three-toed beasthad drawn one paw, red with the blood of helpless humans, rippingacross the bosom of the land.
His number was flashing on the call board that had been registeringincessant orders to other craft. He cut in on the Headquarters wave.
"O'Rourke--Mountain Division--Unit Five!" he reported. "Do you get myvoice or shall I send by key?"
The man at Headquarters did not trouble to reply to the question. Hisvoice came faint but clear:
"Number Five--O'Rourke--Orders! If that new ship of yours has anyspeed, show it now! Bear on Washington! Get here as quick as the goodLord will let you! Mountain Division says you've got something good inthat sound-dampener; if you have, we need it now!"
O'Rourke shot back a crisp acknowledgment; took a reading from tworadio beacons; projected them on the map; and pricked a point at theirintersection. He had his own ship on a line with the Capitol in amatter of seconds.
"And there's hell poppin' there, I'm bettin'! That Headquarters laddidn't tell much--he wouldn't be worth a dime on a newscast--but Igathered there was somethin' doin'."
He had spoken more to himself than to his companion who had been asilent listener to the incoming orders. But the Infant replied in hisown peculiar way.
"The one you saw," he said inquiringly: "he did his dirty work with alittle rod or tube, you said?"
* * * * *
With an effort, O'Rourke brought his thoughts in line with thequestion. "Oh, you mean the man-thing I saw in Stobolsk? Yes, that'sright; he had a thing like a gun."
"And he held it in his hand?"
"In the big paw that passed for a hand, yes!"
"All right! Now think carefully, Danny, and tell me: was thereanything fastened to it--a wire, perhaps--a connection of some kindwith the ground?"
O'Rourke stared at the pink and white face of the cherub who sat withhim in the control room of a rocket-ship that threw itself like a redmeteor across the high skies. "You're a bit of a devil, yourself," hesaid wonderingly at last. "How in the names of the Saints did youknow? Yes, there was a wire, and I had forgotten it myself. It hungdown, I remember, from the butt of the thing. But not to the ground.Infant--you missed it there; 'twas looped back like into the folds ofthe damn blue nightie he wore."
"And then went to the ground," said the Infant imperturbably,"--through his shoes most likely; or, if the robe was metal, that mayhave dragged on the ground instead."
He smiled seraphically at the bewildered pilot as he added: "That'sall, Danny, for the present. Fly your little tin ship. I've got someheavy thinking to do."
Danny heard him ask one cryptic question, but he asked it as one whoknows that only from his own brain can come the answer.
"How do they get rid of it?" the Infant was demanding. "If they stayin the air, how do they get rid of the load?"
And Pilot O'Rourke was glad enough to leave the answer to that one tothe Infant. For had not the Infant alone seen the only reasonableanswer to the puzzle of the mysterious man? And Danny had learned thatit takes a real man and a real mind to track truth to her hiding placeand accept the absurd improbabilities on which truth rests.
* * * * *
They were approaching their destination when the Infant opened hisCupid's-bow mouth to pronounce one additional question. "How high," heasked, "will your little tin ship fly? I know they've reached justunder a hundred thousand experimentally, but how high will this onego?"
"And that's a question neither you nor I can answer, Infant." Dannywas working with careful fingers at tiny levers; their control roomwas filled with whining whispers and thin shrieks. "We're goin' downnow," he continued, and again flipped over the switch that would puthim in communication with the Washington office of the A. F. F.
"O'Rourke--Mountain Division--Unit Five," he said quietly."Approaching Washington at altitude sixty-five thousand. Descending.Orders, please!"
Within the control room, where the voice of a Washington operator shouldhave answered on the instant, there was silence. The rocket motor hadbeen stilled. The two men were suddenly breathless withlistening--listening!--where was heard only the whispering shrillnessfrom without. The whispering grew as the red ship slanted down intodenser air; it built up in volume; it varied its pitch and timber tillit sounded like echoing voices ... ghostly voices and phantom words ...like orders from the dead....
And Danny O'Rourke found his eyes staring into those of the Infant,where he read only the confirmation of his own fears.
It was the Infant who first found words with which to break thedreadful silence.
"Headquarters is gone," he said in a strange, dry voice, "wiped out!They must have got it! It looks as if we were on our own.
"Where are you going?" he asked. "It's your ship."
And Danny answered with a single word, though he added other foremphasis under his breath:
"Down!" he said quietly. "And be damned to them!"
* * * * *
Rolling smoke clouds came to meet them. Danny O'Rourke was watchinghis altimeter sharply as he neared the ground. But he glanced morethan once at the smoke. It was shot through with tongues of flame asthey settled down; that was only what might be expected. But Danny waspuzzled by the gray-white whirls that rose through the billowingsmoke, until he knew it for the dust of powdered masonry, and realizedthat below him, where great buildings had been, were tumbled ruins.
Beside his control board a radio warning was telling of approachingships. Danny cut in on then on emergency wave-length, and found thattwo full squadrons of nitro-ships were at hand with others coming.
"Let them tend to it!" the pale-faced youngster beside him choked--onedoes not see his country's capital destroyed without a tightening ofthe throat. "They can cool it with CO_2 and put down a rescue squad,though what they can do in that furnace is more than I can see."
Danny nodded mutely; he opened the exhaust to the full, and therocket-plane swept out on whirlwinds of raging fire, and smoke, whoseflames reached up even where they flew and licked hungrily at theirship.
Jarring explosions sent shudders through their craft. Ahead of thembright flashes illumined the swirling fumes where bursting shellsmarked the destruction of some ammunition stores outside the city.
And Danny, as he drove his red meteor into the clear air of the upperlevels, was searching the heavens above for the enemy he had expectedto sight down below. He knew now that his mad plunge into the seethingflames was only a blind impulse--an effort to satisfy that demandwithin him for a foe upon whom to wreak revenge.
* * * * *
Beside him, his companion spun the dial of a receiving set for theAirnews Service; a voice was shouting excitedly into their cabin:"... physicists unable to find cause ... no meteoric material seen ...new rays ... enormous temperatures ... some new and unknown conditionsencountered in space--"
"Hell!" said the Infant wearily, and snapped off the instrument."Meteors! New conditions in space! But, come to think of it, we can'tblame them for being off the trail. You know that the bird that'sdoing this flies high and fast ... and when he stops there's nobodyleft alive to tell of it!... And don't look for him here."
"Why not?" Danny demanded aggressively. "This ship isn't armed, but ifI get my sights on that flyin' devil--"
"You won't," said the Infant darkly. "He's off somewhere dischargingthe load he's accumulated."
He reached for a map, stuck his finger on a point in eastern New YorkState. "Let's go there, Danny--and I'd like to get there _right now_!"
And Danny O'Rourke, who, ordinarily was a bit particular about whogave him orders, looked at the Infant's blue eyes that had gone hardand cold, and he swung his roaring ship toward the north and a placethat was marked by a steady finger on the map.
* * * * *
New York was a place of flashing reflections far beneath them as theypassed. Danny pointed downward toward the miniature city,
where asilvery river met the sea; where a maze of flaming lights in all ofthe colors of the spectrum gave indication of activity at the greatNavy Field.
"How did he miss it, the murderin' devil?" he asked. "How come that hehit Washington first? Did he have some way of knowin' that it was theheart of the whole country?"
"And why pick on us here in this country? Or are we just the first,and will he spit his rage over the rest of the world before he'sthrough? It it the end of the world that's come?"
To all of which there was no answer. And at last, when New York hadvanished, they