Part 1

THE OVERSIGHT

by MILES J. BREUER

_Time Accomplishes Progress On Earth._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Comet December 40. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

John C. Hastings, senior medical student in the Nebraska State University Medical School at Omaha, looked out of the window of the Packard sedan he was driving down the road along the top of the bluff, and out in the middle of the Missouri River he saw a Roman galley, sweeping down midstream with three tiers of huge oars.

A pang of alarm shot through him. The study of medicine is a terrible grind; he had been working hard. In a recent psychiatry class they had touched upon hysterical delusions and illusions. Was his mind slipping? Or was this some sort of optical delusion? He had stolen away from Omaha with Celestine Newbury to enjoy the green and open freshness of the country like a couple of stifled city folks. Perhaps the nearest he had come to foolishness had been when the stars had looked like her eyes and he had pointed out Mars and talked of flying with her to visit that mysterious red planet.

"Do you see it too?" he gasped at Celestine.

She saw it, too, and heard the creak of oars and the thumping of a drum; there floated up to them a hoarse chant, rhythmic but not musical, broken into by rough voices that might have been cursing.

It was a clumsy vessel, built of heavy timbers, with a high-beaked prow. There was a short mast and a red-and-yellow sail that bulged in the breeze. The long oars looked tremendously heavy and unwieldy, and swung in long, slow strokes, swirling up the muddy water and throwing up a yellow bow-wave. The decks were crowded with men, from whom came the gleam of metal shields, swords, and helmets.

"Some advertising scheme I suppose," muttered John cynically.

"Or some traveling show, trying to be original," Celestine suggested.

But the thing looked too grim and clumsy for either of these things. There was a total lack of modern touch about it. Nor was there a word or sign of advertising anywhere on it. They stopped the car and watched. As it slowly drew nearer they could see that the men were coarse, rowdy, specimens; and that the straining of human muscles at the oars was too real to be any kind of play.

Then there were shots below them. Someone at the foot of the bluff was blazing away steadily at the galley. On board the latter, a commotion arose. Men fell. Then voices out on the road in front of them became more pressing than either of these things.

"A young fellow and a girl," someone said; "big, fast car. Omaha license number. They'll do."

"Hey!" a voice hailed them.

In front, on the road, were a dozen men. Some were farmers, some were Indians. One or two might have been bank clerks or insurance salesmen. All were heavily armed, with shotguns, rifles, and pistols. They looked haggard and sullen.

"Take us to Rosalie, and then beat it for Omaha and tell them what you saw," one of the men ordered gruffly. "The newspapers and the commander at Fort Crook."

This was strange on a peaceful country road, but John could see no other course than to comply with their request. He turned the car back to Rosalie, the Indian Reservation town, and the men were crowded within it and hung all over the outside. Even the powerful Packard found it a heavy burden. In the direction of Rosalie, the strangest sight of all awaited them.

Before they saw the town, they found a huge wall stretching across the road. Beyond it rose blunt shapes, the tops of vast low buildings. What a tremendous amount of building! the thought struck John at once. For, they had driven this way just three days before, and there had been no sign of it; only the wide green fields and the slumbering little village.

The armed men became excited and furious when they saw the wall. They broke out into exclamations which were half imprecations and half explanatory.

"They put these things down on our land. Ruined our farms. God knows what's become of the town. Squeezed us out. Must be a good many dead. We have telephoned Lincoln and Washington, but they are slow. They can't wake up. Maybe they don't believe us." There were curses.

John could see great numbers of armed men gathering from all directions. There was no order or discipline about them, except the one uniting cause of their fury against this huge thing that had so suddenly arisen. Far in the distance, countless little groups were emerging from behind trees and around bends in the road or driving up in cars; and nearby there were hundreds more arriving with every conceivable firearm. The last man in the countryside must have been aroused.

The men climbed out of John's car and repeated their order that he drive to Omaha and tell what he saw.

