The Onslaught from Rigel/Chapter VII

Chapter VII: An Exploration
There was a moment's silence as the Australian captain steadied himself against the roll of the vessel, staring incredulously at the group that gathered round him.

“Are you—human?” he finally managed to gasp.

“If we aren't somebody's been kidding us,” said Gloria, irreverently. “But are you? You're all blue!”

“Of course,” said the captain. “It was the comet. We knew it struck in America somewhere but didn't know where or what it did. What's the matter with your ship?” He indicated the wrecked and leaking bow. “She seems to be down by the head.”

“Oh, that was a valentine from the birds,” said Ben. “Can you give us quarters on your vessel? There aren't many of us.”

Captain Entwhistle seemed to come out of a dream. “Of course, of course. Come on. We can discuss things better in my cabin.”

As they mounted to the deck of the Brisbane, even the trained sailors, the light blue of their faces oddly at variance with the dark blue of their uniforms, could not refrain from staring at the colonists. They crowded into the captain's cabin past rows of eager blue faces.

“I suggest,” said Captain Entwhistle, “that we begin by telling each other how this happened. I can scarcely credit the fact that you are human and can walk and talk. Would any of you care for a whiskey and soda?”

“No, thanks,” said Murray, the spirit of fun stirring in him, “but I'll have a drink of lubricating oil if you can find any.”

The naval officer looked at him, and remarked, a trifle stiffly, “Certainly, if you wish. Williams—”

“Oh, don't mind him,” Ben Ruby cut in. “Pardon me, Captain, he can drink lubricating oil perfectly well, but he's just joking with you. You were saying about the comet—”

“Why, you knew that the big comet struck the earth as predicted, didn't you? It was on the morning of February sixteenth, last year—evening of February fifteenth by American time. Even in our country, which is around on the other side of the earth, it caused a good deal of damage. The gases it set free put everybody to sleep and caused a lot of wreckage. Our scientists say the gases of the comet in some unexplained way altered the iron in the hæmoglobin of our blood to cobalt. It seems to work just as well, but that's why we're all blue. I don't quite understand it myself, but you know how these medical Johnnies are. Now what happened to you people?”

“May I ask something first?” said Beeville. “What day is this?”

“August eighteenth, 1946,” said the captain as though slightly baffled by the question.

“Good God!” said the scientist. “Then we were there for over a year!”

“Yes,” said Ben. “All of us you see here and several others returned to consciousness about the same time, two months ago. We know nothing of what the comet did to us or how this change occurred except that when we woke up we were just what you see. Dr. Beeville has been experimenting with a view to finding out what happened, but he hasn't made much progress so far. All we know is that we're composed of metal that doesn't rust easily, make our meals off electricity, and find the taste of any kind of oil agreeable. And the birds—” he broke off with a gesture.

“Oh, yes, the birds,” said the captain. “Have they been annoying you, too? That's one of the reasons, aside from exploration, why we're here. I assume you mean the big four-winged birds that we call dodos down under. We haven't seen much of them, but occasionally they come and fly away with a sheep or even a man. One of our aviators chased one several hundred miles out to sea recently and we had assumed they came from one of the islands. Our scientists don't know what to make of them.”

“Neither do ours, except that they're an unadulterated brand of hell,” put in Murray. “We were all living in New York, snug as bugs in a rug, when they began dropping incendiary bombs on us and carrying off anyone they could get hold of.”

“Including this insignificant person,” said Yoshio, proudly.

“Incendiary bombs! Do you mean to tell me they have intelligence enough for that?”

“I'll tell the cockeyed world they have! Did you see the prow of our ship? That's where one of their little presents got home. If anyone had been there, he wouldn't be anything but scrap iron now. If you really want to find out what it's all about come on up to New York, but get ready for the fight of your life.”

The captain leaned back, sipping his drink meditatively. “Do you know,” he said, “that's just what I was thinking of doing? Frankly your story is all but incredible, but here you are as proof of it and you don't seem to be robots, except in appearance.”

“Oh, boy,” whispered Murray to Gloria, “wait till these babies get after the birds with their eight-inch guns. They'll wish they'd never heard of us. I'm glad I'm going to be on hand to see the fun.”

“Yeh, but maybe the birds will have something up their feathers, too,” she replied. “I wouldn't like to place any bets. We thought we had them licked when we got the destroyer and now look at us.”

