The Onslaught from Rigel/Chapter IX

Chapter IX: The Opening of the Conflict
“I'm glad,” said Gloria to Murray Lee, as they leaned against the rail of the steamerParamatta in their new American Army uniforms, “that they're going to attack these things in the old U. S. I'd hate like anything to think we last Americans were shoved out of our country by a lot of chickens.”

Murray glanced around him. In every direction the long lines of the convoy stretched out, big liners loaded to the funnels with men, guns, tanks and ammunition. On the fringes of the troopships the sleek grey sides of the cruisers and destroyers that protected them were visible, and overhead there soared an armada of fast airplanes—no mere observation machines, or peaceful explorers like the South Africans, but fierce, deadly fighting planes, rocket-powered, which could step along at four miles a minute and climb, dive and maneuver better than a dodo.

He nodded. “You said something, sister. Say won't it be great to take a whack at them under the Stars and Stripes. I'm glad they let us do it, even if there are only fourteen of us.”

In the four months since the conference with the Australian Scientific Committee it had been amply demonstrated to the three remaining governments of the world that there was not room for both man and dodos on the same planet. A carefully-worked out campaign had evidently been set in operation by whatever central intelligence led the four-winged birds with the object of wiping human life from the earth. The bombing of Canberra was merely the first blow.

While Australia was arming and organizing to meet the menace the second blow fell—on Sourabaya, the great metropolis of Java, which was wiped out in a single night. At this evidence of the hostile intentions of the dodos radio apparatus began to tap in Australia, in the Dutch colonies and in South Africa; old guns forgotten since the last great war, were wheeled out; the factories began to turn out fighting airplanes and the young men drilled in the parks.

When, late in November, a flock of twenty-five dodos was observed over north Australia, headed for Sydney, the forces of the defence were on their guard. Long before the birds reached the town they were met by a big squadron of rocket-powered fighting planes and in a desperate battle over the desert, with claw and beak and bomb against machine-gun, were shot down to the last bird. With that the attacks had suddenly ceased, and the federated governments, convinced that it was but the calm before a greater storm, had gathered their strength for a trial of arms.

It was realized that whatever lay behind this attempt to conquer all there was left of the old earth must be in some way due to the coming of the great comet and must center somewhere in America, where the comet had struck. So for the first time the race of man began to learn what international cooperation meant. Delegates from the three surviving governments met in conference at Perth with Ben Ruby accorded a place as the representative of the United States. The decision of the conference was to mobilize every man and weapon to attack the birds in America and exterminate them there if possible; if impossible to do this, then to keep them so occupied at home that they would be unable to deliver any counter-attack.

There was plenty of shipping to carry an army far larger than the federated governments could mobilize; the main weakness of the expedition lay in the lack of naval protection, for the great navies of the world had perished when the northern hemisphere passed under the influence of the comet. It was sought to make up for this deficiency by a vast cloud of airplanes, flying from the decks of many merchant ships, converted into aircraft carriers, though some of the new rocket-planes were powerful enough to cruise around the world under their own power. And so, on this March morning in 1947 the whole vast armada was crossing the Atlantic toward the United States. In view of the fact that the headquarters of the dodos seemed to be somewhere in the Catskills, it had been decided to land in New Jersey, form a base there and work northward.

In the preliminary training for the coming conflict the metal Americans had played an important part. Their construction made them impossible as aviators, which they would have preferred. But quite early it was discovered that they made ideal operators for tanks. The oil fumes and the lack of air did not in the least affect beings to whom breathing had become unimportant, and the oil was actually a benefit.

As a result the little American army had been composed of fourteen tanks of a special type, fitted at the direction of the military experts, with all the latest and best in scientific devices. They were given extra-heavy armor, fitted in two thicknesses, with a chamber between, as a protection against the light-bombs, and each tank, intended to be handled by a single operator, was provided with one heavy gun, so arranged that it could be used against aerial attack.

A stir of motion was visible at the head of the convoy. A destroyer dashed past theParamatta, smoke pouring from her funnels, the white bow-wave rising as high as her bridge as she put on full speed. From the airplane carrier just behind them in the line, one, two, three flights of fighters swung off, circled a moment to gain altitude and then whirled off to the north and west.

“What is it?” asked Gloria.

A sailor touched his cap. “Sighted a dodo, I believe, miss,” he said.

“Oh, boy,” said Gloria, “here we go. What would you give to be in one of those planes?”

