.

Jlucjiist 25 Cent^
 —

By "Philip Trancis *JVpwlan

Foreword World domination was in the" hands of Mongolians

and the center of world power lay in inland China,
|LSEWHERE I have set clown, for what- with Americans one of the few races of mankind un-
ever interest they have in this, the 25th —
subdued and it must be admitted in fairness to the
Century, my personal recollections of the truth, not worth the trouble of subduing in the eyes of
20th Century. the Han Airlords who ruled Nortb America as titular
Now it occurs to me that my memoirs of tributaries of the Most Magnificent.
the 25th Century may have an equal interest 500 years For they needed not the forests in which the Ameri-
—
from now particularly in view of that unique per- cans lived, nor the resources of the vast territories
spective from which I have seen the 25th Century, these forests covered. With the perfection to which
entering it as I did, in one leap across a gap of 492 they had reduced the synthetic production of necessi-
years. ties and luxuries,their remarkable development of
This statement requires elucidation. There are still and mechanical accomplishment of
scientific processes
many in the world who are not familiar with my unique work, they had no economic need for the forests, and
experience. Five centuries from now there may be no economic desire for the enslaved labor of an unruly
many more, especially if civilization is fated to endure
any worse convulsions than those which have occurred They had all they needed for their magnificently
between 1975 A.D. and the present time. luxurious and degraded scheme of civilization within
I should state .there fore, that I, Anthony Rogers, am, the walls of the fifteen cities of sparkling' glass they
so far as I know, the only man alive whose normal span had flung skyward on the sites of ancient American
of eighty-one years 'of life has been spread over a centers, into the bowels of the earth underneath them,
period of 573 years." To be precise,' I lived the first and with relatively small surrounding areas of agri-
twenty-nine years of my life between. 1898 and 1927; culture.
the other fifty-two since 2419. The gap between these Complete domination of. the air rendered communi-
two, a period of nearly five hundred years, I spent in a cation between these centers a matter of ease and safety.
state of suspended animation, free from the ravages of Occasional destructive raids on the waste lands were
katabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on considered all that was necessary to keep the "wild"
my physical or mental faculties. Americans on the run within the shelter of their forests,
When I began my long sleep, man had just begun and prevent their becoming a menace to the Han
his real conquest of the air civilization.
ina sudden series of trans- — =^=^^=^^^^= But nearly three hundred
oceanic flights in airplanes TJ ERE. once more, is a real sdentifution story phis. It years of easily maintained
driven by internal combus- -''
is a •ii>;\-; zuhkk -jiill wake. >','.: hran of imtiy: i-e/tdtrs
security, the last century of
tion motors.He had barely leap with joy.
which bad been nearly ster-
begun to speculate on the
We have rarely printed a story in this magazine that for
scientific interest, as zvell as suspense, could hold its own with ile in scientific, social and
possibilities of harnessing this particular story. We prophecy that this story wilt be- economic progress, had
sub-atomic forces, and had come more valuable as the years go by. It certainly holds a softened and devitalized the
made no further practical number of interesting prophecies, of which no doubt, many Hans.
will come trite. For wealth of science, it will be hard to
penetration into the field of It had likewise developed,
beat for some time to come. It is one of those rare stories
ethereal pulsations than the beneath the protecting fo-
that wilt bear reading and re-reading many times.
primitive radio and tele- TRis story has impressed us so favorably, that we hope the liage of the forest, the
vision of that day. The author may be induced to write a seijiicl to it soon. growth of a vigorous new
United States of America __ __ American civilization, re-
was the most powerful na- markable in the mobility and
tion in the world, its political, financial, industrial and flexibilityof its organization, in its conquest of almost
scientific influence being supreme; and in the arts also insuperable obstacles, in the development and guarding
it was rapidly climbing into leadership. of its industrial and scientific resources, all in antici-
I awoke to find the America I knew a total wreck pation of that "Day of Hope" to which it had been
to find Americans a hunted race in their own land, looking forward for generations, when it would be
hiding in the dense forests that covered die shattered strong enough to burst from the green chrysalis of the
and leveled ruins of their once magnificent cities, des- forests, soar into the upper air lanes and destroy the
perately preserving, and struggling to develop in their yellow incubus.
secret retreats, the remnants of their culture and sci- At the time I awoke, the "Day of Hope" was almost
—
ence and the undying flame of their sturdy inde- at hand. I shall not attempt to set forth a detailed his-
pendence. tory of the Second War of Independence, for that has
 424 AMAZING STORIES
been recorded already by better historians than I am. CHAPTER 1
Instead I shall confine myself largely to the part I was
fortunate enough to play in this struggle and in the
Men
Floating

events leading up to it.

It all resulted from my interest in radioactive gases.
During the latter part of 1927 my company, the Ameri-
MY first glimpse of a human being of the 25th
Century was obtained through a portion of
woodland where the trees were thinly scat-
can Radioactive Gas Corporation, had Iieen keeping tered, with a dense forest beyond.
me busy investigating reports of unusual phenomena I had been wandering along aimlessly, and hopelessly,
observed in certain abandoned coal mines near the musing over my strange fate, when I noticed a figure
Wyoming Valley, in Pennsylvania. that cautiously backed out of the dense growth across
With two and a complete equipment of
assistants the glade. I was about to call out joyfully, but there
scientific instruments, I began the exploration of a was something furtive about the figure that prevented
deserted working in a mountainous district, where sev- me. The boy's attention ( for it seemed to be a lad of
eral weeks before, a number of mining engineers had fifteen or sixteen) was centered tensely on the heavy
reported traces of carnotite* and what they believed to growth of trees from which he had just emerged.
be radioactive gases. Their report was not without He was clad in rather tight-fitting garments entirely
foundation, it was apparent from the outset, for in our of green, and wore a helmet-like cap of the same color.
examination of the upper levels of the mine, our instru- High around his waist he wore a broad thick belt, which
ments indicated a vigorous radioactivity. bulked up in the back across the shoulders, into some-
On the morning of December 15th, we descended to thing of the proportions of a knapsack.
one of the lowest levels. To our surprise, we found As I was taking in these details, there came a vivid
no water there. Obviously it had drained off through flash and heavy detonation, like that of a hand grenade,
some break in the strata. We
noticed too that the not far to the left of him. He threw up an arm and
rock in the side walls of the shaft was soft, evi- staggered a bit in a queer, gliding way ; then he recov-
dently due to the radioactivity, and pieces crumbled ered himself and slipped cautiously away from the place
under foot rather easily. We
made our way cautiously of the explosion, crouching slightly, and still facing
down the shaft, when suddenly the rotted timbers the denser part of the forest. Every few steps he
above us gave way. would raise his arm, and point into the forest with
I jumped ahead, barely escaping the avalanche of something he held in his hand. Wherever he pointed
coal and soft rock, but my companions, who were there was a terrific explosion, deeper in among the
several paces behind me, were buried under it, and trees. It came to me then that he was shooting with
undoubtedly met instant death. some form of pistol, though there was neither flash nor
I was trapped. Return was impossible. With my detonation from the muzzle of the weapon itself.
electric torch I explored the shaft to its end, but could After firing several times, he seemed to come to a
find no other way out. The air became increasingly sudden resolution, and turning in my general direction,
difficult to breathe, probably from the rapid accumula- leaped —to my amazement sailing through the air be-
tion of the radioactive gas. In a little while my tween the sparsely scattered trees in such a jump as I
senses reeled and I lost consciousness. had never in my life seen before. That leap must have
When awoke, there was a cool and refreshing cir-
I carried him a full fifty feet, although at the height of
culation of air in the shaft. I had no thought that I his arc, he was not more than ten or twelve feet from
had been unconscious more than a few hours, although the ground.
it seems that the radioactive gas had kept me in a state When he alighted, his foot caught in a projecting
of suspended animation for something like 500 years. root, and he sprawled gently forward. I say "gently"
My awakening, I figured' out later, had been due to for he did not crash down as I expected him to do,
some shifting of the strata which reopened the shaft The only thing I could compare it with was a slow-mo-
and cleared the atmosphere in the working. This must tion cinema, although I had never seen one in which
have been the case, for I was able to struggle back up horizontal motions were registered at normal speed a»d
the shaft over a pile of debris, and stagger up the long only the vertical movements were slowed down.
incline to the mouth of the mine, where an entirely Due to my surprise, I suppose my brain did not func-
different world, overgrown with a vast forest and no tion with its normal quickness, for I gazed at the prone
visible sign of human habitation, met my eyes. figure for several seconds before I saw the blood that
I shall pass over the days of mental agony that fol- oozed out from under the tight green cap. Regaining
lowed in my attempt to grasp the meaning of it all. my power of action, I dragged him out of sight back
There were times when I felt that I was on the verge of the big tree. For a few moments I busied myself
of insanity. I roamed the unfamiliar forest like a lost in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood. The wound
soul. Had not been for the necessity of improvising
it was not a deep one. My companion was more dazed
traps and crude clubs with which to slay my food, I than hurt. But what of the pursuers?
believe I should have gone mad. I took the weapon from his grasp and examined it
Suffice it to say, however, that
survived this psychic
I hurriedly. It was not unlike the automatic pistol to
crisis. I shall begin my narrative proper with my first which I was accustomed, except that it apparently fired
contact with Americans of the year 2419 A. D. with a button instead of a trigger, I inserted several
fresh rounds of ammunition into its magazine from my
companion's belt, as rapidly as I could, for I soon heard
 ARMAGEDDON — 2419 A.D.

ear us, the suppressed conversation of his pursuers, lay in the belt. The thing was some sort of anti-gravity
There followed a series of explosions round about belt that almost balanced the weight of the wearer,
,hut none very close. They evidently had not spot- thereby tremendously multiplying the propulsive power
ted our hiding place, and were firing at random. of the leg muscles, and the lifting power of the arms.
I waited tensely, balancing the gun
hand, toin my When the girl came to, she regarded me as curiously
'accustom myself to its weight and probable throw. as I did her, and promptly began to quiz me. Her ac-
Then I saw a movement in the green foliage of a tree cent and intonation puzzled me a lot, but nevertheless
not far away, and the head and face of a man appeared. we were able to understand each other fairly well, ex-
:'Like my companion, he was clad entirely in green, cept for certain words and phrases. I explained what
.which made his figure difficult to distinguish. But his had happened while she lay unconscious, and she
face could be seen clearly. It was an evil face, and had thanked me simply for saving her life.
murtler in it. "You are a strange exchange," she said, eying my
That decided me. I gun and fired. My
raised the clothing quizzically. Evidently she found it mirth pro-
aim was bad, for there was Ho kick in the gun, as I voking by contrast with her own neatly efficient garb.
had expected, and I hit the trunk of the tree several "Don't you understand what I mean by 'exchange?'
feet below him. It blew him from his perch like a I mean ah —
let me see —
a stranger, somebody from
crumpled bit of paper, and he floated down to the some other gang. What gang do you belong to?" (She
ground, like some limp, dead thing, gently lowered by pronounced it "gan," with only a suspicion of a nasal
an invisible hand. The tree, its trunk blown apart by sound.)
the explosion, crashed down. I laughed. "I'm not a gangster," I said. But she
There followed another series of explosions around evidently did not understand this word. "I don't be-
us. These guns we were using made no sound in the long to any gang," I explained, "and never did. Does
firing, and my opponents were evidently as much at sea everybody belong to a gang nowadays ?"

as to. my position as I was to theirs. So I made no "Naturally," she said, frowning. "If you don't be-
attempt to reply to their fire, contenting myself with long to a gang, where and how do you live ? Why have
keeping a sharp lookout in their general direction. And you not found and joined a gang? How do you eat?
'
patience had its reward. Where do you get your clothing ?"
Very soon I saw a cautious movement in the top of "I've been eating wild game for the past two weeks,"
another tree. Exposing myself as little as possible, I I explained, "and this clothing I er — — —
ah ." I paused,
aimed carefully at the tree trunk and fired again. A wondering how I could explain that it must be many
shriek followed the explosion. I heard the tree crash hundred years old.
down ; then a groan. In the end I saw I would have to tell my story as
There was silence for a while. Then I heard a faint well as I could, piecing it together with my assumptions
sound of boughs swishing. I shot three times in its as to what had happened. She listened patiently; in-
direction,pressing the button as rapidly as I could. credulously at first, but with more confidence as I went
Branches crashed down where my shells had exploded, on. When I had finished, she sat thinking for a long
hut therewas no body. time.
Then I saw one of them. He was starting one of "That's hard to believe," she said, "but I believe it."

those amazing leaps from the bough of one tree to She looked me over with frank interest.
another, about forty feet away. "Were you married when you slipped into uncon-
I threw up my gun
impulsively and fired. By now sciousness down in that mine?" she asked me suddenly.
I had gotten the feel of the weapon, and my aim was I assured her I had never married. "Well, that simpli-
good. I hit him. The. "bullet" must have penetrated fies matters," she continued. "You see, if you were
his body and exploded. For one moment I saw him technically classed as a family man, I could take you
flying through the air. Then the explosion, and he hai back only as an invited exchange and I, being unmar-
vanished. ITe never finished his leap. It was annihila ried, and no relation of yours, couldn't do the inviting."
tion.
CHAPTER II
How many more of them there were I don't know
But this must have been too much for them. The> The Forest Gangs
used a final round of shells on us, all of
harmlessly, and shortly after I heard
which exploded
them swishing SHE gaveandmeeconomic system under which
social
a brief outline of the very peculiar
her peo-
and crashing away from us through the tree tops. Not ple lived. At least it seemed very peculiar from
one of them descended to earth. my 20th Century viewpoint.
Now I had time to give some attention to my com- I learned with amazement that exactly 492 years had

panion. She was, I found, a girl, and not a boy. De- passed over my head as I lay unconscious in the mine.
spite her bulky appearance, due to the peculiar belt Wihna, for that was her name, did not profess to lie
strapped around her body high up under the arms, she a historian, and so could give me only a sketchy outline
was very slender, and very pretty. of the wars that had been fought, and the manner
There was a stream not far away, from which I in which such radical changes had come about. It

brought water and bathed her face and wound. seemed that another war had followed the First World
Apparently the mystery of these long leaps, the War, in which nearly all the European nations had
monkey-like ability to jump from bough to bough, and banded together to break the financial and industrial
of the bodies that floated gently down instead of falling, power of America. They succeeded in their purpose.
 426 AMAZING STORIES
though they were beaten, for the war was a terrific one, tors of the Hans. They tapped the radio communication
and left America, like themselves, gasping, bleeding and lines of the Hans, with crude instruments at first.; better
disorganized, with only the hollow shell of a victory. ones later on. They bent every effort toward the re-
This opportunity had been seized by the Russian development of science. For many generations they
Soviets, who had made a coalition with the Chinese, to labored as unseen, unknown scholars of the Hans, pick-
sweep over all Europe and reduce it to a state of chaos. ing up their knowledge piecemeal, as fast as they were
America, industrially geared to world production and able to.
the world trade, collapsed economically, and there en- During the earlier part of this period, there were
sued a long period of stagnation and desperate at- many deadly wars fought between the various gangs,
tempts at economic reconstruction. But it was im- and occasional courageous but childishly futile attacks
possible to stave off war with the Mongolians, who 'by upon the Hans, followed by terribly punitive raids.
now had subjugated the Russians, and were aiming at But as knowledge progressed, the sense of American
a world empire. brotherhood redeveloped. Reciprocal arrangements
In about 2109, it seems, the conflict was finally pre- were made among the gangs over constantly increasing
cipitated. The Mongolians, with overwhelming fleets areas. Trade developed to a certain extent, as between
of great airships, and a science that far outstripped that one gang and another. But the interchange of knowl-
of crippled America, swept in over the Pacific and At- edge became more important than that of goods, as
lantic Coasts,and down from Canada, annihilating skill in the handling of synthetic processes developed.
American aircraft, armies and cities with their terrific Within the gang, an economy was developed that was
disintegrator rays. These rays were projected from a a compromise between individual liberty and a military
machine not unlike a searchlight in appearance, the socialism. The right of private property was limited
reflector of which, however, was not material substance, practically to personal possessions, but private priv-
but a complicated balance of interacting electronic ileges were many, and sacredly regarded. Stiraulatien
forces. This resulted in a terribly destructive beam. Un- to achievement lay chiefly in the winning of various
der its influence, material substance melted into "no- kinds of leadership and prerogatives, and only in a
thingness" ; i. e., into electronic vibrations. It destroyed very limited degree in the hope of owning anything that
all then known substances, from air to the most dense might be classified as "wealth," and nothing that might
metals and stone. be classified as "resources." Resources of <very descrip-
They settled down to the establishment of what be- tion, for military safety and efficiency, belonged as a
came known as the Han dynasty in America, as a sort matter of public interest to the community as a whole.
of province in theirWorld Empire. In the meantime, through these many generations,
Those were terrible days for the Americans. They the Hans had developed a luxury economy, and with
were hunted like wild beasts. Only those survived who it the perfection of gilded vice and degradation. The
finally found refuge in mountains, -canyons and forests. Americans were regarded as "wild men of the woods/'
Government was at an end among them. Anarchy pre- And since they neither needed nor wanted the woods
vailed for several generations. Most would have been or the wild men, they treated them as beasts, and were
eager to submit to the Hans, even if it meant slavery. conscious of no human brotherhood with them. As time
But the Hans did not want them, for they themselves went on, and synthetic processes of producing foods and
had marvelous machinery and scientific process by materials were further developed, less and less ground
which all difficult labor was accomplished. was needed by the Hans for the purposes of agriculture,
Ultimately they stopped their active search for, and and finally, -even the working of -mines was abandoned
annihilation of the widely scattered groups of now when it became cheaper to build up metal from elec-
savage Americans. So long as they remained hidden in tronic vibrations than to dig them out of the .ground.
their forests, and did not venture near the great cities The Hans race, devitalized by its vices and luxuries,
the Hans had built, little attention was paid to them. with machinery and scientific processes to satisfy its
Then began the building of the new American civili- every want, with virtually no necessity of labor, began
zation. Families and individuals gathered together in to assume a defensive attitude toward the Americans.
clans or "gangs" for mutual protection. For nearly a And quite naturally, the Americans regarded the
century they lived a nomadic and primitive life, mov- Hans with a deep, grim hatred. Conscious of individual
ing from place to place, in desperate fear of the casual superiority as men, knowing that latterly they were out-
and occasional Hans air raids, and the terrible dis- stripping the Hans in science and civilization, they
integrator ray. As the frequency of these raids de- longed desperately for the day when they should be
creased, they began to stay permanently in given locali- powerful enough to rise and annihilate the Yellow-
ties, organizing upon lines which in many respects were Blight that lay over the continent.
similar to those of the military households of the Nor- At the time of my awakening, the gangs were rather
man feudal barons, except that instead of gathering to- loosely organized, but were considering the establish-
gether in castles, their defense tactics necessitated a ment of a special military force, whose special business
certain scattering of living quarters for families and it would be to harry the Hans and bring down their
individuals. They lived virtually in the open air, in the air ships whenever possible without causing general
forests, in green tents, resorting to camouflage tactics alarm among the Mongolians. This force was destined
that would conceal from air observers.
their presence to become the nucleus of the national force, when the
They dug underground and laboratories, that
factories Day of Retribution arrived. But that, however, did.
they might better be shielded from the electrical detec- not happen for ten years, and is another story.
 ARMAGEDDON — 2419 A.D. 427

Wilma told me she was a member of the Wyoming They were very useful in the forest. They were belts,
Gang, which claimed the entire Wyoming Valley as its strapped high under the arms, containing an amount
under the leadership of Boss- Hart.
territory, Her of inertron adjusted to the wearer's weight and pur-
mother and father were dead, and she was unmarried, poses. In effect they made a man weigh as little as he
so she was not a "family member." She lived in a desired; two pounds if he liked,
little group of tents known as Camp 17, tinder a woman "Floaters" are a later development of "jumpers" —
Camp Boss, with seven other girls. rocket motors encased in inertron blocks and strapped
Her duties alternated between military or police to the back in such a way that the wearer floats, when
scouting and factory work. For the drifting, facing slightly downward.
two-week period which would end the With his motor in operation, he moves
next day, she had been on "air patrol." like a diver, head- foremost, controlling
This did not mean, as I first imagined, his direction by twisting his body and
that shewas flying, but rather that she by movements of his outstretched arms
was on the lookout for Han ships over and hands. Ballast weights locked in
thisoutlying section of the Wyoming the front of the belt adjust weight and
territory,and had spent most of her lift. Some men prefer a few ounces
time perched in the tree tops scanning of weight in -floating, using a slight
the skies. Had she seen one she would motor thrust to overcome this. Others
have fired a "drop flare" several miles prefer a buoyance balance of a few
off to one side, which would ignite ounces. The inadvertent dropping of
when it was floating vertically toward weight is not a serious matter. The
the earth, so that the direction or point motor thrust always can be used to
from which it had been fired might not On the left of t&e illni iion. is a descend. But as an extra precaution,
Han girl, and an the
be guessed by the airship and bring a American girl, who, life ii $ h« in case the motor should fail, for any
race, Is equipped with taertron
blasting play of the disintegrator ray reason, there are built into every belt a
in Other members of the
her vicinity. number of detachable sections, one or
air patrol would send up rockets on seeing hers, until more of which can be discarded to balance off any loss
finallya scout equipped with an ultrophone, which, un- in weight.
'

likethe ancient radio, operated on the ultronic ethereal "But who were your assailants," I asked, "and why
vibrations, would pass the warning simultaneously to were you attacked ?''
the headquarters of the Wyoming Gang and other com- Her assailants, she told me, were members of an out-
munities within a radius of several hundred miles, not law gang, referred to as "Bad Bloods," a group which
to mention the few American rocketships that might for several generations had been under the domination
be in the air, and which instantly would duck to cover of conscienceless leaders who tried to advance the in-
either through forest clearings or fey flattening down terests of their clan by tactics which their neighbors
to earth in green fields where their coloring would prob- had come to regard as unfair, and who in consequence
ably protect them from observation. The favorite had been virtually boycotted. Their purpose had been
American method of propulsion was known as "rocket- to slay her near the Delaware frontier, making it ap-
ing." The rocket is what I would describe, from my pear that the crime had been committed by Delaware
20th Century comprehension of the matter, as an ex- scouts and thus embroil the Delawares and Wyomings
tremely powerful gas blast, atomically produced in acts of reprisal against each other, or at least cause
through the stimulation of chemical action. Scientists suspicions.
of today regard it as a childishly simple reaction, but Fortunately they had not succeeded in surprising her,
by that very virtue, most economical and efficient. and she had been successful in dodging them for some
But tomorrow, she explained, she would go back to two hours before the shooting began, at the moment
work in the cloth plant, where she would take charge when I arrived on the scene.
of one of the synthetic processes by which those won- "But we must not stay here talking," Wilma con-
derful substitutes for woven fabrics of wool, cotton cluded. "I have to take you in, and besides I must
and silk are produced. At the end of another two weeks, report this attack right away. I think we had better
she would be back on military duty again, perhaps at slipover to the other side of the mountain. Whoever
tliesame work, or maybe as a "contact guard," on duty is on that post will have a phone, and I can make a
where the territory of the Wyomings merged with that direct report. But you'llhave to have a belt. Mine
of the Dekrwares, or the "Susqnannas" (Susquehan- alone won't help much against our combined weights,
nas) or one of the half dozen other "gangs" in that and there's little to be gained by jumping heavy. It's

section of the country which I knew as Pennsylvania almost as bad as walking."

and New York States. After a we found one of the men I had
little search,
Wilma cleared up for me the mystery of those flying killed,who had floated down among the trees some
leaps which she and her assailants had made, and ex- distance away and whose belt was not badly damaged.
plained in the following manner, how the inertron belt In detaching it from his body, it nearly got away from
balances weight me and shot up in the air. Wilma caught it, however,
"Jumpers" were in common use at the time I and though it reinforced the lift of her own belt so
"awoke," though they were costly, for at that time that she had to hook her knee around a branch to hold
inertron had not been produced- in very great quantity. herself down* she saved it. I climbed the tree, and
 AMAZING STORIES
with my weight added to hers, we floated down easily. other side of the mountain. So she closed down the lid
CHAPTER III
of the phone and handed it back to Alan, who seemed
relieved to see us departing over the tree tops in the
Life in the 25th Century direction of the camps.

WE were delayed in starting for quite a while

since I had to acquire a few crude ideas about
the technique of using these belts, I had been
We had covered perhaps ten miles, in what still
seemed to me a surprisingly easy fashion, when Wilma
explained, that from here on we would have to keep
sitting down, for instance, with the belt strapped about to the ground. We were nearing the camps, she said,
me, enjoying an ease similar to that of a comfortable and there was always the possibility that some small
armchair; when I stood up with a natural exertion of Han scoutship, invisible high in the sky, might catch
muscular effort, I shot ten feet into the air, with a wild sight of us through a projectoscope and thus find the
instinctive thrashing of arms and legs that amused general location of the camps.
Wilma greatly. Wilma took me to the Scout office, which proved to
But after some practice, I began to get the trick of be a small building of irregular shape, conforming to
gauging muscular effort to a minimum of vertical and the trees around it, and substantially constructed of
a maximum of horizontal. The correct form, I found, green sheet like material.
was in a measure comparable to that of skating. I I was received by the assistant Scout Boss, who re-
found, also, that in forest work particularly the arms ported my arrival at once to the historical office, and
and hands could be used to great advantage in swinging to officials he called the Psycho Boss and the History
along from branch to branch, so prolonging leaps al- Boss, who came in a few minutes later. The attitude
most indefinitely at times. of all three men was at first polite but skeptical, and
In going up the side of the mountain, I found that Wilma's ardent advocacy seemed to amuse them
my 20th Century muscles did have an advantage, in secretly.
spite of lack of skill with the belt, and since the slopes For the next two hours I talked, explained and
were very sharp, and most of our leaps were upward, answered questions. I had to explain, in detail, the
I could have distanced Wilma easily. But when we manner of my life in the 20th Century and my under-
crossed the ridge and descended, she outstripped me standing of customs, habits, business, science and the
with her superior technique. Choosing the steepest history of that period, and about developments in the
slopes, she would crouch in the top of a tree, and propel centuries thathad elapsed. Had I been in a classroom,
herself outward, literally diving until, with the loss of I would have come through the examination with a very
horizontal momentum, she would assume a more up- poor mark, for I was unable to give any answer to
right position and float downward. In this manner fully half of their questions. But before long I real-
she would sometimes cover as much as a quarter of a ized that the majority of these questions were designed
mile in a single leap, while I leaped and scrambled as traps. Objects, of whose purpose I knew nothing,
clumsily behind, thoroughly enjoying the novel sensa- were casually handed to me, and I was watched keenly
tion. as I handled them.
Half way down the mountain, we saw another green- In the end I could see both amazement and belief
clad figure leap out above the tree tops toward us. The begin to show in the faces of my inquisitors, and at last
three of us perched on an outcropping of rock from the Historical and Psycho Bosses agreed openly that
which a view for many miles around could be had, they could find no flaw in my story or reactions, and
while Wilma hastily explained her adventure and my that unbelievable as it seemed, my story must be ac-
presence to her fellow guard, whose name was Alan. cepted as genuine.
I learned later that this was the modern form of Helen. They took me at once to Big Boss Hart. He was a
"You want to report by phone then, don't you?" portlyman with a "poker face." He would probably
Alan took a compact packet about six inches square have been the successful politician even in the 20th
from a holster attached to her belt and handed it to Century.
Wilma. They gave him a brief outline of my story and a
So far as I could see, it had no special receiver for report of their examination of me. He made no com-
the ear. Wilma merely threw back a lid, as though ment other than to nod his acceptance of it. Then he
she were opening a book, and began to talk. The voice turned to me.
that came back from the machine was as audible as her "How does it feel?" he asked. "Do we look funny
own. to you?"
She was queried closely as to the attack upon her, "A bit strange," I admitted. "But I'm beginning to
and at considerable length as to myself, and I could lose that dazed feeling, though I can see I have an aw-
tell from the tone of that voice that its owner was not ful lot to learn."
prepared to take me at my face value as readily as "Maybe we can learn some things from you, too," he
Wilma had. For that matter, neither was the other girl. said. "So you fought in the FirstWorld War. Do
I could realize it from the suspicious glances she threw you know, we have very left in the way of
little
my way, when she thought my attention was elsewhere, records of the details of that war, that is, the precise
and the manner in which her hand hovered constantly conditions under which it was fought, and the tactics
near her gun holster. employed. We
forgot many things during the Han ter-
Wilma was ordered to bring me in at once, and in- ror, and —
well, I think you might have a lot of ideas
formed that another scout would take her place on the worth thinking over for our raid masters. By the way,
 ARMAGEDDON — 2419 A.D. 429
now that you're here, and can't go back to your own All able-bodied men and women alternated in two-
century, so to speak,what do you want to do? You're week periods between military and industrial service,
welcome to become one of us. Or perhaps you'd just except those who were needed for household work.
with us for a while, and then look around
like to visit Since working conditions in the plants and offices were
among the other gangs. Maybe you'd like some of the ideal, and everybody thus had plenty of healthy out-
others better. Don't make up your mind now. We'll put door activity in addition, the population was sturdy and
you down as an exchange for a while. Let's see. You active. Laziness was regarded as nearly the greatest
and Bill Hearn ought to get along well together. He's of social offences. Hard work and general merit were
Camp Boss of Number 34 when he isn't acting as variously rewarded with extra privileges, advancement
Raid Boss or Scout Boss. There's a vacancy in his to positions of authority, and with various items of
camp. Stay with liira and think things over as long as personal equipment for convenience and luxury.
you want to. As soon as you make up your mind to In leisure moments, I got great enjoyment from sit-
anything, let me know." ting outside the dwelling in which I was quartered with
We ail shook hands, for that was one custom that Bill Hearn and ten other men, watching the occasional
had not died out i* five hundred years, and I set out passers-by, as with leisurely, but swift movements, they
with Bill Hearn. swung up and down the forest trail, rising from the
Bill, like all the others, was clad in green. He was ground in long almost-horizontal leaps, occasionally
a big man. That is, he was about my own height, five swinging from one convenient branch overhead to
feet eleven. This was considerably above the average another before "sliding" back to the ground farther on.
now, for the race had lost something in stature, it Normal traveling pace, where these trails were straight
seemed, through the vicissitudes of five centuries. Most enough, was about twenty miles an hour. Such things
of the women were a bit below five feet, and the men as automobiles and railroad trains (the memory of them
only a trifle above this height. not more than a month old in my mind) seemed inex-
For a period of two weeks Bill was to confine himself pressibly silly and futile compared with such conven-
to camp duties, so I had a good chance to familiarize ience as these belts or jumpers offered.
myself with the community life. It was not easy. There Bill suggested that I wander around for several days,
were so many marvels to absorb. I never ceased to from plant to plant, to observe and study what I could.
wonder at the strange combination of rustic social life The entire community had been apprised of my com-
and feverish industrial activity. At least, it was ing, my rating as an "exchange" reaching every building
strange to me. For in my experience, industrial de- and post in the community, by means of ultronic broad-
velopment meant crowded cities, tenements, paved cast. Everywhere I was welcomed in an interested and
streets, profusion of vehicles, noise, hurrying men and helpful spirit.
women with strained or dull faces, vast structures and I visited the plants where ultronic vibrations were
ornate public works. isolated from the ether and through slow processes
Here, however, was rustic simplicity, apparently iso- built up into sub-electronic, electronic
and atomic forms
lated families and groups, living in the heart of the into the two great synthetic elements, ttltron and in-
forest, with a quarter of a mile or more between house- ertron. I learned something, superficially at least, of
holds, a total absence of crowds, no means of convey- the processes of combined chemical and mechanical ac-
ance other than the belts called jumpers, almost con- tion through which were produced the various forms
stantly worn by everybody, and an occasional rocket of synthetic cloth. I watched the manufacture of the
ship, used only for longer journeys, and underground machines which were used at locations of construction
plants or factories that were to my mind more like to produce the various forms of building materials.
laboratories and engine rooms ; many of them were ex- But I was particularly interested in the munitions plants
cavations as deep as mines, with well finished, lighted and the rocket ship shops.
and comfortable interiors. These people were adepts Ultron is a solid of great molecular density and mod-
at camouflage against air observation. Not only would which has the. property of being 100
erate elasticity,
their activity have been unsuspected by an airship pass- percent conductive to those pulsations known as light,
ing over the center of the community, but even by an electricity and Since it is completely permeable
heat.
enemy who might happen to drop through the screen to light vibrations, is therefore absolutely invisible
it

of the upper branches to the floor of the forest The and non-reflective. magnetic response is almost,
Its
camps, or household structures, were all irregular in but not quite, 100 percent also. It is therefore very
shape and of colors that blended with the great trees heavy under normal conditions but extremely respon-
among which they were hidden. sive to the repcUor or anti-gravity rays, such as the
There were 724 dwellings or "camps" among the Hans use as "legs" for their airships.
Wyomings, located within an area of about fifteen "Inertron is the second great triumph of American
square miles. The total population was 8,688, every research and experimentation with ultronic forces. It
man, woman and child, whether member or "exchange," was developed just a few years before my awakening
being listed. in the abandoned mine. It is a synthetic element, built
The plants were widely scattered through the territory up, through a complicated heterodyning of ultronic
also. Nowhere was anything like congestion permitted. pulsations,from "infra balanced" subionic forms. It is
So far as possible, families and individuals were as- completely inert to both electric and magnetic forces in
signed to living quarters, not too far from the plants or allthe orders above the uttronk; that is to say, the sub-
offices in which their work lay. clecfroni-c, the electronic, the atomic and the molecular.
430 AMAZING STORIES
In consequence it has a number of amazing and valu- done otherwise than I did in that matter, and most of
able properties. One of these is the total lack of weight. all my own appreciation of the fact that she had not
Another is a total lack of heat. It has no molecular found it as difficult as the others to believe my story,
vibration whatever. It reflects 100 percent of the heat operated in the same direction. I could easily imagine

and light impinging upon does not feel cold to

it. It my storymust have sounded incredible.
the touch, of course, since it will not absorb the heat It was. natural enough too, that she should feel an

of the hand. It is a solid, very dense in molecular struc- unusual interest in me. In the first place, I was her
ture despite its lack of weight, of personal discovery. In the second,
great strength and considerable she was a girl of studious and re-
"elasticity. It is a perfect shield flective turn of mind. She never got
against the disintegrator rays. tired of my stories and descriptions
Rocket guns are very simple con- of the 20th Century.
trivances so far as the mechanism The others of the community,
of launching the bullet is concerned. however, seemed to find our friend-
They are simple light tubes, closed ship a bit amusing. It seemed that
at the rear end, with a trigger actu- Wilma had a reputation for being
ated pin for piercing the thin skin cold toward the opposite sex, and so
at the base of the cartridge. This others, not lieing able to appreciate
piercing of the skin starts the some of her fine qualities as I did,
chemical and atomic reaction. The Setting his K for a long distance shot, misinterpreted her attitude, much to
entire cartridge leaves the tube un- their own delight. Wilma and I,

der its own power, at a very easy initial velocity, just however, ignored this as much as we could.
enough to insure accuracy of aim ; so the tube does not
have to be of heavy construction. The bullet increases CHAPTER IV
in velocity as it goes. It may be solid or explosive. It
A Han Air Raid
may explode on contact or on time, or a combination of
these two.
Bill and I talked mostly of weapons, military tactics
THERE was a
Mann, with whom
girl in Wilma's camp named Gerdi
Bill Hearn was desperately in

and strategy. Strangely enough he had no idea what- love, and the four of us used to go around a lot
ever of the possibilities of the barrage, though the tre- together. Gerdi was a distinct type. Whereas Wilma
mendous effect of a "curtain of fire" with such high-ex- had the usual dark brown hair and hazel eyes that
plosive projectiles as these modern rocket guns used marked nearly 'every member of the community, Gerdi
was obvious to me. But the barrage idea, it seemed, has had red hair, blue eyes and very fair skin. She has
been lost track of completely in the air wars that fol- been dead many years now, but I remember her vividly
lowed the First World War, and in the peculiar guerilla because she was a throwback in physical appearance to
tactics developed by Americans in the later period of d certain 20th Century type which I have found very
operations from the ground against Han.airships, and in rare among modern Americans also because the four ;

the gang wars which until a few generations ago I of us were engaged one day in a discussion of this very
learned, had been almost continuous. point, when I obtained my first experience of a Han
"I wonder," said Bill one day, "if we couldn't work air raid.
up some form of barrage to spring on the Bad Bloods. We were sitting high on the side of a hill overlooking
The Big Boss told me today that he's been in com- the valley that teemed with human activity, invisible
munication with the other gangs, and all are agreed beneath its blanket of foliage.
that the Bad Bloods might as well be wiped out for The other three, who knew of the Irish but vaguely
good. That attempt on Wilma Deering's life and and indefinitely, as a race on the other side of the globe,
their evident desire to make trouble among the gangs, which, like ourselves, had succeeded in maintaining a
has stirred up every community east of the Alleghanies. precarious and fugitive existence in rebellion against the
The Boss says that none of the others will object if we Mongolian domination oE the earth, were listening with
go after them. So I imagine that before long we will. interest to my
theory that Gerdi's ancestors of several
Now show me again how you worked that business in hundred years ago must have been Irish. I explained
the Argonne forest. The conditions ought to be pretty that Gerdi was an Irish type, evidently a throwback,
much the same." and that her surname might well have been McMann,
I went over it with him in detail, arid gradually we or McMahan, and still more anciently "mac Mathgham-
worked out a modified plan that would be better adapted hain." They were interested too in my surmise that
to our more powerful weapons, and the use of jumpers. "Gerdi" was the same name as that which bad been
"It will be easy," Bill exulted. "I'll slide down and "Gerty" or "Gertrude" in the 20th Century.
talk it over with the Boss tomorrow." In the middle of our discussion, we were startled
During the first two weeks of my stay with the Wy- by an alarm rocket that burst high in the air, far to the
omings, Wilma Deering and I saw a great deal of each north, spreading a pall of red smoke that drifted like
other. I naturally felt a little closer friendship for her, a cloud. It was followed by others at scattered points
in view of the fact that she was the first human being in the Northern sky.
I saw after waking from my long sleep her apprecia-
; "A Han raid !" Bill exclaimed in amazement. "The
tion of my saving her life, though I could not have first in seven years!"
 ARMAGEDDON — 2419 A.D. 431

