Part 2 (1/2)

CHAPTER III.

THE LANDING OF THE INVADERS.

March 8, 1941, was the date at which Mercury was again to be in inferior conjunction--at her closest point to the earth since her transit over the face of the sun on November 11 of the previous year. During February--after Professor Newland's statements--the subject received a tremendous amount of publicity. Some scientific men rallied to Professor Newland's support; others scouted the idea as absurd.

Officially, the governments of the world ignored the matter entirely. In general, the press, editorially, wrote in a humorous vein, conjuring up many ridiculous possibilities of what was about to happen. The public followed this lead. It was amused, interested to a degree; but, as a ma.s.s, neither apprehensive nor serious--only curious.

In some parts of the earth--among the smaller Latin nations particularly--some apprehension was felt. But even so, no one knew what to do about it--where to go to avoid the danger--for the attack, if it came at all, was as likely to strike one country as another.

The first week in March arrived with public interest steadily increasing.

Mercury, always difficult of observation, presented no spectacle for the public gaze and imagination to feed upon. But, all over the world, there were probably more eyes turned toward the setting and rising sun during that week than ever had been turned there before.

Professor Newland issued no more statements after that evening I have described. He was taken with a severe cold in the latter part of February, and as Beth was in delicate health and did not stand the Northern winters well, the whole family left for a few months' stay at their bungalow home in Florida. They were quite close to the little village of Bay Head, on the Gulf coast. I kept in communication with them there.

The 8th of March came and pa.s.sed without a report from any part of the earth of the falling of the Mercutian meteors. Satirical comment in the press doubled. There was, indeed, no scientific report of any unusual astronomical phenomena, except from the Harvard observatory the following morning. There Professor Newland's a.s.sistant, Professor Brighton, stated he had again observed a new ”star”--an interplanetary vehicle, as Professor Newland described it. Only a single one had been observed this time. It was seen just before dawn of the 9th.

Then, about 4 P.M., Atlantic time, on the afternoon of the 9th, the world was electrified by the report of the landing of invaders in the United States. The news came by wireless from Billings, Montana. An interplanetary vehicle of huge size had landed on the desert in the Shoshone River district of northern Wyoming, west of the Big Horn Mountains.

This strange visitor--it was described as a gleaming, silvery object perhaps a hundred feet in diameter--had landed near the little Mormon settlement of Byron. The hope that its mission might be friendly was dispelled even in the first report from Billings. The characteristic red and green light-fire had swept the country near by--a horizontal beam this time--and the town of Byron was reported destroyed, and in all likelihood with the loss of its entire population.

The Boston _Observer_ sent me to Billings almost immediately by quadruplane. I arrived there about eight o'clock on the evening of the 10th. The city was in a turmoil. Ranchers from the neighboring cattle country thronged its streets. A perfect exodus of people--Mormons and oil men from Shoshone country, almost the entire populations of Cody, Powell, Garland, and other towns near the threatened section, the Indians from the Crow Reservation at Frannie--all were streaming through Billings.

The Wyoming State Airplane Patrol, gathered in a squadron by orders from Cheyenne, occasionally pa.s.sed overhead, flas.h.i.+ng huge white searchlights.

I went immediately to the office of the Billings _Dispatch_. It was so crowded I could not get in. From what I could pick up among the excited, frightened people of Billings, and the various bulletins that the _Dispatch_ had sent out during the day, the developments of the first twenty-four hours of Mercutian invasion were these:

Only a single ”vehicle”--we called it that for want of a better name--had landed. Airplane observation placed its exact position on the west bank of the Shoshone River, about four miles southwest of Byron and the same distance southeast of Garland. The country here is typically that of the Wyoming desert--sand and sagebrush--slightly rolling in some places, with occasional hills and b.u.t.tes.

The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad runs down its spur from the Northern Pacific near Billings, pa.s.ses through the towns of Frannie--near the border of Montana and Wyoming--and Garland, and terminates at Cody.

This line, running special trains throughout the day, had brought up a large number of people. During the afternoon a bomb of some kind--it was vaguely described as a variation of the red and green light-rays--had destroyed one of the trains near Garland. The road was now open only down to Frannie.

The town of Byron, I learned, was completely annihilated. It had been swept by the Mercutian Light and destroyed by fire. Garland was as yet unharmed. There was broken country between it and the Mercutian invaders, and the rays of the single light which they were using could not reach it directly.

Such, briefly, was the situation as I found it that evening of the 10th.

In Billings we were sixty-five miles north of the Mercutian landing place.

What power for attack and destruction the enemy had, we had no means of determining. How many of them there were; how they could travel over the country; what the effective radius of their light-fire was; the nature of the ”bomb” that had destroyed the train on the C., B. and Q. near the town of Garland--all those were questions that no one could answer.

Billings was, during those next few days, princ.i.p.ally a gathering place and point of departure for refugees. Yet, so curiously is the human mind const.i.tuted, underneath all this turmoil the affairs of Billings went on as before. The stores did not close; the Billings _Dispatch_ sent out its reports; the Northern Pacific trains from east and west daily brought their quota of reporters, picture men and curiosity seekers, and took away all who had sense enough to go. The C., B. and Q. continued running trains to Frannie--which was about fifteen miles from the Mercutian landing place--and many of the newspaper men, most of those, in fact, who did not have airplanes, went there.

That first evening in Billings, Rolland Mercer--a chap about my own age, who had brought me from the East in one of the Boston _Observer's_ planes--and I, decided on a short flight about the neighboring country to look the situation over. We started about midnight, a crisp, cloudless night with no moon. We had been warned against venturing into the danger zone; several of the Wyoming patrol and numbers of private planes had been seen to fall in flames when the light struck them.

We had no idea what the danger zone was--how close we dared go--but decided to chance it. To fly sufficiently high for safety directly over the Mercutians appeared difficult, since the light-fire already had proven effective at a distance of several miles at least. We decided not to attempt that, but merely to follow the course of the C., B. and Q.

southwest to Cody, then to circle around to the east, and thence back north to Billings, pa.s.sing well to the east of the Mercutians.

We started, as I have said, about midnight, rising from the rolling prairie back of Billings. We climbed five hundred feet and, with our searchlight playing upon the ground beneath, started directly for Frannie.