At the foot of Government Hill, with a trumped-up excuse, Don got us away from our escort. The night was far darker now; a gray-white ma.s.s of clouds had come up to obscure the moon. We cycled through the outskirts of Hamilton to the harbor road and followed it around the marshy end of the bay and into Paget. There had been at first many vehicles coming in from the beach, but when we pa.s.sed the intersection and nothing lay ahead of us but the Paget ridge we found the road deserted.
We had had our handle-bar flash-lights turned on, but now we shut them off, riding slowly into the darkness. Don presently dismounted.
"Better leave our wheels here."
"Yes."
We laid them on the ground in a little roadside banana patch. We were no more than a quarter of a mile from the enemy now; the glow of their green beams standing up into the air showed on the ridge-top ahead of us.
"We"ll take the uproad," Don whispered. "Shall we? And when we get to the top, follow some path, instead of a road."
"All right," I agreed.
We started on foot up the steep side road which led from the bay sh.o.r.e to the summit of the ridge. The houses here were all dark and deserted, their occupants long since having fled to Hamilton. It was enemy country here now.
We reached the summit and plunged into a cedar grove which had a footpath through it. The green light-beams seemed very close; we could see them in a little group standing motionless up into the darkness of the sky.
"Can"t plan," Don whispered. "But we must keep together. Get up as close as we can and see what conditions are."
And see if Jane were here.... It echoed through my head, and I knew it was also Don"s guiding thought.
Another ten minutes. We were advancing with the utmost caution. The cedar grove was almost black. Then we came to the end of it. There was a winding road and two white houses a hundred feet or so apart.
And beyond the houses was a stretch of open field, strangely denuded of vegetation.
"There they are, Bob!" Don sank to the ground with me beside him. We crouched, revolvers in hand, gazing at the strange scene. The field had been a cedar grove, but all the vegetation now was gone, leaving only the thin layer of soil and the outcropping patches of Bermuda"s famous blue-gray rock. The houses, too, had been blasted. One was on this side of the field, quite near us. Its walls and roof had partially fallen; its windows and door rectangles yawned black and empty, with the hurricane shutters and the wooden window cas.e.m.e.nts gone and the panes shattered into a litter of broken gla.s.s.
But the house held our attention only a moment. Across the two-hundred-foot field we could plainly see the invaders--forty or fifty men"s figures dispersed in a little group. It seemed a sort of encampment. The green light beams seemed emanating from small hand projectors resting now on the ground. The sheen from them gave a dull lurid-green cast to the scene. The men were sitting about in small groups. And some were moving around, seemingly a.s.sembling larger apparatus. We saw a projector, a cylindrical affair, which half a dozen of them were dragging.
"Bob! Can you make out--back by the banana grove--captives? Look!"
The encampment was at the further corner of the naked field. A little banana grove joined it. We could see where the enemy light had struck, partially melting off some of the trees so that now they stood leprous. In the grove were other figures of men, and it seemed that among them were some girls. Was Jane there among those captives?
"We"ve got to get closer," I whispered. "Don, that second house--if we could circle around and get there. From the corner of it, we"d be hidden."
"We"ll try it."
The farther house was also in ruins. It stood near the back edge of the naked field and was within fifty feet of the banana grove. We circled back, and within ten minutes more were up against the broken front veranda of the house.
"No one here," Don whispered.
"No, evidently not."
"Let"s try getting around the back and see them from the back corner."
We were close enough now to hear the voices in the banana grove. The half-wrecked house against which we crouched was a litter of stones and broken gla.s.s. It was black and silent inside.
"Don, look!"
Sidewise across the broken veranda the group of figures in the field were partly visible. We saw ghostly wraiths now among them--apparitions three or four feet above the ground. They solidified and dropped to earth, with their comrades gathering over them. The babble of voices in a strange tongue reached us. New arrivals materializing!
But was Jane here? And Tako, the giant? We had seen nothing of either of them. These men seemed all undersized rather than gigantic. We were about to start around the corner of the veranda for a closer view of the figures in the grove, when a sound near at hand froze us. A murmur of voices! Men within the house!
I pulled Don flat to the ground against the stone steps of the porch. We heard voices; then footsteps. A little green glow of light appeared. We could see over the porch floor into the black yawning door rectangle. Two men were moving around in the lower front room, and the radiation from their green lights showed them plainly. They were small fellows in white, tight-fitting garments, with the black helmet and the looped wires.
"Don, when they come out--" I murmured it against his ear. "If we could strike them down without raising an alarm, and get those suits--"
"Quiet! They"re coming!"
They extinguished their light. They came down the front steps, and as they reached the ground and turned aside Don and I rose up in the shadows and struck at them desperately with the handles of our revolvers. Don"s man fell silently. Mine was able to ward off the blow; he whirled and flashed on his little light. But the beam missed me as I bent under it and seized him around the middle, reaching up with a hand for his mouth. Then Don came at us, and under his silent blow my antagonist wilted.
We had made only a slight noise; there seemed no alarm.
"Get them into the house," Don murmured. "Inside; someone may come any minute."
We dragged them into the dark and littered lower room. We still had our revolvers, and now I had the small hand-projector of the green light-beam. It was a strangely weightless little cylinder, with a firing mechanism which I had no idea how to operate.
In a moment we had stripped our unconscious captives of their white woven garments. In the darkness we were hopelessly ruining the mechanism of wires and dials. But we did not know how to operate the mechanism in any event; and our plan was only to garb ourselves like the enemy. Thus disguised, with the helmets on our heads, we could get closer, creep among them and perhaps find Jane....
The woven garments which I had thought metal, stretched like rubber and were curiously light in weight. I got the impression now that the garments, these wires and disks, the helmet and the belt with its dial-face--all this strange mechanism and even the green-ray projector weapon--all of it was organic substance. And this afterward proved to be the fact.[1]
[1] As we later learned, the scientific mechanism by which the transition was made from the realm of the fourth dimension to our own earthly world and back again, was only effective to transport organic substances. The green light-beam was of similar limitation. An organic substance of our world upon which it struck was changed in vibration rate and s.p.a.ce-time co-ordinates to coincide with the characteristics with which the light-current was endowed.
Thus the invaders used their beams as a weapon. The light flung whatever it touched of organic material with horrible speed of transition away into the Unknown--to the fourth, fifth, or perhaps still other realms. In effect--annihilation.
The mechanism of wires and dials (and small disks which were storage batteries of the strange current) was of slower, more controllable operation. Thus it could be used for transportation--for s.p.a.ce-time traveling, as Earth scientists later came to call it. The invaders, wearing this mechanism, materialized at will into the state of matter existing in our world--and by a reversal of the co-ordinates of the current, dematerialized into the more tenuous state of their own realm.
We were soon disrobed and garbed in the white suits of our enemies.
The jacket and trunks stretched like rubber to fit us.
"Can"t hope to get the wires right," Don whispered. "Got your helmet?"
"Yes. The belt fastens behind, Don."
"I know. These accursed little disks, what are they?"
We did not know them for storage batteries as yet. They were thin flat circles of flexible material with a cut in them so that we could spring the edges apart and clasp them like bracelets at intervals on our arms and legs. The wires connected them, looped up to the helmet, and down to the broad belt where there was an indicator-dial in the middle of the front.[2]
[2] We were soon to learn also that they were bringing into our world weapons, food, clothing and a variety of equipment by encasing the articles in containers operated by these same mechanisms of wires carrying the transition current.
The transportation was possible because all the articles they brought with them were of organic substance.