"Maybe it's- just one of their ships off its course," daylight (and still faintly visible to the human eye at
I ventured. night). Actually, I had been informed by my instruc-
"No," said Wilma insome agitation. "That would tors, there were two rays; the visible one generated by
be green rockets. Red means only one thing, Tony. the ship's apparatus, and directed toward the ground
They're sweeping the countryside with their dis beams, as a beam of "carrier" impulses and ; the true repellor
Can you see anything, Bill ?" ray, the complement of the other in one sense, induced
"We had better get under cover," Gerdi said ner- by the action of the "carrier" and reacting in a concen-
vously. "The four o£ us are bunched here in the open. trating upward direction from the mass of the earth,
For ail we know may
be twelve miles up, out of
they becoming successively electronic, atomic and finally
sight, yet looking at us with a projecto'." molecular, in its nature, according to various ratios of
Bill had been sweeping the horizon hastily with his distance between earth mass and "carrier" source,
glass, but apparently saw nothing. until, in the last analysis, the ship itself actually is
"We had better scatter, at that," he said finally. "It's supported on an upward rushing column of air, much
orders,you know. See !" He pointed to the valley. on a fountain jet.
like a ball continuously supported
Here and there a tiny human figure shot for a mo- The raider neared with incredible speed. Its rays
ment above the foliage of the treetops. were both slanted astern at a sharp angle, so that it slid
"That's bad," Wilma commented, as she counted the forward with tremendous momentum.
jumpers. "No less than fifteen people visible, and all The ship was operating two disintegrator rays,
clearly radiating from a central point. Do they want though only in a casual, intermittent fashion. But when-
to give away our location ?" ever they flashed downward with blinding brilliancy,
The standard orders covering air raids were that the forest, rocks and ground melted instantaneously into
population was to scatter individually. There should nothing, where they played upon them.
be no grouping, or even pairing, in view of the destruc- When later I inspected the scars left by these rays
tiveness of the disintegrator rays. Experience of gen- I found them some five feet deep and thirty feet wide,
erations had proved that if this were done, and every- the exposed surfaces being lava-like in texture, but of
body remained hidden beneath the tree screens, the a pale, iridescent, greenish hue.
Hans would have to sweep mile after mile of territory, No systematic use of the rays was made by the ship,
foot by foot, to catch more than a small percentage of however, until it reached a point over the center of
the community. the valley —
the center of the community's activities.
Gerdi, however, refused to leave Bill, and Wilma There it came to a sudden stop by shooting its repellor
developed an equal obstinacy against quitting my side. beams sharply forward and easing them back gradually
I was inexperienced at this sort of thing, she explained, and motionless.
to the vertical, holding the ship floating
quite ignoring the fact that she was too ; she was only Then the work of destruction began systematically.
thirteen or fourteen years old at the time of the last Back and forth traveled the destroying rays, plough-
air raid. ing parallel furrows from hillside to hillside. We
However, since I could not argue her out of it, we gasped in dismay, Wilma and I, as time after time we
leaped together about a quarter of a mile to the right, saw it plough through sections where we knew camps
while Bill ,and Gerdi disappeared down the hillside or plants were located.
among the trees. "This is awful" she moaned, a terrified question in
Wilma and I both wanted a point of vantage from her eyes. "How could they know the location so exactly,
which we might overlook the valley and the sky to the Tony? Did you see? They were never in doubt. They
North, and we found it near the top of the ridge, where, stalled at a predetermined spot — —
and and it was ex-
protected from visibility by thick brandies, we could actly the right spot."
look out between the tree trunks, and get a good view We did not talk of what might happen if the rays
of the valley. were turned in our direction. We both knew. We
No more
rockets went up. Except for a few of those would simply disintegrate in a split second into mere
warning red clouds, drifting lazily in a blue sky, there scattered electronic vibrations. Strangely enough, it
was no visible indication of man's past or present was this self-reliant girl of the 25th Centuiy, who clung
existence anywhere in the sky or on the ground. to me, a relatively primitive man of the 20th, less
Then Wilma gripped my arm and pointed. I saw familiar than she with the thought of this terrifying
it; away off in the distance; looking like a phantom moral support.
possibility, for
dirigible airship, in its coat of low-visibility paint, a We knew that many of our companions must have
bare spectre. been whisked into absolute non-existence before our
"Seven thousand feet up," Wilma whispered, crouch- eyes in these few moments. The whole thing paralyzed
ing close to me. "Wr ateh.'' us into mental and physical immobility for I do not
The ship was about the same shape as the great know how long.
dirigibles of the 20th Century that I had seen, but It couldn't have been long, however, for the rays had

without the suspended control car, engines, propellors, not ploughed more than thirty of their twenty-foot
rudders or elevating planes. As it loomed rapidly furrows or so across the valley, when I regained con-
nearer, I saw that it was wider and somewhat flatter trol of myself, and brought Wilma to herself by shak-
than I had supposed. ing her roughly.
Now I could see the repellor rays that held the ship "How far will this rocket .gua shoot, Wilma ?" I
aloft, like searchlight beams faintly visible in the bright demanded, drawing my pistol.
 .

402 AMAZING STORIES

"Itdepends on your rocket, Tony. It will take even The silence, the vacuity of the landscape, was op-
the longest range rocket, but you could shoot more pressive, as the last echoes died away.
accurately from a longer tube. But why? You Then far down the hillside, a single figure leaped
couldn't penetrate the shell of that ship with rocket exultantly above the foliage screen. And in the distance
force, even if you could reach it." another, and another.
I fumbled clumsily with my rocket pouch, for I was In a moment the sky was punctured by signal rockets.
excited. I had an idea I wanted to try; a "hunch" I One after another the little red puffs became drifting
called it, forgetting that Wilma could not understand clouds.
my ancient slang. But finally, with her help, I selected "Scatter Scatter !" Wilma exclaimed. "In half an
1

the longest range explosive rocket in my pouch, and hour there'll be an entire Han fleet here from Nu-yok,
fitted it to my pistol. and another from Bah-fio. They'll get this instantly
"It won't carry seven thousand feet, Tony," Wilma on theiT recordographs and location finders. They'll
objected. But I took aim carefully. It was another blast the whole valley and the country for miles be-
thought that I had in my mind. The supporting re- yond. Come, Tony. There's no time for the gang to
pellor ray, Ihad heeu told, became molecular in charac- rally. See the signals. We've got to jump. Oh, I'm
ter at what was called a logarithmic level of five (below so proud of you 1"
that it was a purely electronic "flow" or pulsation be- Over the ridge we went, in long leaps towards the
tween the source of the "carrier" and the average mass east, the country of the Delawares.
of the earth), Below that level if I could project my From time to time signal rockets puffed in the sky.
explosive bullet into this stream where it began to carry Most of them were the "red warnings," the "scatter"
material substance upward, might it not rise with the signals.But from certain of the others, which Wilma
air column, gathering speed and hitting the ship with Wyoming rackets, she gathered that who-
identified as
enough impact to carry it through the shell ? It was ever was in command (we did not know whether the
worth trying anyhow. Wilma became greatly excited, Boss was alive or not) was ordering an ultimate rally
too,when she grasped the nature of my inspiration. toward the so
south, and we changed our course.
Feverishly I looked around for some formation of It was a great pity, I thought, that the clan had not
branches against which I could rest the pistol, for I been equipped throughout its membership with- ultrb-
had to aim most carefully. At last I found one. phones, but Wilma explained to me, that not enough
Patiently I sighted on the hulk of the ship far above us, of these had been built for distribution as yet, although
aiming at the far side of it, at such an angle as would, general distribution had been contemplated within a
so far as I could estimate, bring my bullet path through couple of months.
tbe forward repellor beam. At last the sights wavered We traveled far before nightfall overtook us, trying
across the point I sought and I pressed the button only to put as much distance as possible "between our-
gently. selves and the valley.
For a moment we gazed breathlessly. When gathering dusk made jumping too dangerous,
Suddenly the ship swung bow down, as on a pivot, we sought a comfortable spot beneath the trees, and
and swayed like a pendulum. Wilma screamed in her consumed part of our emergency rations. It was the
excitement. first time I had tasted the stuff —a highly nutritive syn-
"Oh Tony, you hit it! You hit it! Do it again; thetic substance called "concentro," which was, however,
bring it down!" a bit bitter and unpalatable. But as only a mouthful
We had only one more rocket of extreme range be- or so was needed, it did not matter.
tween us, and we dropped it three times in our excite- Neither of us had a cloak, but we were both
ment in inserting it in my gun. Then, forcing myself thoroughly tired and happy, so we curled up together
to be calm by sheer will power, while Wilma stuffed for warmth. I remember Wilma making some sleepy
her little fist into her mouth to keep from shrieking, remark about our mating, as she cuddled up, as though
I sighted carefully again and fired. In a flash, Wilma the matter were all settled, and my surprise at my own
had grasped tbe hope that this discovery of mine might instant acceptance of the idea, for I had not consciously
lead to the end of the Han domination. thought of her that way before. Bubwe both fell asleep
The elapsed time of the rocket's invisible ffiight at once.
seemed an age. In the morning we found little time for love making.
Then we saw the ship falling.. It seemed to plunge The practical problem facing us was too great. Wilma
lazily, but actually it fell with terrific acceleration, felt that the Wyoming plan must be to rally in the
turning end over end, its disintegrator rays, out of con- Susquanna had her doubts about the
territory, but she
trol, describing vast, wild arcs, and once cutting a gash wisdom of this plan. In my elation at my success in
through the forest less than two hundred feet from bringing the Han ship, and my newly found in-
down
where we stood. terest in my charming companion, who was, from my
The crash with which the heavy craft hit the ground viewpoint of another century, at once more highly civ-
—
reverberated from the hills the momentum of eighteen ilized and yet more primitive than myself, I had for-
or twenty thousand tons, in a sheer drop of seven gotten the. ominous fact that the Han ship I had
thousand feet. A
mangled mass of metal, it buried destroyed must have known the exact location of the
itself in the ground, with poetic justice, in the middle Wyoming Works.
of the smoking, semi-molten field of destruction it had This meant, to Wilma's logical mind, either that the
been so deliberately ploughing. Hans had perfected new instruments as yet unknown
 ARMAGEDDON — 2419 A.D.

to us, or that somewhere, among the Wyomings or

some other nearby gang, there were traitors so de-

graded as to commit that unthinkable act of trafficking
in inforriiation with the Hans. In either contingency,
she argued, other Plan raids would follow, and since
!he Susquannas had a highly developed organization
and more than usually productive plants, the next raid
might be expected to strike them.
But at any rate it was dearly our business to get in
touch with the other fugitives as quickly as possible,
so in spite of muscles that were sore from the excessive
leaping of the day before, we continued on our way.
We traveled for only a couple of hours when we
saw a multi-colored rocket in the sky, some ten miles
ahead of us.
"Bear to the left, Tony," Wilma said, "and listen
for the whistle."
"Why?" I asked.
"Haven't they given you the rocket code yet?" she
replied. "Tliat's what the green, followed by yellow
and purple means; to concentrate five miles east of
the rocket position. You know the rocket position
itself might draw a play of disintegrator beams."
It did not take us long to reach the neighborhood of
the indicated rallying, though we were now traveling
beneath the trees, with but an occasional leap to a top
branch to see if any more rocket smoke was floating
above. And soon we heard a distant whistle.
We found about half the Gang already there, in a
spotwhere the trees met high above a little stream.
The Big Boss and Raidbosses were busy reorganizing
theremnants.
We reported to Boss Hart at once. He was silent,
but interested, when he heard our story.
"You two stick close to me," he said, adding grimly,
"I'm going back to the valley at once with a hundred
picked men, and I'll need you."

CHAPTER V
Setting the Trap
fifteen minutes we were on our way. A
INSIDE of
certainamount of caution was sacrificed for the
sake of speed, and the men leaped away either
across the forest top, or over open spaces of ground,
but concentration was forbidden. The Big Boss named
the spot on the hillside as the rallying point.
"We'll have to take a chance oil being seen, so long
as we don't group," he declared, "at least until within
five From then on I want
miles of the rallying spot.
every man to disappear from sight and to travel under
cover. And keep your ultrophones open, and tuned
on ten -four-seven- six."
Wilma and I had received our battle equipment from
the Gear boss. It consisted of a long-gun, a hand-gun,
with a special case of ammunition constructed of iner-
tron, which made the load weigh but a few ounces, and
a short sword. This gear we strapped over each other's
shoulders, on top of our jumping belts. In addition, we
each received an ultrophone, and a light inertron
by
blanket rolled into a cylinder about six inches long Tlie Ban raider neared with incredible speed. Its rays wen
slanted astern at a sharp angle, so that It slid forward with trem<
two or three in diameter. This fabric was exceedingly momentum . .Whenever the disintegrator rays Hashed Sow
.

with blinding brilliancy, forest, rocks and ground melted i

thin and light, but it had considerable warmth, be- taneously Into nothing, where they played upon them.
 —
434 AMAZING STORIES
cause of the mixture of inertron in its composition. set. They slipped into little pockets over our ears in
"This looks like business," Wilma remarked to me the fabric helmets we wore, and shut out virtually
with sparkling eyes. (And I might mention a curious all extraneous sounds. The chest discs were likewise
thing here. The word "business" had survived from self-contained sending sets, strapped to the chest a few
the 20th Century American vocabulary, but not with inches below the neck and actuated by the vibrations
any meaning of "industry" or "trade," for such things from the vocal cords through the body tissues. The
being purely community activities were spoken of as tota! range of these sets was about eighteen nules. Re-
"work" and "clearing." Business simply meant fight- ception was remarkably clear, quite free from the static
ing, and that was all.) that so marked the 20th Century radios, and of a
"Did you bring all this equipment from the valley?" strength in direct proportion to the distance of the
I asked the Gear boss. speaker.
"No," he said. "There was no time to gather any- The Boss' set was triple powered, so that his orders
thing. All this stuff we cleared from the Susquannas would cut in on any local conversations, which were
a few hours ago. I was with the Boss on the way down, indulged in, however, with great restraint, and only
and he had me jump on ahead and arrange it. But you for the purpose of maintaining contacts.
two had better be moving. He's, beckoning you now." I marveled at the efficiency of this modern method
Hart was about to call us on our phones when we of battle communication in contrast to the clumsy
looked up. As soon as we did so, he leaped away, signaling devices of more ancient times; and also at
waving us to follow closely. other military contrasts in which the 20th and 25th
He was a powerful man, and he darted ahead in Century methods were the reverse of each other in
long, swift, low leaps up the banks of the stream, which efficiency.These modern Americans, for instance,
followed a fairly straight course at this point. By ex- knew little of hand to hand fighting, and nothing,
tending ourselves,, however, Wilma and I were able naturally, of trench warfare. Of barrages they were
to catch up to him. quite ignorant, although they possessed' weapons of
As we gradually synchronized our leaps with his, terrificpower. And until my recent flash of inspira-
he outlined to us, between the grunts that accompanied tion, no one among them, apparently, had ever thought
each leap, his plan of action. of the scheme of shooting a rocket into a repellor beam
"We have to start the big business unh sooner — — and letting the beam itself hurl it upward into the most
or later," he said. — —
"And if unh the Hans have vital part of the Han ship.
found any way of locating our positions unh it's — — Hart
patiently placed his men, first giving his in-
time to start now, although the Council of Bosses structions to the campmasters, and then remaining
—
unh had intended waiting a few years until enough silent,while they placed the individuals.
— —
rocket ships have been unh built. But no matter In the end, the hundred men were ringed about the
— —
what the sacrifice unh we can't afford to let them valley, on the hillsides and tops, each in a position from
get us on the run unh — — We'll set a trap for the
. which he had a good view of the wreckage of the Han
— —
yellow devils in the unh valley if they come back for ship. But not a man had come in view, so far as I
their wreckage—imh —
and if they don't, we'll go could see, in the whole process.
— —
rocketing for some of their liners unh on the Nu- The Boss explained to me that it was his idea that
yok, Clee-lan, Si-ka-ga course. We can use unh — he, Wilma and I should investigate the wreck. It
that idea of yours of shooting up the repellor unh — Han ships should appear in the sky, we would leap
beams. Want you to give us a demonstration." for the hillsides.
With further admonition to follow him closely, he I suggested to him to have the men set up their long-
increased his pace, and Wilma and I were taxed to 1

gttns trained on an imaginary circle surrounding the

our utmost to keep up with him. It was only in ascend- wreck. He busied himself with this after the three
ing the slopes that my tougher muscles overbalanced his 1

of us leaped down to the Han ship, serving as a. target

greater skill, and I was able to set the pace for him, himself, while he called on the men individually to aim
as I had for Wilma.' their pieces and lock them in position.
Weslept in greater comfort that night, under our In the meantime Wilma and I climbed into the
inertron blankets, and were off with the dawn, leaping wreckage, but did not find much. Practically all of the
cautiously to the top of the ridge overlooking the valley instruments and machinery had been twisted out of
which Wilma and I had left. all recognizable shape, or utterly destroyed by the ship's
. The Boss scanned the sky with his ultroscope, pa- disintegrator rays which apparently had continued .to
tiently taking some fifteen minutes to the task, and then operate in the midst of its warped remains for some
swung his phone, into use, calling the roll and giving moments after the crash.
the men their instructions. It was unpleasant work searching the mangled bodies
His first order was for us all to slip our ear and of the crew. But it had to l>e done. The Han clothing,
chest discs into permanent position. I observed-, was quite different from that of the Ameri-
These ultrophones were quite different from the one cans,and in many respects more like the garb to which
used by Wilma's companion scout the day I saved her I had been accustomed in the earlier part of my life.
- from the vicious attack of the bandit Gang. That one It was made of synthetic fabrics like silks, loose and
was contained entirely in a small pocket case. These, comfortable trousers of knee length, and sleeveless
with which we were now equipped, consisted of a pair of shirts.
ear discs, each a separate and self-contained receiving No protection, except that against drafts, was
 ARMAGEDDON — 2419 A.D. 435

needed, Wilma explained to me, for the Han cities there? Speak in rotation from Bald Knob around to
were entirely enclosed, with splendid arrangements for the east, north, west."
ventilationand heating. These arrangements of course In turn the men called their names. There were
were equally adequate in their airships. The Hans, twenty of them.
indeed, had quite a distaste for unshaded daylight, 1 assigned them by name to cover the various Han
since their lighting apparatus diffused a controlled ships, numbering the latter from left to right.
amount of violet rays, making the unmodified sunlight "Train your rockets on their repellor rays about
unnecessary for health, and undesirable for comfort. three-quarters of the way up, between ships and
Since theHans did not have the secret of inertron, none ground. Aim is more important than elevation. Fol-
of them wore anti-gravity belts. Yet in spite of the fact low those rays with your aim .continuously. Shoot when
that they had to bear their own full weights at all times, I tell you, not before. Deering has the record. The
they were physically far inferior to the Americans, for Hans probably have not seen us, or at least think there
they lived lives of degenerative physical inertia, having are but two of us in the valley, since they're settling
machinery of every description for the performance of without opening up disintegrators. Any opinions ?"
all labor, and convenient conveyances for any move- My ear discs remained silent.
ment of more than a few steps. "Deering and I Temain here until they land and
Even from the twisted wreckage of this ship I could debark. Stand by and keep alert."
see that seats, chairs and couches played an extremely Rapidly and easily the .largest of the Han ships set-
important part in their scheme of existence. tled to the earth. Three scouted sharply to the south,
But none of the bodies were overweight. They rising to a higher level. The others floated motionless
seemed to have been the bodies of men in good health, about a thousand feet above.
but muscularly much underdeveloped. Wilma ex- Peeping through a small fissure between two plates,
plained to me that they had mastered the science of I saw the vast hulk of the ship come to rest full on the
gland control, and of course dietetics, to the point line of our prospective ring barrage. A door clanged
where men and women among them not uncommonly open a couple of feet from the ground, and one by
reached the age of a hundred years with arteries and one the crew emerged.
general health in splendid condition.
I did not have time to study the ship arid its contents CHAPTER VI
as carefully as I would have liked, however. Time The "Wyoming Massacre"
pressed, and it was our business to discover some clue
to the deadly accuracy with
the Wyoming Works.
which the ship had spotted THEY'RE coming out of the ship." spoke
quietly, with my hand over my mouth, for fear
I

The Boss had hardly finished arrangements for

his they might hear me. "One — two—three — four
the ring barrage, when one of the scouts on an eminence —six—seven—eight—nine. That seems be
five to all.

to the north, announced the approach of seven Han Who knows how many men a ship like that is likely
ships, spread out in a great semicircle. to carry?
Hart leaped for the hillside, calling to us to do like- "About ten, if there are no passengers," replied one
wise, but Wilma and I had raised the flaps of our of my men, probably one of those on the hillside.
helmets and switched off our "speakers" for conversa- "How are they armed ?" I asked.
tion between ourselves, and by the time we discovered "Just knives," came the reply. "They never permit
what had happened, the ships were clearly visible, so hand-rays on the ships. Afraid of accidents. Have
fast were they approaching. a ruling against it."

"Jump!" we heard the Boss order, "Deering to the "Leave them to us then," I said, for I had a hastily
north. Rogers to the east." formed plan in my mind. You, on the hillsides, take
But Wilma looked at me meaningly and pointed to the ships above. Abandon the ring target. Divide up
where the twisted plates of the ship, projecting from in training on those repellor rays. You on the hilltops,
the ground, offered a shelter. all train on the repellors of the ships to the south.
"Too late. Boss," she said. "They'd see us. Be- Shoot at the word, but not before.
sides I think there's something here we ought to look "Wilma, crawl over to your left where you can make
at. It's probably their magnetic graph." a straight leap for the door in that ship. These men
"You're signing your death warrant," Hart warned. are all walking around the wreck in a bunch. When
"We'll risk it" said Wilma and I together. they're on the far side, I'll give the word and you leap
"Good for you," replied the Boss. "Take command through that door in one bound. I'll follow. Maybe
then, Rogers, for the present. Do you all know his we won't be seen. We'll overpower the guard inside,
voice, boys?" hut don't shoot. We may escape being seen by both
A chorus of assent rang in our ears, and I began to this crew and ships above. They can't see over this
do some fast thinking as the girl and I ducked into the wreck."
twisted mass of metal. It was so easy that it seemed too good to be true.
"Wilma, hunt for that record," I said, knowing that The Hans who had emerged from the ship walked
by the simple process of talking I could keep the entire round the wreckage lazily, talking in gutteral tones,
command continuously informed as to the situation. keenly interested in the wreck, but quite unsuspicious.
"On the hillsides, keep your guns trained on the circles At last they were on the far side. In a moment
and stand by. On the hilltops, how many of you are they would be picking their way into the wreck.
436 AMAZING STORIES
"Wilma, leap!" I almost whispered the order. Again there was a chorus of assent.
Thedistance between Wilma's hiding place and the "Then on the count of three, shoot up those repellor
door in the side of the Han ship was not more than rays — -all of them —and for God's sake, don't miss."
fifteen feet. She was already crouched with her feet And I counted.
braced gainst a metal beam. Taking the lift of that I think my "three" was a bit weak. I know it took
wonderful inertfon belt into her calculation, she dove all the courage I had to utter it.

headforemost, like a green projectiie, through the door. For an agonizing instant nothing happened, except
I followed in a split second, more clumsily, but no less that the landing party from the ship strolled into my
speedily, bruising my
shoulder painfully, as I ricocheted range of vision.
from the edge of the opening and brought up sliding Then startled, they turned their eyes upward. For
against the unconscious "girl ; for she evidently had hit an instant they stood frozen with horror at whatever
her head against the partition within the ship into which they saw.
she had crashed. One hurled his knife at me. It grazed my cheek.
We had made some noise within the ship. Shuffling Then a couple of them made a break for the doorway.
footsteps were approaching down a well lit gangway. The rest followed. But I fired pointblank with my
"Any signs we have been observed?" I asked my hand-gun, pressing the button as fast as I could and
men on the hillsides. aiming at their feet to make sure my explosive rockets
"Not yet," I heard the Boss reply, "Ships overhead would make contact and do their work.
still standing. No beams have been broken out. Men The detonations of my rockets were deafening. The
on ground absorbed in wreck. Most of them have spot on which the Hans stood flashed into a blinding
crawled into it out of sight." glare. Then there was nothing there except their torn
"Good," I said quickly. "Deering hit her head. and mutilated corpses. They had been fairly bunched,
Knocked out. One or more members of the crew ap- and I got them all.
proaching. We're not discovered yet. I'll take care of I ran to the door, expecting any instant to be hurled
them. Stand a bit longer, but be ready." into infinity by the sweep of a disintegrator ray.
I think my last words must have been heard by the Some eighth of a mile away I saw one of the ships
man who was approaching, for he stopped suddenly. crash to earth. A
disintegrator ray came into my line
I crouched at the far side of the compartment,
. of vision, wavered uncertainly for a moment and then
motionless. I would not draw my sword if there were began to sweep directly toward the ship in which I
only one of them. He would be a weakling, I figured, stood. But it never reached it. Suddenly, like a light
and I should easily overcome him with my bare hands. switched off, it shot to one side, and a moment later
Apparently reassured at the absence of any further another vast hulk crashed to earth. I looked out, then
sound, a man came around a sort of bulkhead and I — stepped out on the ground.
leaped. The only Han ships in the sky were two of the scouts
I swung my legs up in front of me as I did so, to the south which were hanging perpendicularly, and
catching him full in the stomach and knocked him sagging slowly down. The others must have crashed
cold. down while I was deafened by the sound of the explo-
Iran forward along the keel gangway, searching sion of my own rockets.
for the control room. I found it well up in the nose Somebody hit the other repellor ray of one of the
of the ship. And it was deserted. What could I do two remaining ships and it fell out of sight beyond a
to jam die controls of the ships that would not register hilltop. The other, farther away, drifted down diagon-
on the recording instruments of the other ships? I ally, its disintegrator ray playing viciously over the
gazed at the mass of controls. Levers and wheels ga- ground below it.

