The man who mastered time
main Bas army. The attack would have to be repelled by the coast
defense, and by the small aerial army already formed: one hundred Bas
led by Mogruud; two hundred Scientists with whom Loto and George were to
serve, and the twenty-six Scientist girls, led by Azeela and Dee.
That morning the aerial voices ordered every able-bodied Bas man on the
island to come toward Anglese City with every dog that could be
procured. If the invaders landed, the dogs could best oppose them.
It was at this juncture that the king announced the change of his royal
capital to Orleen. The royal family, the councilors, their
retainers--all fled in their dog carriages from Anglese City. Orleen,
much further down the channel, would be safe. News of the king's action
spread over the island. Arans from everywhere fled after him, huddling
in Orleen.
In the confusion of those hours, the contempt for the Arans passed
almost without comment. Orleen was the safest place, and the Bas
there--men and women both--scornful of remaining among the cowards, came
eastward.
By noon the flying army was fully accoutered and waiting in a field near
Anglese City. Loto, equipped to remain in constant telephonic
communication with Fahn, was virtually the leader. George, with his
several weapons in his belt, stood beside Loto. Mogruud had his hundred
Bas around him. The girls were in two small groups apart.
At a signal from Fahn, the little army rose swiftly into the sunlit sky.
The watching throng was stricken silent with awe. The figures in the air
arranged themselves in a broad arc, with the officers in front, and then
swept forward, over the channel toward the mountains and the distant
sea.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The palm-dotted island fell silently away. Ahead lay the blue channel;
to the right the open sea. To George the flight--the first of any
duration he had taken--was exhilarating. It was soundless; the absence
of any rush of air against him made it totally unlike flying in a plane.
He seemed to be wafting forward as though the air were his native
element.
Loto was just ahead of him. Behind him came the army, maintaining its
arc-like formation. A little in front, and at a slightly lower level,
were the two squads of girls. They were all slim, graceful creatures,
most of them under twenty. The black gauze--loose trousers and
blouse--showed the white of their limbs beneath. Their heads were bound
in deep-red rubber cloth, tight over the forehead and tied in back with
flowing ends. With cylinders extended from the left hand they slid
gracefully forward through the air.
Though George felt no rush of air, he found he could not talk to Loto,
even though no more than twenty feet separated them. The rushing wind
between them tore away the words.
Soon they were over the channel. The girls were drifting much lower now.
Loto darted down a few feet; then as though he had changed his mind, he
came up again. He reached for a mouthpiece that dangled under his chin
and fitted it to his lips. His voice, magnified to a stentorian roar,
rolled out.
"_Azeela! Dee! Come higher! You must not go so low!_"
Obediently the two girls rose to the higher level, their little squads
following them. When they were over the mouth of the channel, George saw
Toroh's barges--tiny dark smudges on the water some miles up the coast
and a mile or so off shore. His heart leaped, began pounding in spite of
his efforts to quiet it.
Following Loto he swept diagonally upward and forward. Presently he
could count six barges. They were tremendous things, crowded with men
and dogs and mechanical apparatus. Spread over each was a huge caging of
flashing silver metal. One barge was some distance in the lead; the
others straggled out irregularly behind it for about a mile. All the
Noth vessels were being drawn slowly through the water by ranks of
harnessed dogs.
Loto momentarily shut off his cylinder; his speed was slackening. George
overtook him, put an arm on his shoulder. The nearest of the barges was
now less than a mile ahead.
An upward flash from the leading barge was followed in a few seconds by
a crack of thunder. The bolt dissipated harmlessly into the air. But
obviously it was powerful, with an effective range of two thousand
feet--twice that of the Anglese defense.
Toroh's plan now became apparent. He would batter the Anglese coast
projectors while still beyond reach of them, and then make his landing.
The cages over the barges were for protection from the smaller
thunderbolts of the attacking aerial army.
George knew the cages were only partially effective. A bolt was
difficult to aim, but it did queer things when it struck. From a short
distance--a hundred feet or less--the barges could be set on fire and
sunk. Their thin metal hulls were not protected. They could be pierced.
The wooden super-structure could be fired; the swimming dogs struck and
killed.
In hurried whispers Loto was constantly talking with Fahn back in the
cavern. The Scientist's orders he repeated with his electrically
magnified voice that could be heard easily by every one of the little
aerial army.
For a time they circled about, above the barges, but keeping well
beyond the two-thousand foot range. Against the blue of the sky their
figures must have shown plainly to the Noths. Occasionally a bolt would
flash up, but they were harmless at that distance. And the barges pushed
steadily forward.
At last Fahn decided the moment for attack had arrived. Loto repeated
the order. George's division and Mogruud's separated from the rest. One
hundred turned seaward, the others toward land. They dropped swiftly;
straight down, like divers, heavily laden with lead, dropping through
water. And then a darting, twisting swarm of insects--from every side at
once they attacked the leading barge.
