Vandals of the Stars (continued 2)
Reading edition
Suddenly the front end tilted upward and the monster rose clear of the water. It shot straight up into the air at a speed so terrific that they could scarcely follow it.
“It’s gone!” gasped Fragoni. “Those brainless, mindless automatons must have survived!”
“No,” remarked Steinholt thoughtfully. “I don’t believe that there is any life left on that thing. No one had closed the well when it rose, and it would mean death to go out into space with the ship in that condition.”
“Then what made it go up?” demanded Lazarre. “Can the damn thing run itself, Steinholt?”
“I imagine,” recalled the Teuton, “that our bolts killed every living thing that was on the craft but that, at the same time, they set the mechanism of the monster into action. Ah,” he moaned, “but that is too bad. We could have learned much by an examination of the interior of that liner of the air.”
A cry from Inga startled them and they saw that she was looking skyward, with terror in her eyes.
They followed her gaze and there, streaking through the black clouds, they saw a long trail of white fire.
“It’s that thing!” exclaimed Fragoni. “I tell you that those upon it still live and that they are about to wreak vengeance upon us.”
“No,” said Steinholt positively. “You are wrong, Fragoni. What is happening may be almost as disastrous, though,” he admitted. “That leviathan is in its death agonies; it is a metal monster gone mad, and none can say what will happen before it expires.”
“The place for us,” asserted Dirk hurriedly, “is in the Worldwide Tower. There we can keep track of what is transpiring and try to decide what to do.”
The others agreed with him and, seeking the westward level of flight, he sped the plane in the direction of the mammoth pyramid from which the news of the world was broadcast.
They reached the vast structure in a few minutes, and, after dropping the plane on a landing stage, they went into the operating room.
Here they learned quickly that the craft of the Lodorians was doing incalculable damage, and that it was throwing the population of the world into an unprecedented panic.
It was, apparently, following an erratic, uncertain orbit that took it far out into space and then back quite close to the surface of the earth again.
It had passed through the very heart of Chicago within a few yards of the ground, and it had cut and burned a swath more than a mile wide through the buildings of that metropolis.
Other cities in America had felt the devastating effects of its irresistible and molten heat and, within a short time, thousands of people had been slain by it.
Time and again, from the terrace of the great tower, Dirk and his companions saw the skies above them light up as that terrible, blazing, projectile which, uncontrolled, went hurtling on its way through the night.
For three hours it careened on its mad course and hysteria reigned throughout the cities of the whole civilized world.
But then a report came from a rocket-liner that had left Berlin en route for San Francisco.
“Either a great meteor or that leviathan of the Lodorians just swept down past us in mid-Atlantic and plunged into the sea. Apparently it has exploded, for it has thrown a great column of water for miles up into the air. We are stopping and standing by, although the heat is intense and clouds of steam are rising from the sea.”
As the minutes passed by after the report from the rocket-ship had been received, the disappearance from the sky of the flaming craft from space seemed to confirm the belief that it had been swallowed by the ocean. This was accepted as a certainty by eight o’clock in the morning.
“Ah,” sighed Steinholt, “if only it had crashed on land somewhere. If there only was enough of it left for us to––”
“Enough of any damn contraption of that kind,” swore Lazarre fervently, “is altogether too much. I hope, for one, that its fragments are scattered so far that we never can put them together again.”
Dirk and Inga leaned against one of the parapets that evening on a gardened terrace of his own great mansion in Manhattan.
Their little party had gone there after leaving the Worldwide Tower in the morning.
After resting during the day, Lazarre and Fragoni were somewhere together, discussing the plans for a new palace to take the place of the one that was destroyed so that Zitlan and his minions might die in its ruins.
Steinholt, elsewhere, was delving into oceanography and submarine engineering, in an attempt to learn whether or not it would be feasible to fish for the remains of the lost ship of Lodore.
“It seems like a dream, doesn’t it, Dirk?” the girl remarked. “It is difficult to believe that we actually have seen and talked with people from some far-away world.”
Together they looked up into the crystalline skies, where mazes of shining stars gave testimony to the countless worlds which were wheeling around them.
“And just to think, Dirk,” Inga continued proudly, “that it was you who saved this world and all of its people from that horrible Zitlan and his horde.”
“I saved you,” he told her gravely and tenderly, “and that somehow means more to me than saving all of this world and all of the other worlds which are rolling through the uncharted ways of time and space.”
