Part 10

Six days after that momentous meeting of the council, a mighty fleet of air-boats rose and circled above the city. The character of the invisible force-shield above the city had been altered to allow the passage of any air-boat through it, and now no less than five hundred of the air-boats hovered over Kom. In design they were much like the ones I had vaguely glimpsed in the city of cylinders, long and flat and narrow, pointed at either end and with a low wall around their sides for the protection of their occupants.

The people of Kom had worked wonders in those six days, thus to construct half a thousand of the flying cars, and to equip them with a time-wave apparatus like our own. Every car was thus equipped, the apparatus on each being a direct copy of that in our own car. Lantin and I still clung to our own car, however, which had been overhauled for us by the scientists of Kom after our crash, and which was unhurt by the collision. And most of our time, during that period, had been engaged in directing the manufacture of the time-traveling apparatus, and teaching a selected few the operation of it. These few, in turn, taught many others, and by the time we were ready for our start, there was at least one man on each air-boat who understood the time-wave mechanism.

The plans of our expedition were simple enough. We were to drop down on the city of cylinders, destroy it utterly, and annihilate both the Kanlars and the Raider, if possible. I think that in reality none of the members of our expedition had any real desire to meet the Raider, but I knew that in spite of the fear they had of him, they would obey the orders of Kethra without faltering.

I knew but little of the weapons which the scientists of Kom had furnished to the occupants of the air-boats. Kethra had spoken to us of a sound-ray, an intense beam of sound-vibrations which, directed on some object, could be changed in frequency until it matched that object's frequency of vibration, which would result in the destruction of the thing so focused on. It was the principle of two tuning-forks, which will cause each other to vibrate across a great distance, if of the same period of vibration. I had heard mention of other weapons, also, designed to combat the Raider, but had seen none of these.

Now, as the great fleet hovered and circled above the white city of Kom, with our own time-car poised above the fleet, a single large air-boat drove up through the mass of the others and hung beside us. It was the car of Kethra, a long, black one, and near its pointed prow stood the white-robed leader himself.

He bent, spoke an order into a mouthpiece, and then his car slanted up and northward, with swiftly increasing speed, while the great fleet below did likewise, his order being communicated by a form of radio to every air-boat. Still hanging beside the car of Kethra, our own time-car raced along, since we were to guide the fleet toward the city of cylinders.

By the time Kom had disappeared behind us, the fleet was flying almost two miles high, in wedge-shaped formation, with our time-car and the air-boat of Kethra at the wedge's apex.

It was late morning when we flashed high over the colossal metal wall that held back the ice-flood. It soon vanished behind us, and we were again flashing north across the ice-fields.

The sun's rays slanting down almost vertically on the ice far below set up a dazzling glare that was almost blinding. Looking back, I saw an air-boat behind and below us crash into the one ahead of it, and both plunged down to destruction on the ice. Some half-dozen cars spiraled down toward the wreckage, but the main body of the fleet swept on, unheeding of such accidents.

* * * * *

All of that day the fleet raced on, while, in the time-car, Lantin slowed our pace to keep beside them. Sunset came, an arctic sunset, with a crimson globe of fire falling down behind the boundless steppes of ice, suffusing the sky with a glare like blood. Abruptly Lantin uttered a low exclamation, seized binoculars and gazed north through the window beside him.

I sprang to his side, and when he handed me the glasses I saw, far ahead, a little cluster of black dots that stood out jet-black against the crimson sunset. But already Kethra too had seen them, and a score of cars leaped forward from the main body of the fleet, in pursuit, our own time-car among them.

We flashed up toward them, and they grew in size, resolved themselves into air-boats much like those around us. As we neared them, they turned and fled north. Two of them, much swifter than the others, were out of sight almost in a second, safely beyond our pursuit, but the others, seven in number, saw that escape was impossible, so they turned to fight.

