The Airlords of Han by Philip Francis Nowlan (i love reading TXT) 📕

living thing that had been struck, then gathered speed again and shot forward toward the gaping black hole where the gate had been.

I brought it to a stop at the pile of debris, and climbed through this to freedom and the night. Stumblingly I made my way out into the open, and waited.

Behind, and far above me on the mountain peak, the lights of the city gleamed and flashed, while the iridescent beams of countless disintegrator ray batteries on surrounding mountain peaks, played continuously and nervously, criss-crossing in the sky above it.

Then with a swish, a line dropped out of the sky, and a little seat rested on the ground beside me. I climbed into it, and without further ado was whisked up into the swooper that floated a few hundred feet above me.

A half an hour later I was deposited in a little forest glade where the headquarters of the Wyoming Gang were located, and was greeted with a frantic disregard for decorum by the Deputy Boss of the Wyomings, who rushed upon me like a whirlwind, laughing, crying and whispering endearments all in the same breath, while I squeezed her, Wilma, my wife, until at last she gasped for mercy.

CHAPTER XIV
The Destruction of Lo-Tan

"How did you know I had been taken to Lo-Tan as a prisoner?" I asked the little group of Wyoming Bosses who had assembled in Wilma's tent to greet me. "And how does it happen that our gang is away out here in the Rocky Mountains? I had expected, after the fall of Nu-Yok, that you would join the forest ring around Bah-Flo (Buffalo I called it in the Twentieth Century) or the forces beleaguering Bos-Tan."

They explained that my encounter with the Han airship had been followed carefully by several scopemen. They had seen my swooper shoot skyward out of control, and had followed it with their telultronoscopes until it had been caught in a gale at a high level, and wafted swiftly westward. Ultronophone warnings had been broadcast, asking western Gangs to rescue me if possible. Few of the Gangs west of the Alleghanies, however, had any swoopers, and though I was frequently reported, no attempts could be made to rescue me. Scopemen had reported my capture by the Han ground post, and my probable incarceration in Lo-Tan.

The Rocky Mountain Gangs, in planning their campaign against Lo-Tan, had appealed to the east for help, and Wilma had led the Wyoming veterans westward, though the other eastern Gang had divided their aid between the armies before Bah-Flo and Bos-Tan.

The heavy bombardment which I had heard from Lo-Tan, they told me, was merely a test of the enemy's tactics and strength, but it accomplished little other than to develop that the Hans had the mountains and peaks thickly planted with rocket gunners of their own. It was almost impossible to locate these gun posts, for they were well camouflaged from air observation, and widely scattered; nor did they reveal their positions when they went into action as did their ray batteries.

The Hans apparently were abandoning their rays except for air defense. I told what I knew of the Han plans for abandoning the city, and their escape tunnels. On the strength of this, a general council of Gang Bosses was called. This council agreed that immediate action was necessary, for my escape from the city probably would be suspected, and San-Lan would be inclined to start an exodus at once.

As a matter of fact, the destruction of the city presented no real problem to us at all. Explosive air balls could be sent against any target under a control that could not be better were their operators riding within them, and with no risk to the operators. When a ball was exploded on its target by the operator, or destroyed by accident, he simply reported the fact to the supply division, and a fresh one was placed on the jump-off, tuned to his controls.

To my own Gang, the Wyomings, the Council delegated the destruction of the escape tunnels of the enemy. We had a comfortably located camp in a wooded canyon, some hundred and thirty miles northeast of the city, with about 500 men, most of whom were bayonet-gunners, 350 girls as long-gunners and control-board operators, 91 control boards and about 250 five-foot, inertron-protected air balls, of which 200 were of the explosive variety.

I ordered all control boards manned, taking Number One myself, and instructed the others to follow my lead in single file, at the minimum interval of safety, with their projectiles set for signal rather than contact detonation.

In my mind I paid humble tribute to the ingenuity of our engineers as I gently twisted the lever that shot my projectile vertically into the air from the jump-off clearing some half mile away.

The control board before me was a compact contrivance about five feet square. The center of it contained a four-foot viewplate. Whatever view was picked up by the ultronoscope "eye" of the air ball was automatically broadcast on an accurate tuning channel to this viewplate by the automatic mechanism of the projectile. In turn my control board broadcast the signals which automatically controlled the movements of the ball.

Above and below the viewplate were the pointers and the swinging needles which indicated the speed and angle of vertical movement, the altimeter, the directional compass, and the horizontal speed and distance indicators.

At my left hand was the lever by which I could set the "eye" for penetrative, normal or varying degrees of telescopic vision, and at my right the universally jointed stick (much like the "joy stick" of the ancient airplanes) with its speed control button on the top, with which the ball was directionally "pointed" and controlled.

The manipulation of these levers I had found, with a very little practice, most instinctive and simple.

So, as I have said, I pointed my projectile straight up and let it shoot to the height of two miles. Then I levelled it off, and shot it at full speed (about 500 miles an hour with no allowance for air currents) in a general southwesterly direction, while I eased my controls until I brought in the telescopic view of Lo-Tan. I centered the picture of the city on the crossed hairlines in the middle of my viewpoint, and watched its image grow.

In about fifteen minutes the "string" of air balls was before the city, and speaking in my ultrophone I gave the order to halt, while I swung the scope control to the penetrative setting and let my "eye" rove slowly back and forth through the walls of the city, hunting for a spot from which I might get my bearings. At last, after many penetrations, I managed to bring in a view of the head of the shaft at the bottom of which I knew the tunnels were located, and saw that we were none too soon, for all the corridors leading toward this shaft were packed with Hans waiting their turn to descend.