lore. In the center of the compartment, on a massively I shouted with exultation and relief.
braced universal joint mounting, was what I took for "Take back the command, Boss !" I yelled.
the repellor generator. A
dial on it glowed and a faint His commands, sending out jumpers in pursuit of
hum came from within its shielding metallic case. But the descending ship, rang in my ears, but I paid no
I had no time to study it. attention to them. I leaped back into the compartment
Above all else, I was afraid that some automatic of the Han ship and knelt beside my Wilma. Her
telephone apparatus existed in the room, through which padded helmet had absorbed much of the blow, I
I might be heard on the other ships. The risk of trying thought; otherwise, her skull might have been frac-
to jam the controls was too great. I abandoned the tured.
idea and withdrew softly. I would have to take a "Oh, my head!" she groaned, coming to as I lifted
chance that there was no other member of the crew her gently in my arms and strode out in the open with
aboard. her. ."We must have won, dearest, did we?"
I ran back to the entrance compartment. Wilma "We most certainly did," I reassured her. "All but
still lay where she had slumped down. I heard the one crashed and that one is drifting down toward the
voices of the Hans approaching. It was time to act. south ; we've captured this one we're in intact. There
The next few seconds would tel! whether the ships in was only one member of the crew aboard when we
the air would try or be able to melt us into nothingness. dove in."
I spoke. Less than an hour afterwards the Big Boss ordered
"Are you boys all ready?" I asked, creeping to a the outfit to tune in ultrophones on three-twenty-three
position opposite the door and drawing my hand-gun. to pick up a translated broadcast of the Han intelligence
 ARMAGEDDON— 2419 A.D. 437

office in Nu-yok from the Susquanna station. It was fore it went dead recently. There the bottom projec-
in the form of a public warning and news item, and toscope relays of all ships registered the wreck of the
read as follows GK-984. Teleproj ecto scope views of the wreck and
"This is Public Intelligence Office, Nu-Yok, broad- the bowl of the valley showed no evidence of the
casting warning to navigators of private ships, and presence of tribesmen. Neither ship registers nor base
news of public interest. The squadron of seven ships registersshowed any indication of electroactivity ex-
which left Nu-Yok this morning to investigate the re- cept from die squadron itself. On orders from the
cent destruction of the GK-984 in Base Squadron Commander, the
the Wyoming Valley, lias been de- _,.^ M_:
LD-248, LK-745 and LG.-2S
stroyed by a series of mysterious scouted southward at 3,000 feet.
explosions similar to those which The GK-43, GK-981 and GK-220
wrecked the GK-984. stood above at 2,500 feet, and the
"The phones, viewplates, and all GK-18 landed to permit personal
other signaling devices of fire of the inspection of the wreck by the
seven ships ceased operating sud- science committee, The party de-
denly at approximately the same barked, leaving one man on board
moment, about seven- four-nine." in the control cabin. He set all pro-
(According to the Han system of jectoscopes at universal focus ex-
reckoning tine, seven and forty- cept RB-3," (this meant the third
-if"-
nine one hundredths after mid- As the American leaped, lie tmiae Ms legs projectoscope from the bow of the
SS in front of him, catcMnc ths Has full ia
night.) After violent disturbances the stomach. ship, on the right-hand side of the
the location finders went out of op- lower deck) "with which he fol-
eration. Electroactivity registers applied to the terri- lowed the landing group as it walked around the wreck.
tory of the Wyoming Valley remain dead. "The first abnormal phenomenon recorded by any
"The Intelligence Office has no indication of the kind of the instruments at Base was that relayed automati-
of disaster which overtook the squadron except certain cally from projectoscope RB-4 of the GK-18, which
evidences of explosive phenomena similar to those in as the party disappeared from view in back of the
the case of GK-984, which recently went dead
the wreck, recorded two green missiles of roughly cylindri-
while beaming the valley in a systematic effort to wipe cal shape, projected from the wreckage into the landing
out the works and camps of the tribesmen. The Office compartment of the ship. At such close range these
considers, as obvious, the deduction that the tribesmen were not clearly denned, owing to the universal focus
have developed a new, and as yet undetermined, tech- at which the projectoscope was set. The Base Captain
nique of attack on airships, and has recommended to of GK-18 at once ordered the
r< the control room
ri

the Heaven-Born that immediate and unlimited author- to investigate, and saw him leave the control room in
ity be given the Navigation Intelligence Division to compliance widi this order. An instant later confused
make an invest igation of this technique and develop a sounds reached the control-room electrophone, such
defense against it. as might be made by a man falling heavily, and foot-
"In the meantime it urges that private navigators steps reapproached the control room, a figure entering
avoid this territory in particular, and in general hold as and leaving the control room hurriedly. The Base
closely as possible to the official inter-city routes, which Captain now believes, and the stills of the photorecord
now are being patrolled by the entire force of the support his belief, that this was not the crew member
Military Office, which is beaming the routes generously who had been left in the control room. Before the
to a width of ten miles. The Military Office reports Base Captain could speak to him he left the room, nor
diat it is at present considering no rataliatory raids was any response given to the attention signal the
against the tribesmen. With the Navigation Intelli- Captain flashed throughout the ship.
gence Division, it holds diat unless further evidence of "At this point projectoscope RB-3 of the ship now
the nature of the disaster is developed in the near out of focus control, dimly showed the landing party
future, the public interest will be better served, and at walking back toward the ship. RB-4 showed it more
smaller cost of life, by a scientific research than by clearly. Then on both diese instruments, a number of
attempts at retaliation, which may bring destruction blinding explosives in rapid succession were seen and
on all ships engaging therein. So unless further evi- the electrophone relays registered terrific concussions;
dence actually is developed, or the Heaven-Born orders the ship's electronic apparatus and projectoscopes ap-
to the contrary, the Military will hold to a defensive paratus went dead.
policy. "Reports of the other ships' Base Observers and
"Unofficial intimations from Lo-Tan are to the effect Executives, backed by the photorecords, show the ex-
that the Heaven-Council has the matter under con- plosions as taking place in the midst of the landing
sideration, party as it returned, evidently unsuspicious, to the
"The Navigation Intelligence Office permits the ship. Then in rapid succession they indicate that ter-
broadcast of the following condensation of its detailed rific explosions occurred inside and outside the three
observations ships standing above close to their rep ray generators,
"The squadron proceeded to a position above the and all signals from these ships thereupon went dead.
Wyoming Valley where the wreck of the GK-984 was "Of the three ships scouting to the south, the LD-
known to be, from the record of its location finder be- 248 suffered an identical fate, at the same moment.
 438 AMAZING STORIES
Its records add little to the knowledge of the disaster. -which had been seared by the Han beams and the im-
But with the LK-745 and the LG-25 it was different. mediate locations of the Han wrecks.
"The relay instruments of the LK-745 indicated the During this period, a sharp check was kept upon .

destruction by an explosion of the rear rep-ray genera- Han messages, for the phone plant had been one of the
tor, and that the ship hung stern down for a short first to be put in operation, and when it became evident
space, swinging like a pendulum. The forward view- that the Hans did not intend any immediate reprisals,
plates and indicators did not cease functioning, but the entire membership of the community was sum-
their records are chaotic, except for one projectoscope moned back, and normal life was resumed.
still, which shows the bowl of the valley, and the GK- Wilma and I had been married the day after the
981 falling, but no visible evidence of tribesmen. The destruction of the ships, and spent this intervening
control-room viewplate is also a chaotic record of the period in a delightful honeymoon, camping high in the
ship's crew tumbling and falling to the rear wall. Then mountains. On our return, we had a camp of our own,
the forward rep-ray generator exploded, and all signals of course. We
were assigned to location 1017. And
went dead. as might be expected, we had a great deal of banter
"The fate of the LG-25 was somewhat similar, ex- over which one of us was Camp Boss. The title stood
after my name on the Big Boss' records, and those of
'

cept that this ship hung nose down, and drifted on the
wind southward as it slowly descended out of control. the Big Camboss, of course, but Wilma airily held that
"As its room was shattered, verbal report
control this —
meant nothing at all and generally succeeded in
from its Action Captain was precluded. The record of making me admit it whenever she chose.
the interior rear viewplate shows members of the crew I found myself a full-fledged member of the Gang
climbing toward the rear rep-ray generator in an at- now, for I had elected to search no farther for a per-
tempt to establish manual control of it, and increase manent alliance, much as I would have liked to famil-
the lift The projectoscope relays, swinging in wide iarize myself with this 25th Century life in other '

arcs, recorded little of value except at the ends of their sections of the country. The Wyomings had a high
swings. One of these, from a machine which happened morale, and had prospered under the rule of Big Boss
to be set in telescopic ",cus, shows several views of
. Hart for many years. But many of the gangs, I found,
great value in picturing the falls of the other ships, were badly organized, lacked strong hands in authority,
and all of the rear projectoscope records enable the and were rife with intrigue. On the whole, I thought
reconstruction in detail of the pendulum and torsional I would be wise to stay with a group which had already
movements of the ship, and its sag toward the earth. proved its friendliness, and in which I seemed to have
But none of the views showing the forest below contain prospects of advancement. Under these modern social
any indication of tribesmen's presence. final ex- A and economic conditions, the kind of individual free-
plosion put this ship out of commission at a height of dom to which I had been accustomed in the 20th Cen- ;

1,000 feet, and at a point four miles S. by E. of the tury was impossible. I would have been as much of a
center of the valley." nonentity in every phase of human relationship by
The message ended with a repetition of the warning attempting to avoid alliances, as any man of the 20th
to other airmen to avoid the valley. Century would have been politically, who aligned him-
self with no political party.
CHAPTER VII This entire modern life, it appeared to me, judging
Incredible Treason from my ancient viewpoint, was organized along what
I called "political" lines. And in this connection, it

AFTER
support from
receiving this report, and reassurances of
the Big Bosses of the neighboring
amused me to notice how universal had
of the word "boss." The leader, the person in charge
become the use

Gangs, Hart determined to reestablish the Wy- or authority over anything, was a "boss." There was I

oming Valley community. as little formality in his relations with his followers as

A careful survey of the territory showed that it was there was in the case of the 20th Century political boss,
only the northern sections and slopes that had been and the same high respect paid him by his followers as
"beamed" by the first Han ship. well as the same high consideration by him of their ;

The synthetic fabrics plant had been partially wiped interests. He was just as much of an autocrat, and
out, though the lower levels underground had not been just as much dependent upon the general popularity of
reached by the dis ray. The forest screen above it, his actions for the ability to maintain his autocracy.
however, had been annihilated, and it was determined The sub-boss who could not command the loyalty of
to abandon it, after removing all usable machinery and his followers was as quickly deposed, cither by them or
evidences of the processes that might be of interest to by his superiors, as the ancient ward leader of the 20th
the Man scientists, should they return to the valley in Century who lost control of his votes.
the future. As society was organized in the 20th Century, I do
The ammunition plant, and the rocketship plant, not believe the system could have worked in anything
which had just been about to start operation at the time but politics. I tremble to think what would have hap-
of the raid, were intact, as were the other important pened, had the attempt been made to handle the A. E.
plants. F. this way during the First World War, instead of
Hart brought the Camboss up from the Susquanna by that rigid military discipline and complete assump-
Works, and laid out new camp locations, scatter- tion of the individual as a mere standardized cog in
ing them farther to the south, and avoiding ground the machine.
1 J
 ARMAGEDDON — 2419 A.D. 439

But owing to the centuries of desperate suffering rays unless we use much larger rockets. They are
the peoplehad endured at the hands of the Hans, there wise to us now. They're putting armor of great thick-
developed a spirit of self-sacrifice and consideration ness in the hulls of their ships below the rep-ray
for thecommon good that made the scheme applicable machines. Near Bah-flo this morning a party of Eries
and efficient in all forms of human cooperation. shot one without success. The explosions staggered
I have a little heresy about all this, however. My her, but did not penetrate. As near as we can gather
associates regard the thought with as much horror as from their reports, their laboratories have developed
many worthy people of the 20th Century felt in regard a new alloy of great tensile strength and elasticity which
to any heretical suggestion that the original outline nevertheless lets the rep-rays through like a sieve. Our
of government as laid down in the First Constitution reports indicate that the Eries' rockets bounced off
did not apply as well to 20th Century conditions as to harmlessly. Most
of the party was wiped out as the
those of the early 19th. dis rays went into action on them.
In later years, I felt was a certain soften-
that there "This is going to mean real business for all of the
ing of moral fiber the people; since the Hans
among gangs before long. The Big Bosses have just held a
had been finally destroyed with all their works and ; national ultrophone council. It was decided that
Americans have developed a new luxury economy. I America must organize on a national basis. The first
have seen signs of the reawakening of greed, of self- move is to develop sectional organization by Zones.

ishness. The eternal cycle seems to be at work. I fear I have- been made Superboss of the Midatlantic Zone.
that slowly, though surely, private wealth is reappear- "We're in for it now. The Hans are sure to launch
ing,codes of inflexibility are developing; they will be reprisal expeditions. If we're to save the race we must
followed by corruption, degradation and in the end ; keep them away from our camps and plants. I'm
some cataclysmic event will end this era and usher in thinking of developing a permanent field force, along
a new one: the lines of the -regular armies of the 20th Century you
All this, however, is wandering afar from my story, told me about. Its business will be twofold; to carrv
which concerns our early battles against the Hans, and the warfare as much as possible to the Hans, and to
not our more modern problems of self-control. serve as a decoy, to beep their attention from our
Our victory over the seven Han ships had set the plants. I'm going to need your help in this,
country ablaze. The secret had been carefully com- "The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is
municated to the other gangs, and the country was this: Amazing and impossible as it seems, there is a
agog from one end to the other. There was feverish group, or perhaps an entire gang, somewhere among
activity in the ammunition plants, and the hunting of us, that is betraying us to the Hans. It may be the Bad
stray Han ships became an enthusiastic sport. The Bloods, or it may be one of those gangs who live near
results were disastrous to our hereditary enemies. one of the Han cities. You know, a hundred and
From the Pacific Coast came the report of a great fifteen or twenty years ago there were certain of these
Transpacific liner of 75,000 tons "lift" being brought people's ancestors who actually degraded themselves
to earth from a position of invisibility above the clouds. by mating with the Hans, sometimes even serving them
A dozen Sacramentos had caught the hazy outlines as skives, in the days before they brought all their ser-
of its rep-rays approaching them, head-on, in the twi- vice machinery to perfection.
light, like ghostly pillars reaching into the sky. They "There- is such a gang, called the Nagras, up near
had fired rockets into it with ease, whereas they would Bah-flo, and another in Mid-Jersey that men call the

have had difficulty in hitting it if it had been moving Pineys. But I hardly suspect the Pineys. There is

at right angles to their position. They got one rep-ray. little intelligence among them. They wouldn't have
The other was not strong enough to hold it up. It the information to give the Hans, nor would they be
floated to earth, nose down, and since it was unarmed capable of imparting it. They're absolute savages."
and unarmored, they had no difficulty in shooting it "Just what evidence is there that anybody has been
to pieces and massacring its crew and passengers. It clearing information to the Hans?" I asked.
seemed barbarous to me. But then I did not have "Well," he replied, "first of all there was that raid
centuries of bitter persecution in my blood. upon us. That first Han ship knew the location of
From the Jersey Beaches we received news of the our plants exactly. You remember it floated directly
destruction of a Nu-yok-A-lan-a liner. The Sand- into position above the valley and began a systematic
snipers, practically invisible in their sand colored beaming. Then, the Hans quite obviously have learned
clothing, and half buried along the beaches, lay in wait that we are picking up their electrophone waves, for
for days, risking the play of dis beams along the route, they've gone back to their old, but extremely accurate,
and finally registering four hits within a week. The system of directional control. But we've been getting
Hans discontinued their service along this route, and them for the past week by installing automatic re-
as evidence that they were badly shaken by our success, broadcast units along the scar paths. This is what the
sent no raiders down the Beaches- Americans called those strips of country directly under
It was a few weeks later that Big Boss Hart sent for the regular ship routes of the Hans, who as a matter
me. of precaution frequently blasted them with their dis
"Tony," he said, "There are two things I want to beams to prevent the growth of foliage which might
talk to you about. One of them will become public give shelter to the Americans. But they've been beam-
property in a few days, I think. aren't going toWe ing, those paths so hard-, it looks as though they even
get any more Han ships by shooting up their repetlor had information of this strategy. And in addition.
 440 AMAZING STORIES
they've been using code. Finally, we've picked up When I told Wilma of the plan, I expected her to
three of their messages in which, they discuss, with raise violent and tearful objections, but she didn't. She
some nervousness, the existence of our 'mysterious' was made of far sterner stuff than the women of the
ultrophone." 20th Century. Not that she couldn't weep as copiously
"But they still have no knowledge of the nature and or be just as whimsical on occasion; but she wouldn't
control of ultronic activity?" I asked. weep for the same reasons.
"No," said the Big Boss thoughtfully, "they don't She just gave me an unfathomable look, in which
seem te have a bit of information about it." there seemed to be a bit of pride, and asked eagerly
"Then it's quite clear," I ventured, "that whoever is for the details. I confess I was somewhat disappointed
'clearing' us to them is doing it piecemeal. It sounds that she could so courageously risk my loss, even though
like a of occasional barter, rather than an out and
bit I was amazed at her fortitude. But later I was to learn
out alliance. They're holding back as much informa- how little I knew her then.
tion as possible for future bartering, perhaps." We were ready to slide off at dawn the next morn-
"Yes," Hart said, "and it isn't information the Hans ing. I had kissed Wilma good-bye at our camp, and

are giving in return, but some form of goods, or privi- after a final conference over our plans, we boarded our
lege. The trick would be to locate the goods. I guess craft and gently glided away over the tree tops on a
I'll have to make a personal trip around among the course, which, after crossing three routes of the Han
Big Bosses." ships, would take us out over the Atlantic, off the
Jersey coast, whence we would come up on Nu-Yok
CHAPTER VIII from the ocean.
Twice we had to nose down and lie motionless on
The Han City
the ground near a route while Han ships passed. Those
me were tense moments. Had the green back of our ship
THIS
Han
conversation set thinking.
electrophone inter -communication had been
All of the
been observed, we would have been disintegrated in a
an open record to the Americans for a good many second. But it wasn't.
years, and the Hans were just finding it out. For cen- Once over the water, however, we climbed in a great
turies they had not regarded us as any sort of a menace. our altimeter regis-
spiral, ten miles in diameter, until
Unquestionably it had never occurred to them to secrete tered ten miles. Here Gibbons shut off his rocket
their own records. Somewhere in Nu-Yok or Bah-flo, motor, and we floated, far above the level of the At-
or possibly in Lo-Tan itself, the record of this traitor- whose course was well to the north of us
lantic liners,
ous transaction would be more or less openly filed. If anyhow, and waited for nightfall.
we could only get at it 1 I wondered if a raid might Then Gibbons turned from his control long enough
not be possible. to grin at me.
Bill Hearn and I talked it over with our Han-affairs "I have a surprise for you, Tony," he said throwing
Boss and his experts. There ensued several days of back the lid of what I had supposed was a big supply
research, in which the Han records of the entire decade case. And with a sigh of relief, Wilma stepped out of
were scanned and analyzed. In the end they picked the case.
out a mass of detail, and fitted it together into a very "If you. 'go into zero' (a common expression of the
definite picture of the great central filing office of the day for being annihilated by the disintegrator ray),
Hans Nu-Yok, where the entire mass of official
in you don't think I'm going to let you go alone, do you,
records was kept, constantly available for instant pro- Tony ? I couldn't believe my ears last night when you
jectoscoping to any of the city's offices, and of the spoke of going without me, until I realized that you
system by which the information was filed. are still five hundred years behind the times in lots of
The attempt began to look feasible, though Hart ways. Don't you know, dear heart, that you offered
instantly turned the idea down when I first presented me the greatest insult a husband could give a wife?
it to him. It was unthinkable, he said. Sheer suicide. You didn't, of course."
But in the end I persuaded him. The others, it seemed, had all been in on the secret,
*'I will need," I said, "Blash, who is thoroughly famil- and now they would have kidded me unmercifully, ex-
iar with the Han library system Bert Gaunt, who for ; cept that Wilma's eyes blazed dangerously.
. years has specialized on their military offices ; Bill Bar- At nightfall, we maneuvered to a position directly
ker, the ray specialist, and the best swooper pilot we above the city. This took some time and calculation on
have." Swoopers are one-man and two-man ships, the part of Bill Barker, who explained to ine that he
developed by the Americans, with skeleton backbones of had to determine our point by ultronic bearings. The
inertron (during the war painted green for invisibility slightest resort toan electronic instrument, he feared,
against the green forests below) and "bellies" of clear might he detected by our enemies' locaters. In fact,
ultron. we did not dare bring our swooper any lower than five
"That he Mort Gibbons," said Hart. "We've
will miles for fear that its capacity might be reflected in
only got three swoopers left, Tony, but I'll risk one their instruments.
of them if you and the others will voluntarily risk your Finally, however, he succeeded in locating above the
existences. But mind, I won't urge or order one of central tower of the city.
you to go. I'll spread the word to every Plant Boss at "If my calculations are as much as ten feet off,"
once to give you anything and everything you need in he remarked with confidence, "I'll eat the tower. Now
the way of equipment." the restis up to you, Mert. See what you can do to
 ARMAGEDDON — 2419 A.D. 441

hold her steady. —

No here, watch this indicator piled up. on tower, and all built on the vast base-mass
the red —
beam, not the green one. See if you keep of the city, which, so I Iiad been told, sheered upward
it exactly centered on the needle, you're O.K. The from the surface of the rivers to a height of 728 levels.
width of the beam represents seventeen feet. The The city, I noticed with some surprise, did not cover
tower platform is fifty feet square, so we've got a good anything like the same area as the New York of the
margin to work on." 20th Century. It occupied, as a matter of fact, only
For several moments we watched as Gibbons bent the lower half of Manhattan Island, with one section
over his levers, constantly adjusting them with deft straddling the East River and spreading out sufficiently
touches of his fingers. After a bit of wavering, the over what once had been Brooklyn,- to provide berths
beam remained centered on the needle. for the great liners and- other air craft.
"Now," I said, "let's drop." Straight beneath my feet was a tiny dark patch. It
I opened the trap and looked down, but quickly shut seemed the only spot in the entire city that was not
)t again when I felt the air rushing out of the ship into aflame with radiance. This was the central tower, in
the rarefied atmosphere in a torrent. Gibbons literally the top floors of which were housed the vast library
yelled a protest from his instrument board. of record files and the main projectoscope plant.
"I forgot," I mumbled. "Silly of me. Of course, "You can shoot the wire now," I ultrophoned Gib-
we'll have to drop out of compartment." bons, and let go the little weighted knob. It dropped
The compartment, to which I referred, was similar like a plummet, and we followed with considerable
to those in some of the 20th Century submarines. We speed, but braking our descent with gloved hands
all entered it. There was barely room for us to stand, sufficiently to see whether the knob, on which a faint
shoulder to shoulder. With some struggles, we got light glowed as a signal for ourselves, might be ob-
into our special air helmets and adjusted the pressure. served by any Han guard or night prowler. Apparently
At our signal, Gibbons exhausted the air in the com- it was not, and we again shot down with accelerated
partment, pumping it into the body of the ship, and speed.
as the little signal light flashed, Wilma threw open the Welanded on the roof of the tower without any
hatch. mishap, and fortunately for our plan, in darkness.
Setting the ultron wire reel, I climbed through, and Since there was nothing .above it on which it would
began to. slide down gently. have been worth while to shed illumination, or from
We all had our beits on, of course, adjusted to a which there was any need to observe it, the Hans had
weight balance of but a few ounces. And the five-mile neglected to light the tower roof, or indeed to occupy
reel of ultron wire that was to be our guide, was of it at all. This was the reason we had selected it as
gossamer fineness, though, anyway, I believe it would our landing place.
have lifted the full weight of the five of us, so strong As soon as Gibbons had our word, he extinguished
and tough was this invisible metal. As an extra pre- the knob light, and the knob, as well as the wire, became
caution, since the wire was of the purest metal, and totally invisible. At our ultrophoned word, he would
therefore totally invisible, even in daylight, we all had light it again.
our belts hooked on small rings that slid down the wire. "No gun play now," I warned. "Swords only, and
I went down with the end of the wire. Wilma fol- then only if absolutely necessary."
lowed a few feet above me, then Barker. Gaunt and Closely bunched, and treading as lightly as only in-
Hash. Gibbons, of course, stayed behind to hold the we made our way cautiously
ertron-belted people could,
ship in position and control the paying out of the line. through a door and down an inclined plane to the floor
We had our ultrophones in place inside our air
all below, where Gaunt and Blash assured us the military
helmets, and so could converse with one another and offices were located.
with Gibbons. But at Wilma 's suggestion, although Twice Barker cautioned us to stop as we were about
we would have liked to let the Big Boss listen in, we to pass in front of mirror-like "windows" in the pass-
kept than adjusted to short-range work, for fear that age wall, and flattening ourselves to the floor, we
Ihose who had been clearing with the Hans, and against crawled past them.
whom we were on a raid for evidence, might also pick "Projectoscopes" he said. "Probably on automatic
up our conversation. We had no fear that the Hans record only, at this time of night. Still, we don't want
would hear us. In fact, we had the added advantage to leave any records for them to study after we're
that, even after we landed, we could converse freely gone."
without danger of their hearing our voices through our "Were you ever here before?" I asked.
air helmets. "No," he replied, "but I haven't been studying their
For a whileI could see nothing below but utter electrophone communications for seven years without
darkness. Then I realized, from the feel of the air as being able to recognize these machines when I run
much from anything, that we were sinking through
as across them."
a cloud layer. We passed through two more cloud CHAPTER IX
layers before anything was visible to us. The Fight in the Tower
Then there came under my gaze, about two miles
below, one of the most beautiful sights I have ever far we had not laid eyes on a Han. The tower
seen; the soft, yet brilliant, radiance of the great Han SO seemed deserted. Blash and Gaunt, however, as-
sured me that there would be at least one man
cityof Nu-Yok. Every foot of its structural members
seemed to glow with a wonderful incandescence, tower on "duty" in the military offices, though he would
442 AMAZING STORIES.
probably be asleep, and two or three in the library in a great leap toward the intersection whence I knew j

proper and the projectoscope plant. I could see her. ;

"We've got to put them out of commission," I said. In the middle of my leap my ultrophone registered-'
"Did you bring the 'dope' cans, Wilma?" her gasp of alarm. The next instant I glided to a stop
"Yes," she said, "two for each. Here," and she at the intersection to see Wilma backing toward the
distributed them. door of the military office, her sword red with blood,
We were now two levels below the roof, and at the and an inert form on the corridor floor. Two other
point where we were to separate. Hans were circling to either side of her with wicked
I did not want to let Wilma out of my sight, but it looking knives, while a third evidently a high officer,
was necessary. judging by the resplendence of his garb tugged desper-
According to our plan, Barker was to make his way ately to get an electrophone instrument out of a bulky
to the projectoscope plant, Slash and I to the library, pocket. If he ever gave the alarm, there was no telling
and Wilma and Gaunt to the military office. what might happen to us.
Blash and I traversed a long corridor, and paused at I was at least seventy feet away, but I crouched low

the great arched doorway of the library. Cautiously and sprang with every bit of strength in my legs. It
we peered in. Seated at three great switchboards were
.
would be more correct to say tliat I dived, for I
library operatives. Occasionally one of them would reached the fellow head on, with no attempt to. draw
reach lazily for a level or sleepily push a button, as
-
,
my legs beneath me.
little numbered lights winked on and off. They were Some instinct must have warned him, for he turned
answering calls for electrograph and viewplate records suddenly as I hurtled close to him. But by this time
on all sorts of subjects from all sections of the city. I had sunk close to- the floor, and had stiffened myself ,

I apprised my companions of the situation. rigidly, lest a dragging knee or foot might just prevent ,

"Better wait a bit," Blash added. "The calls will my reaching him. I brought my blade upward and
lessen shortly." over. It was a vicious slash that laid him open, bisect-
Wilma reported an officer in the military office sound ing him from groin to chin, and his dead body toppled
asleep* down oh me, as I slid to a tangled stop.
"Give himthe can, then;" I said. The other two startled, turned. Wilma leaped at
:

Barker was to do nothing more than keep watch in one and struck him down with a side slash. I looked
the projectoscope plant, and a few moments later he up at this instant, and the dazed fear on his face at
reported himself well concealed, with a splendid view of the length of her leap, registered vividly. The Hans
the floor. knew nothing of our inertron belts, it seemed, and
"I think we can take a chance now," Blash said to these leaps and dives of ours filled them with terror.
me, and at my nod, he opened thC lid of his dope can. As I rose to my feet, a gory mess, Wilma, with a :

Of eourse, the fumes did not affect us, through our poise and speed which I found time to admire even in
helmets. They were absolutely without odor or visi- this crisis, again leaped. This time she dove head
bility, and in a few seconds the librarians were uncon- first at I had done, and with a beautifully executed

scious. We stepped into the room. thrust, ran the last Han through the throat.
There ensued considerable cautious observation and Uncertainly, she scrambled, to her feet, staggered
experiment on the part of Gaunt, working from the queerly, and then sank gently prone on the corridor.
military office, and Blash in the library; while Wilma She had faulted.
and I, with drawn swords and sharply attuned micro- At this juncture, Blash and Gaunt reported with
phones, stood guard, and occasionally patrolled nearby elation that they had the record we wanted,
corridors. "Back to the roof, everybody!" I ordered, as I '

"I hear something approaching," Wilma said after picked Wilma up in my arms. With her inertron belt, ,

a with excitement in her voice,

bit, "It's a soft, glid- she felt as light as a feather.
ing sound," Gaunt joined me at once from the military office, and
"That's an elevator somewhere," Barker cut in from at the intersection of the corridor, we came upon Blash
the projectoscope floor. "Can you locate it? I can't waiting for us. Barker, however, was not in evidence.
hear it." "Where are you. Barker ?" I called.
"It's to the east of me," she replied. "Go ahead," he replied. "I'll be with you on the :

"And to my west," said I, faintly catching it. "It's roof at once."

between us, Wilma, and nearer you than me. Be care- We came out in the open without any further mishap, ,

ful. Have you got any information yet, Blash and and I instructed Gibbons in the ship to light the knob
Gaunt ?" on the end of the ultron wire. It flashed dully a few
"Getting it now," one of them replied. "Give us feet away from us. Just how he had maneuvered the
two minutes more." ship to keep: our end of the line in position, without
"Keep at it then," I said. "We'll guard." its swinging in a tremendous arc, I have never been

The soft, gliding sound ceased. able to understand. Had not the night been an un- :

"I think it's very close to me." Wilma almost whis- usually still one, he could not have checked the initial
pered. "Come closer Tony. I have a feeling something pendulum-like movements. As it was, there was con-
is going to happen. I've never known my nerves to get siderable air current at certain of the levels, and in
taut like this without reason." different directions too. But Gibbons was an expert
In some alarm, I launched myself down the corridor of rare ability and sensitivity in the handling of a rocket
 ARMAGEDDON — 2419 A.D.

ship, and he managed, with the aid of his delicate CHAPTER X

instruments, to sense the drifts almost before they af-
fected the fine nitron wire, and to neutralize them with
The Walls of Hell

shifts in the position of the ship.

little

Blash and Gaunt fastened their rings to the wire, THE traitors were, it seemed, a degenerate gang
of Americans, located a few miles north of Nu-
and I hooked my own and Wilma's on, too. But on yok on the wooded banks of the Hudson, the
looking around, I found Barker was still missing. Sinsings. They had exchanged scraps of information
"Barker, come!" I called. "We're waiting." to the Hans in return for several old repellor ray
"Coming !" he replied, and indeed, at that instant, machines, and the privilege of timing in on the Han
his figure appeared up the ramp. He chuckled as he electronic power broadcast for their operation, pro-
fastened his ring to the wire and said something ahout vided their ships agreed to subject themselves to the
a little surprise he had left for the Hans. orders of the Han traffic office, while aloft.
"Don't reel in the wire more than a few hundred The rest wanted to ultrophone their news at once,
feet," I instructed Gibbons. "It will take too long to since there was always danger that we might never
wind it in. We'll float up, and when we're aboard, get back to the gang with it.
we can drop it."
however. The Sinsings would be likely
I objected,
In order to float up, we had to dispense with a pound to pick up our message. Even if we used the directional
or two of weight apiece. We
hurled our swords from projector, they might have scouts out to the west and
us, and kicked off our shoes as Gibbons reeled up the south in the big inter-gang stretches of country. They
a bit, and then letting go of the wire, began to hum
line would flee to Nu-Yok and escape the punishment they
upward on our rings with increasing velocity. merited. It seemed to be vitally important that they
The rush of air brought Wilma to, and I hastily ex- should not, for the sake of example to other weak
plained to her that we had been successful. Receding groups among the American gangs, as well as to pre-
far below us now, I could see our dully shining knob vent a crisis in which they might clear more vital infor-
swinging to and fro in an ever widening arc, as it mation to the enemy.
crossed and recrossed the black square of the tower "Out to sea again," I ordered Gibbons. "They'll be
roof. As an extra precaution, I ordered Gibbons to less likely to look for us in that direction."
shut off the light, and to show one from the belly of "Easy, Boss, easy," he replied. "Wait until we get
the ship, for so great was our speed now, that I began up a mile or two more. They must have discovered
to fear we would have difficulty in cheeking ourselves. evidences of our raid by now, and their dis ray wall
We were literally falling upward, and with terrific may go in operation any moment."
acceleration. Even downward and
as he spoke, the ship lurched to
Fortunately, we had several minutes in which to one side.
which none of us, strangely enough,
solve this difficulty, "There it is!" he shouted. "Hang on, everybody.
had foreseen. It was Gibbons who found the answer.
We're going to nose straight tip!" And he flipped
"You'll be all right if all of you grab the wire tight the rocket motor control wide open.
when I give the word," he said. "First I'll start reeling Looking through one of the rear ports, I could see
it in at full speed. You won't get much of a jar, and a nebulous, luminous ring, and on all sides the atmos-
then I'll decrease its speed again gradually, and its phere took on a faint iridescence.
weight will hold you back. Are you ready ? One two
!"
— We were almost over the destructive range of the
—three disintegrator ray wall, a hollow cylinder of annihilation
We all grabbed tightly with our gloved hands as he shooting upward from a solid ring of generators sur-
gave the word. We must have been rising a good bit rounding the city. It was the main defense system of
faster than he figured, however, for it wrenched our
the Hans, which had never been used except in periodic
arms considerably, and the maneuver set up a sickening tests. They may or may not have suspected that an
pendulum motion. American rocket ship was within the cylinder probably ;

