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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Invasion, by William Fitzgerald Jenkins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Invasion
+
+Author: William Fitzgerald Jenkins
+
+Release Date: July 19, 2009 [EBook #29455]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INVASION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+     This etext was produced from Astounding Stories March 1933.
+     Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
+     U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+    [Illustration: He picked Sylva up in his arms and ran madly.]
+
+
+                               Invasion
+
+
+                          By Murray Leinster
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+[Sidenote: The whole fighting fleet of the United Nations is caught in
+Kreynborg's marvelous, unique trap.]
+
+
+It was August 19, 2037. The United Nations was just fifty years old.
+Televisors were still monochromatic. The Nidics had just won the World
+Series in Prague. Com-Pub observatories were publishing elaborate
+figures on moving specks in space which they considered to be Martian
+spaceships on their way to Earth, but which United Nations astronomers
+could not discover at all. Women were using gilt lipsticks that year.
+Heat-induction motors were still considered efficient prime movers.
+
+Thorn Hard was a high-level flier for the Pacific Watch. Bathyletis
+was the most prominent of nationally advertised diseases, and was to
+be cured by RO-17, "The Foundation of Personal Charm." Somebody named
+Nirdlinger was President of the United Nations, and somebody else
+named Krassin was Commissar of Commissars for the Com-Pubs. Newspapers
+were printing flat pictures in three colors only, and deploring the
+high cost of stereoscopic plates. And ... Thorn Hard was a high-level
+flier for the Pacific Watch.
+
+That is the essential point, of course--Thorn Hard's work with the
+Watch. His job was, officially, hanging somewhere above the
+twenty-thousand-foot level with his detector-screens out, listening
+for unauthorized traffic. And, the normal state of affairs between the
+Com-Pubs and the United Nations being one of highly armed truce,
+"unauthorized traffic" meant nothing more or less than spies.
+
+But on August 19th, 2037, Thorn Hard was off duty. Decidedly so. He
+was sitting on top of Mount Wendel, in the Rockies; he had a
+ravishingly pretty girl sitting on the same rock with him, and he was
+looking at the sunset. The plane behind him was an official Watch
+plane, which civilians are never supposed to catch a glimpse of. It
+had brought Thorn Hard and Sylva West to this spot. It waited now,
+half-hidden by a spur of age-eroded rock, to take them back to
+civilization again. Its G.C. (General Communication) phone muttered
+occasionally like the voice of conscience.
+
+[Illustration:]
+
+The colors of the mountain changed and blended. The sky to westward
+was a glory of a myriad colors. Man and girl, high above the world,
+sat with the rosy glow of dying sunlight in their faces and watched
+the colors fade and shift into other colors and patterns even more
+exquisite. Their hands touched. They looked at each other. They
+smiled queerly, as people smile who are in love or otherwise not quite
+sane. They moved inevitably closer....
+
+And then the G.C. phone barked raucously:
+
+"All Watch planes attention! Urgent! Extreme high-level traffic
+reported seven-ten line bound due east, speed over one thousand. All
+Watch planes put out all detectors and use extra vigilance. Note: the
+speed, course, and time of report of this traffic checks with Com-Pub
+observations of moving objects approaching Earth from Mars. This
+possibility should be considered before opening fire."
+
+Thorn Hard stiffened all over. He got up and swung down to the stubby
+little ship with its gossamer-like wings of cellate. He touched the
+report button.
+
+"Plane 257-A reporting seven-ten line. Thorn Hard flying. On Mount
+Wendel, on leave. Orders?"
+
+He was throwing on the screens even as he reported. And the vertical
+detector began to whistle shrilly. His eyes darted to the dial, and he
+spoke again.
+
+"Added report. Detector shows traffic approaching, bound due east,
+seven hundred miles an hour, high altitude.... Correction; six-fifty
+miles. Correction; six hundred." He paused. "Traffic is decelerating
+rapidly. I think, sir, this is the reported ship."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then there was a barely audible whining noise high in the air to
+the west. It grew in volume and changed in pitch. From a whine it
+became a scream. From a scream it rose to a shriek. Something
+monstrous and red glittered in the dying sunlight. It was huge. It was
+of no design ever known on earth. Wings supported it, but they were
+obscured by the blasts of forward rockets checking its speed.
+
+It was dropping rapidly. Then lifting-rockets spouted flame to keep it
+from too rapid a descent. It cleared a mountain-peak by a bare two
+hundred feet, some two miles to the south. It was a hundred-odd feet
+in length. It was ungainly in shape, monstrous in conformation.
+Colossal rocket-tubes behind it now barely trickled vaporous
+discharges. It cleared the mountain-top, went heavily on in a steep
+glide downward, and vanished behind a mountain-flank. Presently the
+thin mountain air brought the echoed sound of its landing, of
+rapid-fire explosions of rocket-tubes, and then silence.
+
+Thorn Hard was snapping swift, staccato sentences into the
+report-transmitter. Describing the clumsy glittering monster, its
+motion; its wings; its method of propulsion. It seemed somehow
+familiar despite its strangeness. He said so.
+
+Then a vivid blue flame licked all about the rim of the world and was
+gone. Simultaneously the G.C. speaker crashed explosively and went
+dead. Thorn went on grimly, switching in the spare.
+
+"A very violent electrical discharge went out from it then. A blue
+light seemed to flash all around the horizon at no great distance and
+my speaker blew out. I have turned on the spare. I do not know whether
+my sender is functioning--"
+
+The spare speaker cut in abruptly at that moment:
+
+"It is. Stay where you are and observe. A squadron is coming."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the voice broke off, because a new sound was coming from the
+speaker. It was a voice that was unhuman and queerly horrible and
+somehow machine-like. Hoots and howls and whistles came from the
+speaker. Wailing sounds. Ghostly noises, devoid of consonants but
+broadcast on a wave-length close to the G.C. band and therefore
+produced by intelligence, though unintelligible. The unhuman hoots and
+wails and whistles came through for nearly a minute, and stopped.
+
+"Stay on duty!" snapped the G.C. speaker. "That's no language known on
+earth. Those are Martians!"
+
+Thorn looked up to see Sylva standing by the Watch-plane door. Her
+face was pale in the growing darkness outside.
+
+"Beginning duty sir," said Thorn steadily, "I report that I have with
+me Miss Sylva West, my fiancée, in violation of regulations. I ask
+that her family be notified."
+
+He snapped off the lights and went with her. The red rocket-ship had
+landed in the very next valley. There was a glare there, which wavered
+and flickered and died away.
+
+"Martians!" said Thorn in fine irony. "We'll see when the Watch planes
+come! My guess is Com-Pubs, using a searchlight! Nervy!"
+
+The glare vanished. There was only silence, a curiously complete and
+deadly silence. And Thorn said, suddenly:
+
+"There's no wind!"
+
+There was not. Not a breath of air. The mountains were uncannily
+quiet. The air was impossibly still, for a mountain-top. Ten minutes
+went by. Twenty. The detector-whistles shrilled.
+
+"There's the Watch," said Thorn in satisfaction. "Now we'll see!"