For a moment, the fight was on their side, for they turned quite unexpectedly and raced straight toward us, in a solid mass. Lantin's hands flashed over the controls and our car slanted up above the onrushing seven with the speed of lightning, but as it did so a blue flash leapt from the foremost of them and barely missed us.

The air-boats behind us were not so fortunate, for as the streaks of blue light from the enemy touched them, four plunged down to the ice, in flames. The seven attackers, unscathed thus far, passed under them in a swooping dip, turned, and came racing back for another blow.

But now the surprize of our forces was gone, and they struck back. A sudden sound smote our ears, even in the time-car, a low thrumming sound that rose in pitch higher and higher. I could see the men on our air-boats pointing blunt-nosed metal objects toward the oncoming cars of the enemy, and abruptly the significance of it struck me, and I understood that they were using the sound-ray Kethra had mentioned.

The seven air-boats rushed on toward our own, and I had a flashing glimpse of their decks, crowded with armored guards and with a few of the brilliant-robed Kanlars directing them. Blue flashes leapt again from the seven, and two more of the air-boats of Kom cometed down in bursts of fire, but now, as the seven dipped again under the air-boats of the Khluns, the thrumming, high-pitched sound increased sharply in intensity, and I saw five of the seven Kanlar cars literally break up into small pieces and fall, tumbling down toward the ice-fields below them in a shower of men and small pieces of metal. It was the power of sound, which causes a steam-whistle to shake a house to its foundations, a thousand times amplified by the apparatus devised by the men of Kom.

The remaining two air-boats of the Kanlars attempted to flee, but in a moment they too broke up and fell, as the men of Kom altered the vibration-frequency of their apparatus to affect the two remaining cars.

Behind us, now, the great main fleet of our air-boats was coming up, and there was a short halt in midair. Kethra's air-boat swept up beside us, and I opened the door in the top of our time-car, and stood up to hear him.

"Those were scouts," he cried to us, "a patrol of the Kanlars' air-boats. And two got away! They'll warn the Kanlars of our coming."

"But what do you intend to do?" I asked. "You'll not give up the attack?"

"No!" he shouted. "We'll go on, and meet them if they come out. But there will be no surprize now."

"But what of our friends?" I asked. "We were to rescue them from the pit."

"We'll send an air-boat for them," he said. "It can speed up to the city of cylinders, and since the Kanlars will come down to meet us now, it can sink down into the shaft you spoke of without interference, and get your friends. I will need you with me, to guide us to the city of Kanlars, in case their fleet doesn't come out to meet us."

And so we swiftly decided. At an order from Kethra, an air-boat slanted up toward us and hung beside us. We gave the pilot of it, and his two assistants, precise information that would enable them to reach the temple and get down to the pit, where they could rescue our comrades from the roof-top where they would be awaiting us. The pilot was instructed to race up toward the city of cylinders in a wide circle, to avoid meeting any of the Kanlars' air-boats, and when the city was deserted by guards and Kanlars, as we were confident it would be, he could easily penetrate to the temple and the pit. He promised to carry out our instructions faithfully, and sped away into the gathering dusk toward the northwest.

* * * * *

Night was falling now, and with an order from Kethra, the fleet again began to move, speeding toward the north, but going warily now, with a fringe of swift scouts flying above and far ahead, and with Kethra's car and our own soaring at the point of the fleet's triangular formation.

On we sped, into the darkness, showing no lights and progressing entirely by compass. Midnight came and passed, while we raced north over the limitless ice-fields, and it began to seem that the Kanlars had no stomach for fighting, now that we had come to attack them. I relieved Lantin at the controls of our car, an hour after midnight, and while he caught a little sleep on the car's floor, we soared smoothly on.

The soundless, mighty fleet of air-boats moving steadily along behind me, the monotonous, endless ice below, and the hour after hour that passed without any attack materializing, all of these smoothed down the fears in my mind and lulled me into a temporary lassitude. Half drowsing at the controls of the car, I kept beside the air-boat of Kethra, speeding on into the thick darkness. A glance at a dial told me that we were within a hundred miles of the ice-field's end, and the thought pulled me up somehow from the sudden weariness that had gripped me. Then, a half-mile ahead of me, there was a blinding glare of azure light, a crash that came loudly to my ears even from that distance, and then silence.

