. Inventor gave it to me. I broke it the other day."

He looked at me sharply. I tried to assume indifference; and he handed it back. "Forward march, and no tricks," he ordered, and prodded me with the bayonet until I would have given a good deal to know the secret of the little weapon he had returned to me.

Presently we reached a low concrete building. He put me past a barred door, and locked it. I was left alone in the dark. Presently I struck the few matches I had, to examine the little weapon. I set the dial by guess, and found the tiny lever that lit the tube with the soft crimson light, but I could not test it.

Toward morning I had an incredible visitor!

A pale violet light was suddenly thrown through the bars of the door. I looked up to see the amazing Thing before it, regarding me. It was octopus-like, with a central body upheld on a dozen whip-like tentacles! But it was luminous, purple, semi-transparent!

The shapeless glowing purple body had a nucleus of red--a little sphere of intense red light embedded in the shining form. It seemed like a terrible eye, watching me.

For a moment the awful thing was there, and then it moved silently away, drawing itself upon the slender gleaming tentacles. It left me weak and trembling. I hardly dared believe my eyes. Was this one of the "beings from another plane" with which Vars had allied himself in his insane attack against the earth?