+
+And then, abruptly, there was a lurid flash in the sky to northward.
+Two thousand feet up and a mile away, the unearthly green blaze of a
+hexynitrate explosion lit the whole earth with unbearable brilliance.
+
+"Stop your ears!" snapped Thorn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The racking concussion-wave of hexynitrate will break human eardrums
+at an incredible distance. But no sound came, though the seconds went
+by.... Then, two miles away, there was a second gigantic flash....
+Then a third.... But there was no sound at all. The quiet of the hills
+remained unbroken, though Thorn knew that such cataclysmic detonations
+should be audible at twenty miles or more. Then lights flashed on
+above. Two--three--six of them. They wavered all about, darting here
+and there.... Then one of the flying searchlights vanished utterly in
+a fourth terrific flash of green.
+
+"The watch planes are going up!" said Thorn dazedly. "Blowing up! And
+we can't hear the explosions!"
+
+Behind him the G.C. speaker barked his call. He raced to get its
+message.
+
+"The Watch planes we sent to join you," said a curt voice he
+recognized as that of the Commanding General of the United Nations,
+"have located an invisible barrier by their sonic altimeters. Four of
+them seem to have rammed it and exploded without destroying it. What
+have you to report?"
+
+"I've seen the flashes, sir," said Thorn unsteadily, "but they made no
+noise. And there's no wind, sir. Not a breath since the blue flash I
+reported."
+
+A pause.
+
+"Your statement bears out their report," said the G.C. speaker
+harshly. "The barrier seems to be hemispherical. No such barrier is
+known on Earth. These must be Martians, as the Com-Pubs said. You will
+wait until morning and try to make peaceful contact with them. This
+barrier may be merely a precaution on their part. You will try to
+convince them that we wish to be friendly."
+
+"I don't believe they're Martians, sir--"
+
+Sylva came racing to the door of the plane.
+
+"Thorn! Something's coming! I hear it droning!"
+
+Thorn himself heard a dull droning noise in the air, coming toward
+him.
+
+"Occupants of the rocket-ship, sir," he said grimly, "seem to be
+approaching. Orders?"
+
+"Evacuate the ship," snapped the G.C. phone. "Let them examine it.
+They will understand how we communicate and prepare to receive and
+exchange messages. If they seem friendly, make contact at once."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thorn made swift certain movements and dived for the door. He seized
+Sylva and fled for the darkness below the plane. He was taking a
+desperate risk of falling down the mountain-slopes. The droning drew
+near. It passed directly overhead. Then there was a flash and a
+deafening report. A beam of light appeared aloft. It searched for and
+found Thorn's plane, now a wreck. Flash after flash and explosion
+after explosion followed....
+
+They stopped. Their echoes rolled and reverberated among the hills.
+There was a hollow, tremendous intensification of the echoes aloft as
+if a dome of some solid substance had reflected back the sound. Slowly
+the rollings died away. Then a voice boomed through a speaker
+overhead, and despite his suspicions Thorn felt a queer surprise. It
+was a human voice, a man's voice, full of a horrible amusement.
+
+"Thorn Hardt! Thorn Hardt! Where are you?" Thorn did not move or
+reply. "If I haff not killed you, you hear me," the voice chuckled.
+"Come to see me, Thorn Hardt. Der dome of force iss big, yes, but you
+can no more get out than your friends can get in. And now I haff
+destroyed your phones so you can no longer chat with them. Come and
+see me, Thorn Hardt, so I will not be bored. We will discuss der
+Com-Pubs. And bring der lady friend. You may play der chaperon!"
+
+The voice laughed. It was not pleasant laughter. And the humming drone
+in the air rose and dwindled. It moved away from the mountain-top. It
+lessened and lessened until it was inaudible. Then there was dead
+silence again.
+
+"By his accent, he's a Baltic Russian," said Thorn very grimly in the
+darkness. "Which means Com-Pubs, not Martians, though we're the only
+people who realize it; and they're starting a war! And we, Sylva, must
+warn our people. How are we going to do it?"
+
+She pressed his hand confidently, but it did not look promising. Thorn
+Hard was on foot, without a transmitter, armed only with his
+belt-weapons and with a girl to look after, and moreover imprisoned in
+a colossal dome of force which hexynitrate had failed to crack....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was August 20, 2037. There was a triple murder in Paris which was
+rumored to be the work of a Com-Pub spy, though the murderer's
+unquestionably Gallic touches made the rumor dubious. Newspaper
+vendor-units were screaming raucously, "Martians land in Colorado!"
+and the newspapers themselves printed colored-photos of hastily
+improvised models in their accounts of the landing of a blood-red
+rocket-ship in the widest part of the Rockies. The inter-continental
+tennis matches reached their semi-finals in Havana, Cuba. Thorn Hard
+had not reported to Watch headquarters in twelve hours. Quadruplets
+were born in Des Moines, Iowa. Krassin, Commissar of Commissars of the
+Com-Pubs, made a diplomatic inquiry about the rumors that a Martian
+space-ship had landed in North America. He asked that Com-Pub
+scientists be permitted to join in the questioning and examination of
+the Martian visitors. The most famous European screen actress landed
+from the morning Trans-Atlantic plane with her hair dyed a light
+lavender, and beauty-shops throughout the country placed rush orders
+for dye to take care of the demand for lavender hair which would begin
+by mid-afternoon. The heavy-weight champion of the United Nations was
+warned that his title would be forfeited if he further dodged a fight
+with his most promising contender. And ... Thorn Hard had not reported
+to Watch headquarters in twelve hours.
+
+He was, as a matter of fact, cautiously parting some bushes to peer
+past a mountain-flank at the red rocket-ship. Sylva West lay on the
+ground behind him. Both of them weary to the point of exhaustion. They
+had started their descent from Mount Wendel at the first gray streak
+of dawn in the east. They had toiled painfully across the broken
+country between, to this point of vantage. Now Thorn looked down upon
+the rocket-ship.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It lay a little askew upon the ground, seeming to be partly buried in
+the earth. A hundred feet and more in length, it was even more
+obviously a monstrosity as he looked at it in the bright light of day.
+But now it was not alone. Beside it a white tower reared upward. Pure
+white and glistening in the sunshine, a bulging, uneven shaft rose a
+hundred feet sheer. It looked as solid as marble. Its purpose was
+unguessable. There was a huge, fan-shaped space where the vegetation
+about the rocket-ship was colored a vivid red. In air-photos, the
+rocket-ship would look remarkably like something from another planet.
+But nearby, Thorn could see a lazy trickle of fuel-fumes from a
+port-pipe on one side of the monster....
+
+"That tower is nothing but cellate foam, which hardens. And Sylva!
+See?"
+
+She came cautiously through the brushwood and looked down. She
+shivered a little. From here they could see beneath the bows of the
+rocket-ship. And there was a name there, in the Cyrillic alphabet
+which was the official written language of the Com-Pubs. Here, on
+United Nations soil, it was insolent. It boasted that the red ship
+came, not from an alien planet, but from a nation more alien still to
+all the United Nations stood for. The Com-Pubs--the Union of Communist
+Republics--were neither communistic nor republics, but they were much
+more dangerous to the United Nations than any mere Martians would have
+been.