A ragged skirmish line was closing in rapidly toward the big gray wall, that stretched for a mile from north to south. Along the top of it, after the manner of sentries, paced little dark figures. John and Celestine were amazed to see that they, too, were Roman soldiers. The sunlight glinted from their armor; the plumes on their helmets stood out against the sky; their shield and short swords were picturesque, but, against the rifles below, out of place.

There came a shot, and another from the approaching attackers, and a figure on top of the wall toppled and fell sprawling to its foot and lay still on the ground. Hoarse shouts arose. A dense knot of Roman soldiers gathered on top of the wall. A fusillade of shots broke out from below, men running frantically to get within close range. The group on the wall melted away, many crashing down on the outside, and a heap remaining on top. The wall was completely deserted. The wind wafted a sulphurous odor to the nostrils of the two young people in the Packard.

Then followed a horrible spectacle. John, hardened to gruesome sights in the course of his medical work, came away from it trembling, wondering how Celestine would react.

A huge gate swung wide in the wall, and a massed army of Roman soldiers marched out. Bare thighs and bronze greaves, and strips of armor over their shoulders, plumed helmets, small, heavy shields; one company with short swords, the next with long spears; one solid company after another poured out of the gates and marched forth against their attackers.

The Farmers and Indians and other dispossessed citizens opened fire on the massed troops with deadly effect. Soldiers fell by the hundreds; huge gaps appeared in the ranks; whole companies were wiped out. But, with precise and steady discipline, others marched in their places. Blood soaked the ground and smeared the trees and shrubbery. Piles of dead were heaped up in long windrows, with twitching and crawling places in them. New ranks climbed over them and marched into the blaze of lead, only to fall and be replaced by others. The peaceful Nebraska prairie was strewn with thousands of armed corpses.

Terror gripped the hearts of the couple in the Packard. The firing began to halt. It became scattered here and there as ammunition became scarce. As the troops poured out in unlimited numbers, men in overalls, sweaters, and collars and shirt sleeves began to retreat. The grim ranks closed upon the nearest ones. Swords rose and fell, spears thrust, clubbed rifles were borne down. There was more blood, and the bodies of American citizens littered the ground that they themselves had owned and tried to defend.

John and Celestine, paralyzed by the spectacle, came to with a jerk.

"It's time to move," John said.

He swung the car around just as, with a rattle and a roar, a score of chariots dashed out of the great gates and the horses came galloping down the road. The ranks of the infantry opened to permit pursuit of the retreating skirmishers. The clumsy vehicles rattled and bumped behind flying hoofs at a rapid clip, the men in them hanging on to the reins and keeping their footing by a miracle. Gay cloaks streamed backward in the wind, and gold gleamed on the horses' harness.

John bore down on the accelerator pedal, and the car leaped ahead with a roar, a scattered string of chariots swinging in behind it. He headed down the road and, once the Packard got a proper start, it left its pursuers ridiculously behind. Celestine shrieked and pointed ahead.

"Look!"

A group of Roman soldiers with drawn swords were formed on the road ahead, and more were swarming out of the shrubbery.

An officer waved a sword and shouted a sharp word.

"Stop, nothing!" John said through gritted teeth, remembering bloody overalls and sprawling limbs gripping battered rifles.

He put his full weight on the accelerator pedal and the huge machine throbbed and rumbled into life, a gleaming, roaring gray streak.

"Duck down below the windshield, dear," he said to Celestine. Never before had he used that word, though he had often felt like it.

The Roman soldiers quailed as they saw the big car hurtling toward them, but they had no time to retreat. The bumper struck the mass of men with a thud and a crash of metal. Dark spatters appeared on the windshield and things crunched sickeningly. The car swerved and swung, dizzily, and John's forehead bumped against the glass ahead of him, but his hands hung to the wheel. The fenders crumpled and the wheels bumped over soft things. Just as he thought the car would overturn, he found himself flying smoothly down a clear road; in his windshield mirror a squirming mass on the road was becoming rapidly too small to see.