In the depths of the cavern at Anglese City, Fahn sat in his room of
mirrors. A metal band about his head held a receiver to his ear. A black
mouthpiece hung against his chest and by lowering his head he could
bring his lips to it. Rogers was at his side. The mirrors in every part
of the room were lighted, giving the viewpoints of the coast towers near
the mouth of the channel. In several of the mirrored scenes, over the
distant water and in the air, black specks were visible; the enemy and
Fahn's army above them.
But these were not the vital crystal mirrors. A small one--a foot square
perhaps--stood on the table before Fahn. He and Rogers were gazing into
it intently. The mirror was connected with a tiny lens strapped to
Loto's forehead; it gave Loto's viewpoint of the battle, showed the
scene exactly as Loto saw it.
Fahn was silent; a stern, anxious old man, with all his science around
him, sitting in seclusion to direct this warfare upon which the fate of
his people depended. Occasionally he would murmur something to Rogers,
and the other man would speak into a mouthpiece--an order for the
operator of the broadcasted aerial voices, controlled from another part
of the cavern. Then throughout the island, cheering words to the Bas
would resound, news of the progress of the battle. But Fahn's gaze never
wavered from the little mirror.
George's and Mogruud's divisions descended upon the leading barge. The
barge spat forth its bolts, but it could discharge only one or two
against a hundred of the tiny ones from its attackers. Looking down,
from Loto's viewpoint overhead, the barge was assailed on every side by
the pencils of electrical flame. Figures dropped, inert, into the water;
others, wounded, wavered upward. The wire cage over the barge was
sizzling and crackling; the swimming dogs, a dozen or more of them,
crumpled in the water and were dragged forward in their harness by the
others.
The engagement had lasted no more than a minute when the air about the
barge was suddenly plunged into blackness. Everything down there was
blotted out--a patch of solid ink on the sea. The Noth vessel had
exploded a bomb whose etheric vibration absorbed all light over a radius
of five hundred feet.
Fahn smiled grimly. The darkness there would pass presently. His own
leaders, Loto, George, Mogruud and the two girls, had the same
equipment. Each of them could discharge such a bomb; a puff of darkness,
cloaking everything around them in temporary invisibility.
Fahn heard his own orders roared by Loto. The attacking figures came up.
But there were not two hundred of them now: about twenty lay down there
in the water; a dozen more were wounded; a few were moving slowly
homeward through the air.
The darkness still hung around the attacked Noth vessel. But it was
thinning out; now the vague outlines of the barge could be seen. Within
a minute the dark patch was gone. One end of the barge was blazing, but
the Noths were extinguishing the flames. Other figures were cutting
loose the dead dogs in the water, while new dogs were leaping overboard
to take their places.
The attacked barge presently moved onward; slowly, inexorably, they were
all coming down the coast. They were no more than a mile or two now from
the estuary of the channel-mouth.
Three times more Fahn ordered a division down at the same barge. The
Noth tactics were repeated. The barge discharged a few of its bolts and
then enveloped itself in blackness--an absence of light that even the
thunderbolts could not illumine.
These brief engagements were largely a matter of individual action.
Warfare was new to the Anglese, but they were learning. The huge bolts
from the barge could not parallel the water level for long; inevitably
they turned downward to discharge themselves. Close to the water the
attackers were comparatively safe.
When the Anglese came up after these attacks and reformed themselves in
orderly array, there were only ten more of their number missing. But it
was fifty in all, and a score of wounded.
The attacked barge was blazing end to end. Its crowded deck was a
turmoil of figures. They were plunging overboard--men and dogs--to avoid
the flames. In a moment the barge tilted upward at its stern. Its torn
bow was admitting the water; it slid downward, hissing, and disappeared
beneath the surface. Figures bobbed up from the swirl, inert, charred
figures; others among them, still alive, swam about in aimless
confusion.
One barge! But there were five more. And these others had all pushed
forward until now they were almost down to the channel. Fahn realized
that there were five hundred Noths and as many dogs crowded into each of
them. They could take to the water while they were still beyond range of
his coast projectors and come forward individually, each man mounted
upon his swimming dog. The coast defense could strike down no more than
a few of them if they came in that fashion. Twenty-five hundred men and
their giant brutes, landing on the island.
Azeela and Dee were hovering close to Loto; they were asking their
father's permission to try a new plan. The battle could not be
maintained as it was going; the hand thunderbolt globes held but ten
charges each, and the equipment of each individual was only three
globes. A third of the thunderbolts were already exhausted in sinking
one barge.
Fahn's expression did not change; only the grip of his fingers as he
clenched them and the rising muscles under his thin cheeks betokened his
emotion. His voice was steady, grim as always, when he ordered his
daughters to their desperate venture.
Azeela and Dee, with their twenty-six comrades, selected the barge that
had replaced the leader. In a closely knit group they hovered above it.
Thunderbolts shot up, but could not reach them. The girls aimed a
pure-white beam of light downward--twenty-six tiny rays blending into
one. Rogers, bending over Fahn to gaze into the little mirror, was