Part 3 (1/2)
A second dark cloud swept forward in the gathering dusk and merged into the ma.s.s of fliers about the dome. Five minutes later, a third.
Dense as the air-traffic was, riding-lights were necessary. They began to appear in the deepening twilight. It seemed as if all the sky were alight with fireflies, whirling and swirling and fluttering here and there. But then the fire-drill began to emit a tiny wisp of smoke.
Thorn worked furiously. Then a tiny flickering flame appeared, which he nursed with a desperate solicitude. Then a larger flame. Then a roaring blaze! It could not be missed! A fire within the dome could not fail to be noted and examined instantly!
A searchlight beam fell upon them, illuminating him in a pitiless glare. Thorn waved his arms frantically. He had nothing with which to signal save his body. He flung his arms wide, and up, and wide again, in an improvised adaption of the telegraphic alphabet to gesticulation. He sent the watch call over and over again....
A little cloud of riding-lights swept toward the dome from an infinite distance away. Darkness was falling so swiftly that they were still merely specks of light as they swept up to and seemed to melt into the swirling, swooping ma.s.s of fliers about the dome....
Cold sweat was standing out on Thorn's face, despite the violence of his exertions. He was even praying a little.... And suddenly the searchlight beam flickered a welcome answer:
”W-e u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d. R-e-p-o-r-t.”
Thorn flung his arms about madly, sending:
”G-e-t a-w-a-y q-u-i-c-k. C-o-m P-u-b-s h-e-r-e. W-i-l-l m-a-k-e o-t-h-e-r d-o-m-e o-u-t-s-i-d-e t-o t-r-a-p y-o-u.”
The searchlight beam upon him flickered an acknowledgment. He knew what was happening after that. The G.C. phones would flash the warning to every s.h.i.+p, and every s.h.i.+p would dash madly for safety.... A sudden, concerted quiver seemed to go over the whirling maze of lights aloft. A swift, simultaneous movement of every s.h.i.+p in flight. Thorn breathed an agonized prayer....
There was a flash of blue light. For one fractional part of a second the stars and skies were blotted out. There was a dome of flame above him and all about the world, of bright blue flame which instantly was--and instantly was not!
Then there was a ghastly blast of green. Hexynitrate going off. In this glare were silhouetted a myriad motes in flight. But there was no noise. A second flare.... And then Thorn Hard, groaning, saw flash after flash after flash of green. Monster explosions. Colossal explosions. Terrific detonations which were utterly soundless, as the s.h.i.+ps of the Fighting Force, in flight from the menace of which Thorn had warned them, crashed into an invisible barrier and exploded without cracking it.
It was August 24th, 2037. For three days, now, seven of the eight great combat-squadrons of the United Nations Fighting Forces had been prisoners inside a monstrous transparent dome of force. There was a financial panic of unprecedented proportions in the great financial districts of New York and London and Paris. Martial law was in force in Chicago, in Prague, in Madrid, and in Buenos Aires. The Com-Pubs were preparing an ultimatum to be delivered to the government of the United Nations. Thorn and Sylva were hunted fugitives within the inner dome of force, which protected the red rocket-s.h.i.+p from the seven combat squadrons it had imprisoned. Newspaper vendor-units were shrieking, ”Air Fleet Still Trapped!” and a prominent American politician was promising his const.i.tuents that if a foreign nation dared invade the sacred territories of the United Nations, a million embattled private planes would take the air. And he seemed not even trying to be humorous! Scientists were wringing their hands in utter helplessness before the incredible resistance of the dome. It had been determined that the dome was a force-field which caused particles charged with positive electricity to attempt to move in a right-hand direction about the source of the field, and particles charged with negative electricity to attempt to move in a left-hand direction. The result was that any effort to thrust an external object into the field of force was an attempt to tear the negatively charged electrons of every atom of that substance, free from the positively charged protons of nuclei. An object could only be pa.s.sed through the field of force if it ceased to exist as matter--which was not an especially helpful discovery. And--Thorn Hard and Sylva were still hunted fugitives inside the inner dome.
The sun was an hour high when the helicopter appeared to hunt for them by day. After the first time they had never dared light a fire, because Kreynborg in the helicopter searched the hills for a glow of light. But this day he came searching for them by day. Thorn had speared a fish for Sylva with a stick he had sharpened by rubbing it on a crumbling rock. He was working discouragedly on a little contrivance made out of a forked stick and the elastic from his parachute-pack. He was haggard and worn and desperate. Sylva was beginning to look like a hunted wild thing.
Two hundred yards from them the most formidable fighting force the world had ever seen littered the earth with gossamer-seeming cellate wings and streamlined bodies at all angles to each other. And it was completely useless. The least of the weapons of the air-fleet would have been a G.o.dsend to Thorn and Sylva. To have had one s.h.i.+p, even the smallest, where they were would have been a G.o.dsend to the fleet. But two hundred yards, with the dome of force between, made the fleet just exactly as much protection for Sylva as if it had been a million miles away.
The droning hum of the helicopter came across the broken ground. Now louder, now momentarily muted, its moments of loudness grew steadily more strong. It was coming nearer. Thorn gripped his spear in an instinctive, utterly futile gesture of defense. Sylva touched his hand.
”We'd better hide.”
They hid. Thick brush concealed them utterly. The helicopter went slowly overhead, and they saw Kreynborg gazing down at the earth below him. Nearly overhead he paused. And suddenly Thorn groaned under his breath.
”It's the flags.h.i.+p!” he whispered hoa.r.s.ely to Sylva. ”Oh, what fools we were! The flags.h.i.+p! He knows the General would have brought it to earth opposite us, to question us!”
The flags.h.i.+p was nearly opposite. To find the flags.h.i.+p was more or less to find where Thorn and Sylva hid. But they had not realized it until now.
The speaker in the helicopter boomed above their heads.
”Ah, my friends! I think you hear me. Answer me. I haff an offer to make.”
s.h.i.+vering, Sylva pressed close to Thorn.
”Der Com-Pub fleet is on der way,” said Kreynborg, chuckling.