+
+"We'll have some heavy ships here to investigate, soon," said Thorn
+grimly. "Then I'll signal!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He flung back his head. High up and far away, beyond that invisible
+barrier against which Watch-planes had flung themselves in vain, there
+were tiny motes in mid-air. These were Watch planes too, hovering
+outside the obstacle they could not see, but which even hexynitrate
+bombs could not break through. And very far away indeed there was a
+swiftly-moving small dark cloud. As Thorn watched, that cloud drew
+close. As his eyes glowed, it resolved itself into its component
+specks. Small, two-man patrol-scouts. Larger, ten-man cruisers of the
+air. Huge, massive dreadnaughts of the blue. A complete
+combat-squadron of the United Nations Fighting Forces was sweeping to
+position about the dome of force above the rocket-ship.
+
+The scouts swept forward in a tiny, whirling cloud. They sheered away
+from something invisible. One of them dropped a smoking object. It
+emitted a vast cloud of paper, which the wind caught and swept away,
+and suddenly wrapped about a definite section of an arc. More and more
+of the tiny smoke-bombs released their masses of cloudlike stuff. In
+mid-air a dome began to take form, outlined by the trailing streaks of
+gray. It began to be more definitely traced by interlinings. An aerial
+lattice spread about a portion of a six-mile hemisphere. The top was
+fifteen thousand feet above the rocket-ship, twenty-five thousand feet
+from sea-level, as high as Mount Everest itself.
+
+Tiny motes hovered even there, where the smallest of visible specks
+was a ten-man cruiser. And one of the biggest of the aircraft came
+gingerly up to the very inner edge of the lattice-work of fog and hung
+motionless, holding itself aloft by powerful helicopter screws. Men
+were working from a trailing stage--scientists examining the barrier
+even hexynitrate would not break down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thorn set to work. He had come toilsomely to the neighborhood of the
+rocket-ship because he would have to do visual signaling, and there
+was no time to lose. The dome of force was transparent. The air fleet
+would be trying to communicate through it with the Martians they
+believed were in the rocket-ship. Sunlight reflected from a polished
+canteen would attract attention instantly from a spot near the red
+monster, while elsewhere it might not be observed for a long time.
+But, trying every radio wave-band, and every system of visual
+signaling, and watching and testing for a reply, Thorn's signal ought
+to be picked up instantly.
+
+He handed his pocket speech-light receptor to Sylva. It is standard
+equipment for all flying personnel, so they may receive non-broadcast
+orders from flight leaders. He pointed to a ten-man cruiser from
+which shone the queer electric-blue glow of a speech-light.
+
+"Listen in on that," he commanded. "I'm going to call them. Tell me
+when they answer."
+
+He began to flash dots and dashes in that quaintly archaic telegraph
+alphabet Watch fliers are still required to learn. It was the Watch
+code call, sent over and over again.
+
+"They're trying to make the Martians understand," said Sylva
+unsteadily with the speech-light receiver at her ear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Flash--flash--flash.... Thorn kept on grimly. The canteen top was
+slightly convex, so the sunlight-beam would spread. Accuracy was not
+needed, therefore. He covered and uncovered it, and covered and
+uncovered it....
+
+"They answered!" said Sylva eagerly. "They said 'Thorn Hard report at
+once!'"
+
+There was a hissing, roaring noise over the hillside, where the red
+rocket-ship lay. Thorn paid no attention. He began to spell out, in
+grim satisfaction:
+
+"R-o-c-k-e-t s-h-i-p i-s--"
+
+"Look out!" gasped Sylva. "They say look out, Thorn!"
+
+Then she screamed. As Thorn swung his head around, he saw a dense mass
+of white vapor rushing over the hillside toward them. He picked Sylva
+up in his arms and ran madly....
+
+The white vapor tugged at his knees. It was a variation of a
+vortex-stream. He fought his way savagely toward higher ground. The
+white vapor reached his waist.... It reached his shoulders.... He
+slung Sylva upon his shoulder and fought more madly still to get out
+of the wide white current.... It submerged him in its stinging, bitter
+flood.... As he felt himself collapsing his last conscious thought was
+the bitter realization that the bulbous white tower had upheld
+television lenses at its top, which had watched his approach and
+inspection of the rocket-ship, and had enabled those in the red
+monster to accurately direct their spurt of gas.
+
+His next sensation was that of pain in his lungs. Something that
+smarted intolerably was being forced into his nostrils, and he battled
+against the agony it produced. And then he heard someone chuckle
+amusedly and felt the curious furry sensation of electric anesthesia
+beginning....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he came to himself again a machine was clicking erratically and
+there was the soft whine of machinery going somewhere. He opened his
+eyes and saw red all about him. He stirred, and he was free.
+Painfully, he sat up and blinked about him with streaming,
+gas-irritated eyes. He had been lying on a couch. He was in a room
+perhaps fifteen feet by twenty, of which the floor was slightly
+off-level. And everything in the room was red. Floor and walls and
+ceiling, the couch he had lain on and the furniture itself. There was
+a monstrous bulk of a man sitting comfortably in a chair on the other
+side of the room, pecking at a device resembling a writing-machine.
+
+Thorn sat still for an instant, gaining strength. Then he flung
+himself desperately across the room, his fingers curved into talons.
+
+Five feet, ten, with the slant of the floor giving him added
+impetus.... Then his muscles tightened convulsively. A wave of pure
+agony went through his body. He dropped and lay writhing on the floor,
+while the high-frequency currents of an induction-screen had their way
+with him. He was doubled into a knot by his muscles responding to the
+electric stimulus instead of his will. Sheer anguish twisted him. And
+the room filled with a hearty bellow of laughter. The monstrous
+whiskered man had turned about and was shaking with merriment.
+
+He picked up a pocket-gun from beside him and turned off a switch at
+his elbow. Thorn's muscles were freed.
+
+"Go back, my friendt," boomed the same voice that had come from a
+speaker the night before. "Go to der couch. You amuse me and you haff
+already been useful, but I shall haff no hesitation in killing you.
+You are Thorn Hardt. My name is Kreynborg. How do you do?"
+
+"Where's my friend?" demanded Thorn savagely. "Where is she?"
+
+"Der lady friendt? There!" The whiskered man pointed negligently with
+the pocket-gun. "I gafe her a bunk to slumber in."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a niche in the wall, which Thorn had not seen. Sylva was
+there, sleeping the same heavy, dreamless sleep from which Thorn
+himself had just awakened. He went to her swiftly. She was breathing
+naturally, though tears from the irritating gas still streaked her
+face and her skin seemed to be pinkened a little from the same cause.
+
+Thorn swung around. His weapons were gone, of course. The huge man
+snapped on the induction-screen switch again and put down his weapon.
+With that screen separating the room into two halves, no living thing
+could cross it without either such muscular paralysis as Thorn had
+just experienced, or death. Coils in the floor induced alternating
+currents in the flesh itself, very like those currents used for
+supposed medical effects in "medical batteries," and "shockers."
