The Fire People Read online

  CHAPTER III.

  THE LANDING OF THE INVADERS.

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

  Officially, the governments of the world ignored the matter entirely. Ingeneral, the press, editorially, wrote in a humorous vein, conjuring upmany ridiculous possibilities of what was about to happen. The publicfollowed this lead. It was amused, interested to a degree; but, as a mass,neither apprehensive nor serious--only curious.

  In some parts of the earth--among the smaller Latin nationsparticularly--some apprehension was felt. But even so, no one knew what todo about it--where to go to avoid the danger--for the attack, if it cameat 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 thepublic gaze and imagination to feed upon. But, all over the world, therewere probably more eyes turned toward the setting and rising sun duringthat week than ever had been turned there before.

  Professor Newland issued no more statements after that evening I havedescribed. 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 winterswell, the whole family left for a few months' stay at their bungalow homein Florida. They were quite close to the little village of Bay Head, onthe Gulf coast. I kept in communication with them there.

  The 8th of March came and passed without a report from any part of theearth of the falling of the Mercutian meteors. Satirical comment in thepress doubled. There was, indeed, no scientific report of any unusualastronomical phenomena, except from the Harvard observatory the followingmorning. There Professor Newland's assistant, Professor Brighton, statedhe had again observed a new "star"--an interplanetary vehicle, asProfessor Newland described it. Only a single one had been observed thistime. It was seen just before dawn of the 9th.

  Then, about 4 P.M., Atlantic time, on the afternoon of the 9th, the worldwas electrified by the report of the landing of invaders in the UnitedStates. The news came by wireless from Billings, Montana. Aninterplanetary vehicle of huge size had landed on the desert in theShoshone River district of northern Wyoming, west of the Big HornMountains.

  This strange visitor--it was described as a gleaming, silvery objectperhaps a hundred feet in diameter--had landed near the little Mormonsettlement of Byron. The hope that its mission might be friendly wasdispelled even in the first report from Billings. The characteristic redand green light-fire had swept the country near by--a horizontal beam thistime--and the town of Byron was reported destroyed, and in all likelihoodwith the loss of its entire population.

  The Boston _Observer_ sent me to Billings almost immediately byquadruplane. I arrived there about eight o'clock on the evening of the10th. The city was in a turmoil. Ranchers from the neighboring cattlecountry thronged its streets. A perfect exodus of people--Mormons and oilmen from Shoshone country, almost the entire populations of Cody, Powell,Garland, and other towns near the threatened section, the Indians from theCrow Reservation at Frannie--all were streaming through Billings.

  The Wyoming State Airplane Patrol, gathered in a squadron by orders fromCheyenne, occasionally passed overhead, flashing huge white searchlights.I went immediately to the office of the Billings _Dispatch_. It was socrowded 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 firsttwenty-four hours of Mercutian invasion were these:

  Only a single "vehicle"--we called it that for want of a better name--hadlanded. Airplane observation placed its exact position on the west bank ofthe Shoshone River, about four miles southwest of Byron and the samedistance southeast of Garland. The country here is typically that of theWyoming desert--sand and sagebrush--slightly rolling in some places, withoccasional hills and buttes.

  The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad runs down its spur from theNorthern Pacific near Billings, passes through the towns of Frannie--nearthe border of Montana and Wyoming--and Garland, and terminates at Cody.This line, running special trains throughout the day, had brought up alarge number of people. During the afternoon a bomb of some kind--it wasvaguely described as a variation of the red and green light-rays--haddestroyed one of the trains near Garland. The road was now open only downto Frannie.

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

  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 ofdetermining. How many of them there were; how they could travel over thecountry; what the effective radius of their light-fire was; the nature ofthe "bomb" that had destroyed the train on the C., B. and Q. near the townof Garland--all those were questions that no one could answer.

  Billings was, during those next few days, principally a gathering placeand point of departure for refugees. Yet, so curiously is the human mindconstituted, underneath all this turmoil the affairs of Billings went onas before. The stores did not close; the Billings _Dispatch_ sent out itsreports; the Northern Pacific trains from east and west daily broughttheir quota of reporters, picture men and curiosity seekers, and took awayall who had sense enough to go. The C., B. and Q. continued running trainsto Frannie--which was about fifteen miles from the Mercutian landingplace--and many of the newspaper men, most of those, in fact, who did nothave 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 tolook the situation over. We started about midnight, a crisp, cloudlessnight with no moon. We had been warned against venturing into the dangerzone; several of the Wyoming patrol and numbers of private planes had beenseen to fall in flames when the light struck them.

  We had no idea what the danger zone was--how close we dared go--butdecided to chance it. To fly sufficiently high for safety directly overthe Mercutians appeared difficult, since the light-fire already had proveneffective at a distance of several miles at least. We decided not toattempt 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 backnorth to Billings, passing well to the east of the Mercutians.

  We started, as I have said, about midnight, rising from the rollingprairie back of Billings. We climbed five hundred feet and, with oursearchlight playing upon the ground beneath, started directly for Frannie.We passed over Frannie at about eight hundred feet, and continued on theC., B. and Q. line toward Garland. We had decided to pass to aconsiderable extent to the west of Garland, to be farther away from thedanger, and then to strike down to Cody.

  We were flying now at a speed close to a hundred and forty miles an hour.Off to the left I could see the red and green beam of the single light ofthe Mercutians; it was pointing vertically up into the air, motionless.Something--I do not know what--made me decide to turn off our searchlight.

  I looked behind us. Some miles away, and considerably nearer theMercutians than we were, I saw the light of another plane. I was watchingit when suddenly the red and green beam swung toward it, and a momentlater picked it up. I caught a fleeting glimpse of what I took to be alittle biplane. It remained for an instant illuminated by the weird redand green flare; then the Mercutian Light swung back to its v
erticalposition. A second later the biplane burst into flames and fell.

  The thing left me shuddering. I turned our searchlight permanently off andsat staring down at the shadowy country scurrying away beneath us.

  Mercer had evidently not seen this tragedy. He did not look at me, butkept facing the front. We were now somewhat to the west of Garland, withit between us and the Mercutians. The few lights of the town could be seenplainly. The country beneath us seemed fairly level. To the west, half amile away, perhaps, I could make out a sheer, perpendicular wall of rock.We seemed to be flying parallel with it and about level with its top.

  We were rising a little, I think, when suddenly our engines stopped. Iremember it flashed through my mind to wonder how Mercer would dare shutthem off when we were flying so low. The sudden silence confused me alittle. I started to ask him if he had seen the biplane fall, when heswung back abruptly and gripped me by the arm.

  "Turn on the light--you fool--we've got to land!"

  I fumbled with the searchlight. Then, just as I turned the switch, I saw,rising from a point near the base of the Mercutian Light, what appeared tobe a skyrocket.

  It rose in a long, graceful arc, reached the top of its ascent, and camedown, still flaming. I remember deciding it would fall in or near Garland.

  It seemed to go out just before it landed--at least I did not follow itall the way down. Then there came a flash as though a huge quantity of redand green smokeless powder had gone off in a puff; a brief instant ofdarkness, and then flames rose from a hundred points in the little town.The next second our wheels ground in the sand.

  I heard a splintering crash; something struck me violently on theshoulder; then--blackness.