They craned their necks eagerly, but nothing was visible except a few flecks in the sky that might be dodos or might equally well be airplanes. Faint and far, a rattle of machine-guns drifted down; there was a flash of intense light, like the reflection in a far-distant mirror, and the machine-guns ceased. A few moments later the airplanes came winging back to their mother ship. A sailor on her deck began to swing his arms in the curious semaphore language of the sea.

“What happened?” asked Gloria of the man by their side.

“I'm trying to make out, miss. One dodo, he says, carrying a bomb—hit—by—machine-gun… Oh, the bomb went off in the dodo's claws and blew him all to pieces.”

The echo of a cheer came across the water from the other ships. The first brush had gone in favor of the race of man!

That night dodos announced their presence by a few bombs dropped tentatively among the ships, but did no damage, being so hurried and harried by the airmen, and by morning the dream-towers of Atlantic City, necked with the early morning sun, rose out of the west. Far in the distance the aviators of the expedition had spied more of the birds, but after the first day's encounter with the airplanes they kept a healthy distance, apparently contented to observe what they could.

As ship after ship swung in toward the piers and discharged its cargo of men, guns and munitions, the birds became bolder, as though to inspect what was going on. But the Australian aviators attacked them fiercely, driving them back at every attempt to pierce the aerial cordon, and when night came on, nearly a third of the force had been landed and quartered in parts of the one-time pleasure city.

Covered by the darkness a few dodos came down to drop bombs that night. They met with poor success. Delicate listening apparatus, intended originally to pick up the sound of approaching enemy airplanes had been one of the first things landed. The whir of the birds' wings was plainly audible, and before they had realized that man had a weapon to meet their night attacks half a dozen of them had been caught in the bursts of anti-aircraft guns and more had been met and shot down by the night-patrolling airmen.

The next morning saw the unloading beginning anew, while the emptied transports were taken around into Delaware Bay. Fortunately, the weather continued unusually fine for late March, bright with sunshine, giving the dodos no opportunity to attack behind the cover of clouds. There was just enough cold in the air to make the Australians and South Africans lively, though the Americans found the temperature caused the oil to move sluggishly in their metallic joints.

At daybreak the whole American unit had been pushed out to the railroad line at Greenwood with the advance guard of tanks, and finding no opposition they continued on to Farmington, where there was an airport that would serve for the leading squadrons of planes.

“Do you know,” said Ben to Murray, “I wish those dodos would show a little more pep. Fighting them is no cinch. We're a little ahead of the game now, but it's largely because they've let us alone and haven't brought up any of those light-beam guns.”

“Maybe we've got 'em on the run,” replied Murray. “You can't tell when anyone will develop a yellow streak, you know.”

“Yes, but we've seen enough of these babies to know they haven't got a yellow streak a millimeter wide in their whole make-up. Yet here they let us do just about as we please. Makes me think they're just laying for us, and when they get us where they want us—zowie!”

“Mebbe so, mebbe so,” replied Murray. “Beeville still thinks it isn't the birds at all; that they've got a big boss somewhere running the whole works and till we find out what's behind it we're fighting in the dark. Well, they'll unload the rest of the army tomorrow and then we'll get down to cases.”

The country between Atlantic City and Philadelphia is flat, with a few gentle elevations and dotted with small towns, farms and tiny bits of woodland. In the cold spring morning of the next day, with rain portended, the army of the federated governments pushed out along the roads through this land like a huge, many-headed snake, tanks and airplanes in the lead, the steady ranks of infantry and the big guns coming behind. Back at Atlantic City all machine-shops and factories had been set in operation and wrecking crews were already clearing the railroads and mounting huge long-range guns on trucks, preparatory to covering the advance. All along the route was bustle and hurry; camp kitchens rumbled along, harassed officers galloped up and down the lines on their horses (now, like their masters with a strange bluish cast of skin) and messengers rushed to and fro on popping motorcycles.

Out with the advance the American division of fourteen tanks rolled along. The dodos seemed to have completely disappeared, even the scouting aviators, far ahead, reporting no sign of them. The army was succeeding in establishing itself on American soil.

But around noon a “stop” signal flashed on the control boards of the tanks. They halted at the crest of a little rise and climbed out to look around.

“What is it?” asked someone.

“Perhaps gentlemanly general wishes to disport in surf,” suggested Yoshio, with his flashing, steel-toothed smile, “and proceeding is retained without presence.”

“Perhaps,” said Gloria, “but I'll bet a dollar to a handful of blue kangaroos that the dodos are getting in their licks somewhere.”

“Well, we'll soon know,” said Murray Lee. “Here comes a dispatch rider.”