For a while all we could do was swing there in an they had turned on their generators more as a precau-
arc that may have been a quarter of a mile across, about tion toprevent any reaching a position above the city.
three and a half miles above the city, and still more But even at our present great height, we were in
than a mile from our ship. great danger. It was a question how much we might
Gibbons skilfully took up the slack as our momen- have been harmed by the rays themselves, for their
tum pulled up the line. Then at last we had ourselves effective range was not much more than seven or eight
under control again, and continued our upward jour- miles. The greater danger lay in the terrific downward
ney, checking our speed somewhat with our gloves. rush of air within the cylinder to replace that which
There was not one of us who did not breathe a big was being burned into nothingness by the continual
sigh of relief when we scrambled through the hatch The air fell into the cylinder
play of the disintegrators.
safely into the ship again, cast off the nitron line and
with the force of a gale. It would be rushing toward
slammed the trap shut.
the wall from the outside with terrific force also, but,
Little realizing that we had a still more terrible ex-
we discussed the information naturally, the effect was intensified on the interior.
perience to go through,
Blash and Gaunt had between them extracted from the Our ship vibrated and trembled. We had only one
Han records, and the advisability of ultrophoning Hart chance of escape—to fight our way well above the cur-
'at once. rent. To drift down with it meant ultimately, and in-
444 AMAZING STORIES
evitably, to be sucked into the destruction wall at some rocket gun and a split second later the Han ship flew
lower level. apart like a clay pigeon.
But very gradually and jerkily our upward move- We staggered, and fluttered crazily for several mo-
ment, as shown on the indicators, began to increase, ments while Gibbons struggled to bring our ship into
and after an hour of desperate struggle we were free balance, and a section of about four square feet in
of the maelstrom and into the rarefied upper levels. the side of the ship near the stern slowly crumbled like
The terror beneath us was now invisible through several rusted metal. His beam actually had touched us, but
layers of cloud formations. our explosive rocket had got him a thousandth of a
Gibbons brought the ship back to an even keel, and second sooner.
drove her eastward into one of the most brilliantly gor- Part of our rudder had been annihilated, and our
geous sunrises I have ever seen. motor damaged. But we were able to swoop gently
We described a great circle to the south and west, in back across Jersey, fortunately crossing the ship lanes
a long easy dive, for he had cut out his rocket motors without sighting any more Han craft, and finally
to save them as much as possible. We
had drawn settling to rest in the little glade beneath the trees, near
terrifically on their fuel reserves in our battle with the Hart's <amp.
elements. For the moment, the atmosphere below
cleared, and we could see the Jersey coast far beneath, CHAPTER XI
like a great map.
The New Bess
"We're not through yet," remarked Gibbons sud-
denly, pointing at his periscope, and adjusting
telescopic focus.
that —and he's seen
"A Han
us. If
it

ship, and a 'drop ship' at

he whips that beam of his
to
WE had ultrophoned our arrival and the Big
Boss himself, surrounded by the Council, was
on hand to welcome us and learn our news.
on us, we're done." In turn we were informed that during the night a band
1 gazed, fascinated, at the viewplate. What I saw of raiding Bad Bloods, disguised under the insignia of
was a cigar shaped ship not dissimilar to our own in the Altoonas, a gang some distance to the west of us,
design, and from the proportional size of its ports, had destroyed several of our camps before our people
of about the same our swoopers. We learned
size as had rallied and driven them off. Their purpose, evi-
later that they carried crews, for themost part of not dently, had been to embroil us with the Altoonas, but
more than three or four men. They had streamline fortunately, one of our exchanges recognized the Bad
hulls and tails that embodied um ver sal -jointed double Blood leader, who had been slain.
fish-tail rudders. In operation they rose to great heights The Big Boss had mobilized the full raiding force
on their powerful repellor rays, then gathered speed of the Gang, and was on the point of heading an ex-
either by a straight nose dive, or an inclined dive in pedition for the extermination of the Bad Bloods.
which they sometimes used the repellor ray slanted I looked around the grim circle of the sub-bosses,
at a sharp angle. He was already above us, though and realized the fate of America, at this moment, lay
several miles to the north. He could, of course, try in their hands. Their temper demanded the immediate
to get on our tail and "spear" us with his beam' as he expenditure of our full effort in revenging ourselves
dropped at us from a great height. for this raid. But the strategic exigencies, to my mind,
Suddenly his beam blazed forth in a blinding flash, quite clearly demanded the instant and absolute ex-
whipping downward slowly to our right. He went termination of the Sinsings. It might be only a matter
through a peculiar corkscrew-like evolution, evidently of hours, for all we knew, before these degraded people
maneuvering to brjng his beam to bear on us with a would barter clues to the American ultronic secrets
spiral morion. to the Hans.
Gibbons instantly sent our ship into a series of evo- "How large a force have we ?" I asked Hart.
lutions that must have looked like those of a frightened "Every man and maid who can be spared," he re-
hen. Alternately, he used the forward and the reverse plied. "That gives us seven hundred married and
rocket blasts, and in varying degree. We fluttered, we unmarried men, and three hundred girls, more than
shot suddenly to right and left, and dropped like a the entire Bad Blood Gang. Every one is equipped with
plummet in uncertain movements. But all the time belts, ultrophones, rocket guns and swords, and all
the Han scout dropped toward us, determinedly whip- fighting mad,"
ping the air around us with his beam. Once it sliced I meditated how I might put the matter to these
across beneath us, not more than a hundred feet, and determined men, and was vaguely conscious that they
we dropped with a jar into the pocket formed by the were awaiting my words.
destruction of the air. Finally I began to speak. I do not remember to this
He had dropped to within a mile of us, and was day just what I said. I talked calmly, with due regard
coining with the speed of a projectile, when the end for their passion, but with deep conviction. I went
came. Gibbons always swore it was sheer luck. Maybe over the information we had collected, point by point,
it was, but I like pilots who are lucky that way. building my case logically, and painting a lurid picture
In the midst of a dizzy, fluttering maneuver of our of the danger impending in that half-alliance between
own, with the Han ship enlarging to our gaze with the Sinsings and the Hans of Nu-yok. I became im-
terrifying rapidity, and its beam slowly slicing toward passioned, culminating, I believe, with a vow to proceed
us in what looked like certain destruction within the single handed against the hereditary enemies of our
second, I saw Gibbons* fingers flick at the lever of his race, "if the Wyomings were blindly set on placing a
 ARMAGEDDON — 2419 A.D. 445

gang feua ahead of honor and duty and the hopes of But the extermination of the Sinsings would be
all America." another thing. In the first place, there would be no
As I concluded, a great calm came over me, as of warning of our action until it was all over, I hoped.
one detached. I had felt much the same way during In the second place, we would have indisputable proof,
several crises in the First World War. I gazed from in the form of their rep ray ships and other parapher-
face to face, striving to read their expressions, and in nalia, of their traffic with the Hans; and the state of
a mood to make good my threat without any further American prejudice, at the time of which I write held
heroics, if the decision was against me. trafficking with the Hans a far more heinous thing than
But it was Hart who sensed the temper of the Coun- even a vicious gang feud.
cil more quickly than I did, and looked beyond it into I called an executive session of the Council at once.
the future. I wanted to inventory our military resources.
He arose from the tree trunk on which he had been I created a new office on the spot, that of "Control
sitting. Boss," and appointed Ned Garlin to the post, turning
"That settles it," be said, looking around the ring. over his former responsibility as Plants Boss to his
"I have felt this thing coming on for some time now. assistant. I needed someone, I felt, to tie in the re-
I'm sure the Council agrees with me that there is among cords of the various functional activities of the cam-
us a man more capable than I, to boss the Wyoming paign, and take over from me the task of keeping the
Gang, despite his handicap of having had all too short records of them up to the minute.
a time in which to familiarize himself, with our modern I received reports from the bosses of the ultrophone
ways and facilities. Whatever I can do to support unit, and those of food, transportation, fighting gear,
his .effective leadership, atany cost, I pledge myself chemistry, electronic activity and electrophone intelli-
to do." gence, ultroscopes, air patrol and contact guard.
As he concluded, he advanced to where I stood, and My ideas for the campaign, of course, were some-
taking from his head the 'green crested helmet that what tinged with my 20th Century experience, and I
constituted his badge of office, to my surprise he placed found myself faced with the task of working out a
it in my mechanically extended hand. staff organization that was a composite of the best and
The roar of approval that went up from the Council most easily applied principles of business and military
members left me dazed. Somebody ultrophoned the efficiency, as i knew them from the viewpoint of im-
news to the rest of the Gang, and even though the mediate prarlicality.
earflaps of my helmet were turned up,I could hear the What I wanted was an organization that would be
cheers with which my invisible followers greeted
me, specialized, functionally, not as that indicated above,
from near and camps and plants.
distant hillsides, but from the angles of intelligence as to the Sinsings
:

M3' first move was

to make sure that the Phone activities intelligence as to Han activities perfection
: :

Boss, in communicating this news to the members of the of communication with my own units co-operation of :

Gang, had not re-broadcast my talk nor mentioned my fieldlcommand and perfect mobilization of emergency
:

plan of shifting the attack from the Bad Bloods to supplies and resources.
the Sinsings. I was relieved by his assurance that he Ittook several hours of hard work with the Council
had not, for it would have wrecked the whole plan. to map out the plan. First we assigned functional
Everything depended upon our ability to surprise the experts and equipment to each "Division" in accordance
Sinsings. with its needs. Then these in turn were reassigned
So I pledged the Council and my companions to by the new Division Bosses to the Field Commands as
secrecy, and allowed it to be believed that we were needed, or as Independent or Headquarters Units. The
about to take to the air and the trees against the Bad two intelligence divisions were named the White and
Bloods. the Yellow, indicating that one specialized on the
That outfit must have been badly scared, the way American enemy and the other on the Mongolians.
they were "burning" the ether with ultrophone alibis The division in charge of our own communications,
and propaganda for the benefit of the more distant the assignment of ultrophone frequencies and strengths,
gangs. It was their old game, and the only method and the maintenance of operators and equipment, I
by which they had avoided extermination long ago called "Communications."
—
from their immediate neighbors these appeals to the I named Bill Hearn to -the post of Field Boss, in
spirit of American brotherhood, addressed to gangs charge of the main or undetached fighting units, and
too far away to have had the sort of experience with to the .Resources Division, I assigned all responsi-
.them that had fallen to our lot. bility for what few aircraft we had and all transporta-
;

I chuckled. Here was another good reason for the tion and supply problems, I assigned to "Resources."
shift in my plans. Were we actually to undertake the The functional bosses stayed with this division.
exterminations of the Bad Bloods nt once, it woidd We finally completed our organization with the as-
have been a hard job to convince some of the gangs signment of liaison representatives among the various
that we had not been precipitate and unjustified. Jeal- divisions as needed.
ousies and prejudices existed. There were gangs which Thus I had a "Headquarters Staff" composed of the
would give the benefit of the doubt to the Bad Bloods, Division Bosses who reported directly to Ned Garlin
rather than to ourselves, and the issue was now hope- as Control Boss, or to Wilma as my personal assistant.
lessly beclouded with the clever lies that were being And each of the Division Bosses had a small staff of
broadcast in an unceasing stream. his own.
 446 AMAZING STORIES
In the final summing up of our personnel and re- to a halt and maintained 4heir positions for a while
sources, I found we had roughly a thousand "troops," with the idling blasts of their rocket motors, to give
of whom some three hundred and fifty were, in what the ultroscope operators a chance to make a thorough
I called The Service Divisions, the rest being in Bill examiuatiou of the territory below us, for it was very
Hearn's Field Division. This latter number, however, important that this next step in our program should
was cut down somewhat by the assignment of numer- be carried out with ail secrecy.
ous small units to detached service. Altogether, the At length they reported the ground below us entirely
actual available fighting force, I figured, would number clear of any appearance of human occupation, and a
about five hundred, by the time we actually went into gun unit of long-range specialists was lowered with
action. a dozen rocket giuis, equipped with special automatic
Wehad only six small swoopers, but I had an devices that the Resources Division had developed at
ingenious plan in my mind, as the result of our little my request, a few hours before our departure. These
raid on Nu-yok, that would make this sufficient, since were aiming and timing devices. After calculating the
the reserves of inertron blocks were larger than I ex- range, elevation and rocket charges carefully, the guns
pected to find them. The Resources Division, by were left, concealed in a ravine, and the men were
packing its supply cases a bit tight, or by slipping in hauled up into the ship again. At the predetermined
extra blocks of inertron, was able to' reduce each to a hour, those unmanned rocket guns would begin auto-
weight of a few ounces. These easily could be floated matically to bombard the Bad Bloods' hillsides, shifting
and towed by the swoopers in any quantity. Hitched their aim and elevation slightly with each shot, as did
to ulrron lines, it would be a virtual impossibility for many of our artillery pieces in the First World War.
them to break loose. In the meantime, we turned south about twenty miles,
The entire personnel, of course, was supplied with and grounded, waiting for the bombardment to begin
jumpers, and if each man and girl was careful to ad- before we attempted to sneak across the Han ship lane.
just balances properly, the entire number could also I was relying for security on the distraction that the
be towed along through the air, grasping wires of bombardment might furnish the Han observers.
ultron, swinging below the swoopers, or stringing out It was tense work waiting, but the affair went
behind them. through as planned, our squadron drifting across the
There would be nothing tiring about this, because, route high enough to enable the ships'tails of troops
the strain would be no greater than that of carrying a and supply cases to clear the ground.
one or two pound weight in the hand, except for air In crossing the second ship route, out along the
friction at high speeds. But to make doubly sure that Beaches of Jersey, we were not so successful in escap-
we should lose none of our personnel, I gave strict ing observation. A
Han ship came speeding along
Orders that the belts and tow lines should be equipped ata very low elevation. We
caught it on our electronic
with rings and hooks. locationand direction finders, and also located it with
So great was the efficiency of the fundamental or- our ultroscopes, hut it came so fast and so low that I
ganization and discipline of the Gang, that we got thought it best to remain where we had grounded the
under way at nightfall. second time, and lie quiet, rather than get under way
One by one the swoopers eased into the air, each and cross in front of it.

followed by its long train or "kite-tail" of humanity The point was this. While the Hans had no such
and supply cases hanging lightly from its tow line. devices as our ultronoscopes, with which we could see
For convenience, the tow lines were made of an alloy in the dark (within certain limitations of course), and
of ultron which, unlike the metal itself, is visible. their electronic instruments would be virtually useless
At first these "tails" hung downward, but as the in uncovering our presence, since all but natural elec-
ships swung into formation and headed eastward to- tronic activitieswere carefully eliminated from our
ward the Bad Blood territory, gathering speed, they apparatus, except electrophone receivers (which are
began to string out behind. And swinging low from not easily spotted), the Hans did have some very
each ship on heavily weighted lines, ultroscope, ultro- highly sensitive sound devices which operated with
phone, and straight- vision observers keenly scanned the great efficiency in calm weather, so far as sounds
countryside, while intelligence men in the swoopers emanating from the air were concerned. But the
jlbove bent over their instrument boards and viewplates. "ground roar" greatly- confused their use of these
Leaving Control Boss Ned Garlin temporarily in instruments in the location of specific sounds floating
charge of affairs, Wilma and I dropped a weighted line up from the surface of the earth.
from our ship, and slid down about half way to the This ship must have caught some slight noise of ours,
flnder lookouts, that is to say, about a thousand feet. however, in its sensitive instruments, for we heard
(The sensation of floating swiftly through the air like its electronic devices go into play, and picked up the
this, in the absolute security of one's confidence in the routine report of the noise toits Base Ship Commander.
inertron belt, was one of never-ending delight to me. But from the nature of the conversation, I judged they
We reascended into the. swooper as the expedition had not identified it, and were, in fact, more curious
approached the territory of the Bad Bloods, and di- about the detonations they were picking up now from
rected the preparations for the bombardment. It was the Bad Blood lands some sixty miles or so to the
part of my plan to appear to carry out the attack as west.
originally planned. Immediately after this ship had shot by, we took the
About fifteen miles from their camps our ships came air again, and following much the same route that I
 ARMAGEDDON — 2419 A.D. 447

liad taken the previous night, climbed in a long semi- Again I gave the word, and Hearn passed on the
circle out over the ocean, swung toward the north and order to his subordinates.
finally the west. We
set our course, however, for the Far belowus, and several miles to the right and
Sinsings land north of Nu-yok, instead of for the city left, two barrage lines made their appearance.
the
itself. From the great height to which we had risen, they
appeared like lines of brilliant, winking lights, and the
CHAPTER XII detonations were muffled by the distances into a sort
of rumbling, distant thunder. Hearn and his assist-
The Finger of Doom
ants were very busy measuring, calculating, and snap-
;

we crossed the Hudson River, a few miles north

AS of the city, we dropped several units of the
Yellow Intelligence Division, with full instru-
ping out ultrophone orders to unit commanders that
resulted in the straightening of Hues and the closing
of gaps in the barrage.
mental equipment. Their apparatus cases were nicely The White Division Boss reported the utmost con-
balanced at only a few ounces weight each, and the fusion in the Sinsing organization. (They were, as
men used their chute capes to ease their drops. might be expected, an inefficient, loosely disciplined
Werecrossed the river a little distance above and gang), and repeated broadcasts for help to neighboring
began dropping White Intelligence units and a few gangs. Ignoring the fact that the Mongolians had not
long and short range gun units. Then we held our used explosives for many generations, they neverthe-
position until we began to get reports. Gradually we less jumped at the conclusion that they were being
ringed the territory of the Sinsings, our observation raided by the Hans. Their frantic broadcasts persisted
units working busily and patiently at their locaters in this thought, despite the nervous electrophonic in-
and scopes, both aloft and aground, until Garlin finally quiries of the Hans- themselves, to whom the sound of
turned to me with the remark, the battle was evidently audible, and who were trying
"The map circle iscomplete now, Boss. We've got to locate the trouble. ,

clear locations all the way around them." At this point, the swooper I had sent South toward
"Let me see it," I replied, and studied the illuminated the city went into action as a diversion, to keep the
viewplate map, with its little overlapping circles of Hans at home. Its "kite tail" loaded with long-range
light that indicated spots proved clear of the enemy gunners, using the most highly explosive rockets we
by ultroscopic observation. had, hung invisible in the darkness of the sky and bom-
I nodded to Bill Hearn. "Go ahead now, Hearn," I barded the city from a distance of about five miles.
said, "and place your barrage men." With an entire city to shoot at, and the object of cre-
He spoke into his ultrophone, and three of the ships ating as much commotion therein as possible, regardless
began to glide in a wide ring around the enemy terri- of actual damage, the gunners had no difficulty in hit-
tory. Every few seconds, at the word from his Unit ting the mark. I could see the glow of the city and
Boss, a gunner would drop off the wire, and slipping the stabbing flashes of exploding rockets. In the end,
the clasp of his chute cape, drift down into the dark- the Hans, uncertain as to what was going on, fell back
ness below. on a defensive policy, and shot their "hell cylinder,"
Bill formed two lines, parallel to and facing the or wall of upturned disintegrator rays into operation.
river, and enclosing the entire territory of the enemy That, of course, ended our bombardment of them. The
between them. Above and below, straddling the river, rays were a perfect defense, disintegrating our rockets
were two defensive lines. These latter were merely as they were reached.
to hold their positions. The others were to close in If they had not sent out ships before turning on the
toward each other, pushing a high-explosive barrage rays, and if they had none within sufficient radius
five miles ahead of them. When the two barrages already in the air, all would be well.
met, both lines were to switch to short-vision-range I queried Garlin on this, but he assured me Yellow
barrage and continue to close in on any of the enemy Intelligence reported no indications of Han ships nearer
who might have drifted through the previous curtain than 800 miles. This would probably give us a free
of fire. hand for a while, since most of their instruments re-
In the meantime Bill kept his reserves, a picked corded only imperfectly or not at all, through the
corps of a hundred men (the same that had accom- death walL
panied Hart and myself in our fight with the Hand Requisitioning one of the viewplates of the head-
squadron) in the air, divided about equally among the quarters ship, and the services of an expert operator,
"kite tails" of four ships. I instructed him to focus on our lines below. I wanted

A final roll call, by companies, divisions and

units, a close-up of the men in action.
functions, established the fact that all our forces were He began to manipulate his controls and chaotic
in position. No Han activity was reported, and no shadows moved rapidly across the plate, fading in and
Han broadcasts indicated any suspicion of our expedi- out of focus, until he reached an adjustment that gave
tion. Nor was there any indication that the Sinsings me a picture of the forest floor, apparently 100 feet
had any knowledge of the fate in store for them. The wide, with the intervening branches and foliage of the
idling of rep ray generators was reported from the trees appearing like shadows that melted into reality
center of their camp, obviously those of the ships the a few feet above the ground.
—
Hans had given them the price of their treason to I watched one man setting up his long-gun with
their race. skillful speed. His lips pursed slightly as though he
•448 AMAZING STORIES
were whistling, as he adjusted the tall tripod on which many, stood aiound in tense attitudes, their helmet
the long tube was balanced. Swiftly he twirled the phones strapped around their ears, nervously fingering
knobs controlling the aim and elevation of his piece. the tuning controls at their belts. Unquestionably they
Then, lifting a belt of ammunition from the big box, must have located some of our frequencies, and over-
which itself looked heavy enough to break down the heard many of our reports and orders. But they were
spindly tripod, he inserted the end of it in the lock of confused and disorganized. If they had an Ultrophone
his tube and touched the proper combination of buttons. Boss they evidently were not reporting to him in an
Then he stepped aside, and occupied himself with organized way.
peering carefully through the trees ahead. Not even a They were beginning to draw back now before our
tremor shook the tube, but I knew that at intervals of advancing fire. With intermittent desperation, they
something less than a second, it was discharging small began to shoot over our barrage again, and the explo-
projectiles which, traveling under their, own continu- sions of their rockets flashed at widely scattered points
ously reduced power, were arching into the air, to fall beyond. A few took distance "pot shots."
precisely five miles ahead and explode with the force Oddly enough it was our own forces that suffered
of eight-inch shells, such as we used in the First World the first casualties in the battle. Some of these distance
War. shots by chance registered bits, while our men were
Another gunner, fifty feet to the right of him, waved under strict orders not to exceed their barrage distances.
a hand and called out something to him. Then, picking Seen upon the ultroscope viewplate, the battle looked
up his own tube and tripod, he gauged the distance as though it were being fought in daylight, perhaps on
between the trees ahead of him, and the height of a cloudy day, while the explosions of the rockets ap-
their lowest branches, and bending forward a bit, peared as flashes of extra brilliance.
flexed his muscles and leaped lightly, some twenty-five The two barrage lines were not more than .five hun-
feet. Another leap took him another twenty feet or so, dred feet apart when the Sinsings resorted to tactics
where he began to set up his piece. we had not foreseen. We noticed first that they began
I ordered my observer then to switch to the barrage to lighten themselves by throwing away extra equip-
itself. He got a close focus on it, but this showed ment. A
few of them in their excitement threw awa"y
little except a continuous series of blinding flashes, too much, and shot suddenly into the air. Then a
which, from the viewplate, lit up the entire interior of few floated up gently, followed by increasing
scattering
the ship. An eight-hundred-foot focus proved better. numbers, while still others, preserving a weight bal-
I had thought that some of our French and American ance, jumped toward the closing barrages and leaped
artillery of the 20th Century had achieved the ultimate high, hoping to clear them. Some succeeded. We
in mathematical precision of fire, but I had never seen saw .others blown about like leaves in a windstorm,
anything to equal the accuracy of that line of terrific to crumple and drift slowly down, or else to fall into
explosions as it moved steadily forward, mowing down the barrage, their belts blown from their bodies.
trees as a scythe cuts grass (or used to 500 years ago), However, it was not part of our plan to allow a
literally churning up the earth and the splintered, single one of them to escape and find his way to the
blasted remains of the forest giants, to a depth of from Hans. I quickly passed the word to Bill Hearn to
ten to twenty feet. have the alternate men in his line raise their barrages
By now the two curtains of fire were nearing each and heard him bark out a mathematical formula to the
other, lines of vibrant, shimmering, continuous, bril- Unit Bosses.
liant destruction, inevitablysqueezing the panic-stricken We backed off our ships as the explosions climbed
Sinsings between them. into the air in stagger formation until they reached a
Even as I watched, a group of them, who had been height of three miles. I don't believe any of the
making a futile effort to get their three rep ray ma- Sinsings who tried to fioat away to freedom succeeded.
chines into the air, abandoned their efforts, and rushed But we did know later, that a few who leaped the
forth into the milling mob. barrage got away and ultimately readied Nu-yok.
I queried the Control Boss sharply on the futility of It was those who managed to jump the barrage who
this attempt of theirs, and learned that the Hans, gave us the most trouble. With half of our long-guns
apparently in doubt as to what was going on, bad turned aloft, I foresaw we would not have enough to
continued to "play safe," and broken off their power establish successive ground barrages and so ordered the
broadcast, after ordering all their own ships East of barrage back two miles, from which positions our "cur-
the Alleghenies to the ground, for fear these ships they tains" began to close in again, this time, however,
had traded to the Sinsings might be used against them. gauged to explode, not on contact, but thirty feet in
Again I turned to my viewplate, which was still the air. This left little chance for the Sinsings to
focussed on the central section of the Sinsing works. leap either over or under it.
The confusion of the traitors was entirely that of Gradually, the two barrages approached each other
fear, for our barrage had not yet reached them." until they finally met, and in the grey dawn the battle
Some of them set up their long-guns and fired at ended.
random over the barrage line, then gave it up. They Our own casualties amounted to forty-seven men in
realized that they hadno target to shoot at, no way the ground forces, eighteen of whom had been slain
of knowing whether our gunners were a few hundred in hand to hand fighting with the few of the enemy
beyond
feet or several mites it. who managed to reach our lines, and sixty-two in the
Their ultrophone men. of whom they did not have crew and "kite tail" force of swooper No. 4, which had
 ARMAGEDDON — 2419 A.D. 449

been located by one of the enemy's ultroscopes and laying barrages that advance along the ground, or
brought down with long-gun fire. climb into the air, are tremendous.
Since nearly every member of the Sinsing Gand had, "The dis ray inevitably reveals its source of emana-
so far as we knew, been killed, we considered the raid tion. The rocket gun does not. The dis ray can reach
a great success. its target only in a straight line. The rocket may be
It had, however, a far greater significance than this. made to travel in an arc, over intervening obstacles, to
To all of us wlio took part in the expedition, the an unseen target.
effectiveness of our barrage tactics definitely estab- "Nor must we forget that our ultronists now are
lished a confidence in our ability to overcome the Hans. promising us a perfect shield against the dis ray in
As I pointed out to Wilma inertron."
"It has been my belief all along, dear, that the "I tremble though, Tony dear, when I think of the
American explosive rocket is a far more efficient weap- horrors that are ahead of us. The Hans are clever.
They will develop defenses against our new tactics.
on than the disintegrator ray of the Hans, once we
can train all our gangs to use it systematically and in
And they are sure to mass against us not only the full
force of their power in America, but the united forces
co-ordinated fashion. As a weapon in the hands of a
of the World Empire. They are a cowardly race in
single individual, shooting at a mark in direct line of
one sense, but clever as the very Devils in Hell, and
vision, the rocket-gun is inferior in destructive power
inheritors of a calm, ruthless, vicious persistency,"
to the dis ray, except as its range may be a little
"Nevertheless," I prophesied, "the Finger of Doom
greater. The trouble is that to date it has been used points squarely at them today, and unless you and I
only as we used our rifles and shot guns in the 20th are killed in the struggle, we shall live to see America
Century. The possibilities of its use as artillery, in blast the Yellow Blight from the face of the Earth."
Philip Francis Nowlan
A Hyatt Verrill-
.
?~ CyjjLG.iWales

FKHtJtWTF.J- Jtimi HHUCiOHIWY, "

 g

site AIULORBS * HAN

By Philip Franeis Nowlan
A Sequel to "Armageddon—2419 A. D."

CHAPTER I entire squadron crashing to earth bow a handful of us

;

T&e Airlords Besieged in a rocketship successfully raided the Han city of Nu-
Yok; and how by the application of military principles,
BN a previous record of my adventures in the I remembered from the First World War, I was able
early part of the Second War of Inde- to lead the Wyomings to victory over the Sinsings, a
i pendence I explained how I, Anthony Hudson River tribe which had formed a traitorous al-
Rogers, was overcome by radioactive gases
I
liance with the hereditary enemies and oppressors of the*
an abandoned mine near Scranton in the
in White Race in America.
year 1927, where I existedin a state of suspended ani- Bydie Spring of 2420 A.D., a short six months after
., matfon for nearly five hundred years; and awakened these events, the positions of the Yellow and the White
to find that the America I knew had been crashed Races in America had been reversed. The hunted were
.
under the cruel tyranny of the Airlords of Han, fierce now the hunters. The Hans desperately were increas-
Mongolians, who, as scientists now' contend, had in ing the defenses of their fifteen cities, around each of
their blood a taint not of this earth, and who with which the American Gangs had drawn a widely de-
science and resources far in advance of those of a ployed line of long-gunners while nervous air convoys,
;

United States, economically prostrate at the end of a closely bunched behind their protective screen of dis-
long series of wars with a Bolshevik Europe, in the
1

integrator beams, kept up sporadic and coJtly systems

"year 2270 A.D., had swept down from the skies in of transportation between the cities.
their great airships that rode "repeller rays" as a hall During this period our OM'n campaign against the
rides the stream of a fountain, and with their terrible Hans of Nu-Yok was fairly typical of the development
"disintegrator rays" had destroyed more than four- of the war throughout the country. Our force was
fifths of the American
and driven the other fifth
race, -composed of contingents from most of the Gangs of
to cover in the vast forestswhich grew up over the -
Pennsylvania, Jersey and New England. encircled We
remains of the once mighty civilization of the United the city on a wide radius, oiir line running roughly from
States. Staten Island to the forested site of the ancient city
I explained the part I played in the fall of the year. of Elizabeth, to First and Second Mountains just West
'

2419, whera the rugged Americans, with science secretly of the ruins of Newark, Bloom field and Montclair,
developed to terrific effi- '
thence Northeasterly across
ciency in their forest fast- the Hudson, and down to
ness., turned fiercely and as- JFsure
*
you have read "Armagec!don—Z4\9 A.D."—o.nd -we are
— the Sound. On Long Island
you have you tna^hanK a slight idea what is in
sumed the a gressive store for yon in the present sequel. " our line was pushed for-
against a now effete Han Mr. Nawlan has outdone himself., ward to the first slopes of
quite in <:>/? humble
population, which for gen- opinion, the sequel is in mOuy respects better than the the hills.
erations had shut itself up original story.
We had no more .'than
in the fifteen great Mongol-
We heps thai will be your verdict also.
Like the first story, this one is pregnant with adventure, four long-gunners to the
ian cities of America, hav- mystery and science hi an unusual degree for stories of square .mile inouTr first line,
ing abandoned cultivation this kind. but each of these was equal
of the soil and the operation Apparently Mr. Ncvltm has developed an entirely new
to a battery of heavy artil-
of mines; for these Hans technique in inventing new and amasinrj instrttvii-iHaiiiies,
lery such as. I had known in
rnd -indeed, wholly tint) branches- of science vst'.f. particu-
produced all they needed in the First World War. And
larly science as applied to warfare. Aud no matter how
.

the way of food, clothing, fast a- thinker and no matter how good tt scientist you are, when their firewas first-
shelter '
and "
machinery voi, will fmd hut the author is always a few steps eik-cod of
I
concentrated on the Han
through el ectrono -synthetic you ami anticipates your ovm thoughts nine times out of ten.
city, they .blew its outer
processes. It is a capital stem which you will enjoy ail Iks miy
through. walls and roof levels into a
I explained how I was
— _ ™~""~"~~~
chaotic mass of wreckage
adopted into the Wyoming '

before the nervous Yellow

Gang, or clan, descendants of the original populations engineers could turn on the ring of generators which
of Wilkes-Barre, Scranton and the Wyoming Valley surrounded the city with a vertical fihs of disinte-
in Pennsylvania how quite by accident I stumbled upon
; grator rays. Our explosive rockets could not penetrate
a method of destroying Han aircraft by shooting ex- this film, [or it disintegrated them instantly
and harm-
plosive rockets, not directly at the heavily armored ships, lessly, as it did all other "material substance
with the
.
but at the repeller ray columns, which automatically sole exception of "inertron," that synthetic element
de-
drew the rockets upward where they exploded in the veloped by the Americans from the sub-electronic
and
generators of the aircraft how the Wyomings: threw
;
ultrouic orders.
the first thrill of terror into the Airlords by bringing an The continuous operation of the disintegrators de-

1106
t emerged ijiio tin: civ:
 1108 AMAZING STORIES
strayed the air and maintained a constant vacuum We
Wyomings possessed one swooper completely
wherever they played, into which the surrounding air sheathed with inertron and counter weighted with ultron.
continuously rushed, naturally creating atmospheric dis- The Altoonas and the Lycomings also had one apiece.
turbances after a time, which resulted in a local storm. But a shielded swooper, while impervious to the "dis"
This, however, ceased after a number of 'hours, when ray,was helpless against squadrons of Han aircraft, for
the flow of air toward the city became steady. the Hans developed a technique of playing their beams
The Hans suffered severely from atmospheric con- underneath the swooper in such fashion as to suck it
ditions inside their city at first, but later rearranged down flutteringly into the vacuum so created, until
their disintegrator ring in a system of overlapping films they brought it finally, and more or less violently, to
that left diagonal openings, through which the air earth.
rushed to them, and through which their ships emerged Ultimately the Hans broke our blockade to a cer-
to scoutour positions. tain extent, when they resumed traffic between their
We shot down seven
of their cruisers before they cities ingreat convoys, protected by squadrons of cruis-
realized the folly of floating individually over our in- ers in vertical formation, playing a continuous cross-
visible line. Their beams traced paths of destruction fire of disintegrator beams ahead of them and down on
like scars across the countryside, but caught less than the sides in a most effective screen, so that it was very
half a dozen of our gunners alt told, for it takes a lot difficult for us to get a rocket through to the repeller
of time to sweep every square foot of a square mile rays.
with a beam whose cross section is not more than twenty But we lined the scar paths beneath their air routes
or twemy-five feet in diameter. Our gunners, com- for miles at a stretch with concealed gunners, some of
pletely concealed beneath [he foliage oE the forest, with whom would sooner or later register hits, and it was
weapons which did not reveal their position, as did the seldom that a convoy made the trip between Nu-Yok
flashes and detonation of the twentieth century artillery, and Boss-Tan, Bah- Flo, Si-ka-ga or Ah-Ia-nah with-
with comparative ease.
hit their repeller rays out losing several of its ships.
The "drop ships," which the Hans next sent out, Hans who reachedthe ground alive were never taken
were harder to handle. Rising to immense heights be- prisoner. Not even the splendid discipline of the Amer-
hind the city's disintegrator wall, these tiny, projectile- icans could curb the wild hate developed through cen-
like craft slippedthrough the rifts in the cylinder of de- turies of dastardly oppression, and the Hans were
struction, and then turning off their repeller rays, drop- mercilessly slaughtered, when they did not save us the
ped at terrific speed until their small vanes were suffi- trouble by committing suicide.
cient to support them as they volplaned in great circles, Several times the T Tans drove "air wedges" over our
shooting back into the city defenses at a lower level. lines iu this vertical
or "cloud bank" formation, plough-
The great speed of these craft made it almost im- ing a scar path a mile or more wide through our posi-
possible to register a direct hit against them with rocket tions. But at worst, to us, this did not mean the loss
guns, and they had no repeller rays at which we might of _ more than a dozen men and girls, and generally their
shoot while they were over our lines. raids cost them .one or more ships. They cut paths
But by the same token they were able to do little of destruction across the map. but they could not cover
damage to us. So great was the speed of a drop ship, the entire area, and when they had ploughed out over
that the only way in which it could use a disintegrator our lines, there was nothing left for them to do but to
ray was from a fixed generator in the nose of the turn around and plough back to Nu-Yok. Our lines
structure, as it dropped in a straight line toward its closed up again after each raid, and we conriuued"Trr
target. But since they could not sight the widely de- take heavy toll from convoys and raiding fleets. Finally
ployed individual gunners in our line, their scouting they abandoned these tactics.
was just as ineffective as our attempts were to shoot So at the time of which I speak, the Spring of 2420
them down. A.D., the Americans and the Hans were temporarily
at
pretty much of- a deadlock. But the Hans were as
FOR more than a month
deadlock, with the Hans
the situation remained a
locked up in their
desperate as we were sanguine, for we had time
side.
on our
cities,
while we mobilized gunners and supplies. It was at this period thatwe first learned of the
Had our stock of inertron been sufficiently great at Airlords' determination, a very unpopular one with
we could have ended the war quickly, with
this period, their conscripted populations, to carry the fight
to us
aircraft impervious to the "dis" ray. But the produc- on the ground. The time had passed when command of
tion of inertron is a painfully slow process, involving the air meant victory. We
had no visible cities nor
the building up of this weightless element from ultronic massed bodies of men for them to destroy, nothing
vibrations through the sub-electronic, electronic and but vast stretches of silent forests and hills, where
atomic states into molecular form. Our laboratories had our forces lurked, invisible from the air.
barely begun production on a quantity basis, for we had
just learned how to protect them from Han air raids, CHAPTER II
and it would be many months more before the supply The "Ground Ships" Threaten
they had just started to manufacture would be finished.
In the meantime we had enough fof a few aircraft, for
jumping belts and a small amount of armor, o NE of our Wyoming girls, on contact guard
near
Pocono. blundered into a hunting camp of the
Bad Bloods, one of the renegade American
 THE AIRLORDS OF HAN 1109