Through the mighty fleet behind me pulsed a sudden murmuring sound, a whisper of excitement, of expectancy. Lantin, aroused by the crash, jumped up and was at my side.

"One of the scouts," I cried to him; "the Kanlars are attacking them, and one was destroyed."

Even as I spoke, two more blue flashes jetted out of the darkness ahead, and two air-boats that were racing back to us went down in flames. And then, rushing toward us out of the darkness, came the Kanlar fleet.

In the very van of our own fleet, I had a twisted, misty vision of myriad dark shapes that rushed toward us; then, instinctively, I slanted our time-car up and sped up above the battle. We were weaponless, for the sound-rays could not have been used through the walls of our closed car, and so to remain in the very center of the conflict was to invite purposeless destruction.

For a moment, the world was filled with crashing sounds, as the two oncoming fleets met, their air-boats crashing here and there into air-boats of the opposing fleet. Then the battle resolved itself with sudden decision into myriad individual combats.

Stretching far away into the night, all around us, lay the two fleets, inextricably mixed and mingled with each other, and incapable of acting in two single units. Flashes of blue lightning burned from the air-boats of the Kanlars, and car after car of the Khluns was going down to death on the ice two miles below. By the light of the flashes, and the ensuing flames, the scene below us was ghastly, the air-boats, filled with brazen-armored guards and bright-robed Kanlars, or with the white-clad Khluns, grappling there in midair, plunging down to destruction, or swooping giddily upon one another. There was a chorus of humming sounds that rose even above the roar of the battle, and here and there the air-boats of the Kanlars were disintegrating and falling, spilling forth their occupants in midair. It was well that the Khluns had constructed their own air-boats of a material immune to their own sound-rays, since mixed as the battle was, many of their cars would have been downed by their own allies' weapons.

The battle had met and joined in less than a minute, while we hung above it. So far the fighting had been even, but now a thing occurred that tipped the scale in the Kanlars' favor.

Without warning, every air-boat of the Khluns suddenly glowed with misty light. Shouts of surprize and rage came up to us. The cars of the Kanlars were as dark as ever, and now, swooping out of the darkness upon the shining air-boats of the men of Kom, they sent them reeling down in flames by the dozens.

"Look!" cried Lantin, pointing up through the window in the car's top.

Far above, high over even our own car, were some twenty round, glowing circles of light, a light that was identical with the misty light that glowed from the cars of the Khluns.

"The Kanlars!" Lantin shouted. "There are air-boats up there, with apparatus that makes the Khluns' cars shine, while their own remain dark! They must be destroyed, or it is all over with our forces!"

I looked around for Kethra, but he was lost to view in the battle that raged below. Nor was there any of our allies' cars around us, so I turned our own time-car and sent it racing up toward those glowing circles above.

Straight toward them we sped, with the power opened wide, and I braced myself for the shock. Our car struck the first glowing circle with a staggering shock, and ripped through the air-boat above it as if it were paper. We slanted on up, and looking down, I saw the car we had struck reeling down toward the battle below, broken and afire. I turned our car, hovered like a poised hawk for a second, and then flashed down again on the line of air-boats.

A dozen flashes of blue flame burned up toward me, but the tremendous swiftness of our car carried us out of line before they reached us. Flashing down on a long slant, I pointed the car's steel prow toward the center of the line of cars, and this time we plowed across two of them in our resistless, ramming swoop.