+
+"Be calm!" said Kreynborg, chuckling. "I am pleased to haff company.
+This is der loneliest spot in der Rockies. It was chosen for that
+reason. But I shall be here for maybe months, and now I shall not be
+lonely. We of der Com-Pubs haff scientific resources such as your
+fools haff nefer dreamed of, but there is no scientific substitute for
+a pretty woman."
+
+He turned again to the writing device. It clicked half a dozen times
+more, and he stopped. A strip of paper came out of it. He inserted it
+into the slot of another mechanism and switched on a standard G.C.
+phone as the paper began to feed. In seconds the room was filled with
+unearthly hoots and wails and whistles. They came from the device into
+which the paper was feeding, and they poured into the G.C.
+transmitter. They went on for nearly a minute, and ceased. Kreynborg
+shut off the transmitter.
+
+"My code," he observed comfortably, "gifing der good news to
+Stalingrad. Everything is going along beautifully. I roused der fair
+Sylva and kissed her a few times to make her scream into a record, and
+I interpolated her screamings into der last code transmission. Your
+wise men think der Martians haff vivisected her. They are
+concentrating der entire fighting force of der United Nations outside
+der dome of force. And all for a few kisses!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thorn was white with rage. His eyes burned with a terrible fury. His
+hands shook. Kreynborg chuckled again.
+
+"Oh, she is unharmed--so far. I haff not much time now. Presently der
+two of you will while away der time. But not now."
+
+He switched on the G.C. receiver and the room filled with a multitude
+of messages. Thorn sat beside Sylva, watching, watching, watching,
+while invisible machinery whined softly and Kreynborg listened
+intently to the crisp, curt official reports that came through on the
+Fighting Force band. Three combat-squadrons were on the spot now;
+One, Three and Eight. Four more were coming at fast cruising
+speed--four hundred miles an hour. One combat-squadron of the whole
+fleet alone would be left to cope with all other emergencies that
+might arise.... A television screen lighted up and Thorn could see
+where the lenses on the bulbous tower showed the air all about filled
+with fighting-planes, hovering about the dome of force like moths
+beating their wings against a screen. The strongest fighting-force in
+the world, helpless against a field of electric energy!
+
+"It is amusing," chuckled Kreynborg, looking at the screen
+complacently. "Der dome of force is a new infention. It is a
+heterodyning of one frequency upon another at a predetermined
+distance. It has all der properties of matter except mass and a limit
+of strength. There is no limit to its strength! But it cannot be made
+except in a sphere, so at first it seemed only a defensif weapon. With
+it, we could defy der United Nations to attack us. But we wished to do
+more. So I proposed a plan, and I haff der honor of carrying it out.
+If I fail, Krassin disavows me. But I shall not fail, and I shall end
+as Commissar for der continent of North America!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He looked wisely at Thorn, who sat motionless.
+
+"You keep quiet, eh, and wait for me to say something indiscreet?
+Ferry well, I tell you. We are in a sort of gold-fish globe of
+electric force. Your air fleet cannot break in. You know that! Also,
+if they were in they could not break out again. So I wait, fery
+patiently pretending to be a Martian until all your Fighting Force has
+gathered around in readiness to fight me. But I shall not fight. I
+shall simply make a new and larger gold-fish globe, outside of this
+one. And then I go out and make faces at der Fighting Force of der
+United Nations imprisoned between der two of them--and then der
+Com-Pub fleet comes ofer!"
+
+He stood up and put his hand on a door-knob.
+
+"Is it not pretty?" he asked blandly. "In two weeks der air fleet will
+begin to starfe. In three, there will be cannibalism, unless der
+Com-Pubs accept der surrender. Imagine...." He laughed. "But do not
+fear, my friendt! I haff profisions for a year. If you are amusing, I
+feed you. In any case I exchange food for kisses with der charming
+Sylva. It will be amusing to change her from a woman who screams as I
+kiss her, to one who weeps for joy. If I do not haff to kill you, you
+shall witness it!"
+
+He vanished through a doorway on the farther side of the room.
+Instantly Thorn was on his feet. The dead slumber in which Sylva was
+sunk was wholly familiar. Electric anesthesia, used not only for
+surgery, but to enforce complete rest at any chosen moment. He dragged
+her from that couch to his own. He saw her stir, and her eyes were
+instantly wide with terror. But Thorn was tearing the couch to pieces.
+Cover, pneumatic mattress.... He ripped out a loosely-fitting
+frame-piece of steel.
+
+"Quick, now," he said in a low tone, "I'm going to short the
+induction-screen. We'll get across it. Then--out the door!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She struggled to her feet, terrified, but instantly game. Thorn slid
+the rod of metal across the stretch of flooring he had previously been
+unable to cross. The induced currents in the rod amounted to a
+short-circuit of the field. The rod grew hot and its paint blistered
+smokily. Thorn leaped across with Sylva in his wake. He pointed to the
+door, and she fled through it. He seized a chair, crashed it
+frenziedly into the television screen, and had switched on the G.C.
+phone when there was a roar of fury from Kreynborg. Instantly there
+was the spitting sound of a pocket-gun and in the red room the racking
+crash of a hexynitrate pellet. Nothing can stand the instant crash of
+hexynitrate. Its concussion-wave is a single pulsation of the air. The
+cellate diaphragm of the G.C. transmitter tore across from its
+violence and Thorn cursed bitterly. There was no way, now, of
+signaling....
+
+A second racking crash as a second pellet flashed its tiny green
+flame. Kreynborg was using a pocket-gun, one of those small terrible
+weapons which shoot a projectile barely larger than the graphite of a
+lead pencil, but loaded with a fraction of a milligram of hexynitrate.
+Two hundred charges would feed automatically into the bore as the
+trigger was pressed.
+
+Thorn gazed desperately about for weapons. There was nothing in sight.
+To gain the outside world he had to pass before the doorway through
+which the bullets had come.... And suddenly Thorn seized the
+code-writer and the device which transmitted that code as a series of
+unearthly noises which the world was taking for Martian speech. He
+swung the two machines before the door in a temporary barrier.
+Whatever else Kreynborg might be willing to destroy, he would not
+shoot into them!
+
+Thorn leaped madly past the door as Kreynborg roared with rage again.
+He paused only to hurl a chair at the two essential machines, and as
+they dented and toppled, he fled through the door and away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sylva peered anxiously at him from behind a huge boulder. He raced
+toward her, expecting every second to hear the spitting of Kreynborg's
+pocket-gun. With the continuous-fire stud down, the little gun would
+shoot itself empty in forty-five seconds, during which time Kreynborg
+could play it upon him like a hose that spouted death. But Thorn had
+done the hundred yards in eleven seconds, years before. He bettered
+his record now. The first of the little green flashes came when he was
+no more than ten yards from the boulder which sheltered Sylva. The
+tiny pellet had missed him by inches. Three more, and he was safe from
+pursuit.
+
+"But we've got to get away!" he panted. "He can shoot gas here and get
+us again! He can cover four hundred yards with gas, and more than that
+with guns."