Gangs, which occupied the Blue Mountain section North of the ancient Romans, but much larger, and capable
o£ Delaware Water Gap. We had not invited their of concealing their bearers from head to foot when
cooperation in this campaign, for they were under some they crouched slightly. These shields, of course, were
suspicion of having trafficked with- the Hans in past colored forest green, and were irregularly shaded ; they
years, but they had offered no objection to our passage were balanced with inertron, so that their' effective
through their territory in our advance on Nu-Yok. weight was only a few ounces. They were curious too,
Fortunately our contact guard had been able to leap had handles for both hands, and two small
in that they
into the upper branches of a tree without being dis- reservoir rocketgiins built into them as integral parts..
covered by the Bad Bloods, for their discipline was lax In going into action, the Susquannas- crouched
and their guard careless. She overheard enough of the slightly,holding the shields before them with both
conversation of their Bosses around the camp fire be- hands, looking through a narrow vision slit, and work-
neath her to indicate the general nature of the Han ing both rocket guns. The shields, however, were a
plans. great handicap in leaping, and in advancing through
After several hours she was able to leap away un- heavy forest growth.
observed through the topmost branches of the trees, The field unit of the Delawares was also heavily
and after putting several miles between herself and armored. It was one of the most efficient bodies of
their camp, she ultrophoned a full report to her Con- shock troops in our entire line. They carried circular
tact Boss back in the Wyoming Valley. My own shields, about three feet in diameter, with a vision
Ultrophone Field Boss picked' up the message and slit and a small rocket gun. These shields were held at

brought the graph record of it to me at once. arm's length in the left hand on going into action. In
Her report was likewise picked up by the Bosses of the right hand was carried an ax-gun, an affair not
the various Gang units in our line, and we had called unlike the battle-ax of the Middle Ages. It was about
a council to discuss our plans by word of mouth. three feet long. The a rocket'gun,
shaft consisted of
We were gathered-irl a sheltered glade on the Eastern with an ax-blade near the muzzle, and a spike at the
slope of First Mountain on a balmy night in May. Far other end. It was a terrible weapon. Jointed, leg-
to the East, across the forested slopes of the lowlands, guards protected the ax-gunner below the rim of his
the flat stretches of open meadow and the rocky ridge shield, and a hemispherical helmet, the front section of
that once had been Jersey City, the irridescent glow of which was of transparent ultron reaching down to the
Nu-Yok' s protecting film of annihilation shot upward, chin, completed his equipment.
gradually fading into a starry sky. The Susquannas also had a long-gun unit in the field.
In the faint glow of our ultronolamps, I made out One company of my Wyomings I had equipped with
the great figure and rugged features of Boss Casaman, a weapon which I designed myself. It was a long-gun
commander of the Mifflin unit, and the gray uniform of which I had adapted for bayonet tactics such as Ameri-
Boss Warn, who led the Sandsnipers of the Barnegat can troops used in the First World War, in the Twen-
Beaches, and who liad swooped over from his head- tieth Century. It was about the length of the ancient
quarters on Sandy Hook. By his side-stood Boss Han- rifle, and was fitted with a- short knife bayonet. The
dan of the Winslows, a Gang from Central Jersee. la stock, however, was replaced by a narrow ax -blade and
the group also were the leaders of the Altoonas, the a spike. It had two hand-guards also. It was fired
Camerons, the Lycomings, Susquannas, Harshbargs, from the waist position.
Hagersduns, Chesters, Reddings, Delawares, Elmirans, In hand-to-hand work one lunged with the bayonet
-J^ggs, ^ludsons and Connedigas. in a vicious, swinging up-thrust, following through
of them were clad in forest-green uniforms that
"*"TSIost with an up-thrust of the ax-blade as one rushed in on
showed black at night, but each had some distinctive one's opponent, and then a down-thrust of the butt-
badge or item of uniform or equipment that distin- spike, developing into a down-slice of the bayonet,
guished his Gang. and a final upward jerk of the bayonet at the throat
Both the Mifflin and Altoona bosses, for instance, and chin with a shortened grip on the barrel, which had
wore heavy-looking boots with jointed knees. They been allowed to slide through the hands at the com-
came from sections that were not only mountainous, but \ pletion of the down-slice.
rocky, where "leaping" involves many a slip and bruised
limb, unless some protection of this sort is worn, But ALMOST regretted that we would not find our-
these boots were not as heavy as they looked, being I selves opposed to the Delaware ax-men in this cam-
counter-balanced somewhat with inertron. paign, so curious was I to compare the efficiency of the
The headgear of the Winslows was quite different two bodies.
from the close-fitting helmet of, the Wyomiugs, being But both the Delawares and my own men were elated
large and bushy looking, for in the Winslow territory at the news that the Hans intended to fight it out on
there were- many stretches of nearly bare land, with the ground at last, and the prospect that we might in
occasional scrubby pines, and a Winslow caught in consequence come to close quarters with them.
the open,on the approach of a Han airship, would twist Many of the Gang Bosses were dubious about our
himself into a motionless imitation of a scrubby plant, Wyoming policy of providing our fighters with no
that passed very successfully for the real thing, when inertron armor as protection against the disintegrator
viewed from several thousand feet in the air. ray of the Hans. Some of them even questioned me
The Susquannas had a unit thatwas equipped with value of all weapons intended for hand to hand fighting.
inertron shields, that were of the same shape as those As Warn, of the Sandsnipers put it: "You should
 '

1110 AMAZING STORIES

be in a better position than anyone, Rogers, with your ray "canopy" that was operated from a short mast, and
memories of the Twentieth Century, to appreciate that spread down around it as a cone.*
between the .superdendliness of the rocket gun and of These ships were merely adaptations of their air-
the disintegrator ray there will never be any opportuni- ships, and were designed to travel but a few feet
ty for hand-to-hand work. Long before the opposing above the ground. Their repellcr rays were relatively
forces could come to grips, one pr the other will be weak; just strong enough to lift them about ten or
wiped out" twelve feet from the surface. Hence they would draw
But I only smiled, for I remembered how much of but lightly upon the power broadcast from the city,
this same talk there was five centuries ago, and that and great numbers of them could he used. A special
it was even predicted in 1914 that no war could last ray at the stern propelled them, and an extra-lift ray
more than six months. in the bow enabled them to nose up over ground ob-
That there would be hand to hand work before we stacles. Their most formidable feature was the cone-
.

were through, and in plenty, I was convinced, and so shaped "canopy" of short range disintegrator- ray de-
every able-bodied youth I could muster was enrolled signed to spread down around them from a circular
in my infantry battalion and spent most of his time in generator at the tip of a twenty-foot mast amidship.
vigorous bayonet practice. And for the same reason This would annihilate any projectile shot at it, for they
I had discarded the idea of armor. I felt it would be naturally could not reach the ship without passing
clumsy, and questioned its value. True, it was an abso- through the cone of rays.
lute bar against the disintegrator ray, but of what use It was instantly obvious that the "ground ships"
would that be if a Han ray found a crevice between would prove to be. the "tanks" of the twenty-fifth
overlapping plates, or if the ray was used to annihilate century, and with due allowance for the fact that they
the very earth beneath the wearer's feet? were protected with a sheathing of annihilating rays
The only protective equipment that I thought was instead of with steel, that they would have about the
worth a whoop was a very peculiar device with which same handicaps and advantages as tanks, except that
a contingent of five hundred Altoonas was supplied. since they would float lightly on short repeller rays,
They called it the "umbra-shield." It was a bell- they could hardly resort to the destructive crushing
shaped aflair of inertron, counterweighted with ultron, tactics of the tanks of the First World War.
about eight feet. high. The gunner, who walked inside As soon as our first supplies of incrtron-sheafhed
it, carried it easily with two shoulder straps. There rockets came through, their invulnerability would be
were handles inside too, by which the gunner might at an end, as indeed would be that of the Han cities
more easily balance it when running, or lift it to clear themselves. But^these projectiles were not yet out of
any obstructions on the ground. the factories.
In the apex of the affair, above his head, was a small In the meantime, however, the groundships would
turret, containing an automatic rocket gun. The per*- be hard to handle. Each of them we understood would
scopic gun sight and the controls were on a level with be equipped with a thin long-range "dis" ray, mounted
the operator's eyes. In going into action he could, in a turret at the base of the mast.
after taking up his position, simply stoop until the rim We had no information as to the probable tactics of
. of the umbra-shield rested on the ground, or else slip the Hans in the use of these ships. One sure method
off the shoulder straps, and stand there, quite safe of destroying them would be to bury mines in their
from the disintegrator ray, and work his gun. path, too deep for the penetration of their protecting
But again, I could not see what was to prevent the canopy, which would not, our engineers estimated, cut
Hans from slicing underneath it, instead of directly deeper than about three feet a second. But we couldn't
at it, with their rays. ring Nu-Yok with a continuous mine on a radius of
As I saw it, any American who was unfortunate from five to fifteen or twenty mile%. Nor could we he
enough to get in the direct path of a "dis" ray, was al- certain, beforehand o£ the direction of their attack.
most certain to "go out," unless he was locked up tight In the end, after several hours' discussion, we agreed
iu a complete shell of inertron, as for instance, in an on a flexible defense. Rather than risk many lives, we
inertron swoopcr. It seemed to me better to concen- would withdraw before them, test their effectiveness
trate all our efforts on tactics of attack, trusting to our and familiarize ourselves with the tactics they adopted,
ability to get the Hans before they got us. If possible, we would send engineers in behind them
I had one other main unit besides my bayonet bat- from the flanks, to lay mines in the probable path of
talion, a long-gun contingent composed entirely of girls, their return, providing their first attack proved to be a
as were my scout units and most of my auxiliary con- raid rather than an advance to consolidate new posi-
tingents. These youngsters had been devoting them- tions.
selves to target practice for months, and had developed CHAPTER III
a fine technique of range finding and the various other We "Sink" the "Ground Ships"
tactics of Twentieth Century massed artillery, to which
was added the scientific perfection of the rocket guns BOSS HANDAN, of the Winslows, a giant of a
and an average mental alertness that would have put man, a two-fisted fighter and a leader of great sa-
the artilleryman of the First World War to shame. . gacity, had been selected by the council as am
From the information our contact guard had obtained, Boss Protm, and having given the scatter signal to the
it appeared that the Hans had developed a type of' council,he retired to our general headquarters, which
"groundship" completely protected by a disintegrator we had established on Second Mountain, a few miles in
 THE AIRLORDS OF HAN 1111

She rear of the fighting front in a deep ravine. forest. In my ears sounded the ultrophone instruc-
There, in quarters cut far below the
surface, he tions of my executives to tire long-gunners in the forest,
Would observe every detail of the battle on the won- and one by one I heard the girls report their rapid re-
derful system of viewplates our ultrono engineers had tirement with their guns and other inertr on -lightened
constructed through a series of relays from ultroscope equipment, I located several of them with my scopes,
observation posts and individual "cammermen." with which I could, of course, focus through the leafy
Two hours before dawn our long distance scopemen screen above them, and noted with satisfaction the un- •

reported a squadron of "ground ships" leaving the hurried speed of their movements.
enemy's disintegrator wall, and heading rapidly some- On ploughed the Han wedge, while my girls separated
what to the south of us, toward the site of the ancient before it and retired to the sides. With a rapidity much
city of Newark. The ultroscopes could detect no greater than that of the ships themselves, the beams
canopy operation. This in itself was not significant, for penetrated deeper and deeper into the forest, playing
&ey were penetrating hills in their lines of vision, most continuously in the same direction, literally melting their
of diem, which of course blurred their pictures to a way through, as a stream of hot water might melt its
Slight extent. But by now we had a well -equipped way through a snow bank.
eiectrono scope division, with instruments nearly equal Then a curious thing happened. One of the ships
io Uiose of the Hans themselves ; and these could de- near one wing of the wedge must have passed over un-
tectno evidence of dis rays in operation. usually soft ground, or perhaps some irregularity in the
Handan appreciated our opportunity instantly, for control of its canopy generator caused it to dig deeper
no sooner had the import of the message on the Rosses' into the earth ahead of it, far it gave a sudden down-
channel become clear than we heard his personal com- ward lurch, and on coming up out of it, swerved a bit to
mand snapped out over the long-gunners' general chan- one side, its offense beam slicing full into the ship
nel. echeloned to the left ahead of it. That ship, all but a
Nine hundred and seventy long-gunners nn the south few plates on one side, instantly vanished from sight.
and west sides of the city, concealed in the dark fast- But the squadron could not stop. As soon as a ship
cesses of the forests and hillsides, leaped to their guns, stood still, its canopy ray playing continuously in one
switched on their dial lights, and flipped the little lever spot, the ground around it was annihilated to a con-
combinations on their pieces that automatically reg- tinuously increasing depth. A couple of them tried it,
istered them on the predetermined position of map sec- but within a space of seconds, they had dug such deep
tion HM-243-839, setting their magazines for twenty holes around themselves that they had difficulty in
shots, and pressing their fire buttons. climbing out." Their commanders, however, had the
For .what seemed an interminable instant nothing foresight to switch off their offense rays, and so dam-
happened. aged no more oi their comrades.
Then several miles to the southeast, an entire section I switched in with my ultrophone on Boss Handan's
of thecountry literally blew up, in a fiery eruption that channel, intending to report my observation, but found
shot a mile into the air. The concussion, when it that one of our swooper scouts, who, like myself, was
reached me, was terrific. The light was blinding. hanging above the Hans, was ahead of me. Moreover,
And our scopemen reported the instant annihilation of he was reporting a suddenly developed idea that re-
(he squadron. sulted in the untimely end of the Hans' groundship
What happened, of course, was this ; the Hans knew threat.
nothing of .our ability to see at night through our ultro- "Those ships can't climb out of deep holes, Boss,"
icopes. Regarding itself as invisible in the darkness, he was saying excitedly. "Lay a big barrage against
and believing cur instruments would pick up its loca- — —
them no, not on them in front of them always in —
tion when its dis rays went into operation, the squadron front of them. Pull it back as they come on. But
made the fatal error of not turning onits canopies. —
churn h I out of the ground in front of them Get the
!

To say that consternation overwhelmed the Han rockelmen to make a penetrative time rocket. Shoot it
high command would be putting it mildly. Despite their into the ground in front of them, deep enough to be
use of code and other protective expedients, we picked below their canopy ray, see, and detonate under them as
!"
up enough of their messages to know that the incident they go over it
badly demoralized them. I heard Handan's roar of exultation as I switched
Their next attempt was made in daylight. I was aloft off again to order a barrage from my Wyoming girls.
in my swooper at the time, hanging motionless about Then I threw my rocket motor to full speed and shot
a mile up. Below, the groundships looked like a off a mile to one side, and higher, for I knew that
number of oval lozenges gliding across a map, each soon there would be a boiling eruption below.
surrounded by a circular halo of luminescence that was No smoke interfered with my view of it, for our
its <iis ray canopy. atomic explosive was smokeless in its action, line of A
They had nosed up over the spiny ridge of what once blinding, flashing fire appeared in front of the ground-
had been Jersey City, and were moving across the ship wedge. The ships ploughed with calm determina-
meadow lands. There were twenty of them. tion toward it. but 'it withdrew before them, not steadily,
Coming to the darker green that marked the forest but jerkily intermittent, so that the ground became a
on the "map" below me, they adopted a wedge forma- series of gigantic humps, ridges and shell holes. Into
tion, and playing their pencil rays ahead of them, these the Han ships wallowed, plunging ponderouslv.
they began (o beam a path for themselves through the yet not daring to stop while their protective canopy
1112 AMAZING STORIES
rays played, not daring to shut off these active rays. Han ship, focussing through to a view of its interior
One overturned. Our observers reported it. The Much as I had imbibed of this generation's hatred for
result was a hail of rocket shells directly on the squad- the Hans, I was forced to admire them for the com-
ron. These could not penetrate the canopies of the pleteness and efficiency of this marvelous craft of
other ships, but the one which had turned turtle was theirs.
blown to fragments. Constantly twirling the controls of my scope to hold
The squadron attempted to change its course and the focus, I examined its interior from nose to stern.
dodge the barrier in front of it. But a new barrier of
-
blazing detonations and churned earth appeared on its
flanks. In a matter of minutes it was ringed around,
ITa may be of interest at this point to give the reader
layman's explanation of the electronic or ionic ma-
thanks to the skill of our fire control. chinery of these ships, and of their general construction,
One by one the wallowing ships plunged, into holes for today the general public knows little of the particu-
from which 'they .could not extricate" themselves. -One lar application of the electronic laws which the Hans
by one their canopy rays were shut off, op the ships used, although the practical application of ultronics are
somersaulted off the knolls on which they perched, as well understood.
fheir canopies melted the ground away from around Back in the Twentieth Century I had, like literally
them. So one by one they were destroyed. millions of others, dabbled a bit in "radio" as we
Thus the second ground sortie of the Hans was an- calledit then the science of the Hans was simply the
;

nihilated. superdevelopment of "electricity," "radio," and "broad-

CHAPTER IV casting."
Itmust be understood that this explanation of mine
Han Electrono-Ray Science
is not technically accurate,, but only what might be
Hans Nu-Yok had only one
AT this period the
airship equipped with
of
their uew armored repetler
defense against our tactics of
termed an
The Hans
illustrative approximation.
power-stations used to broadcast three
h ray,, their latest distinct "powers" simultaneously. Our engineers called
shooting rockets htto the repeller rays and letting the them the "starter," the "pullee" and the "sub-disintegra-
latter hurl them up against the ships. They had de- tor" The last named had nothing to do with the
veloped a new steel alloy of tremendous strength, which
-
operation of the ships, but was exclusively the powerizer
passed their rep ray with ease, but was virtually im- of the disintegrator generators.
pervious to our most powerful explosives. Their_sup- The "starter" was not unlike the "radio" broadcasts
plies of this alloy were limited, for it could be pro- of the Twentieth Century. It went out at a "frequency
duced only in the Lo-Tan shops, for it was only there of about 1,000 kilocycles, had an amperage of approxi-
that they could develop the degree of .electronic power mately zero, but a voltage of two billion. Properly
necessary for its manufacture. amplified by the use of inducto-static batteries (a de-
This ship shot out toward our lines just as the last velopment of 'tile principle underlying the earth induc-
of the groundships turned turtle and was blown to tion compass applied to the control of static) this cur-
pieces. As it approached, the rockets of our invisible rent energized the "A" ionomagnetic coils on the air-
and widely scattered gunners in the forest below began ships, large and sturdy affairs, which operated the
to explode beneath its rep ray plates. The explosions Altractoreflex Receivers, which in turn "pulled in"
caused the great ship to plunge and roll mightily, but the second broadcast power known as the "pullee" ab-
otherwise did it no serious harm that I could see, for sorbing it from every direction, literally exhausting it
it was very heavily armored. from surrounding space. The "pullee" came in at about
Occasionally rockets fired directly at the ship would a half-billion volts, but in very heavy amperage, pro-
find their mark and tear gashes in' its side and bottom portional to the capacity of the receiver, and on a long
plates, but these hits were few. The ship was "high in —
wave at audio frequency in fact. About half of this
the air, and a far more 'difficult target than were its power reception ultimately actuated the repeller ray
rep ray columns. To_hit the latter, our gunners had generators. The other half was used to energize the
only to gauge- their aim vertically. Range could be "B" ionomagnetic coils, peculiarly wound affairs, whose
practically ignored, since the rep ray at any point above magnetic fields constituted the only means of insulating
two-thirds thedistance. from the earth to the ship, would and controlling the circuits of the three, "powers."
automatically hurl the rocket upward against the rep The repeller ray generators, operating on this- cur-
ray plate. rent, and in conjunction with "twin synchronizers" in
As the ship sped toward us, rocking, plunging and the power broadcast plant, developed two rhythmically
recovering, it began to beam the forest below. It was variable ether-ground circuits of opposite-polarity. In
equipped with a superbeam too, which cut a swathe the "X" circuit, the negative was grounded along an
v
nearly a hundred feet wide wherever it played. . ultravioletbeam from the ship's repeller-ray generator.
With visions of many a life snuffed out below me, I The positive connection was through the ether to the
surrendered to the impulse to stage a single-handed at- "X synchronizer" in the power .plant, whose opposite
tack on this ship, feeling quite secure in my floating pole was grounded. The "Y" circuit travelled the same
shell of inertron. I nosed up vertically, and rocketed course, but in the opposite direction.
for a position above the ship, Then as I climbed upward, The rhythmic variables of these two opposing circuits,
as yet unobserved in my tiny craft that was scarcely as nearly as I can understand it, in .heterodyning, crea-
larger than myself, I trained my telultroscope on the ated a powerful material "push" from the earth, up
 THE AIRLORDS OF HAN 1113

along the violet ray beam against the rep ray generator mental laws underlying these successive orders are not
and against the two synchronizers at the power plant. radically dissimilar.And as they progressed, they de-
This push developed molecularly from the earth- veloped constructive as well as destructive practice-
mass-resultant to the generator ; and at the same frac- Hence the great, triumphs of ultron and inertron, our
tional distance from the rep ray generator to the power two wonderful synthetic elements, built up from super-
plant. balanced, and su'b-balanced ultronic whorls, through the
The force exerted upward against the ship was, of sub-electronic order into the atomic and molecular.
course, highly concentrated, being confined to the path Hence also, come our relatively simple and beautifully .

of the ultraviolet Air or any material substance,

beam. efficient ultrophpnes and ultroscopes, which in their
coming within the indicated section of the beam, was phonic and visual operation penetrate obstacles of ma-
thrown violently upward. The ships actually rode on terial, electronic and sub-electronic nature without let

columns of air,thus forcefully upthrown. Their "home or hindrance, and with the consumption of but in7
berths" and "stations" were constructed with air pits finitesimal power.
beneath. When they rose from ordinary grpund in Static disturbance, I should explain, is negligible in
open country, there was a vast upheaval of earth be- the sub-electronic order, and non-existent in the ul-
neath their generators at the instant of take-off, but tronic.
this, of course^ ceased as they got well above ground The pioneer expeditions of our engineers into the
level.' ultronic order, I am toldj necessitated the use of most
Equal pressure to the lifting power of the generator elaborate, complicated and delicate apparatus, as well as
was exerted against the synchronizers at the power '

the expenditure of most costly power, but once estab-

plant, but this force, not being concentrated directionally lished there, all necessary power is developed very
along an ultraviolet beam, involved a practical problem simply from tiny batteries composed of thin plates of
only at points relatively close to the synchronizers. metultron and katultron. These two siibstances, devel-.
.Of course the synchronizers were automatically con- oped synthetically in much the same manner as ordinary
trolled by the operation of the generators, and only ultron, exhibit dual phenomena which for sake of illtis-
the two were needed for any number of ships' draw- .tration I may compare with certain of the phenomena
ing power- from the station, providing then- protection of radioactivity. As radium is constantly giving off
was rugged enough to stand the strain. electronic emanations and changing its atomic struc-
Actually, they were isolated in vast spherical steel ture thereby, so katultron is constantly giving off ul-
chambers with thick walls, so that nothing ,but air pres- tronic emanations, and so changing its sub-electronic
sure would be hurled against them, and this, of course, form, while metultron, its complement, is constantly
would be self -neutralizing, coming as it did from all attracting and absorbing ultronic values, and so chang-
directions. ing its sub-electronic nature in the opposite direction.
The "sub-disintegrator power" reached the ships as Thin plates of these two substances, when placed prop-
an ordinary broadcast reception at a negligible amper- erly in juxtaposition, with insulating plates of inertron
age, but from one to 500 "quints" (quintillions) voltage, . between, constitute a battery which generates an ultronic
''controllable only by the fields of the "B" ionomagnetic current.
coils. It had a wave-length of about ten meters. In And it is a curious parallel that just as there were '

the dis ray generator, this wave-length was broken up many mysteries connected with the nature of 'electricity *.

into an almost unbelievably high frequency, and became in the Twentieth Century (mysteries which, I might
-a directionally controlled wave of an infinitesimal frac- mention, never have been solved, notwithstanding our
fo_£T "of an This wave-length, actually identical
inch. penetration into the "sub-" orders) so there are certain
with the diameter of an electron, that is to say, being ac- mysteries about the ultronic current. It will flow, for
curately "tuned" to an electron, disrupted the orbital instance, through an ultron wire, from the katultron
paths and balanced pulsations of the electrons within to the metultron plate, as electricity will flow through a
the atom, so desynchronizing them as to destroy polarity copper wire. It will short circuit between the two plates
balance of the atom and causing it to cease to exist as an if the inertron insulation is imperfect. When the in?
atom. It was in this way that the ray reduced matter sulation is perfect, however, and no ultron metallic
to "nothingness." circuit is complete, the "current" (apparently the same-
This destruction of the atom, and a limited power for thatwould flow through the metallic circuit) is projected
itsreconstruction under certain conditions, marked the into space inan absolutely straight line from the katul-
utmost progress of* the Han science. tron plate, and received from space by the metultron'
plate on the same line. This line is the theoretical
CHAPTER V ' straight line passing through the mass-center of each
plate. The shapes and angles of the plates have noth-
American Ultronio Science
ing to do with it, except that the perpendicular distance

OUR tories
own engineers, working in shielded labora-
far underground, had established such
of the plate edges from the mass-center line determines
the thickness of the beam of parallel current-rays.
control over the "de-atomized" electrons as to Thus a simple battery may be used either as a sender
dissectthem in their turn into sub-electrons. More- or receiver of current. Two batteries adjusted to the
,
over, they had carried through the study of this same center line become connected in series just as if
"order" to the point where they finally "dissected" the they were connected by ultron wires.
;
sub-electron intoits component ultrons, for the funda- In actual practice, however, two types of batteries are

i
 ;;

1114 AMAZING STORIES

used; both the foco batteries and broadcast' batteries. ceiving battery has a core pole of katultron and an outer
Foco datteries are twin batteries, arranged to shoot shell of metultron. The receiving battery, of course,
a positive and a negative beam in the same direction. picks up all frequencies, the undesired ones being tuned
When these beams are made intermittent at light fre- out in detection.
quencies (though they are not light waves, nor of the Tuning, however, is only a convenience for privacy
same order as lightwaves) and are brought together, and elimination of interference in ultrophonic communi-
or focussed, at a given spot, the space in which they cation. It is not involved as a necessity, for untuned
cross radiates alternating ultronic current in every di- currents may be broadcast at voice controlled fre-
rection. This radiated ultralight acts like true light so quencies, directly and without any carrier wave.
long as the crossing beams vibrate at light frequencies, To use plate batteries or single center-line batteries
except in three respects first, it is not visible to the eye
; for phonic communication would require absolutely ac-
second, its "color" is exclusively dependent on the fre- curate directional aligning of sender and receiver, a
quency of the foco beams, which determine the fre- very great practical difficulty, except when sender and
quency of the alternating radiation. Material surfaces, receiver are relatively close and mutually visible.
it would appear, reflect them all in equal value, and the This, however, is the regular system used in the

color of the resultant picture depends on the color of the Inter-Gang network. for official communication. The
foco frequencies. By altering these, a reddish, yellow- senders and receivers used in this system are set only
ish or bluish picture may be seen. In actual practice with the greatest difficulty, and by the aid of the
an orthochromatic mixture of frequencies is used to finest laboratory apparatus, but once set, they are per-
give a black, gray and white picture. The third dif- manently locked in position at the stations, and barring
ference is this rays pulsating in line toward any ultron
; earthquakes or insecure foundations, need no subsequent
object connected with the rear- plates of the twin bat- adjustment. Accuracy of alignment- permits beam paths
teries through rectifiers cannot he reflected by ma- no thicker than the old lead pencils I used to use in the
terial objects, for it appears they are subject to a kind Twentieth Century.
of- "pull" which draws them straight through material The non-interference of such communication lines,
objects, which in a sense are "magnetized" and while in and the difficulty of cutting in on them from any point
this state offer no resistance. except immediately adjacent to the sender or receiver,
Ultron, when so connected with battery terminals, is strikingly apparent when it is realized that every
glows with true light under the impact ot uifa square inch of an imaginary plane bisecting the unlo-
and if in the. form of a lens or set of lenses, may be cated beam would have to be explored with a receiving
made to deliver a picture in any telescopic degree de- battery in order to locate the beam itself.
sired. A practical compromise between the spherical or uni-
versal broadcast senders and receivers on the one hand,
THE essential parts of
batteries with f oca!
an ultroscope, then, are twin
control and frequency control
and the single
facet battery. Another,
on the other, is the imilti-
line batteries
and more practical device par-
an ultron shield, battery connected and adjustable, to ticularly for distance work, is the window-spherical.
intercept the direct rays from the "glow-spot," with It is merely an ordinary spherical battery with a shield-
ao ordinary light-shield between it and the lens; and ing shell with an opening of any desired size, from
the lens itself, battery connected and with more or less which a directionally controlled beam may be emitted
telescopic elaboration. in different forms, usually that simply of an expanding
To look through a substance at an object, one has cone, with an angle of expansion sufficient to cover
only to fo.cus the glow-spot beyond the substance' but the desired territory at the desired point of reception.
on the near side of the object and slightly above it.
A complete apparatus may be "set" for "penetrative," CHAPTER VI
"distance" and "normal vision."
An Unequal Duel
In the which one would use to look through
first,

tire from the air, or in examining the in- -

forest screen
terior of a Han ship or any opaque structure, the glow-
BUT to return to
from which I
my narrative,
was gazing
and my swooper,
at the interior of the
spot is brought low, at only a tiny angle above the Han ship.

vision line, and the shield, of course, must be very This ship was not unlike the great dirigibles of the
carefully adjusted. Twentieth Century in shape, except that it had no sus-
"Distance" setting would be used, for instance, in. pended control car nor gondolas, no propellers, and no
surveying a valley beyond a hill or mountain; the glow- rudders, aside from a permanently fixed double -fishtail
spot is thrown high to illuminate the entire scene, stabilizer at the rear, aud a number of "keels" so ar-

In the "normal" setting the foco rays are brought to- ranged as to make the most of the repelier lay air-lift
gether close overhead, and illuminate the scene just as columns.
a lamp of super brilliancy would in the same position. Its width was probably twice as great as its depth,

For phonic communication a spherical sending bat- and its length about twice its width. That is to say,
tery is a ball of metultron, surrounded by an insulating it was about 100 feet from the main keel to the top-

shell of inertron, and this in turn by a spherical shell deck at their maximum distance from each other, about
of kaltiiltron, from which the current radiates in every 200 feet wide amidship, and between 400 and 500 feet
direction, tuning being accomplishd by frequency of in- long. It had in addition to the top-deck, three interior
termissions, with audiofrequency modulation. The re- decks. In its general curvature the ship was a compro-
 THE AIRLORDS OF HAN
mise between a true streamline design and a flattened they gazed at their viewplates, and manipulated the
cylinder. little sets of controls placed convenient to their hands.
For
a distance of probably 75 to 100 feet back of
the nose there were no decks except that formed by
the bottom of the hull. But from this point back the
THE was a comic one
picture
wondering how such
to me", and I laughed,
soft creatures had- held the
decks ran to within a few feet of the stern. sturdy and virile American race in complete subjection
At various spots on the hull curvature in this great for centuries. But my laugh died as my mind grasped
"hollow nose" were platforms from which the crews of at the obvious explanation. These Hans were only
the dis ray generators and the elecironoscope and elec- soft physically. Mentally they were hard and hellishly
tronophone devices manipulated their apparatus. efficient ; ruthless, relentless and conscienceless.
Into this space from the forward end of the center Impulsively I nosed my swooper down toward the
deck, projected the control room. The walls, ceiling ship and shot toward it at full rocket power. I had
and floor of this compartment were simply the surfaces acted so swiftly that I had covered nearly half the dis-
of viewplates. There were no windows or other open- tance toward the ship before my mind slowly drifted out
ings. of the daze of my emotion. This proved my undoing.
*The operation officers within the control room, so Their scopeman saw me too quickly, for in heading
far as their vision was concerned, might have imagined directly at them I became easily visible, appearing as a
themselves suspended in space, except for the trans- steady, expanding point. Looking through their hull,
mitters, levers and other signalling devices around I saw the crew of a dis ray generator come suddenly
them. to attention. A second later their beam engulfed me.
Five officers, I understand, had their posts in the For an instant my heart stood still, But the inertron
control room; the captain, and the chiefs of scopes, shell of my swooper was impervious to the disintegrator
phones, dis rays and navigation. Each of these was in ray. -I was out of luck, however, so far as my control
continuous interphone communication with his subordi- over my tiny ship was concerned. I had been hurtling
nates in other posts throughout the ship. Each view- in a direct line toward the ship when the beam found
plate had its phone connecting with its "eye machines" me. Now, when I tried to swerve out of the beam, the
on the hull, the crews of which would switch from swooper responded but sluggishly to the shift I made in
telescopic to normal view at command. the rocket angle. I was, of course, traveling straight
There were, of course, many other viewplates at ex- down a beam of vacuum. As my craft slowly nosed
ecutive posts throughout the ship. to the edge, of the beam, the air rushing into this
The Hans followed a peculiar system in the command vacuum from all sides threw it back in again.
of their ships. Each ship had a double complement of Had I shot my ship-across one of these beams at right
officers. Active Officers and Ease Officers. The former angles, my momentum would have carried me through
were in actual, active charge of the ship and its appa- with no But I had no momentum now ex-
difficulty.
ratus. The latter remained at the ship base, at desks cept in the line of the beam, and this being a vacuum
equipped with viewplates and phones, in constant com- now, my momentum, under full rocket power, was
munication with their "correspondents," on the ship. vastly increased. This realization gave me a second
They acted continuously as consultants, observers, re- and more acute thrill. Would I be able to check my
corders and advisors during the flight or action. Al- little craft in time, or would I, helpless as a bullet itself,
though not primarily accountable for the operation of crash through the shell of the Han ship to my own
the ship, they,were senior to, and in a sense responsible destruction ?
"
for the training and efficiency of the Active Officers. I shut off my rocketmotor, but noticed no practical
The ionomagnetic coils, which served as the casings, diminution of speed.
"plates" and insulators of the gigantic condensers, were It was the fear of the Hans themselves that. saved
all located amidship on a center line, reaching clear me. Through my ultroscope I saw sudden alarm on
through frdm the top to the bottom of the hull, and their faces, hesitation, a frantic officer in the control
reaching from the forward to the rear rep-ray gener- room jabbering into his phone. Then shakily the crew
ators;, that is, from points about 110 feet, from bow and flipped their beam off to the side. The jar on my craft
*
stern. .The crew's quarters were arranged on both was terrific. Its nose caught the rushing tumble of air
sides of the coils. To the outside of these, where the first, of course, and my tail sailing in a vacuum, swung
several decks touched the hull, were located the various around with a sickening wrench. My
swooper might
pieces of phone, scope and dis ray apparatus. as well have been a barrel in the tumult of waters at
The ship into which 1 was gazing with my ultroscope the foot of Niagara. What was worse, the Hans kept
(at a telescopic and penetrative setting), carry a crew of me in that condition. Three of their beams were now .

perhaps 150 men all told. And except for the strained playing in my direction, but not directly on me except
looks on their evil yellow faces I might have been for split seconds. Their technique was to play their
tempted to believe I was looking on some Twenty-fifth beams around me more than on me, jerking them this
Century pleasure excursion, for there was no running way and that, so as to form vacuum pockets into which
around nor appearance of activity. the air slapped and roared as the beams shiftedi tossing
The Hans loved their ease, and despite the fact that me around like a chip.
this was a war ship, every machine and apparatus in it Desperately I- tried to bring my craft under control,
was equipped with a complement of seats and specially to point its nose toward the Han ship and discharge an
designed couches, in which officers and men reclined as explosive rocket. Bitterly I cursed my self-confidence,.
1116 AMAZING STORIES
and my impulsive action. An experienced pilot of the grooved and riveted together, since the substance was.
present age would have known better than to be caught impervious to heat and could not be welded). Desper-
'

shooting straight down a dis ray beam. He would have ately I sawed, hammered and chiseled, until at last with
kept his ship shooting constantly at some angle to it, a wrench and a snap, the plate broke away.
-

so that his momentum would carry him across it it he The released nose of the ship shot upward. The';
hit it. Too late I realized that there was more to the rest began to drop with me. How fast I dropped I
business of air lighting, than instinctive skill in guiding do not know, for my instruments went with the nose.
a swooper. Half fainting, I grimly clenched the rubber hose be-
At last, when for a fraction of a second my nose tween my teeth, while the little compressor "carried.! 1

pointed toward the Hans, I pressed the button of my on" nobly, despite the wrecked condition of the ship,
rocket gun. I registered a hit, but not an accurate one. giving me just enough air to keep my lungs from :

My projectile grazed an upper section of the ship's hull. collapsing.

