CHAPTER VIII
_Charmion_
"Prester Kleig," came suddenly into the Secret Room the voice of fardistant Moyen, "you will at once make a change in your rules regardingthe admission of other than Secret Agents to the Secret Room. You willat once see that Charmion Kane, sister of your friend, is allowed toenter!"
"God Almighty!" A cry of agony from the lips of Prester Kleig. He hadnot forgotten Charmion, but simply had had to move so swiftly that hehad put her out of his mind. For a year he had not seen her, and an houror two more could not matter greatly.
"And her brother Carlos," went on the voice, "see that he, too, isadmitted. I wish, for certain reasons, that Charmion come unharmedthrough the direct attack I am about to make against your country. Iconfess that, save for this ability to speak to you, I am unable to workany damage to the Secret Room, which is therefore the safest place forCharmion Kane! Carlos Kane is being spared because he is her brother!"
There was no mistaking the import of this sinister command from Moyen.He had singled out Charmion, the best beloved of Prester Kleig, for hisattentions, and that he was sure of the success of his attack againstthe United Americas was proved by the calm assurance of his voice, andthe fact that, concentrating on the attack as he must be, he still foundtime for a thought of Charmion Kane.
* * * * *
The hand of ice which had seldom been absent from the heart of Kleigsince he had first seen and heard the voice of Moyen gripped him anew.Blood pounded maddeningly in his temples. Cold sweat bathed his body.
But the rest of the Secret Agents, save to freeze into immobility whenthe hated voice spoke, gave no sign. They had worries of their own, forno instructions had been given that they bring their own loved ones intothe sanctuary of the Secret Room.
As though answering the thoughts of the others, the hated voice spokeagain.
"I regret that I cannot arrange for sanctuary for the loved ones of allof you, for you are gallant antagonists; why save the few, when the manymust perish? For I know you will not surrender, however much I haveproved to you that I am invincible. But Charmion Kane must be saved."
"God!" whispered Kleig. "God!"
Then spoke General Munson.
"I think this ray which the Moyenites use is a variation of theprinciple used in the intricate machinery of Professor Maniel, thoughhow they render it visible I do not know. But it doesn't matter, and maybe only a blind! You'll note that when the black streak, or the goldenray, strikes anything that thing instantly disintegrates. A certainpitch of resonance will break a pane of glass. It's a matter ofvibration, solely, wherein the molecules composing any object animate orinanimate, are hurled in all directions instantaneously.
"Professor Maniel's apparatus, the Vibration-Retarder, is able torecapture the vibrations, speeding outward endlessly through space, andto reconstruct, and _draw back_ to visibility the objects destroyed bythis visible vibratory ray, whatever it is. This problem, then, fallsinto the province of Professor Maniel!"
* * * * *
Through the heart and soul of Prester Kleig there suddenly flowed agreat surge of hope.
"General Munson, if you will operate the machinery of theVibration-Retarder, I wish to talk with Professor Maniel!"
Instantly, efficiently, without a word in reply to the eager command ofPrester Kleig, General Munson relieved Professor Maniel at the apparatuswhich Maniel called the Vibration-Retarder, his invention which he hadcombined with audible teleview to complete this visual miracle of theSecret Room. Professor Maniel stepped to where Prester Kleig wassitting.
Prester Kleig put fingers to his lips for silence, and an expression ofsurprise crossed the wrinkled dead-white face of the Professor.
Before Kleig could speak, however, there came a signal from somewhereoutside the Secret Room, a signal which said that the doors were beingopened and that a personage was coming. The Secret Agents looked at oneanother in surprise, for every man who had a right to be inside theSecret Room was already present.
"I know," said Kleig, his face a mask of terror. "It is Charmion andCarlos Kane! Moyen, the devil, has managed to make sure of obedience tohis orders!"
The Secret Agents turned back to the screen, upon which the view of thefirst aerial brush of the American flyers with the minions of Moyen, intheir aero-subs, was drawing to a terrible close.
For, as the aero-sub commanders had played with the warships, which hadno human beings aboard them, so now did they play with the planes of theAmericas.
* * * * *
One American flyer, startled into a frenzy by the fate of his fellows,put his helicopter into action, and leaped madly out of the midst of thebattle. Instantly an aero-sub zoomed, skyward after him. Again thatgolden streak of light from the nose of an aero-sub, and the helicoptervanes and the slender staff upon whose tip they whirled vanished, shornshort off above the vane-grooves in the top of the wing!