“Well, I'm willing to try an attack, or at least a reconnaissance of them,” said the captain. “Just now we're in the position of an armed exploring party. The Australian government has sent out several ships to see what it could find on the other continents. After the comet struck all the cables went dead. We got into radio communication with the Dutch colonial stations at Batavia and later with South Africa, but the rest of the world is just being re-explored and my commission authorizes me to resist unfriendly acts. I think you could call an incendiary bomb an unfriendly act.”

His eyes twinkled over this mild witticism, and the party broke up with a scraping of chairs. A couple of hours later, the blue line of Sandy Hook was visible, and then the vague cliffs of the New York skyscrapers. The clouds had cleared away after the rain of the last few days; not even a speck of mist hung in the air and everything stood out bright and clear. The colonists felt a pang of emotion grip them as they watched the tall towers of the city rise over the horizon, straight and beautiful as they had always stood, but now without a sign of life or motion, all the busy clamor of the place hushed forever.

Of the tetrapteryxes or “dodos” as the Australian had called them, there was no sign. The sky bent high, unbrokenly blue, not a flicker of motion in it. Murray Lee felt someone stir at his side and looked round.

“Oh, damn,” said Gloria Rutherford, “it's so beautiful that I want to cry. Did you ever feel like that?”

He nodded silently… “And those birds—isn't it a shame somehow that they should have the most beautiful city in the world?”

The shrill of a whistle cut off his words. With marvelous, machine-like precision, the sailors moved about the decks. The Brisbane lost way, came to a halt, and there was a rush of steel as the anchor ran out. Captain Entwhistle came down from the bridge.

“I don't see anything of your dodos yet,” he said. “Do you think it would be wise to send out a landing party, Mr. Ruby?”

“Most certainly not,” said Ben. “You don't know what you're up against yet. Wait till they come round. You'll have plenty to do.”

The captain shrugged. Evidently he was not at all unwilling to match the Australian navy against anything the dodos might do. “Very well, I'll accept your advice for the present, Mr. Ruby. It is near evening in any case. But if there is no sign of them in the morning, I propose to land and look over the city.”

But the landing was never accomplished.

For, in the middle of the night, as Ben, Murray and Gloria were seated in the chartroom of the ship, chatting with the young lieutenant on duty there, there came a quick patter of feet on the deck, and a shout of “Light, ho!”

“There are your friends now, I'll wager,” said the lieutenant. “Now watch us go get 'em. If you want to see the fun, better go up on the bridge. All we do here is wrestle slide-rules.”

Hastily the three climbed the bridge, where a little group of officers was clustered. Following the direction in which they were looking, they saw, just above the buildings on the Jersey shore, what looked like a tall electric sign, burning high in the air and some distance away, with no visible means of support.

“What do you make of it?” asked Captain Entwhistle, turning and thrusting a pair of glasses into Ben's hands. Through them he could read the letters. Printed in capitals, though too small to be read from the ship with the naked eye, he saw:

“SOFT MEN EXIT. HARD MEN ARE WORKERS BELONGING. MUST RETURN. THIS MEANS YOU.”

“Looks like a dumb joke by someone who doesn't know English very well,” he opined, passing the glasses to Gloria. “I don't think those birds would figure that out anyway.”

“Wait a minute, though,” said Gloria, as she read the letters. “Remember they caught Dangerfield and Farrelly and the rest. Maybe they taught them how to speak.”

“Yes, but those two didn't know anything about 'soft men.' It's all crazy, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. And what do they mean by 'belonging'? None of our gang thought up that bright remark.”

“Look, sir,” said one of the younger officers, “it's changing.”

Abruptly the lights were blotted out, to reappear, amid a swimming of colors, nearer and larger. “WARNING” they read this time, “FLY AWAY ACCURSED PLACE.”

“What beats me,” said Ben, “is what makes that light. I'll bet a dollar against a dodo-feather it isn't electrical and fireworks wouldn't hang in the air like that. How do they do it?”

“Well, we'll soon find out,” said the Captain, practically. “Mr. Sturgis, switch on searchlights three and four and turn them on the source of that light.”

A few quick orders and two long beams of light leaped out from the ship toward the source of the mysterious sky-writing—leaped, but not fast enough, for even as the searchlights sought for their goal the lights were extinguished and the long beams swung across nothing but the empty heavens.