At that it did terrific damage. The explosion battered At last shot through a cloud layer, and a long
I ;

"
in a section about fifty feet in diameter, partially detrey- time afterward, it seemed, another. From the way in
ing the top deck. which they flashed up to meet me and to appear away
At the same instant I had shot my rocket, I had, in above me, I must have been dropping like a stone.
a desperate attempt to escape that turmoil of tumbling At last I tried the rocket motor, very gently, to
air, released a catch and dropped all that it was possible check my fall. The swooper was, of course, dropping =

to drop of my ultron ballast. swooper shot up- My tail first, and I hati to be careful lest it turn over with
ward, like a bubble streaking for the surface of water. a sharp blast from the motor, and dump me out. <

I was free of the trap in which I had been caught, Passing through the third layer of clouds I saw the
but unable to take advantage of the confusion which earth beneath me. Then I jumped, pulling myself up
reigned on the Han ship. through the jagged opening, and leaping upward while
I was as helpless to maneuver my ship now, -in its the remains of my ship shot away below me. " *
up-fush, as when I had been tumbling in the air pockets. On approaching the ground I opened my chute-cape,
Moreover I was badly battered from plunging around to further check mj fall, and landed lightly, with no
in my shell like a pellet in a box, and partially uncon- further mishap. Whereupon I promptly threw myself
'Scious, down and slept, so exhausted was I with my experience.
I was miles in the air when I recovered myself. The It was not until the next morning that I awoke and
Swooper was steady enough now, but still rising, my gazed about me. I had come down in mountainous ,•

instruments told me. and traveling in a general west- country. My intention was to get my bearing by tun-
ward direction at full speed. Far below me was a sea ing in headquarters with my ultrophone. But to my
of clouds, stretching from horizon to horizon, and dismay I found the little battery disks had been torn
through occasional breaks in its surface I could see still from the earflaps of my helmet, though my chest-disk
other seas of clouds at lower levels. transmitter was still in place, and so far as I could see,
in working order. I could report my experience, but
CHAPTER VII could receive no reply. ,/,:

I spent a half hour repeating my story and explana- ?

Captured!
tion on the headquarters-channel, then once more sur-
CERTAINLY my situation was no less desperate. veyed my surroundings, trying to determine in
Unless I could find some method of compensa- which direction I had better leap. Then there came '%="->
ting for my lost ballast, the inverse gravity of Stab of pain on the top of my head, and I dropped un- -

my inertron ship would hurl me continuously upward conscious. "'

until I shot forth from the last air layer into space, I I regained consciousness to find myself, much to my .:

thought of jumping, and floating down on my inertron surprise, a prisoner in thehands of a foot detachment .'

belt, but I was already too high for this. The air was of some Hans. My surprise was a double one;
thirty ;

too rarefied to permit breathing outside, though my little first thai, they had not killed me instantly; second, .

air compressors were automatically maintaining the that a detachment of them should be roaming this wild '.

proper density within the shell. It I could compress a country afoot, obviously far from any of their "cities, -

sufficiently large quantity of air inside the craft, I would and with no ship hanging in the sky above them. ,J

add to its weight. But there seemed little chance that

I would myself be able tO withstand sufficient Compres-
ASand growled
I sat up, their officer
a gutteral
grunted with satisfaction
command. I was seized
]

'

I thought of releasing my inertron belt, but doubted and pulled roughly to my feet by four, soldiers, and "'

whether this would be enough. Besides I might need hustled along with the party into a wooded ravine/ -'

the-belt badly if I did find some method of bringing through which we climbed sharply upward. I surmised,-'
the little ship down, and it came too fast. correctly as it turned out, that some projectile had
.'

At a plan came into my half-numbed brain that

last grazed my head, and I was in such shape that if it had -
had some promise of success, though it was desperate .
not been for the fact that my inertron belt bore most of *
enough. Cutting one of the hose pipes on my air com- my weight, they would have had to carry me. But as;f
pressor, and grasping it between my lips, I set to work it was I made out well, and at the end of an hour's -.

to saw off the heads of the rivets that held the entire climb was beginning to feel like myself again, thought
nose section of the swooper (inertron plates had to be the Han soldiers around mc were puffing and drooping"
 THE AIRLORDS OF HAN 1117

men will, no matter how healthy, when they are

as "San-Lan," he replied, "misbegotten spawn of the
"=tota!ly unaccustomed to physical effort. late High Priestess Nlui-Mok, arid now Most Glorious
At length the party halted for a rest. I observed. 'Air Lord of All the Hans," He rolled out these titles
fihem curiously. Except for a few brief exciting mo- with a bow of exaggerated respect toward the West,
,
merits at the time of our air raid on the intelligence and in a tone of mockery. Those of his men who were
office in Nu-Yok, I had seen no living specimens of this near enough to hear, snickered and giggled.
J
> yellow race at close quarters-. I was to learn that this amazing attitude of his was
;: They looked little like the Mongolians of the Twen- typical rather than exceptional. Strange as it may
Century, except for their slant eyes and round
tieth seem, no Han rendered any respect to another, nor
The characteristic of the high cheek bones ap-
.heads. expected it in return ; that is, not genuine respect. Their
were those of
peared to have been bred out of them, as discipline was rigid and cold-bloodedly heartless. The
short legs and the muddy yellow skin. To
the relatively most elaborate courtesies were demanded and accorded
f
call them yellow was more figurative than literal. Their among equals and from inferiors to superiors, but such
j
skins were whiter than those of our own weather-tanned was the intelligence and moral degradation of this re-
.forest men. Nevertheless, their pigmentation was pecul- markable race, that every one of them recognized these
\ iar, and what there was of it looked more like a paie courtesies for what they were; they must of necessity
- orange tint than the ruddiness of the Caucasian. They have been hollow mockeries. They took pleasure in
were well formed, but rather undersized arid soft look- forcing one another to go through with them, each try-
,ing_. small muscled and smooth -skinned, like young girls. ing to outdo the other in cynical, sardonic thrusts,
:
Their features were finely chiseled, eyes beady, and nose clothed in the most meticulously ceremonious courtesy.
slightly aquiline. As a matter- of fact, my captor, by this crude reference
They were uniformed, not in close-fitting green or to tire origin of his ruler, was merely proving himself a
[
other shades of protective coloring, such as the unob- crude fel-low, guilty of a vulgarity rather than of a
-. trusive gray of the Jersey Beaches or the deadened rus- treasonable or disrespectful remark. An officer of
.
set of the autumn uniforms of pur people. Instead higher rank and better breeding, would have managed
T
.
they wore loose fitting jackets of some silky material, a clever innuendo, less direct, but equally plain.
'
and loose knee pants. This particular command had I was about to ask him what part of 'the country we
been equipped with form moulded boots of some soft were in and where I was to be taken, when one of his
material that reached above the knee under their pants. men came running to him with a little portable electro-
'-.
They wore circular hats with small crowns and wide nophone, which he placed before him, with much bow-
r rims. Their loose jackets were belted at the waist, and ing and scraping.
they carried for weapons each man a knife, a short He conversed through this for a while, and then
: double-edged sword and what I took to be a form of condescended to give me the information that a ship
"
magazine rocket gun. It was a rather bulky affair, would soon be above us, and that I was to be transferred
;
short barrelled, and with a pistol grip. It was obviously to it. In telling me this, he managed to convey, with
;
intended to be fired either from the waist' position or crude attempts at mock- courtesy, that he and his men
from some sort of support, like the old machine guns. would feel relieved to be rid of me as a menace to, health
It looked, in fact, like a rather small edition of the and. sanitation, and would take exquisite joy in inflict-
; Twentieth Century arm. ing me upon the crew of the ship.
And have I mentioned the color of .their uniforms?
t,
.Their circular hats and pants were a bright yellow; CHAPTER VIII
their coats a flaming scarlet. What targets they were!
Hypnotic Torture
T must have chuckled audibly at the thought, for

:
their commander who was seated on a folding stool
one of his men had placed for him, glanced in my direc-
SOME twenty minutes
down slowly
settled
later the ship arrived.
on its repeller
into the ravine
It

tion, and, at his arrogant gesture of command. I was it was but a few feet above the tree
rays until
... prodded to my feet, and with my hands still bound, as tops. There
was stopped, and floated steadily, while
it

they had been from the moment I recovered con- a little let. down oh a wire.
cage was Into this I was
sciousness, I was dragged before' him. hustled and locked, whereupon the cage rose .swiftly
Then I knew what it was about these Hans that kept again to a hole in the bottom of the hull, into which it
me in a turmoil of irritation. It was their sardonic,
- fitted snugly, and I stepped into the interior of a craft

;
mocking, cruel smiles; smiles which left their stamp not unlike the one with which I had had my fateful
; on their faces, even in repose. Now the commander encounter, the cage being unlocked.
was smiling tauntingly at me. When he spoke, it was The cabin in which I was confined was not an outside
'

in my own language. compartment, but was equipped with a number of

"So!" he sneered, "You beasts have learned to laugh. viewp lares.
You have gotten out of control in the last year or so. The ship rose to a great height, and headed west-
But that shall be remedied. In the meantime, a simple ward at such speed that the hum of the air past its

little surgical operation would make your smile a perma- smooth plates rose to a shrill, almost inaudible moan.
nent one, reaching from ear to ear. But there; my After a lapse of some hours we came in sight of an
orders are to deliver you and your equipment, all we impressive mountain range, which I correctly guessed
have of it, intact. The Heaven Born has had a whim." to be the Rockies. Swerving slightly, we headed down
"And who," I asked, "is this Heaven Born?" toward one of the topmost pinnacles of the range, and
1118 AMAZING STORIES
there unfolded in one of the viewplates in my cabin tieth Century, and not the Twenty-fifth. Had they done
a glorious view of Lo-Tan, the Magnificent, a fairy so, it might have made a difference. I have no doubt
city of glistening glass spires and irridescent colors,' that some of their most subtle mental assaults missed
piled up on sheer walls of brilliant blue, on the very fire because of my own Twentieth Century "dense- '

tip of this peak. ness." Their hypnotists inflicted many horrifying night-
Nor was there any sheen of shimmering disintegrator mares on me, and made me do and say many things that .

rays surrounding it, to interfere with the sparkling I would not have done in my right senses. But even
sight. So far-flung were the defenses of Lo Tan, I in the Twentieth Century we had learned that hypnotism
found, that it was considered impossible for an Ameri- cannot make a person violate his fundamental concepts
can rocket gunner to get within effective range, and of morality against his will, and steadfastly I steeled my
so numerous were the dis ray batteries on the mountain will against them.
peaks and in the ravines, in this encircling line of de- I have since thought that I was greatly aided by my
fenses, drawn on a radius of no less than 100 miles, newness to this age. I have never, as a matter of fact,
that even the largest of our inertron sheathed aircraft, become entirely attuned to it. And even today I con-
in the opinion of the Hans, could easily be brought to fess to a longing wish that man might travel backward
earth through air-pocketing tactics. And this, I was as well as forward in time. Now that my Wilma has
the more ready to believe after my own recent ex- been at rest these many years, I wish that I might go
perience. back to the year 1927, and take up my old life" where I
I spent two months as a prisoner in Lo-Tan, I can left it off, in the abandoned mine near Scranton,
honestly say that during that entire time every atten- And at the period of which I speak, I was less at-
tion was paid to my physical comfort. Luxuries were tuned than now to the modern world. Real as my life
showered upon me. But I was almost continuously was, and my love for my wife, there was much about it
subjected to some form of mental torture or moral all that was like a dream, and in the midst of my tor-

assault. Most elaborately staged attempts at seduction —

tures by the Hans, this complex this habit of many
were made upon me with drugs, with women. Hypno- months—helped me to tell myself that this, too, was all
tism was resorted to. Viewplates were faked to picture a dream, that I must not succumb, for I would wake up
to me the complete rout of American forces all over in a moment.
the continent. With incredible patience, and laboring And so they failed.
under great handicaps, in view of the vigor of the
American offensive, the Han intelligence department
dug up the fact that somewhere in the forces surround-
MOREgenuine
than
to
that, I think I
respect
won something nearer
from those around me than any
ing Nu-Yok, I had left behind me Wilma, my bride other Hans of that generation accorded to anybody.
of less than a year. In some manner, I will never tell Among was San-Lan himself, the ruler. In
these
how, they discovered some likeness of her, and faked the end itwas he who ordered the cessation of these
an elect ronoscopic picture of her in the hands of tor- tortures, and quite frankly admitted to me his convic-
turers in Nu-Yok, in which she was shown holding tion that they had been futile and that I was in many
out her arms piteously toward me, as though begging senses a super-man. Instead of having me executed, he
me to save her by surrender. continued to shower, luxuries and attentions on me, and
Surrender of what? Strangely enough, they never frequently commanded my attendance upon him.
indicated that to me directly, and to this day I do not Another was his favorite concubine, Ngo-Lan, a crea-
know precisely what they, expected or hoped to get ture of the most alluring beauty ; young- graceful ant?;,
out of me. I surmise that it was information regarding most delicately seductive, whose skill in the arts and
the American sciences. sciences put many of their doctors to shame. This
There was, however, something about the picture creature, his most prized possession, San-Lan with the
of Wilma in the hands of the torturers that did not utmost moral callousness ordered to seduce me, urging
seem real to me, and my mind still resisted. I remem- her to apply without stint and to its fullest extent, her
ber gazing with staring eyes at that picture, the sweat knowledge of evil arts. Had I not seen the naked
pouring down my face, searching eagerly for some horror of her soul, that she let creep into her eyes for
visible evidence of fraud and being unable to find it. just one unguarded instant, and had it not been for my
It was the identical likeness of Wilma. Perhaps had conviction of Wilma 's faith in me, I do not know what
my love for her been less great, I would have suc- —but suffice it to say that I resisted this assault also.
cumbed. But all the while I knew subconsciously that Had San-Lan only known it, he might have had a bet-
this was not Wilma. Product of the utmost of nobility ter chance of breaking down my resistance through
in this modern virile, rugged American race, she would another bit of femininity in his household, the little
have died under even worse torture than these vicious nine-year-old Princess Lu-Yan, his daughter.
Han scientists knew how to inflict, before she would I think San-Lan held something of real affection for -,

have pleaded with me this way to betray my race and this sprightly little mite, who in spite of the sickening
'

her honor. knowledge of rottenness she had already acquired at this

But these were things that not even the most skilled early age, was the nearest thing to innocence I found -

of the Han hypnotists and psychoanalysts could drag in Lb-Tan. But he did not realize this, and could not r m
-.

from me. Their intelligence division also failed to pick for even the most natural and fundamental affection of
up the fact that I was myself the product of the Twen- the human race, that "of parents for their offspring, had *
 THE AIRLORDS OF HAN 1119

teen so degraded and suppressed in this vicious Han brain, and struggles through to his grave, with a more
civilisation as to be unrecognizable. Naturally San- or less beclouded understanding, and with distinct limi-
.Lrn could not understand the nature of my pity For this tations towhat we used to call his "think tank,"
nor the fact that it might have proved a weak
poor child, This particular reflection of mine proved unpopular
spot in my armor. But had he dime so, I truly believe with them, for it stabbed their vanity, and neither my
;he would have been ready to inflict degradation, torture prestige nor the novelty of the idea was sufficient salve.
and even death upon her, to make me surrender the in- These Hans for centuries had believed and taught
:

formation he wanted. their children that they were a super-race, a race of des-
Yet this man, perverted product of a morally de- tiny. Destined to Whom, for What, was not so clear
graded race, had about him something of true dignity; to them; but nevertheless destined to "elevate" human-
something of sincerity, in a warped, twisted way. ity to some sort of super -plane. Yet through these same
. There were times when he seemed to sense vaguely, centuries they had been busily engaged in the extermin-
gropingly, wonderingly, that he might have a soul. ation of "weaklings," whom, by their very persecutions,
The Han philosophy for centuries had not admitted they had turned into "super men," now rising in mighty
(he existence of souls. Its conception embraced noth- wrath to destroy them ; and in reducing themselves to
ing but electrons, protons and molecules, and still was the depths of softening vice and flabby moral fiber. Is
struggling desperately for some shred of evidence that it strange that they looked at me in amazed wonder
thoughts, will power and consciousness of self were when I laughed outright in the midst of some of their
nothing but chemical reactions. However, it had gotten most serious speculations ?
no further than the negative knowledge we had in the
Twentieth Century, that a sick body dulls consciousness Chapter ix
uf the material world, and that knowledge, which all
The Fall of Nu-Yok
mankind has had from the beginning of time, that a

,
dead body means a departed consciousness. They had
succeeded in producing, by synthesis, what appeared to
be living tissues, and even animals of moderately com-
MY position among the Hans, in this period,
a peculiar one. I was at once a closely guarded
prisoner and an honored guest, San-Lan told
was

.
plex structure and rudimentary brains, but they could me frankly that I would remain the latter only so long
complement of life's
not give these creatures the full as I remained an object of serious study or mental di-
characteristics, nor raise the brains to more than me- version to himself or his court. I made bold to ask him.
chanical control of muscular tissues. what would be done with me when I ceased to he such.
. It was my own opinion that they never could suc- "Naturally," he said, "you will he eliminated. What
ceed in doing so. This opinion impressed San-Lan else? It takes the services of fifteen men altogether,
^r greatly. I had expected him to snort his disgust, as the to guard you; and men, you understand, cannot be pro-
extreme school of evolutionists would have done in the duced and developed in less than eighteen years." He
Twentieth Century. But the idea was as new to him meditated frowningly for a moment. "That, by the
and the scientists of his court as Darwinism was to the way, is something I must take up with (he Birth and
late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. So it Educational Bureau. They must develop some method
- was received with much respect. Painfully and with of speeding growth, even at the cost of mental de-
enforced mental readjustments, they began a philosophi- velopment. With your wild forest men getting out of
cal search for excuses and justifications for the idea. hand this way, we arc going to need greater resources
, AH of this amused me greatly, for of course neither of population, and need them badly.
'
the newness nor the orthodoxy of a hypothesis will ""But," he continued more lightly, "there seems to
make it true if it is not true, nor untrue if it is true. be no need for you to disturb yourself over the prospect
Nor could the luck or willpower, with which I had re- at present. It is true you have been able to resist our
sisted their hypnotists and psychoanalysts, make what psychoanalysis and hypnotists, and so have no value to .

might or might not be a universal fact one whit more. or us from the viewpoint of military information, hut as
, less 'of a fact than it really was. But the prestige I a philosopher, you have proved- interesting indeed."
had gained among them, and the novelty of 1113' ex- He broke olV ;. L';is '< :.".' '<.'
pressed opinion carried much weight with them. uniformed official who suddenly appeared on the large
Yet, did not even brilliant scientists frequently ex-, viewplate that formed one wall of the apartment. So
same lack of logic back in the Twentieth Cen-
hibit the perfectly did this mechanism operate, that the man
tury?Did not the historians. the- philosophers of au- might have been in the room with us. He made a low
'„
Greece and Rome show themselves to be the same
cient obeisance, then rose to his full height and looked at his
'

'

shrewd observers as those of succeeding centuries, the ruler with malicious amusement.
same masters of the logical and slaves of the illogical ? "Heaven-Born." he said, "I have the exquisite pain
. After all. I reflected, man makes little progress within of reporting bad news."
drimself. Through succeeding generations he piles up San-Lan gave him a scathing look. "It will be less
\U10se resources which he possesses outside of himself, unpleasant, perhaps, if I am not distracted by the sight
the tools of his hands, and the warehouses of knowledge of you while you report,"
for his brain, whether they be parchment manuscripts, At this the man disappeared, and the viewplate once
printed book, or electron or ecordographs. For Ihc rest more presented its normal picture of the mountains
he is born to-day, as in ancient Greece, with a blank North of L0-T311 ; hut the voice continued;
1120 AMAZING STORIES
"Heaven-Born, the Nu-Yok fleet has been destroyed, the forest which covers the rains of the civilization de-
the city is in ruins, and the newly formed ground stroyed by your ancestors. Ye have sown destruction.
brigades, reduced to 10,000 men, have taken refuge in Ye shall reap it! ., i

the hills of Ron-Dak where they

(the Adirondacks) "Your ancestors thought they had anade mere beasts
are being pressed hard by the tribesmen, who have of the American race. Physically you did reduce them
surrounded them." to the state of beasts. But men do have souls, San-Lan,
For an instant San-Lan
_
sat as though paralyzed. and in their souls the Americans still cherished the
Then he leaped to his feet, facing the viewplate. spark of manhood, of honor, of independence. While
"Let me see you !" he snarled. Instantly the moun- the Hans have degenerated into a race of sleek, pam-
tain view disappeared and the Intelligence Officer ap- pered beasts themselves, they have unwittingly bred a
peared again, this time looking* a little frightened. race of super-men out of those they sought to make
"Where is Lui-Lok?" he shouted. "Cut him in on animals. You have bred your own destruction. Your
my North plate. The commander who loses his city cities shall be blasted from their foundations. Your air
!"
dies by torture. Cut him in. Cut him in fleets shall be brought crashing to earth. You have your
"Heaven- Born, Lui-Luk committed suicide. He choice of dying in the wreckage, or of fleeing to the
leaped into a ray, when rockets of the tribesmen began forests, there to be hunted down and killed as you
to penetrate the ray-wall. Lip-Hung is in command of have sought to destroy us!"
the survivors. We have just had a
message from him. And the ruler of all the Hans shrank back from my
We could not understand all of it. Reception was very outstretched finger as though it had been in truth the
weak because he is operating with emergency apparatus finger of doom.
on Bah-Flo power. The Nu-Yok power broadcast plant But only for a moment. Suddenly he snaried and
has been blown up. Lip-Hung begs for a rescue fleet." crouched as though to spring at me with his bare hands.
San-Lan, his expression momentarily becoming more By a mighty convulsion of the will he regained control
vicious, now was striding up and down the room, while of himself, however, and assumed a manner of quiet
the poor wretch in the viewplate, thoroughly scared at dignity. He even smiled —a. slow, crooked smile.

last, stood trembling. m "No," he said, answering his own thought. "I will
"What !" shrieked the tyrant. "He begs a rescue. A not have you killed now. You shall live on, my hon-
rescue of what? Of 10,000 beaten men and nothing ored guest, to see with your own eyes how we shall
better than makeshift apparatus? No fleet? No city? exterminate your animal-brethren in their forests. Willi
I give him and his 10,000 to the tribesmen ! They are your own ears you shall hear their dying shrieks. The
of no use to us now! Get out! Vanish! No, wait! cold science of Han is superior to your spurious knowl-
Have any of the beasts' rockets penetrated the ray-walls edge. Wehave been careless. To our cost we have let
of other cities?" you develop brains of a sort. But we are still superior.
"No, Heaven-Born, no. It is only at Nu-Yok that We shall go down into the forests and meet you. We
the tribesmen used rockets sheathed in the same mys- shall beat you in your own element. Then, when you
terious substance they use on their little aircraft and have seen and heard this happen, my Council shall de-
which cannot be disintegrated by the ray." (He meant vise for, you a death by scientific torture, such as no
inertron, of course.) man ip the history of the world has been honored with."
San-Lan waved his hand in dismissal. The officer
dissolved from view, and the mountains once more ap- 1MUST digress here a bit from my own personal ad-
peared, as though the whole side of the room were of ventures to explain briefly how the fall o.f Nu-Yok
came about, as "~""'-.
glass. I learned it afterward.
More slowly he paced back and forth. He was the Upon my capture by the Hans, my wife, Wilma, 1

caged tiger now, his face seamed with hate and the courageously had assumed command of my Gang, the
desperation of foreshadowed doom. Wyomings.
"Driven out into the hills," he muttered to himself. Boss Handan, of the Winslows, who was directing the
"Not more than 10,000 of them left. Hunted like American forces investing Nu-Yok, contented himself
—
beasts and by the very beasts we ourselves have hunted for several weeks with maintaining our lines, while
for centuries. Cursed be our ancestors for letting a waiting for the completion of the firet supply of iner- .

single one of the spawn live!" He shook his clenched tron-jacketed rockets. At last they arrived with a lim-
hands above his head. Then, suddenly remembering ited quantity of very
high-powered atomic shells, a trifle
me, he turned and glared. over a hundred of them to be exact. But this number,
"Forest man, what have you to say ?" he demanded. it was estimated, would lie enough to reduce the city to
Thus confronted, there stole over me that same de- ruins. The rockets were distributed, and the day for
tached feeling that possessed me the day I had been the final bombardment was set.
made Boss of the Wyomings. The Hans, however, upset Handan's plans by launch-
"It is the end of the Air Lords of Han," I said ing a ground expedition up the west bank of the
quietly. "For five centuries' command of the air has Hudson. Under cover of an air raid to the southwest,
meant victory. But this is so no longer. For more in which the bulk of their ships took part, this ground-
than three centuries your great, gleaming cities have expedition shot northward in low-flying ships.
been impregnable in all their arrogant visibility. But The raiding air fleet ploughed deep into our lines in
that day is done also. Victory returns once more to- their famous "cloud-bank" formation, with down-play^
the ground, to men invisible in the vast expanse of ing. disintegrator rays so concentrated as to form £
 THE AIRLORDS OF HAN 1121

virtual curtain of destruction. It seared a scarpath a were not as tightly drawn as they might have been, and
mile and a half wide fifteen miles into our territory. there was considerable scattering of both American and
Everyone of our rocket gunners caught in this sec- Han units. The Hans could make only the weakest
tion was annihilated. Altogether we lost several hun- short-range use of their newly developed disintegrator-
dred men and girls. ray field units, since they had only distant sources of
Gunners to each side of the raiding ships kept up a power-broadcast on which to draw. On the other hand,
continuous fire on them. Most of the rockets were dis- the Americans could use their explosive rockets only
integrated, for Handan would not permit the use of the sparingly for fear of hitting one another.
inert ron rockets against the ships. But now and then So the battle was finished in a series of desperate
one found its way through the playing beams, hit a re- hand to hand encounters in the ravines and mountain
peller ray and was hurled up against a Han ship, bring- slopes of the district.
ing it crashing down. The Mifflins and Altoonas, themselves from rocky,
The orders that Handan barked into his ultrophone mountainous sections, gave a splendid account of them-
were, of course, heard by every long-gunner in the ring selves in tliis fighting, leaping to the craggy slopes above
of American forces around the 'city, and nearly all of the Hans, and driving them down into the ravines,
them turned their fire on the Han airfleet, with the where they could safely concentrate on them the fire
exception of those equipped with the inertron rockets- of depressed rocket guns.
These latter held to the original target and promptly The Susquannas, with their great inertron shields,
cut loose on the city with a shower of destruction which which served them well against the weak rays of the
the disintegrator-ray walls could not stop. The results Hans, pressed forward irresistibly every time they made
staggered imagination, and produced awe even in our a contact with a Han unit, their short-range rocket
own ranks. guns sending a hail of explosive destruction before
Where an instant before had stood the high-flung them.
masses and towers of Nu-Yok, gleaming red, blue and But the Delawares, with their smaller shields, in-
gold in the brilliant sunlight, and shimmering through ertron leg-guards and helmets, and their ax-guns, made
the irridescence of the ray "wall," there was a seething faster work of it. They would rush the Hans, shooting
turmoil of gigantic explosions. from their shields as they closed in, and finish the
Surging billows of debris were hurled skyward on business with their ax-blades and the small rocket guns
gigantic pulsations of blinding light, to the accompani- that formed the ha.ndles of their axes.
ment of thunderous detonations that shook men from Itwas my own unit of Wyomings, equipped with
their feet in many sections of the American fine seven bayonet guns not unlike the rifles of the First World
and eight miles away. . War, that took the most terrible toll from the Hans.
As I have said, there were only some hundred of the They advanced at the double, laying a continuous
inertron rocketsamong the Americans, long and slender, barrage before them as they ran, closing with the enemy
to fit the ordinary guns, but the atomic laboratories hid- in great leaps, cutting, thrusting and slicing with those
den beneath the had outdone themselves in
forests, terrible double-ended weapons in a vicious efficiency
their construction. Their release of atomic force was against which the Hans with their swords, knives and
nearly 100 per cent, and each one of them was equal spears were utterly helpless.
to many hundred tons of trinitrotoluol, which I had And so. my prediction that the war would develop
known in the First World War, five hundred years be- hand-to-hand fighting was verified at the outset
fore.-as'T.N.T." None of the details of this battle of the Ron Daks
It was all over in a few seconds. Nu-Yok had ceased were ever known in Lo-Tan. Not more than the barest
to exist, and the waters of the bay and the rivers were outlines of the destruction of the survivors of Nu-Yok
pouring into the vast hole where a moment before had were ever received by San-Lan and his Council. And
been the rocky strata beneath lower Manhattan. of course, at that time I knew no more about it than
Naturally, with the destruction of the city's power- they did.
broadcasting plant the Han air fleet had plunged to CHAPTER X
earth.
.
Life In Lo-Tan, the Magnificent
But the ships of the ground expedition up the river,
hugging the tree tops closely, had run the gauntlet of SAN-LAN'S attitude toward me underwent a
the American long-gunners who were busily shooting change. He did not seek my company as he had
at the other Han fleet, high in the air to the southwest, done before, and so those long discussions and
and about half of them had landed before their ships mental duels in which we pitted our philosophies against
were robbed of their power. The other half crashed, each other came to an end. I was, I suspected, an un-
taking some 10,000 or 12,000 Han troops to destruction pleasant reminder to him of things he would rather
with them. But from those which had landed safely, forget, and my presence was an omen of impending
emerged the 10,000 who now were the sole survivors of doom. That he did not order my execution forthwith
the city, and who took refuge in wooded fastnesses of was due, I believe, to a sort of fascination in me, as
the Adirondacks. the personification of this (to him) strange and mys-
The Americans with their immensely greater mobility, terious race of super-men who had so magically devel-
due to their jumping belts and their familiarity with the oped overnight from "beasts" of the forest.
forest,had them ringed in within twenty-four hours. But though I saw little of him after this, I remained
But owing to the speed of the maneuvers, the lines a member of his household, if one may speak of a
 1122 AMAZING STORIES
'"household" where there is no semblance of house. The women actually moved about through the city
Theimperial apartments were located at the very more than the men, for they had no fixed duties. No
summit of the Imperial Tower, the topmost pinnacle work was required of them, and though nominally free,
of the city, itself clinging to the sides and peak of the theirdependence upon the government pension for their
highest mountain in that section of the Rockies. There necessitiesand on their "husbands" (of the moment)
were days when the seemed to be built on a nigged
city for their luxuries, reduced them virtually to the con-
island in the midst of a sea of fleecy whiteness, for dition of slaves.
frequently the cloud level was below the peak, And Each had her own apartment in the Lower City,
on such days the only visual communication with the with but a single small viewplate, very limited "visi-
world below was through the viewplates which formed and a minimum credit for food and
tation" facilities,
nearly all the interior walls of the thousands of apart- clothing. This apartment was assigned to her on grad-
ments (for the city was, in fact, one vast building) and uation from the State School, in which she had been
upon which the tenants could time in almost any views placed as an infant, and it remained hers so long as she
they wished from an elaborate system of public tele- lived, regardless of whether she occupied it or not, At
vision and projectoscope broadcasts. the conclusion of her various "marriages" she would re-
Every Han city had many public-view broadcasting turn there, pending her endeavors to make a new match.
stations, operating on tuning ranges which did not in- Naturally, as her years increased, her returns became
terfere with other communication systems. For slight more frequent and her stay of longer duration, until
additional fees a citizen in Lo-Tan might, if he felt so finally, abandoning hope of making another match, she
inclined, "visit" the seashore, or the lakes or the forests finished out her days there, usually in drunkenness and
of any part of the country, for when such scene was whatever other forms of cheap dissipation she could
thrown on the walls of an apartment, die effect was afford on her dole, starving herself.
precisely the same as if one were gazing through a Men also received the same State pension, sufficient
vastwindow at the scene itself. for the necessities but not for the luxuries of life. They
was possible too, for a slightly higher fee, to
It got only as an old-age pension, and on application.
it