The plane dropped away, fluttering like a falling leaf for a moment,before the aviator started his three propellers again.
A cheer broke from the lips of Prester Kleig as he watched. Thecommander of that particular aero-sub, apparently contemptuous of thisflyer who had tried to cut out of the fight, allowed him to fall awayunmolested--and the American, driven berserk by the casual, contemptuoustreatment accorded him by this strange enemy, zoomed the second hispropellers whirred into top-speed action, and raced up the sky towardthe belly of the aero-sub.
"If only the aero-sub has a blind spot!" cried Prester Kleig.
* * * * *
In that instant a roaring crash sounded in the Secret Room as theAmerican plane, going full speed, crashed, propellers foremost, into thebelly of the aero-sub.
And the aero-sub, whose brothers had seemed until this momentinvincible, did not escape the wrath of the American--though theAmerican went into oblivion with it!
For, welded together, American plane and aero-sub started the eightthousand feet plunge downward to the sea!
"Watch!" shrieked Munson. "Watch!"
As the aero-sub and the plane plunged down through the formation offighters, the aero-sub pilots saw it, and they fled in wild dismay andat top speed from their falling compatriot. Why? For a moment it was notapparent. And then it was.
For out of the body of the doomed aero-subs came sheets of golden flame!Not the flames of fire, but the golden sheen of that streak which theaero-subs had used against the American planes already out of the fight!The American flyer had crashed into the container, whatever it was, thatharnessed the agency through which the minions of Moyen had destroyedthe _Stellar_, and the battleships raped from Hampton Roads!
"It is liquid, then!" shrieked Munson.
And it seemed to be. For a second the golden mantle, strange,awe-inspiring, bathed and rendered invisible the aero-sub and the planewhich had slain her. Then the golden flame vanished utterly,instantly--and in the air where it had been there was nothing! Theaero-sub was gone, and the plane whose mad charge had erased her.
"Her own death dealing agency destroyed her!" shrieked Munson. "And theother aero-subs cut away from the fight to save themselves, because theytoo carry death and destruction within them!"
* * * * *
Then the inner door of the Secret Room opened and two people entered.One of them, a dazzling beauty with glorious black hair and the tread ofa princess, a picture of perfection from jeweled sandals to coiffuredhair, was Charmion Kane. Behind her came her brother, whose face waschalky white. But Charmion, as she crossed to Kleig and kissed him,while her eyes were luminous with love, held her head proudly high,imperious.
"I know," she said softly to Kleig, "and I am not afraid! I know youwill prevent it!"
Kleig waved the two to chairs and turned again to Professor Maniel.
On a piece of paper he wrote swiftly, using a mode of shorthand knownonly to the Secret Agents.
> "Professor," he wrote feverishly, "can you reverse the process used inyour Vibration-Retarder? Tell me with your eyes, for Moyen may even knowthis writing, and I am sure he hears what we say here, may even be ableto see us?"
Professor Maniel started and stared deeply into the eyes of PresterKleig. His face grew thoughtful. He brushed his slender hand over themassive dome of his brow. Hope burned high in the heart of PresterKleig.
* * * * *
Then, despite Kleig's instructions to answer merely by the expression inhis eyes, Professor Maniel leaned forward and wrote quickly on the pieceof paper Kleig had used.
"Two hours!"
Nothing else, no explanations; but Prester Kleig knew. Maniel believedhe could do it, but he needed two hours in which to perfect his theoryand make it workable. Kleig knew that had he been able to do it in twoyears, or two decades, it still would have been in the nature of amiracle.
But two hours....
And Moyen had said that he was preparing to attack at once.
In two hours Moyen, unless the Americas fought against him with everyresource at their command, could depopulate half the Western World.Kleig looked back to the screen.
There was not a single American plane in the sky above the graveyard ofthose vanished warships. And the aero-subs, swift flying as the wind,were racing back to the mother ship, scores of miles away.
Munson worked with the Vibration-Retarder, the Sound-and-Vision devices,ranging the sea off the coast to either side of that huge, suspendedfortress which was the mother submarine of the aero-subs.
Gasps of terror, though the sight was not unexpected, broke from thelips of every person in the Secret Room.
For super-monsters of Moyen were moving to the attack.