+
+They fled down a tiny water-course, midget figures in an infinity of
+earth and sky, scurrying frenziedly from a red slug-like thing that
+lay askew in a mountain valley. Far away and high above hung the
+war-planes of the United Nations. Big ones and little ones, hovering
+in hundreds about the outside of the dome of force they could neither
+penetrate nor understand.
+
+A quarter of a mile. Half a mile. There was no sign from Kreynborg or
+the rocket-ship. Thorn panted.
+
+"He can't reach us with gas, now, and it looks like he doesn't dare
+use a gun. They'd know he wasn't a Martian. At night he'll use that
+helicopter, though. If we can only make those ships see us...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They toiled on. The sun was already slanting down toward the western
+sky. At four--by the sun--Thorn could point to a huge air-dreadnaught
+hanging by lazily revolving gyros barely two miles away. He waved
+wildly, frantically, but the big ship drifted on, unseeing. The
+Fighting Force was no longer looking for Thorn and Sylva. They had
+been carried into the rocket-ship fourteen hours and more before.
+Sylva's screaming had been broadcast with the weird hoots and
+whistles the United Nations believed to be the language of
+inter-planetary invaders. The United Nations believed them dead. Now a
+watch was being kept on the rocket-ship, to be sure, but it was
+becoming a matter-of-fact sort of vigilance, pending the arrival of
+the rest of the Fighting Force and the cracking of the dome of force
+by the scientists who worked on it night and day.
+
+On level ground, Thorn and Sylva would have reached the edge of the
+dome in an hour. Here they had to climb up steep hillsides and down
+precipitous slopes. Four times they halted to make frantic efforts to
+attract the attention of some nearby ship.
+
+It was six when they came upon the rim. There was no indication of its
+existence save that three hundred yards from them boughs waved and
+leaves quivered in a breeze. Inside the dome the air was utterly
+still.
+
+"There it is!" panted Thorn.
+
+Wearied and worn out as they were, they hurried forward, and abruptly
+there was something which impeded their movements. They could reach
+their hands into the impalpable barrier. For one foot, two, or even
+three. But an intolerable pressure thrust them back. Thorn seized a
+sapling and ran at the barrier as if with a spear. It went five feet
+into the invisible resistance and stopped, shot back out as if flung
+back by a jet of compressed air.
+
+"He told the truth," groaned Thorn. "We can't get out!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Long shadows were already reaching out from the mountains. Darkness
+began to creep upward among the valleys. Far, far away a compact dark
+cloud appeared, a combat-squadron. It swept toward the dome and
+dissociated into a myriad specks which were aircraft. The fliers
+already swirling about the invisible dome drew aside to leave a
+quadrant clear, and Combat-Squadron Seven merged with the rest, making
+the pattern of dancing specks markedly denser.
+
+"With a fire," said Thorn desperately, "they'll come! Of course! But
+Kreynborg took my lighter!"
+
+Sylva said hopefully:
+
+"Don't you know some way? Rubbing sticks together?"
+
+"I don't," admitted Thorn grimly, "but I've got to try to invent one.
+While I'm at it, you watch for fliers."
+
+He searched for dry wood. He rubbed sticks together. They grew warm,
+but not enough to smoke, much less to catch. He muttered, "A drill,
+that's the idea. All the friction in one spot." He tugged at the ring
+under his lapel and the parachute fastened into his uniform collar
+shot out in a billowing mass of gossamer silk, flung out by the
+powerful elastics designed to make its opening certain. Savagely, he
+tore at the shrouds and had a stout cord. He made a drill and revolved
+it as fast as he could with the cord....
+
+A second dark cloud swept forward in the gathering dusk and merged
+into the mass of fliers about the dome. Five minutes later, a third.
+Dense as the air-traffic was, riding-lights were necessary. They began
+to appear in the deepening twilight. It seemed as if all the sky were
+alight with fireflies, whirling and swirling and fluttering here and
+there. But then the fire-drill began to emit a tiny wisp of smoke.
+Thorn worked furiously. Then a tiny flickering flame appeared, which
+he nursed with a desperate solicitude. Then a larger flame. Then a
+roaring blaze! It could not be missed! A fire within the dome could
+not fail to be noted and examined instantly!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A searchlight beam fell upon them, illuminating him in a pitiless
+glare. Thorn waved his arms frantically. He had nothing with which to
+signal save his body. He flung his arms wide, and up, and wide again,
+in an improvised adaption of the telegraphic alphabet to
+gesticulation. He sent the watch call over and over again....
+
+A little cloud of riding-lights swept toward the dome from an infinite
+distance away. Darkness was falling so swiftly that they were still
+merely specks of light as they swept up to and seemed to melt into the
+swirling, swooping mass of fliers about the dome....
+
+Cold sweat was standing out on Thorn's face, despite the violence of
+his exertions. He was even praying a little.... And suddenly the
+searchlight beam flickered a welcome answer:
+
+"W-e u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d. R-e-p-o-r-t."
+
+Thorn flung his arms about madly, sending:
+
+"G-e-t a-w-a-y q-u-i-c-k. C-o-m P-u-b-s h-e-r-e. W-i-l-l m-a-k-e
+o-t-h-e-r d-o-m-e o-u-t-s-i-d-e t-o t-r-a-p y-o-u."
+
+The searchlight beam upon him flickered an acknowledgment. He knew
+what was happening after that. The G.C. phones would flash the warning
+to every ship, and every ship would dash madly for safety.... A
+sudden, concerted quiver seemed to go over the whirling maze of lights
+aloft. A swift, simultaneous movement of every ship in flight. Thorn
+breathed an agonized prayer....
+
+There was a flash of blue light. For one fractional part of a second
+the stars and skies were blotted out. There was a dome of flame above
+him and all about the world, of bright blue flame which instantly
+was--and instantly was not!
+
+Then there was a ghastly blast of green. Hexynitrate going off. In
+this glare were silhouetted a myriad motes in flight. But there was no
+noise. A second flare.... And then Thorn Hard, groaning, saw flash
+after flash after flash of green. Monster explosions. Colossal
+explosions. Terrific detonations which were utterly soundless, as the
+ships of the Fighting Force, in flight from the menace of which Thorn
+had warned them, crashed into an invisible barrier and exploded
+without cracking it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was August 24th, 2037. For three days, now, seven of the eight
+great combat-squadrons of the United Nations Fighting Forces had been
+prisoners inside a monstrous transparent dome of force. There was a
+financial panic of unprecedented proportions in the great financial
+districts of New York and London and Paris. Martial law was in force
+in Chicago, in Prague, in Madrid, and in Buenos Aires. The Com-Pubs
+were preparing an ultimatum to be delivered to the government of the
+United Nations. Thorn and Sylva were hunted fugitives within the inner
+dome of force, which protected the red rocket-ship from the seven
+combat squadrons it had imprisoned. Newspaper vendor-units were
+shrieking, "Air Fleet Still Trapped!" and a prominent American
+politician was promising his constituents that if a foreign nation
+dared invade the sacred territories of the United Nations, a million
+embattled private planes would take the air. And he seemed not even
+trying to be humorous! Scientists were wringing their hands in utter
+helplessness before the incredible resistance of the dome. It had been
+determined that the dome was a force-field which caused particles
+charged with positive electricity to attempt to move in a right-hand
+direction about the source of the field, and particles charged with
+negative electricity to attempt to move in a left-hand direction. The
+result was that any effort to thrust an external object into the field
+of force was an attempt to tear the negatively charged electrons of
+every atom of that substance, free from the positively charged protons
+of nuclei. An object could only be passed through the field of force
+if it ceased to exist as matter--which was not an especially helpful
+discovery. And--Thorn Hard and Sylva were still hunted fugitives
+inside the inner dome.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was an hour high when the helicopter appeared to hunt for them
+by day. After the first time they had never dared light a fire,
+because Kreynborg in the helicopter searched the hills for a glow of
+light. But this day he came searching for them by day. Thorn had
+speared a fish for Sylva with a stick he had sharpened by rubbing it
+on a crumbling rock. He was working discouragedly on a little
+contrivance made out of a forked stick and the elastic from his
+parachute-pack. He was haggard and worn and desperate. Sylva was
+beginning to look like a hunted wild thing.