Gloria shivered. “I think I want to go away from this place,” she said. “There's too much we don't know about around here. We'll be getting table-tappings next.”

“Apparently someone wants us to clear out,” said Captain Entwhistle cheerfully. “Mr. Sturgis, get steam on three boilers and send the men to reserve action stations. We may have something doing here before morning.”

Orders were shouted, iron doors were slammed and feet pattered in the interior of the warship. From their station on the bridge Ben, Gloria and Murray could see the long shafts of the turret guns swing upward to their steepest angle, then turn toward the Jersey shore. The Brisbane was preparing for emergencies.

But there was to be no fight that night, though all night long the weary sailors stood or slept beside their guns. The dark skies remained inscrutable; the mysterious lights did not reappear.

At four o'clock, Captain Entwhistle had retired, reappearing at eight, fresh as though he had slept through the whole night. The colonists, of course, did not need sleep, but while the sailors stared at them, submitted themselves to an electric meal from one of the ship's dynamos. Morning found them gathering about the upper decks, eager for action, particularly McAllister, who had spent most of the night engaged in highly technical discussions of the Brisbane's artillery with one of the turret-captains.

“What do you suggest?” asked the captain. “Shall we land a party?”

“I hate to go without taking a poke at those birds,” said Ben, “but still I don't think it would be safe—”

“What's the matter with that airplane?” asked Gloria, pointing to the catapult between the funnels, where a couple of blue-visaged sailors had taken the covering from a seaplane and were giving it a morning bath.

The captain looked at Ben. “There may be something in that idea. What do you say to a scout around? I'll let you or one of your people go as an observer.”

“Tickled to death,” Ben replied. “We never got beyond the upper part of the city ourselves. The dodos were too dangerous. I'd like to find out what it's all about.”

“How about me?” offered Gloria.

“Nothing doing, kid. You get left this time. If those birds get after us we may land in the bay with a bump and I don't want this party to lose its little sunshine.”

“Up anchor!” came the command. “Revolutions for ten knots speed… I'm going to head down the bay,” he explained to the colonists. “If anything happens I want to have sea-room, particularly if they try bombing us.”

Fifteen minutes later, with the Brisbane running into the morning land-breeze in an ocean smooth as glass, the catapult let go and Ben and the pilot—a lad whose cheeks would have been rosy before the comet, but were now a vivid blue—were shot into the air.

Beneath them the panorama of New York harbor lay spread; more silent than it had been at any day since Hendrick Hudson brought his high-pooped galleys into it. As they rose, Ben could make out the line of the river shining through the pearly haze like a silver ribbon; the towers of the city tilted, then swung toward them as the aviator swept down nearer for an examination. Everything seemed normal save at the north and east, where a faint smoky mist still lingered over the buildings they had occupied. Of birds, or of other human occupation than their own, there was no slightest sign.

A faint shout was borne to his ears above the roar of the motor and he saw the pilot motioning toward a set of earphones.

“What do you say, old chap?” asked the pilot when he had clamped them on. “What direction shall we explore?”

Ben glanced down and around. The cruiser seemed to hang in the water, a tiny droplet of foam at her bow the only sign she was still in motion. “Let's go up the Hudson,” he suggested. “They seemed to come from that direction.”

“Check,” called the pilot, manipulating his controls. The airplane climbed, swung and went on. They were over Yonkers; Ben could see a river steamer at the dock, where she had made her last halt.

“Throw in that switch ahead of you,” came through the earphones. “The one marked RF. That's the radiophone for communicating with the ship. We may need it.”

“O.K.,” said Ben… “Hello… Yes, this is Ruby, in the airplane. Nothing to report. Everything serene. We're going to explore farther up the river.”

In the distance the Catskills loomed before them, blue and proud. Ben felt a touch on his back and looked round. The pilot evidently wished to say something else. He cut in and heard, “What's that off on the left—right in the mountains? No, there.”

Following the indicated direction Ben saw something like a scar on the projecting hillside—not one of the ancient rocks, but a fresh cut on the earth, as though a wide spot had been denuded of vegetation.

“I don't know,” he answered. “Never saw it before. Shall we go see?… Hello,Brisbane. Ruby reporting. There is a mysterious clearing in the Catskills. We are investigating.”