He laughed a hard laugh.

"They didn't know enough to jab a sword into a tire," he said grimly.

And, there to their left, was the tiresome galley, sliding down the river. The countryside was green and peaceful; in a moment even the galley was out of sight. Except for the crumpled fenders and the leaking radiator it seemed that they had just awakened from an unpleasant dream and found that it had not been true.

They talked little on the way to Omaha; but they could not help talking some. Who were these men? Where did they come from? What did it mean, the piles of dead, the sickening river of blood?

They must hurry with the news, so that help would be sent to the stricken area.

The hum of the motor became a song that ate up miles. John worried about tires. A blowout before he reached the army post at Fort Crook might cost many lives. There was no time to waste.

Just as the roof-covered hills of Omaha appeared in the distance, two motorcycles dashed forward to meet the car and signalled a stop. The khaki clad police riders eyed the bloody radiator and nodded their heads together.

"You've been there?" they asked. John nodded.

"You've been there?" he queried in return.

"The telephone and telegraph wires are hot."

"They need help--," John began.

"Are you good for a trip back there in a plane, to guide an observer?" the officer asked. "We'll see the lady home."

So John found himself dashing to the landing field on a motorcycle, and then in an Army plane, a telephone on his ears connected with the lieutenant in front of him. It was all a mad, dizzy, confused dream. He had never been up in a plane before, and the novelty and anxiety of it fought with his tense observation of the sliding landscape below. But there was the galley on the river, and three more following it in the distance. There was an army marching along the top of the bluffs down the river, a countless string of densely packed companies with horsemen and chariots swarming around. There were the huge flat buildings in the walled enclosure where Rosalie had stood. Out of the buildings and out of the enclosures, marched more and more massed troops, all heading toward Omaha.

Then they were back in the City Hall, he and the lieutenant, and facing them were the chief of police and an Army colonel. There was talk of the Governor and General Paul of the State Militia due to arrive from Lincoln any moment in an airplane; and the National Guard mobilizing all over the state, and trucks and caissons and field guns already en route from Ashland with skeletonized personnel. Secretaries dashed out with scribbled messages and in with yellow telegrams. A terrific war was brewing, and what was it all about?

The lieutenant stepped up to the colonel and saluted.

"If you please, sir, the galleys on the river--"

"Yes?" asked the worried colonel.

"They've got to be sunk."

"We have no bombs," the colonel answered. "We're just a toy army here, in the middle of the continent."

"No bombs!" The lieutenant was nonplussed for a moment, and hung his head in study. "Will you leave it to me, sir? Somehow--"

"Good fellow. Thank you," said the colonel, very much relieved. "Your orders are, then, to sink the galleys."

"Come!" The lieutenant said to John.

"Me?" gasped John.

"Don't you want to?" the lieutenant asked. "Men are scarce. I need help. You're the closest. And you've got a level head."

"Just give me a chance," John said eagerly.

The lieutenant spent fifteen minutes in a telephone booth. Then they dashed in a motorcycle to the city landing field where the plane lay. They made the short hop to the Army flying field. This all took time; but when they taxied towards the Army hangars, there stood men ready to load things into the plane. A stack of kegs labeled "Dynamite" and white lengths of fuse did not look very military, and their source was indicated by the departing delivery truck of a hardware firm. The men knocked the stoppers out of the kegs and wadded the fuses into the bungholes with paper.

"Bombs!" The lieutenant spread his hands in a proud gesture. "The Q.M.G. in Washington ought to see this. Maybe he'd trust us with real ones some day."

He turned to John.

"We'll use a cigarette-lighter down in the cockpit, and heave them over the side."

Out over the city they flew, and up the river. The trireme was steadily approaching, and the lieutenant flew his plane a hundred feet above the ship. They could see gaping mouths and goggling whites of eyes turned up at them. The decks were a mass of coarse looking faces.