+
+Two hundred yards from them the most formidable fighting force the
+world had ever seen littered the earth with gossamer-seeming cellate
+wings and streamlined bodies at all angles to each other. And it was
+completely useless. The least of the weapons of the air-fleet would
+have been a godsend to Thorn and Sylva. To have had one ship, even the
+smallest, where they were would have been a godsend to the fleet. But
+two hundred yards, with the dome of force between, made the fleet just
+exactly as much protection for Sylva as if it had been a million miles
+away.
+
+The droning hum of the helicopter came across the broken ground. Now
+louder, now momentarily muted, its moments of loudness grew steadily
+more strong. It was coming nearer. Thorn gripped his spear in an
+instinctive, utterly futile gesture of defense. Sylva touched his
+hand.
+
+"We'd better hide."
+
+They hid. Thick brush concealed them utterly. The helicopter went
+slowly overhead, and they saw Kreynborg gazing down at the earth below
+him. Nearly overhead he paused. And suddenly Thorn groaned under his
+breath.
+
+"It's the flagship!" he whispered hoarsely to Sylva. "Oh, what fools
+we were! The flagship! He knows the General would have brought it to
+earth opposite us, to question us!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The flagship was nearly opposite. To find the flagship was more or
+less to find where Thorn and Sylva hid. But they had not realized it
+until now.
+
+The speaker in the helicopter boomed above their heads.
+
+"Ah, my friends! I think you hear me. Answer me. I haff an offer to
+make."
+
+Shivering, Sylva pressed close to Thorn.
+
+"Der Com-Pub fleet is on der way," said Kreynborg, chuckling.
+"Sefen-eights of der United Nations fleet is just outside. You haff
+observed it. In six hours der Com-Pub fleet begins der conquest of der
+country and der execution of persons most antagonistic to our regime.
+But I haff still weary weeks of keeping der air fleet prisoner, until
+its personnel iss too weak from starfation to offer resistance to our
+soldiers. So I make der offer. Come and while away der weary hours for
+me, and I except you both from der executions I shall findt it
+necessary to decree. Refuse, and I get you anyhow, and you will
+regret your refusal fery much."
+
+Thorn's teeth ground together. Sylva pressed close to him.
+
+"Don't let him get me, Thorn," she panted hysterically. "Don't let him
+get me...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The droning, monotonous hum of the helicopter over their heads
+continued. The little flying-machine was motionless. The air was
+still. There was no other sound in the world.
+
+Silence, save for the droning hum of the helicopter. Then something
+dropped. It went off with an inadequate sort of an explosion and a
+cloud of misty white vapor reared upward on a hillside and began to
+settle slowly, spreading out.... The helicopter moved and other things
+dropped, making a pattern....
+
+"The air's still," said Thorn quite grimly. "That stuff seems to be
+heavier than air. It's flowing downhill, toward the dome-wall. It will
+be here in five minutes. We've got to move."
+
+Sylva seemed to be stricken with terror. He helped her to her feet.
+They began to move toward higher ground. They moved with infinite
+caution. In the utter silence of this inner dome, even the rustling of
+a leaf might betray them.
+
+It was the presence of the air fleet within clear view that made the
+thing so horrible. The defenders of a nation were watching the enemy
+of a nation, and they were helpless to offer battle. The helicopter
+hummed and droned, and Kreynborg grinned and searched the earth below
+him for a sign of the man and girl who had been the only danger to his
+plan and now were unarmed fugitives. And there were four
+air-dreadnaughts in plain sight and five thousand men watching, and
+Kreynborg hunted, for sport, a comrade of the five thousand men and a
+woman every one of them would have risked or sacrificed his life to
+protect.
+
+He seemed certain that they were below him. Presently he dropped
+another gas-bomb, and another. And then Sylva stumbled and caught at
+something, and there was a crashing sound as a sapling wavered in her
+grasp.... And Thorn picked her up and fled madly. But billowing white
+vapor spouted upward before him. He dodged it, and the helicopter was
+just overhead and more smoke spouted, and more, and more.... They were
+hemmed in, and Sylva clung close to Thorn and sobbed....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five thousand men, in a thousand grounded aircraft, shouted curses
+that made no sound. They waved weapons that were utterly futile. They
+were as impotent as so many ghosts. Their voices made not even the
+half-heard whisper one may attribute to a phantom.
+
+The fog-vapor closed over Thorn and Sylva as Kreynborg grinned
+mockingly at the raging men without the dome of force. He swept the
+helicopter to a position above the last view of Thorn and Sylva, and
+the downward-beating screws swept away the foggy gas. Thorn and Sylva
+lay motionless, though Thorn had instinctively placed himself in a
+position of defense above her.
+
+The Fighting Force of the United Nations watched, raging, while
+Kreynborg descended deliberately into the area the helicopter-screws
+kept clear. While he searched Thorn's pockets reflectively and found
+nothing more deadly than small pebbles which might strike sparks, and
+a small forked stick. While he grinned mockingly at the raging armed
+men and made triumphant gesticulations before carrying Sylva's limp
+figure to the helicopter. While the little ship rose and swept away
+toward the rocket-plane.
+
+It descended and was lost to view. Thorn lay motionless on the earth.
+Seven-eighths of the fighting force of the United Nations was
+imprisoned within the space between two domes of force no matter could
+penetrate. A ring two miles across and ten miles in outer diameter
+held the whole fleet of the United Nations paralyzed.
+
+There was sheer panic through the Americas and Europe and the few
+outlying possessions of the United Nations.... And it was at this
+time, with a great fleet already half-way across the Pacific, that the
+Com-Pubs declared war in a fine gesture of ironic politeness. It was
+within half an hour of this time that the Seventh Combat Squadron--the
+only one left unimprisoned--dived down from fifty thousand feet into
+the middle of the Com-Pub fleet and went out of existence in twenty
+minutes of such carnage as is still stuff for epics.