As we sped away into the darkness, I heard other crashes behind me, and when I again turned the car, it was to see the last of the Kanlar air-boats carrying those glowing circles go tumbling down to destruction. For below us the Khluns had seen and guessed the meaning of our attack, and had sped up to finish off those who had escaped us. And with the destruction of that score of hovering Kanlar cars, the strange glowing light that emanated from each of the Khlun cars ceased. What that light was, we never knew. Undoubtedly the Kanlars had devised some method of causing our own air-boats to become light-emitting, while theirs remained dark. Possibly a ray like the fluorescent "black light" of the World War, from which they had guarded their own cars by special means. Whatever the nature of it, the light was a deadly weapon in such a night battle, causing the Khluns' air-boats to stand out as shining marks for the blue flashes, while the cars of the Kanlars hovered invisibly about them in the darkness. But now, with the disappearance of that light, the battle tipped in favor of the men of Kom. Their deadly sound-rays filled the air with thrumming, and in groups, in masses, the air-boats of the enemy disintegrated, broke up, poured down to earth in a mixed shower of men and metal. Finally but a scant thirty cars remained of the Kanlar fleet, while around them circled almost two hundred of the Khlun air-boats, striking at them with the deadly sound-ray.

As we hovered above the battle, a single air-boat drove up toward us, and I saw that in it was Kethra. He stopped his car beside our own, and I opened the door of our car, while Lantin leaned out and shouted to him.

"You've won!" cried Lantin, pointing down to the night below us, where the thrumming of sound-rays and jetting flashes of blue showed the dwindling conflict.

"We've won," he replied, "but where is the Raider?"

"Lurking in the temple," replied Lantin, "and it is there we must go now, to rescue our friends and destroy the Raider."

"We'll do that," replied Kethra, "but first--" Abruptly he stopped speaking, and seemed to be listening tensely. I, too, was listening, and over the crash of air-boats and the humming sound-rays a sound came to my ears that beat in them like the drums of doom.

A little whisper of wind, a whisper that grew swiftly louder, that shrieked, that roared, that bellowed. Up from beneath came a gust of wind of such force that our car heeled around under it, and with it came a piercing whistling to our ears, an eery chorus of wind-shrieks that changed to a thundering gale. Then, a hundred feet below us, there flashed into being--the Raider!

* * * * *

A moment he hung below us, a thing of whirling mists, the three orbs of green glowing radiantly through the darkness. Then he had dropped down onto the battle, expanded, extended his own misty form until it held within it the score of air-boats in which were the survivors of the Kanlars' forces.

A second it continued thus, its vaporous form enveloping the remaining cars of the Kanlars, and then, out from the green, radiant triangle of orbs there burst flash on flash of green light, aimed at the surrounding cars of the Khluns. The cars touched by that green light vanished, simply disappeared from view, leaving a little cloud of radiant sparks which dimmed and vanished likewise.

There was a great shout from behind us, and down toward the Raider, from the car of Kethra, there dropped a thing like a black, enveloping net, queerly tenuous-seeming in the one glimpse of it I had. It was like a net of black force, dropping down on the Raider, but before it reached its objective, the Raider and the cars it held within it had abruptly vanished.

"The Raider!" cried Kethra. "He's gone on into time, with the surviving Kanlars! Follow, follow, follow!"

From the scores of air-boats below us came a savage yell, and there was a second's pause, a second's silence, and then our car was struck by a gale that nearly overturned it, and we hung alone in space. Kethra and his air-boats had followed the Raider on into time, with the time-wave apparatus we had showed them how to use. I knew, too, that at that moment half the air-boats were speeding into the past and half into the future, in search of the Raider, for that had been our plan in case we had need to pursue the Raider into time.

"Shut the car-door!" I cried to Lantin. "We'll follow, too."

"Wait!" he shouted, his head out of the circular door, peering away to the north.

The gray light of dawn was welling up in the east, and by it I saw, away to the north, a black speck that rushed down toward us. It raced on, and now I saw that it was a Khlun air-boat. It sped on toward us, and now I recognized it as the one we had dispatched to rescue our four friends from the pit.

The car sped on toward us, and I saw that on it were the pilot and his two aides, but not our friends. Even before the pilot shouted to us a premonition of disaster filled me.

"The pit!" cried the pilot, bringing his car up beside us.