The man on the motorcycle dashed up, saluted. “General Ruby?” he inquired, and handed the dispatch to Ben. The latter read it, then motioned the others about him.

“Well, here it is, folks,” he said, “Listen to this—'General Grierson to General Ruby. Our flank guard was heavily attacked at Atsion this morning. The Third Brigade of the Fourteenth Division has suffered heavy loss and has been forced back to Chew Road. We are bringing up heavy artillery. The enemy appear to be using large numbers of light-ray guns. Advance guard is recalled to Waterford in support of our left flank.'”

“Oh—oh,” said somebody.

“I knew they'd start giving us hell sooner or later,” remarked Murray Lee as he climbed into his tank.

At Waterford there was ordered confusion when they arrived. Just outside the town a long line of infantrymen were plying pick and shovel in the formation of a system of trenches. Machine-gun units were installing themselves in stone or brick buildings and constructing barricades around their weapons; line after line of tanks had wheeled into position under cover of woods or in the streets of the town, the little whippets out in front, fast cruiser-tanks behind them and the lumbering battle-tanks with their six-inch guns, farther back.

Artillery was everywhere, mostly in little pits over which the gunners were spreading green strips of camouflage. As the American tanks rolled up, a battery of eight-inch howitzers behind a railroad embankment at the west end of the town was firing slowly and with an air of great solemnity at some target in the invisible distance, the angle of their muzzles showing that they were using the extreme range. A couple of airplanes hummed overhead. But of dead or wounded, of dodos or any other enemy there was no sign. It might have been a parade-war, an elaborately realistic imitation of the real thing for the movies.

Guides directed the Americans to a post down the line toward Chew Road. “What's the news?” asked Ben of an officer whose red tabs showed he belonged to the staff.

“They hit the right wing at Atsion,” replied the officer. “Just what happened, I'm not sure. Somebody said they had a lot of those light-ray guns and they just crumpled up our flank like that.” He slapped his hands together to show the degree of crumpling the right flank had endured. “We lost about fifteen hundred men in fifteen minutes. Tanks, too. But I think we're stopping them now.”

“Any dodos?” asked Ben.

“Just a few. The airplanes shot down a flock of seven just before the battle and after that they kept away… What is it? General Witherington wants me? Oh, all right, I'll come. Excuse me, sir,” and the staff officer was off.

Most of the afternoon was spent in an interminable period of waiting and watching the laboring infantry sink themselves into the ground. About four o'clock a fine, cold drizzle began to fall. The Americans sought the shelter of their tanks, and about the same time their radiophones flashed the order to move up, toward the north and east through a barren pasture with a few trees in it, to the crest of a low hill. It was already nearly dark; the tanks bumped unevenly over the stony ground, their drivers following each other by the black silhouettes in the gloom. Off to the right a battery suddenly woke to a fever of activity, then as rapidly became silent and in the intervals of silence between the motor-sounds the Americans could catch the faint rat-tat of machine-guns in the heavens above. Evidently dodos were abroad in the gloom.

At the crest of the hill they could see across a flat valley in the direction of Chew Road. Something seemed to be burning behind the next rise; a ruddy glare lit the clouds. Down the line guns began to growl again, and the earth trembled gently with the sound of an explosion somewhere in the rear. Murray Lee, sitting alone at the controls of his tank. So this was war!

There were trees along their ridge, and looking through the side peep-hole of his tank Murray could make out the vague forms of a line of whippets among them, waiting, like themselves, for the order to advance. He wondered what the enemy were like; evidently not all dodos, since so many tanks had been pushed up to the front. This argued a man or animal that ran along the ground. The dodos seemed to spend most of their time in the air…

He was recalled from his meditations by the ringing of the attention bell and the radiophone began to speak rapidly:

“American tank division—enemy tanks reported approaching. Detain them as long as possible and then retire. Your machines are not to be sacrificed; Radio your positions with reference to Clark Creek as you retire for guidance of artillery registering on enemy tanks. There—”

The voice broke off in mid-sentence. So the dodos had tanks! Murray Lee snapped in his controls and glanced forward. Surely in the gloom along that distant ridge there was a darker spot—next to the house—something.

Suddenly, with a roar like a thousand thunders, a bolt of sheer light seemed to leap from the dark shape on the opposite hill, straight toward the trees where Murray had noticed the whippets. He saw one of the trees leap into vivid flame from root to branch as the beam struck it; saw a whippet, sharply outlined in the fierce glow, its front armor-plate caving; then its ammunition blew up in a shower of sparks, and he was frantically busy with his own controls and gun.