make a mutual connection between apartments in the When boys graduated from the State School they
same or different cities, so that a family in Lo-Tan, generally were "adopted" by their fathers and taken
for instance, might "visit" friends in Fis-Ko {San into the latters* households, where they enjoyed lux-
Francisco) taking their apartment, so to speak, along uries far in excess of their own earning power. It was
with them; being to all intents and purposes separated wasted any affection on them, for
.not that their fathers
from their "hosts" only by a big glass wall which in- as I have explained before, the Hans were so morally
terfered neither with vision nor conversation. atrophied and scientifically developed that love and af-
These public view and visitation projectoscopes ex- fection, as we Americans knew them, were unexper-
plain that utter depth of laziness into which the Hans ienced or suppressed emotions with them. They were
had been dragged by their civilization^ There was no replaced by lust and pride of possession. So long as
incentive for anyone to leave his apartment unless he it pleased a father's vanity, and he did not miss the

was in the military or air service, or a member of one cost, he would keep a sou with him, but no longer.
of the repair services which from time to time had to Young men, of course, started to work at the mini-
scoot through the corridors and shafts of the city, mum wage, which was somewhat higher than the pen-
somewhat like the ancient fire departments, to make sion, There was work for everybody in positions of
some emergency repair to the machinery of the city or minor responsibility, but very little hard work,
its electrical devices. Upon receiving his appointment from one or another
Whyshould he leave his house? Food, wonderful of the big corporations which handled die production
synthetic concoctions of any desired flavor and con- and distribution of the vast community (the shares of
sistency (and for additional fee conforming to the in- —
which were pooled and held by the government that is,
dividual's dietary prescription) came to him through by San-Lan himself—in trust for all the workers, ac-
a shaft, from which his tray slid automatically on to a cording to their positions) he would be assigned to an
convenient shelf or table. apartment-office, or an apartment adjoining the group
At will he could tune in a theatrical performance of of offices in which he was to have his desk. Most of
talking pictures. He could visit and talk with his the work was done in single apartment-offices.
friends. He breathed the freshest of filtered air right The young man, for instance, might recline at his
in his own apartment, at any temperature he desired, ease in his apartment near the top of the city, and for
fragrant with the scent of flowers, the aromatic smell of three or four hours a day inspect, through his viewplate
the pine forests or the salt tang of the sea, as he might and certain specially installed apparatus, the output of
prefer. He could "visit" his friends at will, and though a certain process in one of the vast automatically con-
his apartment actually might be buried many thousand trolled food factories buried far underground beneath
feet from the outside wall of the city, it was none the the base of the mountain, where the moan of its whir-
lessan "outside" one, by virtue of its viewplate walls. ring and throbbing machinery would not disturb the
There was even a tube system, with trunk, branch and peace and quiet of the citizens on the mountain top.
local linesand an automagnetic switching system, by Or he might be required simply to watch the operation
which articles within certain size bmits could be des- of an account machine in an automatic store.
patched from any apartment to any other one in the There is no denying that the economic system of the :

city. Hans was marvelous. A suit of clothes, for instance!

 ;

THE AIRLORDS OP HAN 1123

might be delivered in a man's apartment without a which could be terminated on official notice by either
human hand having ever touched it. it gave a woman no real rights
party, and that after all
Having decided that he wished a suit of a given gen- or prerogatives that could not be terminated at the
eral style, he would simply tune in a visual broadcast whim of her husband, and established her as nothing
of the display of various selections, and when he had but the favorite of his harem, if he had an income
made his choice, dial the number of the item and press large enough to keep one, or the most definitely acknow-
the order button. Simultaneously the charge would be ledged of his favorites if he hadn't, it is easy to see
automatically made against his account number, and that no such thing as a real family life existed among
credited as a sale on the automatic records of that par- them.
ticular factory in the account house. And his account Free women roamed the corridors of the city, pathet-
plate, hidden behind a little would register his
wail door, ically importuning marriage, and wives spent most of
new credit balance. An automatically packaged suit the time they were not under their husbands' watchful
that had been made to style and size-standard by'auto- eyes in flirtatious attempts to provide themselves with
matic machinery from synthetically produced material, better prospects for their next marriages.
would slip into the delivery chute, magnetically ad- Naturally the' biggest problem of the community was
dressed, and in anywhere from a few seconds to thirty that of stimulating the birth rate. The system of
minutes or so, according to the volume of business in special credits to mothers had begun centuries before,
the chutes, and drop into the delivery basket in his room, but had not been very efficacious until women had been
deprived of all other earning power, and even at the
DAILY his wages were credited to his account, and time of which I write it was only partially successful,
monthly his share of the dividends likewise (ac- in spite of the heavy bounties- for children. It was dif-
cording to his position) from the Imperial Investment ficult to make the bounties sufficiently attractive to lure
Trust, after deduction of taxes (through the automatic the women from their more remunerative light flirta-
bookkeeping machines) for the support of the city's tions. Eugenic standards also were a handicap.
pensioners and whatever sum San-Lan himself had As a matter of fact, San-Lan had under consid-
chosen to deduct for personal expenses and gratuities. eration a revolutionary change in economic and moral
A man could not bequeath his ownership interest in standards, when the revolt of the forest men upset his
industry to his son, for that interest ceased with his he had explained to me, it
delicately laid plans, for, as
death, but his credit accumulation, on which interest was no easy thing to upset the customs of centuries
was paid, was credited to his eldest recorded son as a in what he was pleased to call the "morals" of his
matter of law.
Since many of these credit fortunes (The Hans had He had another reason too. The physically active
abandoned gold as a financial basis centuries before) men of the community were beginning to acquire a
were so big that they drew interest in excess of the ut- rather dangerous domination. These included men in
most luxury costs of a single individual, there was a the army, in the airships, and in those relatively few
class of idle rich consisting of eldest soris, passing on civilian activities in which machines could not do the
these credit fortunes from generation to generation. routine work and thinking. Already common soldiers
But younger sons and women had no share in these and air crews demanded and received higher remuner-
fortunes, except by the whims and favor of the "Man- ation than all except the highest of the Ki-Ling, the
Dins" (Mandarins), as these inheritors were known. industrial and scientific leaders, while mechanics and
These Man-Dins formed a distinct class of the popu- who could, and would, work hard
repairmen physically,
lation, and numbered about five per cent of it. It was commanded higher incomes than Princes of the Blood,
distinct from the Ku-Li (coolie) or common people, and though constituting only a fraction of one per cent
and from the "Ki-Ling" or aristocracy composed of of the population they actually dominated the city.
those more energetic men (at least mentally more en- San-Lan dared take no important step in the develop-
ergetic) who were the active or retired executive heads ment of the industrial and military system without con-
of the various industrial, educational, military or politi- sulting their council or Yun-Yun (Union), as it was
cal administrations. known.
A man he so chose, transfer part of his
might, if Socially the Han cities were
a chaotic condition
in
credit to a woman which then remained hers
favorite, at this time, between morals that were not morals, fam-
it up, and of course the prime
for life or until she used ilies that were not were not
families, marriages that
object of most women, whether as wives, or favorites, marriages, children who knew no homes, work that
was to beguile a settlement of this sort out of some was not work, eugenics that didn't work Ku-Lis who ;

wealthy man. envied the richer classes but were too lazy to reach out
When successful in this, and upon reassuming her for the rewards freely offered for individual initiative
freedom, a woman ranked socially and economically the intellectually active and physically lazy Ki-Lings
with the Man-Dins. But on her .death, whatever re- who despised their lethargy the Man-Din drones who
;

'mained of her credit was transferred to the Imperial regarded both classes* with supercilious toleration; the
fund. Princes of the Blood, arrogant in their assumption of a
When one considers that the Hans, from the days of heritage from a Heaven in which they did not beiieve;
their exodus from Mongolia and their conquest of and finally the three castes of the army, air and in-
America, had never held any ideal of monogamy, and dustrial repair services, equally arrogant and with
marriage was but a temporary formality
the fact that more reason in their consciousness of physical power.
 .

1124 AMAZING STORIES

The army exercised a cruelty careless and impartial reclining at their ease before viewplates in their apart-
police power over all classes, including the airmen, ment offices in the city, that clung to the mountain peak
when the latter were in port. But it did not dare to far above.
touch the repair men, who, so far as I could ever make There were just two restrictions on my freedom of
out, roamed the corridors of the city at will during their movement. I was allowed nowhere near the power
hours off duty, wreaking their wills on whomever they broadcasting station on the peak, nor the complement
met. without let or hindrance. of it which was buried three miles below the base of
Even a Prince of the Blood would withdraw into a the mountain. And I was never allowed to approach
side corridor with his escort of a score of men, to let within a hundred feet of any disintegrator ray macliine
one of these labor "kings" pass, rather than risk an when I visited the military outposts in the surrounding
altercation which might result in trouble for the gov- mountains.
ernment with the Yun-Yun, regardless of the rights I first noticed the "escape tunnels" one day when I
and wrongs of the case, unless a heavy credit trans- had descended to the lowest level of all, the location of
ference was made from the balance of the Prince to the Electronic Plant, where machines, known as "re-
that of the worker. For the machinery of the city verse disintegrators," fed with earth and crushed rock
'
could not continue in operation a fortnight, before some by automatic conveyors, subjected this material to the
accident requiring delicate repair work would put it disintegrator ray, held the released electrons captive
partially out of commission. And the Yun-Yun was within their magnetic fields and slowly refashioned them
quick to resent anything it could construe as a slight on into supplies of metals and other desired elements.
one of its members. My attention was attracted to the tunnels by the
In the last analysis it was these Yun-Yun men, unusual fact that men were busily entering and leav-
numerically the smallest of the classes, who ruled the ing them. Almost the entire repair force seemed to be
Han civilization, because for all practical purposes they concentrated here. Stocky, muscular men they were,
controlled the machinery on which that civilization de- with the same modified Oriental countenances as the
pended for its existence. rest of the Hans, but with a certain ruggedness about
Political!)', San-Lan could balance the organizations them mat was lacking in the rest of the indolent popu-
of the army and the air fleets against each other, but he lation, They sweated as they labored over the con-
could not break the grip of the repairmen on the ma- struction of magnetic cars evidently designed to travel
chinery of the cities and the power broadcast plants. down these tunnels, automatically laying pipe lines for
ventilation and temperature control. '
The tunnels them-
CHAPTER XI selves appeared to have been driven with disintegrator
The Forest Men Attack rays, which could bore rapidly through the solid rock,
forming glassy irridescent walls as they bored, and in-
MANY times during the months I remained pris-
oner among the Hans I had tried to develop
volving no problem of debris removal.
I asked San-Lan about it the next time I saw him,
a plan of escape, but could conceive of nothing for the officer of my guard would give me no informa-
which seemed to have any reasonable chance of success. tion.
While I was allowed almost complete freedom within The supreme ruler of the Hans smiled mockingly.
the confines of the city, and sometimes was permitted "There is no reason why you should not know their
to visit even the military outposts and disintegrator ray purpose," he said, "for you will never be abCi to stop
batteries in- the surrounding mountains, I was never our use of them. These tunnels constitute the rsad._to
without a guard of at least five men under the command a new Han era. Your forest men have turned our cities ~-
of an officer. These men were picked soldiers, and into traps, but they have not trapped our minds and
they were armed with powerful though short-range dis- our powers over Nature. We are masters still masters ;

integrator-ray pistols, capable of annihilating anything of the world, and of the forest men.
within a hundred feet. Their vigilance never relaxed. "You have revolutionized the tactics of warfare with
The officer on duty kept constantly at my side, or a your explosive rockets and your strategy of fighting
couple of paces behind me, while certain of the others from concealed positions, miles away, where we cannot
were under strict orders never to approach within my find you with our beams. You have driven our ships
reach, nor to get more than forty feet away from me. from the air, and you may destroy our cities. But we
The thought occurred to me once to seize the officer shall be gone.
at my side and use him as a shield, until I found that "Down these tunnels we shall depart to our new
the guard were under orders to destroy both of us in deep under ground, and scattered far and wide
cities,
such a case. through the mountains. They are nearly completed
So in this fashion I roamed the city corridors, wher- now.
ever I wished. I visited the great factories at the bot- "You will never blast us out of these, even with your
tom of the shafts that led to the base of the mountain, most powerful explosives, because they will be more
where, unattended by any mechanics, great turbines difficult for you to find than it is for us to locate a
whirred ant) moaned, giant pistons plunged back and forest gunner somewhere beneath his leafy screen of
forth, and immense systems of chemical vats, piping miles of trees, and because they wiil be too far under-,
and converters, automatically performed their functions ground." ~,

with the assistance of no human hand, but under the "But," I objected, "man cannot live and flourish like
minute television inspection of many perfumed dandies a mole continually removed from the light of day, with- :'
 THE AIRLORDS OF HAN 1125

out the health-giving rays of the sun, which man needs." for telescopic views of one section or another on his
"Nor" San-Lan jeered. "Wild tribesmen might desk plates, and noting the iittle pale green signal lights
not be able to, but we are a civilization. We
shall make that flashed" up as Sector Observers called for his at-
our own sunlight to order in the bowels of the earth. tention.
If necessary, we can manufacture our air synthetically; Members of Strategy Board, Base Commanders of
not the germ-laden air of Nature, but absolutely pure military units, and San-Lan himself, I understood, sat
air. Our underground cities will be heated or refriger- at similar desks in their private offices, on which all
ated artificially as conditions may require. -Why should these views were duplicated, and in constant verbal
we not iive underground if we desire? We
produce all and visual communication with one another and with
our needs synthetically, the Executive Marshal.
"Nor will you be able to locate our cities with elec- The particular view which appeared on own wail my
tronic indicators. fortunately showed the East side of the dome viewplate,
"You see, Rogers, I know what is in your mind. and in one corner of my picture appeared the Executive
Our scientists have planned carefully. All out ma- Marshal himself.
chinery and processes will be shielded so that no elec- Although I was getting a viewplate picture of a view-
tronic disturbances will exist at the surface. plate picture, I could see the broad, nigged valley to the
"And then, from our underground cities we will East plainly, and the relatively low ridge beyond, which
emerge at leisure to wage merciless war on your wild must have been some thirty miles away.
men of the forest, until we have at last done what our It was beyond this, evidently far beyond it, that -

forefathers should have done, exterminated them to the the scene of the action was located, for nothing showed
last beast." on the plate but a misty haze permeated by indefinite
and continuous pulsations of light, and against which
HE thrust his jeering face close to mine-.
you any answer to that ?" he demanded.
"Have the low mountain ridge stood out in bold relief.
Somewhere on the floor of the Observation room, of
My impulse was to plant my fist in his face, for I course, was a Sector Observer who was looking be-
could think of no other answer. But I controlled yond that ridge, probably through a projectoscope
myself, and even forced a hearty laugh, to irritate him. station in the second or third "circle," located perhaps
"It is a fine plan," I admitted, "but you will not on that ridge or beyond it.
have time to carry it through. Long before you can
At the very moment I was wishing for his facilities
complete your new cities you will have been destroyed."
the Executive Marshal leaned over to a microphone
"They will be completed within the week," he replied
and gave an order in a low tone'. The hemispherical
triumphantly. "We have not been asleep, and our me-
view dissolved, and another took its place, from the
chanical and scientific resources make us masters of
third circle. And the view was now that which would
time as well as the earth. You shall see."
be seen by a man standing on the low distant ridge.
Naturally I was worried. I would have given much
There was another broad valley, a wide and deep
if I could have passed this information on to our chiefs.
canyon, in fact, and beyond this stili another ridge,
But two days" later a mighty exultation arose within
the outlines of which were already beginning to fade
me, when from far to the East and also to the South
on-creeping haze of the barrage. The flashes
.into the
there came the rolling and continuous thunder of rocket
of the great detonating rockets were momentarily be-
fixe. I was in my own apartment at the time. The
Han-captain of my guard was with me, as usual, and coming more vivid.

two guards stood just within the door. The others were "That's the Gok-Man ridge," mused the Han offi-
in the corridor outside. And as soon as I heard it, I cer besideme in the apartment, "and the Forest Men
questioned my jailer with a look. He nodded assent, must be more than fifty miles beyond that."
and I did what probably every disengaged person in "How do you figure that?" I asked curiously.
Lo-Tan did at the same moment, timed in on the local "Because obviously they have not penetrated our
broadcast of the Military Headquarters View and Con- scout fines. See that line of observers nearest the dome
trol Room. (
'
itself. They're all busy with their desk plates. They're
It was as though the side wall of my apartment had in communication with the scout line. The scout line
dissolved, and we looked into a large room or 'office broadcast is still in operation. It looks as though the
which had no walls or ceiling, these being replaced by line is still unpierced, but the tribesmen's rockets are
the interior surface of a hemisphere, which was in fact sailing over and falling this side of it."
a vast viewplate on which those in the room could see All through the night the barrage continued. At
in every direction. Some 200 staff officers had their times seemed to creep closer and then recede again.
it
desks in this room. Each desk was equipped with a sys- Finally it withdrew, pulling back to the American lines,
tem of Small viewplates of its own, and each officer to alternately advance and recede. At last I went to
was responsible for a given directional section of the sleep. The Han officer seemed to be a relatively good-
"map," and busied himself with teleprojeetoscope exam- natured fellow, for one of his race, and he promised to
ination ofit, quite independently of the general view
awake me if anything further of interest took place.
thrown on the dome plate. He didn't though. When I awoke, in the morning,
At a raised circular desk in the center, which was he gave me a brief outline of what had happened.
composed entirely of viewplates, sat the Executive was pieced together from
It his own observations and
Marshal, scanning the hemisphere, calling occasionally the public news broadcast.
 AMAZING STORIES
. CHAPTER XII lens in it, floating slowly down the shaft, as though it
were some living creature making a careful examination,
The Mysterious "Air Balls'*
pausing now and then as its lens swung about like a

THE American barrage had been a long distance

bombardment, designed, apparently, to draw the
great single eye. The moment this "eye" turned upon
them, they said, the ball "rushed" down on them, crush-
Han disintegrator ray batteries into operation ing several to death in its vicious gyrations, and jam-
and so reveal their positions on the mountain tops and ming the mechanism oE the elevator, though failing to
slopes, for the Hans, after the destruction of Nu-Yok, crash through it. Then, said the wounded survivors, it
had learned quickly that Concealment of their positions floated back up the shaft, watchfully "eyeing" them,
was a better protection than a surrounding wall of dis- and slipped off to the side at the wrecked level.
integrator rays shooting up into the sky. The next night several of these "air balls" were seen,
The Hans, however, had failed to reply with disin- following explosions in various towers and sections of
tegrator rays. For already arm, which formerly
this the city roof and walls. In each case repair gangs were
they had believed invincible, was being restricted to a "rushed" by them, and suffered many casualties. On
limited number of their military units, and their fac- the third night a few of the air balls were destroyed by
tories were busy turning out explosive rockets not dis- the repair men and guards, who now were equipped with-
similar to those of the Americans in their motive power disintegrator pistols.
and atomic detonation. They had replied with these, This, however, was pretty costly business, for in each
shooting them from unrevealed positions, and at the case the ray bored into the corridor and shaft walls be-
estimated positions of the Americans. yond its target, wrecking much machinery, injuring the
Since the Americans, not knowing the exact location structural members of that section, penetrating apart-
of the Han outer line, had shot their barrage over it, ments and taking a number of lives. Moreover, the
and the Hans had fired at unknown American positions, "air balls," being destroyed, could not be subjected to
this first exchange of fire had done little more than to scientific inspection.
churn up vast areas of mountain .and valley. After this the explosions ceased. But for many days
The Hans appeared to be elated, to feel that'they had the sudden appearances of these "air balls" in the cor-
driven off an American attack. I knew better. The ridors and shafts of the city caused the greatest con-
nest American move, I felt, would be the occupation of fusion, and many times they were the cause of death
the air, from which they had driven the Hans, and and panic.
from swoopers to direct the rocket fire at the city itself. At times they released poison gases, and not infre-
Then, when they had destroyed this, they would sweep quently themselves burst, instead of withdrawing, in a
in and hunt down the Hans, man to man, in the sur- veritable explosion of disease germs, requiring abso-
rounding mountains. Command of the air was still im- lute quarantine by the Han medical department.
portant in military strategy, but command of the air There was an utter heartlessness about the defense
rested no longer in the air, but on the ground. of the Han authorities, who considered nothing but the
The Hans themselves attempted to scout the Amer- good of the community as a whole ; for when they estab-

ican positions from the air, under cover of a massed lished these quarantines, they did not hesitate to seal up-
attack of ships in "cloud bank" or beaming formation, thousands of the city's inhabitants behind hermetic bar- -

but with Very little success. Most of their ships were riers enclosing entire sections of different levels, where
shot down, and the remainder slid back to the city on deprived of food and ventilation, the wretched inhabi-
sharply inclined repeller rays, one of them which had tants died miserably, long before the disease ger,uis_de-
had its generators badly damaged while still fifty miles veloped in their systems.
out, collapsed over the city, before it could reach its
berth at the airport, and crashed down through the glass
roof of the city, doing great damage.
AT the end of two weeks the entire population of
the city was in a mood of panicky revolt. News
:

'<

Then followed the "air balls," an unforeseen and in- service to the public had been suspended, and the use v
genious resurrection by the Americans of an old prin- of all viewplates and 'phones in the city were restricted
ciple of air and submarine tactics, through a modern to communications.
official The city administration
application of the principle of remote control. had issued orders that all citizens not on duty should .'

The air balls took heavy toll of the morale of the keep to their apartments, but the order was openly '

Hans before they were clearly understood by them, and flouted, and small mobs were wandering through the
even afterward for that matter. corridors, ascending and descending from one level to
Their first appearance was quite mysterious. One another, seeking they knew not what, fleeing the air
uneasy night, while the pulsating growl of the distant balls, which might appear anywhere, and being driven
barrage kept the nerves of the city's inhabitants on edge, back from the innermost and, deepest sections of the
there was an explosion near the top of a pinnacle not city by the military guard.
far from the Imperial Tower. It occurred at the 732nd I now made up my mind that the time was ripe for
level, and caused the structure above it to lean and sag, me to attempt my escape. In all this confusion I might
though it did not fall. have an even break, in spite of the danger I might my-
Repair men who shot up the shafts a few minutes self run from the air balls, and the almost insuperable"
later to bring new broadcast lamps to replace those which difficulties of making my way to the outside of the rity--,
had been shattered, reported what seemed to be a sphere and down the precipitous walls of the mountain to''

of metal, about three feet in diameter, with a four-inch which the city clung like a cap. I would have give£
 THE AIRLORDS OF HAN 1127

much for my inertron belt, that I might simply have it had about die weight of a spider web. Ultimately,
leaped outward from the edge of the roof some dark- I suppose, it would have settled to the floor. But I had
night and floated gently down. I longed for my ultro- no time for such an idle experiment. I quickly pushed
phone equipment, with which I might have established it to my couch, where I threw a couple of pillows and

com muni cation with the beleaguering American forces. some of the bed over
clothes Then
threw myself
it. I
My greatest difficulty, I knew, would be that of back on the couch with my head near it. If the dead
escaping my guard. Once free of them, I figured it guards outside attracted attention, and the Han patrol
would be the business of nobody in particular, in that entered, I could report the attack by the "air ball" and
badly disorganized city, to recapture me. The knives claim that had been knocked unconscious by it.
I
of the ordinary citizens I did not fear, and very few of "One moment," said the ball, after I reported myself
the military guard were armed with disintegrator pistols. ready to talk. "Here is someone who wants to speak
I was sitting in my apartment busying my mind with to you." And I nearly leaped from the couch with joy
various plans, when there occurred a commotion in the when, despite the metallic tone of the instrument, I rec-
city corridor outside my door. The Captain of my ognized the eager, loving voice of my wife, almost hys-
guard jumped nervously from the couch on which he her own joy at talking to me again.
terical in
had been reclining, and ordered the excited guards to
open the door. CHAPTER XIII
In the broad corridor, the remainder of the guard
1

.
Escape!
lay about, dead or groaning, where they had been
bowled over by one of these air balls, the first I had
ever seen.
The metal sphere floated hesitantly above its victims,
WE ing
had little time, however, to waste in en-
dearments, and very little to devote to inform-
me as to the American plans. The essential
turning this way and that to bring its "eye" on various thing was that I report the Han plans and resources to
objects around, ft stopped dead on sighting the door .the fullest of my ability. And for an hour or two I
the guard had thrown open, hesitated a moment, and talked steadily, giving an outline of all I had learned
then shot suddenly into the apartment with a hissing from San-Lan and his Councillors, and particularly of
sound, flinging into a far corner one of the guards who the arrangements for drawing off the population of the
had not been quick enough to duck. As the Captain city to new cities concealed underground, through the
drew it launched itself at him
his disintegrator pistol, system of tunnels radiating from the base of the moun-
with a vicious He bounded back from the impact,
hiss. tain. And as a result, the Americans determined to
.

his chest crushed in, while his pistol,

which fortunately speed up their attack.
had muzzle pointed away from me, shot
fallen with its There were, as a. matter of fact, only two relatively
a continuous beam that melted its way instantly through small commands facing the city, Wilma told me, but
the wall of the apartment. .both of them were picked troops of the new Federal
The sphere then turned on the other guard, who had Council. Those to the South were a division of veterans
thrown himself into a corner where he crouched in fear. who a few weeks before had destroyed the Han city of
Deliberately it seemed to gauge the distance and direc- Sa-Lus (St. Louis). On the East were a number of
Then it hurled itself at him with another vicious
tion. the Colorado Gangs and an expeditionary force of our
hiss, which I now saw came from a little rocket motor,, own Wyomings. The attack on La-Tan. was intended
crushing him to death where he lay. chiefly as an attack on the morale of the Hans of the
It_s,wUng slowly around until the lens faced me other twelve cities. If there seemed to be a chance of
"again, and floated gently into position level with my victory, the operations were to be ptished through.
face, seeming to scan me with its blank, four-inch eye. Otherwise the object would be to do as much damage as
Then it spoke, with a metallic voice. possible, and fade away into the forests if the Hans
"If you are an> American," it said, "answer with developed any real pressure with their new infantry
your name, gang and position." and field batteries of rocket guns and disintegrator
"1 am Anthony Rogers," I replied, still half be- rays.
wildered, "Boss of the Wyomings. I was captured by The "air balls" were simply miniature swoopers of
the Hans after my swooper
was disabled in a fight with spherical shape, ultronically controlled by operators at
a Han 'airshipand had drifted many hundred miles control boards miles away, and who saw on their view-
westward. These Hans you have killed were my plates whatever picture the ultronic television lens in
guard." the sphere itself picked up at the predetermined focus.
"Good!" ejaculated the metal ball. "We have been The main propulsive rocket motor was diametrically
hunting for you with these remote control rockets for opposite the lens, so that the sphere could be steered
two weeks. We knew_you had been captured. A Han simply by keeping the picture of its objective cen-
message was picked up. Close the door of your room, tered on the crossed hairlines of the viewplates. The
and hide this ball somewhere. I have turned off the outer shellmoved magnetically as desired with respect
rocket power. Put it on your couch. Throw some -pil- to the core, which was gyroscopically stabilized. Aux-
lows- over it. Get out of sight. We'll speak softly, so iliary rocket motors enabled the operator to make a
. no Hans can hear, and we'll speak only when you sphere mo\(e sidewise, backward or vertically.
speak to us." Some" of these spheres were equipped with devices
The ball, I found, was floating freely in the air. So which enabled their operators to hear as well as see
perfectly was it balanced with ultron and inertron that through their ultronic broadcasts, and most of those
1128 AMAZING STORIES
which had invaded the interior of Lo-Tan were equipped way to one of the breaches in the wall, nor to the roof,"
with "speakers," in the hope of finding me and estab- she mused.
lishing communication. Still others were equipped for 'No, they are too well guarded," I replied, "and even
two-stage control. That is, the operator control led if you made a new one at a predetermined spot I'm
the vision sphere, and through it watched and steered afraid the repair men and the patrol would go to it
an air toq^edo that travelled ahead of it. ahead of me."
The Han airship or any other target selected hy the "Yes, and they would beam you before you could
operator of such a combination was doomed. There climb inside of a.swooper," she added.
was no escape. The spheres and torpedoes were too "I'll tell you what I can do, Wilma," I suggested. "I

small to be hit. They could travel with the speed of know my way about the city pretty well. Suppose
bullets. They could trail a ship indefinitely, hover a I go down one of the shafts to the base of the mountain.

safe distance from their mark, and strike at will. I think I can get out. It is dark in the valley, so the
Finally, neither darkness nor smoke screens were any Hans cannot see me, and I will „stand out in the- open,
bar to their ultromc vision. The spheres, which had where your ultroscopes can pick me up. Then a
penetrated and explored Lo-Tan in their search for me, swooper can drop quickly down and get me."
had floated through breaches in the walls and roofs "Good!" Wilma said. "But" take that Han's dis-
made by their advance torpedoes. integrator pistol with you. And go right away, Tony.
Wilma had just finished explaining all this to me But wrap this ball in something and carry it with you.
when I heard a noise outside my. door. With a whis- Just toss it from you if you are attacked. I'll stay at
pered warning I flung myself back on the couch and the control board and operate it in case of emergency."
simulated unconsciousness. When I did not answer So I picked up ball and pistol, and thrust the hand
the poundings and calls to open, a police detail broke in which I held it into the loose Han blouse I. wore,
in and shook me roughly. wrapped the ball in a piece of sheeting, and stepped out
"The air ball," I moaned, pretending to regain con- in the corridor, hurrying toward the nearest magnetic
sciousness slowly. "It came in from the corridor. car station, a couple of hundred feet down the corridor,
Look, what it did to the guard. It must have grazed for I had to cross nearly the entire width of the city
my head. Where is it?" to reach the shaft that went to the base of the mountain.
"Gone," muttered the under-officer, looking fearfully I thanked Providence for the perfection of the Han
around. "Yes, undoubtedly gone. These men have mechanical devices when I reached the station. The
been dead some time. And this pistol. The ball got automatic checking system of these cars made station
him before be had a chance to use it. See, it has attendants unnecessary. I had only to slip the key I
beamed through the wall only here, where he dropped it. bad taken from the dead Han officer into the account-
Who are you ? You look like a tribesman. Oh, yes, charging machine at the station to release a car.
you're the Heaven Born's special prisoner. Maybe I Pressing the proper combinations of main and branch
ought to beam you right now. Good thing. Every- line buttons, I seated myself, holding the pistol ready
one would call it an accident. By the Grand Dragon, but concealed' beneath my blouse. The car shot with
I will!" rapid acceleration down the narrow tunnel. „
The tubes in which these magnetic cars (which slid
WHILE
other
he was talking,
side of the room, to
I had staggered to the
draw his attention away
along a few inches above the floor of the tunnel by
localized repeller rays) ran were very narrow, just the
from the couch where the ball was concealed. width of the car, and my only danger would ccnie if on
Now suddenly the pillows burst apart, and a blanket catching up to another car its driver should turn arotm4*=
with which I had covered the thing streaked from the and look in my face. If I kept my face to the front,
couch, hitting the man in the small of the back. I
could and hunched over so as to conceal my size, no driver
hear his spine snap under the impact. Then it shot of a following car would suspect that I was not a
through the air toward the group of soldiers in the Han like himself.
doorway, bowling them over and sending them shriek- The tube dipped under traffic as it came to a trunk
ing right and left along the corridor. Relentlessly and line, and my car magnetically lagged, until an opening
with amazing speed it launched itself at each in turn, in the traffic permitted it to swing swiftly into the main

until the corpses lay grotesquely strewn about, and line tunnel. At the automatic distance of ten feet it
not one had escaped. followed a car in which rode a scantily .clad girl, her
It returned to me for all the world like an old-fash- flimsy silks fluttering in the rush of air. I cursed my
ioned ghost, the blanket still draped over it (and not luck. She would be far more likely to turn around
interfering with its ultronic vision in the least) and than a man, to see if a man were in the car behind,
"stood" before me. —
and if he were personable for not even the impending
"The yellow, devils were going to kill you, Tony," I doom of the city and the public demoralization caused
heard Wilma's voice saying. "You've got to get out of by the "air balls" had dulled the proclivities of the Han
there, Tony, before you are killed. Besides, we need women for brazen flirtation. And turn around she did.
you at the control boards, where you can make real Before I could lower my head she had seen my face, :
,,

use of your knowledge of the city. Have you your and knew I was no Han. I saw her eyebrows arch in /i

jumping belt, ultrophone and rocket gun?" surprise. But she seemed puzzled rather than scared. 4
"No," I replied. "They are all gone." Before she could make up her mind about me, however, -i