"What of the pit?" I shouted. "What of our friends?"

"They're safe, for the time," he answered, "but the hordes are coming out of the pit!"

"What?" I yelled.

"They're coming out," he repeated. "I went straight to the Kanlar city, as you had instructed, and found that the Kanlar fleet had sped south to meet you. The city was in confusion, with all of the Kanlars and the guards gone with the fleet, and only the slaves and the women still there. I took my car straight into the temple, and found the shaft open that leads down to the pit. I went down that shaft, and picked your four friends up from the roof you designated, and they told me that after all the guards on the stair had left, with the fleet, the hordes in the pit began battering at the gate of the stair. I saw them doing that, hovering above them in the darkness. They are mad, thirsty for loot and blood and battle. They cry among themselves that they will seize the flying-platforms on top of the temple and go south to loot Kom."

I gasped. The merciless hordes of the pit, sweeping down on unprotected Kom! I knew that there were men in the pit capable of operating the flying-platforms, if they reached them. They would sweep down upon the city beyond the ice in an avalanche of death and destruction. And Kethra and all his men were somewhere in time, pursuing and battling the Raider!

"Where did you leave our friends?" cried Lantin.

"At the pit's edge, in the temple," answered the other, and we exchanged swift glances, the same thought coming to us at the same time.

"They asked to be left there," added the pilot.

Lantin spoke swiftly to him. "Go after Kethra!" he told him. "You have the time-wave apparatus on your air-boat?" And when the other nodded, he said, "Then go on into time and bring back Kethra and his forces! If the hordes get to the temple's top and seize the flying-platforms, it is the end for all at Kom!"

The pilot hesitated. "And you?"

"Wheeler and I are for the temple," Lantin told him; "with our friends, we'll try to hold the hordes in the pit until you come back with Kethra and his forces. Go, man!"

The pilot cried assent, clicked a switch, and his car had disappeared, speeding into time after Kethra and his men. And now, under my control, our own car sped north toward the city of cylinders.

* * * * *

I think that of all our trips in the car, we attained our highest speed then. Rocketing low above the ground, the landscape beneath us, the endless billows of ice, seemed to pass beneath us in a white blur. We shot across the sky like a comet, and in a few minutes the green land of the Kanlars' country replaced the ice, and then there hove into view the gleaming white city of cylinders.

I swept down toward the great cylinder that was the temple, and brought the car to earth in the shelter of a little clump of trees outside the great building. We sprang out, raced up the ramp, and down the tunneled entrance into the temple's interior.

The metal floor was not in place, and before us yawned the abyss that was the shaft leading down to the pit. Away across the temple, standing on the ring of black flooring that was the shaft's rim, was a group of men, seemingly tiny, toylike figures there in the empty temple's immensity. We ran around the black rim toward them.

It was Denham and his three companions, and they ran forward to meet us, gripped our hands warmly.

"Where are your forces?" asked Denham. "Where are the people of Kom? The hordes are getting ready to come up from the pit, man! Listen," he commanded, and I walked to the shaft's edge and looked down.

From far below, muffled by the great distance, yet coming with force to my ears, there rose a dim roar, the savage shout of thousands of mad warriors. And above that dull roaring there was the clangor of metal smiting on metal.

"They're beating down the gate," Denham said, "and in a few minutes they'll be pouring up that stair. But where is the aid you were to bring?"

In a few words I explained the battle we had taken part in, and the pursuit of the Raider into time by Kethra and his men. "We must hold them in the pit, somehow," I told them, "until Kethra and his forces come back. If those hordes once get to the temple's roof and seize the flying-platforms, it means hideous death for all at Kom!"

"Couldn't you close the metal floor of the temple?" suggested Lantin. "Swing it back in place and close the shaft?"

"But how?" asked Denham. "We've searched but can't find the secret of the floor, or how it is moved."

"But the collapsible stair!" I put in; "you can fold that back! Lantin and I did, the night we escaped!"