+
+The Seventh Squadron died, but with it died not less than three times
+as many of the foe. And then the Com-Pub fleet came on. Most of the
+original force remained; surely enough to devastate an undefended
+nation, to shatter its cities and butcher its people; to slaughter its
+men and enslave its women and leave a shambles and smoking ash-heaps
+where the very backbone of resistance to the red flag had been.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was twenty minutes before Thorn Hard stirred. His lungs seemed on
+fire. His limbs seemed lead. His head reeled and rocked. He staggered
+to his feet and stood there swaying dully. A vivid light, brighter
+than the sunshine, played upon him from the flagship of the fleet
+which now was helpless to defend its nation. Thorn's befogged brain
+stirred dazedly as the message came.
+
+"Com-Pub fleet on way. Seventh Combat-Squadron wiped out. Nation
+defenseless. You are only hope. For God's sake try something.
+Anything."
+
+Thorn roused himself by a terrific effort. He managed to ask a
+question by exhausted gestures in the Watch visual alphabet.
+
+"Kreynborg took her to rocket-ship," came the answer. "She recovered
+consciousness before being carried inside."
+
+And Thorn, reeling on his feet and unarmed and alone, turned and went
+staggering up a hillside toward the rocket-ship's position. He could
+only expect to be killed. He could not even hope for anything more
+than to ensure that Sylva, also, die mercifully. Behind him he left an
+unarmed nation awaiting devastation, with a mighty air fleet speeding
+toward it at six hundred miles an hour.
+
+As he went, though, some strength came to him. The fury of his toil
+forced him to breathe deeply, cleansing his lungs of the stupefying
+gas which, because it was visible as a vapor, had been carried in the
+rocket-ship. A visible gas was, of course, more consistent with the
+early pretense that the rocket-ship bore invaders from another planet.
+And Thorn became drenched with sweat, which aided in the excretion of
+the poisonous stuff. His brain cleared, and he recognized despair and
+discounted it and began to plan grimly to make the most of an
+infinitesimal chance. The chance was simply that Kreynborg had
+ransacked his pockets and ignored a little forked stick.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Scrambling up a steep hillside with his face hardened into granite,
+Thorn drew that from his pocket again. Crossing a hill-top, he
+stripped off his coat.
+
+He traveled at the highest speed he could maintain, though it seemed
+painfully deliberate. An hour after he had started, he was picking up
+small round pebbles wherever he saw them in his path. By the time the
+tall, bulbous tower was in sight he had picked up probably sixty such
+pebbles, but no more than ten of them remained in his pockets. They,
+though, were smooth and round and even, perhaps an inch in diameter,
+and all very nearly the same size. And he carried a club in his hand.
+
+He went down the last slope openly. The television lenses on the tower
+would have picked him out in any case, if Kreynborg had repaired the
+screen. He went boldly up to the rocket-ship.
+
+"Kreynborg!" he called. "Kreynborg!"
+
+He felt himself being surveyed. A door came open. Kreynborg stood
+chuckling at him with a pocket-gun in his hand.
+
+"Ha! Just in time, my friend! I haff been fery busy. Der Com-Pub fleet
+is just due to pass in refiew abofe der welcoming United Nations
+combat-squadrons. I haff been gifing them last-minute information and
+assurance that der domes of force are solid and can hold forefer. I
+haff a few minutes to spare, which I had intended to defote to der
+fair Sylva. But--what do you wish?"
+
+"I'm offering you a bribe," said Thorn, his face a mask. "A billion
+dollars and immunity to cut off the outer dome of force."
+
+Kreynborg grinned at him.
+
+"It is too late. Besides being a traitor, I would be assassinated
+instantly. Also, I shall be Commissar for North America anyhow."
+
+"Two billion," said Thorn without expression.
+
+"No," said Kreynborg amusedly. "Throw away der club. I shall amuse
+myself with you, Thorn Hardt. You shall watch der progress of romance
+between me and Sylva. Throw away der club!"
+
+The pocket-gun came up. Thorn threw away the club.
+
+"What do you want, if two billion's not enough?"
+
+"Amusement," said Kreynborg jovially. "I shall be bored in this inner
+dome, waiting for der air fleet to starfe. I wish amusement. And I
+shall get it. Come inside!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He backed away from the door, his gun trained on Thorn. And Thorn saw
+that the continuous-fire stud was down. He walked composedly into the
+red room in which he had once awakened. Sylva gave a little choked cry
+at sight of him. She was standing, desperately defiant, on the other
+side of the induction-screen area on the floor. There was a scorched
+place on the floor where Thorn had shorted that screen and the bar of
+metal had grown red-hot. Kreynborg threw the switch and motioned Thorn
+to her.
+
+"I do not bother to search you for weapons," he said dryly. "I did it
+so short a time ago. And you had only a club...."
+
+Thorn walked stiffly beside Sylva. She put out a shaking hand and
+touched him. Kreynborg threw the switch back again.
+
+"Der screen is on," he chuckled. "Console each other, children. I am
+glad you came, Thorn Hardt. We watch der grand refiew of der Com-Pub
+fleet. Then I turn a little infention of mine upon you. It is a
+heat-ray of fery limited range. It will be my method of wooing der
+fair Sylva. When she sees you in torment, she kisses me sweetly for
+der prifilege of stopping der heat-ray. I count upon you, my friend,
+to plead with her to grant me der most extrafagant of concessions,
+when der heat-ray is searing der flesh from your bones. I feel that
+she is soft-hearted enough to oblige you. Yes?"
+
+He touched a button and the repaired television-screen lighted up.
+All the dome of mountains and sky was visible in it. There were
+dancing motes in sight, which were aircraft.
+
+"I haff remofed all metal-work from that side of der room," added
+Kreynborg comfortably, "so I can dare to turn my back. You cannot
+short der induction-screen again. That was clefer. But you face a
+scientist, Thorn Hardt. You haff lost."
+
+A sudden surge of flying craft appeared on the television screen. The
+grounded fleet of the United Nations was taking to the air again. In
+the narrow, two-mile strip between the two domes of force it swirled
+up and up.... Kreynborg frowned.
+
+"Now, what is der idea of that?" he demanded. He moved closer to the
+screen. The pocket-gun was left behind, five feet from his
+finger-tips. "Thorn Hardt, you will explain it!"
+
+"They hope," said Thorn grimly, "your fleet can make gaps in the dome
+to shoot through. If so, they'll go out through those gaps and fight."
+
+"Foolish!" said Kreynborg blandly. "Der only weapon we haff to use is
+der normal metabolism of der human system. Hunger!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thorn reached into his pocket. Kreynborg was regarding the screen
+absorbedly. Through the haze of flying dots which was the United
+Nations fleet, a darkening spot to westward became visible. It drew
+nearer and grew larger. It was dense. It was huge. It was deadly. It
+was the Com-Pub battle-fleet, nearly equal to the imprisoned ships in
+number. It swept up to view its helpless enemy. It came close, so
+every man could see their only possible antagonists rendered impotent.
+
+Such a maneuver was really necessary, when you think of it. The
+Com-Pub fleet had encountered one combat-squadron of the United
+Nations fleet, and that one squadron, dying, had carried down three
+times its number of enemies. It was necessary to show the Com-Pub
+personnel the rest of their enemies imprisoned, in order to hearten
+them for the butchery of civilians before them.