COMING–– Murder Madness An Extraordinary Novel By MURRAY LEINSTER
Transcriber Notes
Typographical inconsistencies have been changed and are listed below.
Hyphenation standardized.
Archaic and variable spelling is preserved.
Authors’ punctuation style is preserved.
Transcriber Changes
The following changes were made to the original text:
Page 298: Changed work to wreck (wish to know whether anyone has visited the scene of the wreck)
Page 299: Changed focussed to focused (This means that we have focused or concentrated cold)
Page 317: Added beginning quotes (Its name-grid glowed with the letters: “Anita Prince.”)
Page 321: Changed eavesdroopper to eavesdropper (sitting in the smoking room when the eavesdropper fled past)
Page 321: Changed pressure-cick to pressure-sick (We missed you at breakfast. Not pressure-sick, I hope?)
Page 323: Changed linquists to linguists (people are by heritage extraordinary linguists)
Page 324: Added end quote (Did you have Prince’s cabin searched?”)
Page 328: Changed elipse to ellipse (Blackstone had roughly cast its orbital elements)
Page 339: Changed focussed to focused (connected its little battery; focused its projector)
Page 339: Changed syncronized to synchronized (as I crouched in the darkness behind the cylinder-case, I synchronized)
Page 340: Removed extra quote after leaped (Miko doubtless saw it, and the Martian’s hot anger leaped)
Page 344: Changed Mika to Miko (“Wait a minute!” I called to Miko. “Navigate––where?”)
Page 344: Changed catapaulted to catapulted (The force catapulted me across the space of the room like a volplane)
Page 345: Changed Halian to Haljan (“If you fire, Haljan, and kill me––Miko will kill you then, surely.”)
Page 346: Changed focussed to focused (the image of the lounge interior presently focused)
Page 357: Changed terriffic to terrific (Perry beat a terrific tattoo on the ancient door)
Page 362: Removed comma (for the news crew and editorial force of the paper were a carefully selected body of men indeed)
Page 367: Changed villian to villain (Could the old villain be playing possum?)
Page 367: Removed ’the’ (With dexterous hands O’Hara swiftly went through the old man’s pockets)
Page 367: Changed similiar to similar (an ugly looking pistol of large caliber, a blackjack similar to his own and a small bottle)
Page 369: Changed and to any (If you search my car and find any red liquor in the left back door pocket, I don’t know a thing about it)
Page 372: Changed Hanlon to Handlon (could be recognized as those of Horace Perry and Skip Handlon)
Page 372: Changed focussed to focused (All eyes were now focused on Professor Kell)
Page 373: Changed Kel to Kell (Hurry up and get Kell downstairs so we can see who he is)
Page 374: Changed Rotton to Rotten (“Rotten,” was the reply from the lips of Kell)
Page 393: Changed ecstacy to ecstasy (Fear, despair, reckless abandon, mirth, doubt, religious ecstasy and all the other nuances in the gamut of human emotions)
Page 394: Changed scandals to sandals (On her tiny feet she wore sandals which were spun of webby filaments)
Page 395: Changed knew to know (fairly close to it in my plane and I know what I am speaking about)
Page 397: Changed Igna to Inga (Dirk and Inga seated close together and Stanton, at a distance)
Page 397: Changed part to parts (a proclamation of martial law, to become effective at once in all parts of the world)
Page 399: Changed melifluous to mellifluous (“Good morning,” the other replied in a soft and mellifluous voice)
Page 401: Changed Steinhold to Steinholt (“It’s colossal!” Steinholt then exclaimed, lost in scientific admiration)
Page 412: Changed fulgerant to fulgurant (High up into the heavens it tossed the fulgurant fires that betokened its wealth and power)
Page 412: Changed head to hand (with one of the deadly ray-tubes of the Lodorians in his hand)
Page 413: Changed Lizarre to Lazarre (walked over to where Fragoni and Lazarre were being guarded by two of the conquerors)
Page 413: Changed Igna to Inga (“And Inga?” questioned Dirk.)
Page 414: Changed stacatto to staccato (flailing back and forth between each one of his staccato commands.)
Page 417: Removed extra quote before There (“is in the Worldwide Tower. There we can keep track of what is transpiring and try to decide what to do.”)
Page 417: Changed irresisible to irresistible (Other cities in America had felt the devastating effects of its irresistible and molten heat)