"Hate to do it," remarked the lieutenant, looking down on the decks packed with living men. "But, Lord, it seems to be the game, so light up!" he ordered sharply.

As John applied the cigarette-lighter and the fuse began to fizzle, the lieutenant circled about and again flew over the creeping galley.

"Now!" He shouted, and John rolled the keg over the side. It turned over and over endwise as it fell, and left a sputtering trail of smoke in the air.

It fell on the deck and knocked over several men. The lieutenant was putting height and distance between themselves and the galley as rapidly as possible, and rightly. In another moment there was a burst of flame and black smoke. Blotches of things flew out sidewards from it, and a dull roar came up to them. For a few minutes a mangled mass of wreckage continued the galley's course down the river. Then it slowed and drifted sidewise, and flames licked over it. Struggling figures stirred the water momentarily and sank. Not a swimmer was left; bronze armor does not float on muddy Missouri River water.

Above the second galley they were met by a flight of arrows, and the lieutenant hurriedly performed some dizzy gyrations with the plane to get out of bowshot, but not before several barbed shafts struck through the wings and thumped against the bottom. So they lit their fuse and passed low over the galley at full speed. There was less regret and more thrill as they rolled the keg with its sputtering tail over the side; the humming arrows made the game less one-sided. The high speed of the plane spoiled the aim, and the keg of dynamite plumped harmlessly into the water just ahead of the galley. The second time they figured a little more closely, and before very long, all four of the galleys were a mass of scattered, blackened wreckage.

John leaned back in the seat.

"Terrible way to squander human beings," he said.

The lieutenant's teeth were set.

"You haven't seen anything yet," he said to John. "We've got two more kegs of dynamite and no orders to the contrary. Let's go back to the front lines."

"Front lines!" exclaimed John.

The lieutenant smiled.

"You've studied medicine; I've studied war. It is two and a half hours since we left the meeting. The Roman--or whatever the blank they are--infantry has made ten miles south and west. Our troops from the Fort have easily made thirty or forty in their trucks, and started digging trenches and emplacing guns. That would mean that there must be fighting north and west of here. Isn't that so?"

"I hadn't thought of it," John admitted.

"Also by this time there must be two or three regiments of State militia on trucks and bound in this direction; and the artillery and machine-guns from Ashland ought to be ready any minute. We've got two more kegs. Are you game?"

As if in answer, a dull boom sounded from the northwest, followed by another; and in five minutes the banging was almost continuous.

John nodded his head. The lieutenant swung the plane around, and it was less than ten minutes before they saw the trenches of the Fort Crook troops spread below them; and from far into the north there poured column upon column of densely formed Roman troops, with the gleam of the afternoon sun upon the metal of their armor and swords. On the eastern end of the line the Roman infantry had reached the trenches and a sickening carnage was taking place. As they advanced steadily toward the trenches, the Roman troops were mowed down by the machine-guns of the Federal soldiers and the Omaha police, in swaths like meadow-grass laid flat by the blade of the scythe. During the period of a few minutes as they looked down they saw thousands of men fall; great heaps of twitching and bloody dead in armor and plumes were piled before the thin line of khaki.

"They don't need us much, but here goes!"

Far back over the enemy's lines, where the troops were massed the densest, they sailed, and dropped their black and smoking blasts and scattered several companies of bewildered soldiers. But others took their places and pressed steadily on.

"If we only had a few fighting planes and some ammunition for them--wouldn't we clean up the place!" gloated the lieutenant. "But there isn't a plane with a machine-gun on it in this division, and not an aerial bomb except some dummies for practice. The War Department isn't ever so very fast, and this certainly came suddenly. However, I'm sure that they must be getting busy sending things over by now. Let's look westward."