Slowly I let my "eye" retreat down one of these corridors until I "pulled it out" through the outer wall of the city. There I held the spot on the crossed hairlines and ordered Number Two Operator to my control board, where I pointed out to her the exact spot where I desired a breach in the wall. Returning to her own board, she withdrew her ball from the "string," and focussing on this spot in the wall, eased her projectile into contact with it and detonated.

The atomic force of the explosion shattered a vast section of the wall, and for the moment I feared I had balked my own game by not having provided a less powerful projectile.

After some fumbling, however, I was able to maneuver my ball through a gap in the debris and find the corridor I was seeking. Down this corridor I sent it at the speed of a Twentieth Century bullet, (this is to say, about half speed) to spare myself the sight of the slaughter as it cut a swath down the closely packed column of the enemy. If there were any it did not kill, I knew they would be taken care of by the other balls in the string which would follow.

I had to slow it up, however, near the head of the shaft to take my bearings; and a sea of evil faces, contorted with livid terror, looked at me from my viewplate. But not even the terror could conceal the hate in those faces, and there arose in my mind the picture of their long centuries of ruthless cruelty to my race, and the hopelessness of changing the tigerish nature of these Hans. So I steeled myself, and drove the ball again and again into that sea of faces, until I had cleared the station platform of any living enemy, and sent the survivors crushing their way madly along the corridors away from it. There was blinding flash or two on my viewplate as some Han officer tried his ray pistol on my projectile, but that was all, except that he must have disintegrated many of his fellows, for our balls were sheathed in inertron, and suffered no damage themselves.

Cautioning my unit to follow carefully, I pushed my control lever all the way forward until my "eye" pointed down, and there appeared on my viewplate the smooth cylindrical interior of the shaft, fading down toward the base of the mountain, and like a tiny speck, far, far down, was the car, descending with its last load.

I dropped my ball on it, battering it down to the bottom of the shaft, and with hammer-like blows flattening the wreckage, that I might squeeze the ball out of the shaft at the lower station.

It emerged into the great vaulted excavation, capable of holding a thousand or more persons, from which the various escape tunnels radiated. Down these tunnels the last remnants of a crowd of fugitives were disappearing, while red-coated soldiers guided the traffic and suppressed disorder with the threat of their spears, and the occasional flourish of a ray pistol.

As I floated my ball out into the middle of the artificial cavern I could see them stagger back in terror. Again the blinding flashes of a few ray pistols, and instantaneous borings of the rays into the walls. The red coats nearest the escape tunnels fled down them in panic. Those whose escape I blocked dropped their weapons and shrank back against the smooth, iridescent green walls.

I marshalled the rest of my string carefully into the cavern, and counted the tunnel entrances, slowly swinging my "eye" around the semicircle of them. There were 26 corridors diverging to the north and west. I decided to send three balls down each, leave 12 in the cavern, then detonate them all at once.

Assigning my operators to their corridors, I ordered intervals of five miles between them, and taking the lead down the first corridor, I ordered "go."

Soon my ball overtook the stream of fugitives, smashing them down despite ray pistols and even rockets that were shot against it. On and on I drove it, time and again battering it through detachments of fleeing Hans, while the distance register on my board climbed to ten, twenty, fifty miles.

Then I called a halt, and suspended my previous orders. I had had no idea that the Hans had bored these tunnels for such distances under the surface of the ground as this. It would be necessary to trace them to their ends and locate their new underground cities in which they expected to establish themselves, and in which many had established themselves by now, no doubt.

Fifty miles of air in these corridors, I thought, ought to prove a pretty good cushion against the shock of detonation in the cavern. So I ordered detonation of the twelve balls we had left behind. As I expected, there was little effect from it so far out in the tunnels.

But from our scopemen who were covering the city from the outside, I learned that the effects of the explosion on the mountain were terrific; far more than I had dared to hope for.

The mountain itself burst asunder in several spots, throwing out thousands of tons of earth and rock. One-half the city itself tore loose and slid downward, lost in the debris of the avalanche of which it was a part. The remainder, wrenched and convulsed like a living thing in agony, cracked, crumbled and split, towers tumbling down and great fissures appearing in its walls. Its power plant and electro machinery went out of commission. Fifteen of its scout ships hovering in the air directly above, robbed of the power broadcast and their repeller beams disappearing, crashed down into the ruins.

But out in the escape tunnels, we continued our explorations, now sure that no warnings could be broadcast to the tunnel exits, and mowed down contingent after contingent of the hated yellow men.

My register showed seventy-five miles before I came to the end of the tunnel, and drove my ball out into a vast underground city of great, brilliantly illuminated corridors, some of them hundreds of feet high and wide. The architectural scheme was one of lace-like structures of curving lines and of indescribable beauty.

Word had reached us now of the destruction of the city itself, so that no necessity existed for destroying the escape tunnels. In consequence, I ordered the two operators, who were following me, to send their balls out into this underground city, seeking the shaft which the Hans were sure to have as a secret exit to the surface of the earth above.

But at this juncture events of transcending importance interrupted my plans for a thorough exploration of these new subterranean cities of the Hans. I detonated my projectile at once and ordered all of the operators to do so, and to tune in instantly on new ones. That we wrecked most of these new cities I now know, but of course at the time we were in the dark as to how much damage we caused, since our viewplates naturally went dead when we detonated our projectiles.

CHAPTER XV
The Counter-Attack

The news which caused me to change my plans was grave enough. As I have explained, the American lines lay roughly to the east and the south of the city in the