"It would be no good for you to try to make your her car had swung out of the main tunnel on. its pre- .j
 THE AIKLORDS OF HAN 1129

determined course, and my own automatically was clos- taining the air ball, which I had placed at my feet,
ing up the gap to the car ahead. The passenger in this shot diagonally upward, catching the fellow in the
one wore the uniform of a medical officer, but he did middle of his leap, hurling him back against the grilled
not turn around before I swung out of main traffic to gate of the elevator shaft, and pinning his lifeless body
the little station at the head of the shaft. there. *

This particular shaft was intended to serve the very An instant the girl gazed in speechless horror at what
lowest levels exclusively, and since its single car car- had been her secret lover, then she threw herself at
ried nothing but express traffic, it was used only by my feet, writhing and shrieking in terror.
repair men and other specialists who occasionally had At this moment the elevator shot to a sudden stop
to descend to those levels. behind the grill, and*prepared for the worst, I faced
it, disintegrator pistol raised.
THERE were only three people on the little plat- But I lowered the pistol at once, with a sigh of
form, which reminded me much of the subway sta- relief. The elevator was empty. For a moment I
tions of the Twentieth Century. Two men and a girl considered. I dared not leave either of these bodies
stood facing the gate of the shaft, waiting for the car nor the girlbehind in descending the shaft. At any
to return from below. One of these was a soldier, moment other passengers might glide out of the tunnel
apparently off duty, for though he wore the scarlet totake the elevator, and give an alarm.
military coat he carried no weapons other than his So I played the beam of the pistol for an instant
knife. The other man wore nothing but sandals and a on the two dead bodies. They vanished, of course, into
pair of loose short pants of some heavy and serviceable nothingness, as did part of the station platform. The
material. I did not need to look at the compact tool damage to the platform, however, would not necessarily
kit and the ray machines attached to his heavy belt, nor be interpreted as evidence of a prisoner escaping.
the gorgeously jewelled armlet and diadem that he wore Then I threw open the elevator gate, dragging Ngo-
toknow him for a repair man. Lan into the car and stifling her hysterical shrieks,,
The girl was quite scantily clad, but wore a mask, pressed the button that caused it to shoot downward.
which was not unusual among the Han women when In a few moments I stepped out several thousand feet
they went forth on their flirtatious expeditions, and below, into a shaft that ran toward one of the Valley
there was something about the sinuous grace of her Gates.
movements that seemed familiar to me. She was mak- The pistol again became serviceable, tins time for the
ing desperate love to the repair man, whose attitude destruction of the elevator, thus blocking any possible
toward her was that of pleased but lofty tolerance. pursuit, yet without revealing my flight.
The soldier, who was seeking no trouble, occupied him- Ngo-Lan fought like a cat, but despite her writhing,
self strictly with his own thoughts and paid little atten- scratching and biting, I bound and gagged her with
tion to them. her own clothing, and left her lying in the tunnel while
I stepped from my car, still carrying my bundle in I stepped in a car and shot toward the gate.
which the "air ball" was concealed, and the car shot As the car glided swiftly along the brilliantly lit but
away as I threw the release lever over. Not so suc- deserted tunnel I conversed again with Wilma through
cessful as the soldier in simulating lack of interest in the metallic speaker of the air bail.
the amorousand her companion, I drew from the
girl "The only obstacle now," I told her, "is the massive
haughty challenge, and the girl herself
latter a stare of gate at the end of the tunnel. The gate-guard, I think,
turned me through her mask.
to- look at is posted both outside and inside the gate."
-
She gasped as she did so, and shrank back in alarm. "In that case, Tony," she replied, "I will shoot the
And I knew her then in spite of her mask. She was ball ahead, and blow out the gate. When you hear it
the favorite of the Heaven Born himself. bump'against the gate, throw yourself flat in the car,
"Ngo-Lan !" I exclaimed before I could catch myself. for an instant later I will explode it. Then you can
"
"What rush through the gate into the night. Scout, ships are
At the mention of her name, the soldier's head jerked now hovering above, and they will see you with their
up quickly, and the girl herself gave a little cry of ultroscopes, though the darkness will leave you invisible
terror, shrinking against her burly .companion. This to the Hans."
would mean death for her if it reached the ears of With this the ball shot out of the car and flashed
her lord. away, down the tunnel ahead of me. I heard a distant
And her companion, arrogant in his immunity as a metallic thump, and crouched low in the speeding car,
repair man, hesitated not a second. His arm shot out clapping my hands to my ears. The heavy detonation
toward the soldier, who was nearer to him than I. which followed, struck me like a blow, and left me
There was the flash of a knife blade, and the soldier gasping for breath. The car staggered like a living
sagged on his feet, then tumbled over like a. sack of thing that had been struck, then gathered speed again
potatoes, and before my mind had grasped the danger, and shot forward toward the gaping black hole where
he had swept the girl aside and was springing at me. the gate had been.
That I lived for a moment even was due to the devo- .1 brought it to a stop at the pile of debris, and
tion of my wife, Wilma, who somewhere in the moun- climbed through this to freedom and the night. Stum-
tains to the East was standing loyally before the con- blingly I made my way out into the open, and waited.
trol board of the air hall I carried. Behind, and far above me on the mountain peak, the
For even as the Han leaped at me, die bundle con- -
lights of the city gleamed and flashed, while the irri-
 1130 AMAZING STORIES
beams
descent- of countless disintegrator ray batteries As a matter of fact, the destruction of the city |-mt-
on surrounding mountain peaks played continuously sented no real problem to us at all. Explosive air
and nervously, criss-crossing in the sky above it. balls could be sent against any target under a control
Then with a swish, a line dropped out of the sky, that could not he better were their operators riding
and a little seat rested on the ground beside me. I within them, and with no risk to the operators. When
climbed into it, and without further ado was whisked .aball was exploded on its target by the operator, or
np into the swooper that floated a few hundred feet destroyed by accident, he simply reported the fact to
above me. the supply division, and a fresh cue was placed on
A half an hour later. I was deposited in a Tittle forest the jump-off, tuned to his controis.
glade where the headquarters of the Wyoming Gang To my own Gang, die Wyomings, the Council dele-
were located, and was greeted with a frantic disregard gated the .destruction of the escape tunnels of the
for decorum by the Deputy Boss of the Wyomings, enemy. We
had a comfortably located camp in a
who rushed upon me like a whirlwind, laughing, crying wooded canyon, some hundred and thirty miles north-
and whispering endearments all in the same breath, east of the city, with about 500 men, most of whom
while squeezed
I her, Wilma, my wife, until at last were bayonet-gunners, 350 girls as long-gunners and
she gasped for mercy. control-board operators, 91 control boards and about
250 five-foot, inertron protected air balls, of which 200
CHAPTER XIV were of the explosive variety.
I ordered all control boards manned, taking Number
The Destruction of Lo-Tan
One myself, and instructed the others to follow my
"T" TOW did you know I had been taken to Lo-Tan lead in single at the minimum
| — I as a prisoner?" I asked the little group of
JL M. Wyoming Bosses who had assembled in
file, interval of safety,
with their projectiles set for signal rather than contact
detonation.
Wilma's tent to greet me. "And how does it happen In my mind I paid humble tribute to the ingenuity
that our gang is away out here in the Rocky Moun- of our engineers as I gently twisted the lever that shot
tains? I had expected, after the fall of Nu-Yok, that my projectile vertically into the air from the jump-off
you would join the forest ring around Bah-Flo (Buffalo clearing some half mile away.
I called it in the Twentieth Century) or the forces The control board before me was a compact con-
beleaguering Bos-Tan." trivance about fire feet square. The center of it con-
They explained that my encounter with the Han air- tained a four-foot viewplate. Whatever view was
ship had been followed carefully by several scopemen. picked up by the ultronoscope "eye" of the air ball
They had seen my swooper shoot skyward out of con- was automatically broadcast on an accurate tuning
trol, and had followed it with their telultronoscopes channel to this viewplate by the automatic mechanism
until it had been caught in a gale at a high level, and of the projectile. I-n turn my control board broadcast
wafted swiftly westward. Ultronophone warnings had the signals which automatically controlled the move-
been broadcast, asking Western gangs to rescue me if ments of the ball.
possible. Few of the gangs West of the Alleghanies, Above and below the viewplate were the pointers and
however, had any swoopers, and though I was fre- the swinging needles which indicated the speed and
quently reported, no attempts could be made to rescue angle of vertical movement, the- altimeter, the direc-
me. Scopemen had reported my capture by the Han tional compass, and the horizontal speed and distance
ground post, and my probable incarceration in Lo-Tan. indicators. •--* i

The Rocky Mountain- Gangs, in planning their cam- At my left hand was the lever by which I conid"se+
paign against Lo-Tan, had appealed to the East for the "eye" for penetrative, normal or varying degrees
help, and Wilma had led the Wyoming veterans west- of telescopic vision, and at my right the universally
ward, though the other eastern gang had divided their jointed stick (much "joy stick" of the ancient
like the
aid between the armies before Bah-Flo and Bos-Tan. airplanes) with its speed control button on the top.
The heavy bombardment which. I had heard from with which the ball was directionally "pointed" and
Lo-Tan, they told me, was merely a test of the enemy's controlled.
tactics and strength, but it accomplished little other The manipulation of these levers I had found, with
than to develop that the Hans had the mountains and a very little practice, most instinctive and simple.
peaks thickly planted with rocket gunners of their own. So, as I have said, I pointed my projectile straight
It was almost impossible to locate these gun posts, for up and let it shoot to the height of two miles. Then
they were well camouflaged from air observation, and I levelled it off, and shot it at full speed (ahout 500
widely scattered; nor did they reveal their positions miles an hour with no allowance for air currents) in
when they went into action as did their ray batteries. a general southwesterly direction, while I eased my
The Hans apparently were abandoning their rays controls until I brought in the telescopic view of Lo-
except for air defense. I told what I knew oi the Han Tan, I centered the picture of the city on the crossed
plans for abandoning the city, and their escape tunnels. hairlines in the middle of my viewpoint, and watched
On the strength of this, a general council of Gang its image grow.
Bosses was called. TIu's council agreed that immediate In about fifteen minutes the "string" of air balls was ."

action was necessary, for my escape from the city prob- before the city, and speaking in my ultrophone I gave
ably would be suspected, and San Lan would be inclined the order to halt, while I swung the scope control to ?
to start the exodus from the city at once. the penetrative setting and my
let "eye" rove slowly %
 THE AIRLOKDS OF HAN 1131

back and forth through the walls of the city, hunting and suppressed disorder with the threat of theirspears,
for a spot from which I might get my bearings. At and the occasional flourish of a ray pistol.
last,after many penetrations, I managed to bring in a As I floated my ball out into the middle of the arti-
view of the head of the shaft at the bottom of which I ficial cavern I could see them stagger back in terror.
knew the tunnels were located, and saw that we were Again the blinding flashes of a few ray pistols, and
none too soon, for all the corridors leading toward this instantaneous borings of the rays into the walls. The
shaft were packed with Hans waiting their turn to red coats nearest the escape tunnels fled down them in
descend. panic. Those whose escape I blocked dropped their
weapons and shrank back against the smooth, irri-
SLOWLY I let my "eye" retreat down one of these descent green walls.
I "pulled it out" through the outer
corridors until I marshalled the rest of my string carefully into the
wall- of the city. There I held the spot on the crossed cavern, and counted the tunnel entrances, slowly swing-
hairlines and ordered Number Two Operator to my ing my "eye" around the semicircle of them. There
control board, where I pointed out to her the exact were 26 corridors diverging to the north and west. I
spot where I desired a breach in the wall. Returning decided to send three balls down each, leave 12 in the
to her own board, she withdrew her ball from the cavern, then detonate them all at once.
"string," and focussing on this spot in the wall, eased Assigning my operators to their corridors, I ordered
her projectile into contact with it and detonated. intervals of five miles between them, and taking the
The atomic force of the explosion shattered a vast lead down the first corridor, I ordered "go."
section of the wall, and for the moment I feared I had Soon my ball overtook the stream of fugitives,
balked my own game by not having provided a less smashing them down despite' ray pistols and even
powerful projectile. rockets that were shot against it. On and on I drove
After some fumbling, however, I was able to it, time and again battering it through detachments
of
maneuver my ball through a gap in the debris and find fleeing Hans, while the distance register on my board
the corridor I was seeking. Down this corridor I sent climbed to ten, twenty, fifty miles.
it speed of a Twentieth Century bullet, (that is to
at the Then I called a halt, and suspended my previous
say, at about. half speed) to spare myself tie sight of orders. I had had no idea that the Hans had bored
the slaughter as it cut a swath down the closely packed these tunnels for such distances under the surface of the
column of the enemy. If there were any it did not ground as this. It would be necessary to trace them to
kill, I knew they would be taken care of by the other their ends and locate their new underground cities in
balls in the string which would follow. which they expected to establish themselves, and in
I had to slow it up, however, near the head of the which many had established themselves by now, no
shaft to take my bearings; and a sea of evil faces, doubt.
contorted with livid terror, looked at me from my view- Fifty miles of air in these corridors, I thought, ought
plate. But not even the terror could conceal the hate to prove a pretty good cushion against the shock of
in those faces, and there arose in my mind the picture detonation in the cavern. So I ordered detonation of
of their long centuries of ruthless cruelty to my race, the twelve balls we had left behind. As I expected,
and the hopelessness of changing the tigerish nature there was little effect from it so far out in the tunnels.
of these Hans. So I steeled myself, and drove the But from our scopemen who were covering the city
ball again and again into that sea of faces, until I had from the outside, I learned that the effects of the ex-
clearedJJie station platform of any living enemy, and plosion on the mountain were terrific far more than I
;

way madiy along the

„sent-lfie survivors crushing their had dared to hope for. '*

corridors away from There was a blinding flash or

it. The mountain itself burst asunder in several spots,
two on my viewplate as some Han officer tried his ray throwing out thousands of tons of earth and rock.
pistol on my projectile, but that was ali, except that One-half the city itself tore loose and slid downward,
he must have disintegrated many of his fellows, for lost in the debris of the avalanche of which it was a
our balls were sheathed in inertron, and suffered no part. The remainder, wrenched and convulsed like a
damage themselves. living thing in agony, cracked, crumbled and split,
Cautioning my unit to follow carefully, I pushed towers tumbling down and great fissures appearing in
my control lever all the way forward until my "eye" its walls. Its power plant and electrono machinery
pointed down, and there appeared on my viewplate the went out of commission. Fifteen of its scout ships
smooth cylindrical interior of the shaft, fading down hovering in the air directly above, robbed of the power
toward the base of the mountain, and like a tiny speck, broadcast and their repeller beams disappearing, crashed
far, far down, was the car, descending with its last load. down into the ruins.
I dropped my ball on it, battering it down to the But out in the escape tunnels, we continued our
bottom of the shaft, and with hammer-like blows flat- explorations, now sure that no warnings could be broad-
tening the wreckage, that I might squeeze the ball out cast to the tunnel exits, and mowed down contingent
of the shaft at the lower station. after contingent of the hated yellow men.
It emerged into the great vaulted excavation, capable My register showed seventy-five miles before I came,
of holding a thousand or more persons, from which to the end of the tunnel, and drove my ball out into a
the various escape tunnels radiated. Down these tun- vast underground city of great, brilliantly illuminated
nels the last remnants of a crowd of fugitives were corridors,some of them hundreds of feet high and
disappearing, while red-coated soldiers guided the traffic wide. The architectural scheme was one of lace-like
 I

1132 AMAZING STORIES

structures o[ curving lines and of indescribable Ijeauty. branches of the giant trees, and gave them a general all
Word bad reached us now of the destruction of the around mobility, the enemy could not hope to equal.
city itself, so that no necessity existed for destroying We had the advantage too, in our ultronophones and
the escape tunnels. In consequence. I ordered the two scopes, in a field of energy which the Hans could not
operators, who were following me, to send their balls penetrate, while we could cut in on their electrono, or
out into this underground city, seeking the shaft which (as I would have called it in the Twentieth Century)
the Hans were sure to have as a secret exit to the sur- radio broadcasts.
face of the earth above. Later reports showed that there were no less than
But at this juncture events of transcending im- 10.000 Hans in the force to our north, which evidently
portance interrupted my plans for a thorough explora- was equipped with a portable power broadcast, suf-
tion of these new subterranean cities of the Hans. I ficient for communication purposes and the local opera-
detonated my projectile at once and ordered ail of the tion of small scoutships, painted a green which made
operators to do so, and to tune in instantly on new them difficult to distinguish against the mountain and
ones. That we wrecked most of these new cities' forest backgrounds. These ships just skimmed the sur-
now know, but of course at the time we were in the face of the terrain, hardly ever outlining themselves
dark as to how much damage we caused, since our view- against the sky. Moreover, the Han commanders wisely
plates naturally went dead when we detonated our had refrained from massing their forces. They had
projectiles. deployed over a very wide and deep front, in small
CHAPTER XV units, well scattered, which were driving down the
parallel valleys and canyons like spearheads. Their
The Counter-Attack
communications were working well too, for our scouts

THE news which caused me to change my plans

was grave enough. As I have explained, the
reported their advance as well restrained, and main-
taining a perfect front as between valley and valley,
American lines lay roughly to the east and the with a secondary line of heavy batteries, moved by
south of the city in the mountains. My own Gang held small airships from peak to peak', following along the
the northern flank of the east line. To the south of us ridges somewhat behind the valley forces.
was the Colorado Union, a force of 5,000 men and Hallwell had determined to withdraw our southern
about 2.000 girls recruited from about fifteen Gangs. wing, pivoting it back to face the outflanking Han
They, were a splendid organization, well disciplined and force on that side, which had already worked its way
equipped. Their posts, rather widely distributed, occu- well down in back of our line.
pied tlie mountain tops and other points of advantage In the ultronophone council which we held at once,
to a distance of about a hundred and fifty miles to the each Boss tuning in on Hallwell's band, though remain-
south. There the line turned east, and was held by the ing with his unit, Wilma and I pleaded for a vigorous
Gangs which had come up from the south. Now, attack rather than a defensive maneuver. Our sug-
simultaneously with the reports from my scouts that a gestion was to divide the American forces into three
large Han land force was working its way down on us divisions, with all the swoopers forming a special
from the north, and threatening to outflank us, came reserve, and to advance with a rush on the three Han
word from Jim Haltwell, Big Boss of the Colorado forces belu'nd a rolling barrage.
Union and the commander in chief of our army, that But the best we could do was to secure permission to
another large Han force was to the southwest of our make such an attack with our Wyomings, if we wished,
western flank. And in addition, it seemed, most of to serve as a diversion while the lines were -reforming.
the Han military forces at La-Tan had been moved out And two of the southern Gangs on the west ffariftr-
of the city and advanced toward our lines before our which were eager to get at the enemy, received the
air-ball attack. same permission.
The situation would not have been in the least alarm- The rest of the army fumed at the caution of the
ing if the Hans had had no better arms to fight with council, but it.spoke well for their discipline that they
than their disintegrator rays, which naturally revealed did not take things in their own hands, for in the eyes
the locations of their generators the second the visible of these forest men who had been bounded for cen-
beams went into play, and their airships, which we had turies, the chance to spring at the throats of the Hans
learned how to bring down, first from the air, and now outweighed all other considerations.
from the ground, through ultrono-con trolled projectiles. So, as the council signed off, Wilma and I turned
But the Hans had learned their lesson from us"by to the eager faces that surrounded us, and issued our
this time. Their electrono-chemists had devised atomic orders.
projectiles, rocket-propelled, very much like our own,
which could be launched in a terrific barrage without moment the air was
revealing the locations of their batteries, and they had
INasa the men and girls
filled with leaping figures
shot away over the tree tops
equipped their infantry with rocket guns not dissimilar and up the mountain sides in the deployment move-
to ours. Tliis division of their army had been expanded ment.
by general conscription. So far as ordnance was A grotrp of our engineers threw themselves headlong
concerned, we had little advantage over them although ; toward a cave across the valley, where they had rigged
tactically we were still far superior, for our jumping, oat a powerful electrono plant operating from atomic
belts enabled our men and girls to scale otherwise inac- energy. And a few moments later the little portable
cessible heights, conceal themselves readily in the upper the Intelligence Boss used to pick up the enemy
 THE AIRLORDS OF HAN 1133

messages, began to emit such ear-splitting squeals and their tiny but powerful bombs everywhere as they went.
howls that he shut it off. Our heterodyne or "radio- At the same instant I ordered the girls to cease sharp-
scrambling" broadcast had gone into operation, emit- shooting, and lay their barrages down in the valleys,
ting impulses of constantly varying wavelength over with their long-guns set for maximum automatic ad-
the full broadcast range and heterodyning the Han vance, and to feed the reservoirs as fast as possible,
communications into futility. while the bayonet-gunners leaped along close behind
In a little while our scouts came leaping down the this barrage.
valley from the north, and our air balls now were hov- Then, with a Twentieth Century urge to see with
ering above the Han
operators at the control
lines, my own eyes rather than through a viewplate, and to
boards near-by painstakingly picking up the pictures of take part in the action, I turned command over to
the Han squads struggling down the valleys with their Wilma and leaped away, fifty feet a jump, up the val-
comparatively clumsy weapons. ley, toward the distant flashes and roiling thunder.
As fast as the air-ball scopes picked out these squads,
their operators, each of whom was in ultronophone CHAPTER XVI
communication with a girl long-gunner at some spot
Victory !
in our line, would inform her of the location of the
enemy unit, and the latter, after a bit of mathematical HAD gone five miles, and had paused for a mo-
calculation,would send a rocket into' the air which ment, half way up the slope of the valley to get
would come roaring down on, or very near that unit, I my bearings, when a figure came hurtling through
- and wipe it out. the air from behind, and landed lightly at my side.
But for all of that, the number of the Han squads It was Wilma,
was too much for us. And for every squad we de- "I put Bill Hearn in command and followed Tony. ,

stroyed, fifty "others continued their advance. I won't let you go into that alone. If you die, I do,
And though the lines were still several miles apart, too. Now don't argue, dear. I'm determined."
in most places, and in some cases with mountain ridges So together we leaped northward again toward the
intervening, the Han fire control began to sense the battle. And after a bit we pulled up close behind the
general location of our posts, and things became more barrage.
serious as their rockets too began to hiss down and ex- Great, blinding flashes, like a continuous wall of gi-
plode here and there in our lines, not infrequently kill- gantic fireworks, receded up the valley ahead of us,
ing or maiming one or more of our girls. sweeping ahead of it a seething, tossing mass of debris
The men, our bayonet-gunners, had not as yet suf- that seemed composed of all nature, tons of earth,
fered, for they were well in advance of the girls, under rocks and trees. Ever and anon vast sections of the
strict orders to shoot no rockets nor in any way reveal mountain sides would loosen and slide into the valley.
their positions so the
; Han rockets were going over And, leaping close behind this barrage, with a reck-
their heads. less skill and courage that amazed me, our bayonet
The Hans in the valleys now were shooting diagonal gunners appeared in a continuous series of flashing
barrages up the slopes toward the ridges, where they pictures, outlined in midleap against the wall of fire.
suspected we would he most strongly posted, thus mak- I would not have believed it possible for such a bar-
ing a cro=u-fire up the two sides of a ridge, while their rage to pass over any of the enemy and leave them
heavy batteries, somewhat in the rear, shot straight unscathed. But it did. For the Hans, operating small
trie tops of the ridges.
along- But their valley forces disintegrator beams from local or field broadcasts,
were getting out of alignment a bit by now, owing frantically bored deep, slanting holes in the earth as
to our heterodyne operations. . the fiery tides of explosions rolled up the valleys toward
I ordered our swoopers, of which we had five, to them, and into these probably half of their units were
sweep along above these ridges and destroy the Han able to throw themselves and escape destruction.
batteries. But dazed and staggering they came forth again only
Up where they were located, the
in the higher levels to meet death from the terrible, ripping, slashing, cleav-
Hans had little cover. A
few of their small rep-ray ing weapons in the hands of our leaping bayonet gun-
ships rose to meet our swoopers, but were battered ners.
down. One swooper they brought to earth with a. dis- Thrust ! Cut ! Crunch ! Slice Thrust ! Up and down
integrator ray beam, by creating a vacuum beneath it, with vicious, tireless, flashing speed, swung the bay-
but they did it no serious damage, for its fall was a onets and ax-bladed butts of the American gunners as
light one. Subsequently It did tremendous damage, they leaped and dodged, ever forward, toward new
cleaning off an entire ridge. opponents.
Another swooper ran into a catastrophe that had Weakly and ineffectually the red-coated Han soldiery
,
one chance in a million of occurring. It hit a heavy thrust at them with spears, flailing with their short-
Han rocket nose to nose. Inertron sheathing and all, swords and knives, or whipping alxmt their ray pistols.
it was blown into powder. The forest men were too powerful, too fast in their
But the others accomplished their jobs excellently. remorselessly efficient movement.
Small, two-man ships, streaking straight at the Hans at With a shout of unholy joy, I gripped a bayonet-
between 600 and 700 miles an hour, they could not be gun from the hands of a gunner whose leg had been
hit exceptby sheer amazing luck, and they showered whisked out of existence beneath him by a pistol ray,
1134 AMAZING STORIES
and leaped forward into the fight, launching myself at And so the fall of Lo-Tan was accomplished. Some-
a red-coated officer who was just stepping out of a where in the seething activities of those few days, San
"worm hole." Lan, the "Heaven Born" Emperor of the Hans in
Like a shriek of the Valkyrie, Wilma's battle cry America, perished, for he was heard of never, again,
rang in my ear as she, too, shot herself like a rocket and the unified action of the Hans vanished with him,
at a red-coated figure. though it was several years before one by one their
I thrust with every ounce of my strength. The Han remaining cities were destroyed and their populations
officer, grinning wickedly as he tried to raise the muzzle hunted down, thus completing the reclamation of Amer-
of his pistol, threw himself backward as my bayonet ica and inaugurating the most glorious and noble era of
ripped the air under his nose. But his grin turned scientific civilization in the history of the American
instantly to sickened surprise as the up-cleaving ax-
blade on the butt of my weapon caught him in the groin,
half bisecting him.
And from the corner of my eye I saw Wilma bury ASfrom my
I look back on those emotional and violent years
present vantage point of declining ex-
her bayonet in her opponent, screaming in ecstatic joy. istence tn an age of peace and good will toward all
And so, in a matter of seconds, we found ourselves mankind, they do seem savage and repellent:
in the front rank, thrusting, cutting, dodging, leaping Then there flashes into my memory the picture of
along behind that blinding and deafening barrage in a Wilma (now long since gone to her rest) as, scream-
veritable whirlwind of fury, until it seemed to me that ing in an utter abandon of merciless fury, she threw
we were exulting in a consciousness of excelling even herself recklessly, exultantly into the thick of that wild,
that tide of destruction in our merciless efficiency. relentless slaughter ; and my mind can find nothing sav-
At last we became aware, in but a vague sort of way age nor repellent about her.
at first, that no more red-coats were rising up out of If I, product of the relatively peaceful Twentieth
the ground to go down again before our whirling, Century, was so completely carried away by the fury
swinging weapons. Gradually we paused, looking about of that war, intensified by centuries of unspeakable
in wonder. Then the barrage ceased, and the sudden cruelty on the part of the yellow men who were men-
absence of the deafening roll, and the wall of light, in tally gods and morally beasts, shall I be shocked at
themselves, deafened and blinded us. the "bloodthirstiness" of a mate who was, after all,
I leaped weakly toward the spot where hazily I spied but a normal girl of that day, and who, girl as she was,
Wilma, now drooping and swaying on her feet, sup- never for a moment faltered in the high courage with
ported as she was by her jumping belt, and caught her which she, threw herself into that combat, responding
in my arms, just as she was sinking gently to the to the passionate urge for freedom in her blood that
ground. not five centuries of inhuman persecution could sub-
All around us the weary warriors, crimsoned now due?
with the blood of the enemy, were sinking to the ground Had the Hans been raging tigers, or slimy, loathe-
in exhaustion. And as I, too, sank down, clutching some reptiles, would we have spared them ? And when
in my arms the unconscious form of my warrior wife, in their centuries of degradation they had destroyed
I began to hear, through,.- my helmet phones, the exul- the souls within themselves, were they in any way su-
tant report of headquarters. perior to tigers or snakes? To have extended mercy
Our attack had swept straight through the enemy's would have been suicide.
sector, completely annihilating everything except a few In the years that followed, Wilma ami I,jravelled
hundred of his troops on either flank. And these, in nearly every nation on the earth which had succeeifed-
panic and terror, had scattered wildly in flight. We in throwing off the Han domination, spurred on by
had wiped out a force more than ten times our own our success in America', and I never knew her to show
number. The right flank of the American army was to the men or women of any race anything but the
saved. And already the Colorado Union, from behind utmost of sympathetic courtesy and consideration,
us, was leaping around in a great circling movement, whether they were the noble brown-skinned Caucasians
closing in on the Han force that was advancing from of India, the sturdy Balkanites of Southern Europe,
the ruins of Lo-Tan. or the simple, spiritual Blacks of Africa, today one of
Far away, to the southwest, the Southern Gangs, re- the leading races of the world, although in the Twenti-
inforced in the end by the bulk of our left wing, had eth Century we regarded them as inferior. This char-
struck straight at the enveloping Han force shattering ity and gentleness of hers did not fail even in our con-
it like a thunderbolt, and at present were busily hunt- tacts with the non-Han Mongolians of Japan and the
ing down and destroying its scattered remnants. coast provinces of China.
But before the Colorado Union could complete the But that monstrosity among the races of men which ;

destruction of the central division of the enemy, the originated as a hybrid somewhere in the dark fast-
des])airing Hans saved them the trouble. Company af- nesses of interior Asia, and spread itself like an inhu-
ter company of them, knowing no escape was possible, man —
yellow blight over the face of the globe for that -

lined up in the forest glades and valleys, while their race, like all of us, she felt nothing but horror and the.j
officers swept them out of existence by the hundreds irresistible urge to extermination.
with their ray pistols, which they then turned on them- Latterly, our historians and anthropologists find"'
selves. much support for the theory that the Hans sprang./i
J 136 AMAZING STORIES
from a genus of human-like creatures that may have the Hans spread over the face of the earth, this un-
arrived on this earth with a small planet (or large earthly strain in them not only became more dilute, but

meteor) which is known to have crashed in interior lost itspotency; and in the end, the poison of it sub-
Asia late in the Twentieth Century, causing certain merged the power of it, and earth's mankind came
permanent changes in the earth's orhit and climate. again into possession of its inheritance.
Geological convulsions blocked this section off from How all this may he, I do not know. It is merely
the rest of the world for many years. And it is a a hypothesis over wluch the learned men of to-day
historical fact that Chinese scientists, driving their ex- quarrel.
plorations into it at. a somewhat later period, met the But I do know that there was something inhuman
first wave of the on-coming Hans. about these Hans. And I had many months of inti-
The theory is that tliese creatures (and certain queer mate contact with them, and with their Emperor in
skeletons have been found in the "Asiatic Bowl") with America. I can vouch for the fact that even in his
a mental superdevelopment, hut a vacuum in place of most friendly and human moments, there was an inhu-
that intangible something we call a soul, mated forcibly manity, or perhaps "unhumanity" about him that
with the Tibetans, thereby strengthening their physical aroused in me that urge to kill.
structure to almost the human normal, adapting them- But whether or not there was in these people blood
selves to earthly speech and habits, and in some strange from outside this planet, the fact remains that they
manner intensifying even further their mental powers. have been exterminated, that a truly human civiliza-
Or, to put it the other way around. These Tibetans, tion reigns once more —
and that I am now a very tired
through the injection of this unearthly blood, deteri- old man, waiting with no regrets for the call which will
orated slighlly physically, lost the "soul" parts of their take mc to another existence.
nature entirely, and developed abnormally efficient in- There, it is my hope and my conviction that my
tellects. courageous mate of those bloody days waits for me
However, through the centuries that followed, as with loving anus.