The line was flung a dozen miles west of the Missouri River, and gradually was crawling still further west. The artillery from Ashland had stopped ten miles southwest of the place where fighting first began, and by now had set up their pieces and gotten the range with the aid of a commandeered, tri-motored, passenger plane; they were banging shells at the rate of one every three seconds into the thickest of the troops. Even at the height of three thousand feet, the sight was horrible; there were red areas against the green of the landscape, and red areas on the piled up heaps that twitched and gleamed with spots of metal; the heaps piled up and grew into hills, between the gaping holes that the shells dug into the wheatfields.

"Ha! Look!"

The lieutenant pointed near the line at the middle.

"An artillery captain is looking for prisoners."

The barrage of one of the batteries was laying flat a wide area, but preserving a little circle intact in the middle of it. On this island, among a sea of smoky holes, stood a huddled group of Roman soldiers. One by one they fell, for flying fragments of high-explosive shell traveled far, and they did not know enough to fall flat on their faces. Then the barrage stopped and a platoon of men in khaki with rifles crept toward them.

The lieutenant looked like a man on the side-lines of a football game. He flew his plane low and gazed breathlessly at the combat below. For it was an exciting one.

The khaki-clad soldiers wanted prisoners alive. But the Roman soldiers understood nothing of the threat of the gun. Rifles and pistols were leveled, but served in no wise to stop them from making a fierce attack on the Americans with swords and spears. To save their own lives, the latter had to stop and shoot the Romans down.

All but a half a dozen armored men now lay flat on the ground. These gathered together for a moment's council, adjusted their shields, and balanced their swords and spears. They were preparing a charge.

The lieutenant on the ground obviously had orders to get live prisoners. He also knew his battle psychology well.

He formed his men in line; bayonets flashed out of scabbards and in a moment a serried line of them bristled forward on the ends of the rifles. The khaki-clad line started first. The men on the flanks ran as fast as they could go and dodged through shell-holes. The Romans started slowly toward the thin looking center of the American line.

The aviation lieutenant rose in his seat and dropped the stick of the plane for a moment in his excitement. The plane veered and the fight below was lost to view for a moment. By the time he had swung the plane back, the circle of khaki had almost closed around the Romans. The latter stood back to back, spears straight out in front of them. It must have taken nerve to face that circle of advancing bayonets, outnumbering them six to one. They held, stolid as a rock wall, and John was almost beginning to think that they would fight to the death and kill a few American soldiers. But, just as the ring of bayonets was within a foot of the ends of their spears, they suddenly dropped their weapons on the ground, and held their hands in the age-old gesture, straight above their heads.

The men in khaki pushed them apart with their bayonets, and two to a prisoner, marched them back to the line; others stopping to pick up weapons. For the first time John noted that these men were all giants; even from the altered perspective of the aeroplane it was clear that they were six and a half to seven feet tall, and burly.

"We'll go back and report, then get a rest," the aviation lieutenant said, heading the plane toward the Army field. There he shook hands with John, and arranged to meet in the morning for further work.

After a telephone conversation with Celestine, and a meal, John settled down in his room and turned on the radio. Program material had been crowded off all stations by the news of the war.

"The front lines are now fully equipped with portable searchlights and flares. But the Roman soldiers have quit coming. Apparently there will be no fighting during the night."

There followed a resume of happenings with which John was already familiar, and he shut the instrument off. Just as he was beginning to doze, his telephone rang. It was the pathologist at the Medical School.

"Hello, Hastings," he said. "You have been in on this from the start, and I thought you would be interested in our prisoners."

John hurried over to the hospital, where in one of the wards there was a squad of soldiers with fixed bayonets, and two of the giants on the beds. One had a shoulder wound and one a thigh wound from high-explosive fragments. Both wounds were very slight.

"Mr. Hastings," said the pathologist, presenting him to a man bending over one of the prisoners, "Professor Haven is from Creighton University, and is the head of the Latin Department. He is trying to talk to these men."

Professor Haven shook his head.

"These men speak Latin but I don't," he sighed. "I've studied it a lifetime, but I can't speak it. And they speak a very impure, corrupted Latin. But, I'm making out, somehow."