+
+Kreynborg guffawed as the Com-Pub fleet made its mocking circuit of
+the invisible dome. And Thorn raised his head.
+
+"Kreynborg!" he said grimly. "Look!"
+
+There was something in his tone which made Kreynborg turn. And Thorn
+held a little forked stick in his hand.
+
+"Turn off the induction-screen, or I kill you!"
+
+Kreynborg looked at him and chuckled.
+
+"It is bluff, my friend," he said dryly. "I haff seen many weapons. I
+am a scientist! You play der game of poker. You try a bluff! But I
+answer you with der heat-ray!"
+
+He moved his great bulk, and Thorn released his left hand. There was a
+sudden crack on Kreynborg's side of the room. A pebble a little over
+an inch in diameter fell to the floor. Kreynborg wavered, and toppled
+and fell. Three times more, his face merciless, Thorn drew back his
+arm, and three times Kreynborg's head jerked slightly. Then Thorn
+faced the panel on which the induction-screen switch was placed.
+Several times he thrust his hand through the screen and abruptly drew
+it back with pain, in an attempt to throw the switch. At last he was
+successful, and now he walked calmly across the room and bent over the
+motionless Kreynborg.
+
+"Skull fractured," he said grimly. "All right, Sylva."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He went through the narrow doorway beyond, picking up the pocket-gun
+as he went. There was a noise of whining machinery. Now Thorn was
+emptying pellets into the mechanism that controlled the dome of force.
+There was a crashing of glass. It stopped. There were blows and
+thumpings. That noise stopped too.
+
+Thorn came back, his eyes glowing. He flung open the outer door of the
+rocket-ship, and Sylva went to him.
+
+He pointed.
+
+Far away, the Fighting Force of the United Nations was swirling
+upward. Like smoke from a campfire or winged ants from a tree-stump,
+they went up in a colossal, twisting spiral. Beyond the domes and
+above them. The domes existed no longer. Up and up, and up.... And
+then they swooped down upon the suddenly fleeing enemy. Vengefully,
+savagely, with all the fury of men avenging not only what they have
+suffered, but also what they have feared, the combat-squadrons of the
+United Nations fell upon the invaders. Green hexynitrate explosions
+lighted up the sky. Ear-cracking detonations reverberated among the
+mountains. There was battle there, and death and carnage and utter
+destruction. The roar of combat filled the universe.
+
+Thorn closed the door and looked down at Kreynborg, who breathed
+stentorously, his mouth foolishly open.
+
+"Our men will be back for us," he said shortly. "We needn't worry."
+Then he said, "Huh! He called himself a scientist, and he didn't know
+a sling-shot when he saw one!"
+
+But then Thorn Hard dropped a weapon made of a forked stick and strong
+elastic from his chute-pack, and caught Sylva hungrily in his arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Invasion, by William Fitzgerald Jenkins
+
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+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Invasion, by William Fitzgerald Jenkins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Invasion
+
+Author: William Fitzgerald Jenkins
+
+Release Date: July 19, 2009 [EBook #29455]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INVASION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<p class="center">This etext was produced from Astounding Stories March 1933. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img class="img1" src="images/image_001.jpg" width="500" height="490" alt="He picked Sylva up in his arms and ran madly." />
+<span class="caption">He picked Sylva up in his arms and ran madly.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>Invasion</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>By Murray Leinster</h2>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="sidenote">The whole fighting fleet of the United Nations is caught in
+Kreynborg's marvelous, unique trap.</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="f1">I</span>t was August 19, 2037. The United Nations was just fifty years old.
+Televisors were still monochromatic. The Nidics had just won the World
+Series in Prague. Com-Pub observatories were publishing elaborate
+figures on moving specks in space which they considered to be Martian
+spaceships on their way to Earth, but which United Nations astronomers
+could not discover at all. Women were using gilt lipsticks that year.
+Heat-induction motors were still considered efficient prime movers.</p>
+
+<p>Thorn Hard was a high-level flier for the Pacific Watch. Bathyletis
+was the most prominent of nationally advertised diseases, and was to
+be cured by RO-17, "The Foundation of Personal Charm." Somebody named
+Nirdlinger was President of the United Nations, and somebody else
+named Krassin was Commissar of Commissars for the Com-Pubs. Newspapers
+were printing flat pictures in three colors only, and deploring the
+high cost of stereoscopic plates. And ... Thorn Hard was a high-level
+flier for the Pacific Watch.</p>
+
+<p>That is the essential point, of course&mdash;Thorn Hard's work with the
+Watch. His job was, officially, hanging somewhere above the
+twenty-thousand-foot level with his detector-screens out, listening
+for unauthorized traffic. And, the normal state of affairs between the
+Com-Pubs and the United Nations being one of highly armed truce,
+"unauthorized traffic" meant nothing more or less than spies.</p>
+
+<p>But on August 19th, 2037, Thorn Hard was off duty. Decidedly so. He
+was sitting on top of Mount Wendel, in the Rockies; he had a
+ravishingly pretty girl sitting on the same rock with him, and he was
+looking at the sunset. The plane behind him was an official Watch
+plane, which civilians are never supposed to catch a glimpse of. It
+had brought Thorn Hard and Sylva West to this spot. It waited now,
+half-hidden by a spur of age-eroded rock, to take them back to
+civilization again. Its G.C. (General Communication) phone muttered
+occasionally like the voice of conscience.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img class="img1" src="images/image_002.jpg" width="500" height="477" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>The colors of the mountain changed and blended. The sky to westward
+was a glory of a myriad colors. Man and girl, high above the world,
+sat with the rosy glow of dying sunlight in their faces and watched
+the colors fade and shift into other colors and patterns even more
+exquisite. Their hands touched. They looked at each other. They
+smiled queerly, as people smile who are in love or otherwise not quite
+sane. They moved inevitably closer....</p>
+
+<p>And then the G.C. phone barked raucously:</p>
+
+<p>"All Watch planes attention! Urgent! Extreme high-level traffic
+reported seven-ten line bound due east, speed over one thousand. All
+Watch planes put out all detectors and use extra vigilance. Note: the
+speed, course, and time of report of this traffic checks with Com-Pub
+observations of moving objects approaching Earth from Mars. This
+possibility should be considered before opening fire."</p>
+
+<p>Thorn Hard stiffened all over. He got up and swung down to the stubby
+little ship with its gossamer-like wings of cellate. He touched the
+report button.</p>
+
+<p>"Plane 257-A reporting seven-ten line. Thorn Hard flying. On Mount
+Wendel, on leave. Orders?"</p>
+
+<p>He was throwing on the screens even as he reported. And the vertical
+detector began to whistle shrilly. His eyes darted to the dial, and he
+spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"Added report. Detector shows traffic approaching, bound due east,
+seven hundred miles an hour, high altitude.... Correction; six-fifty
+miles. Correction; six hundred." He paused. "Traffic is decelerating
+rapidly. I think, sir, this is the reported ship."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">A</span>nd then there was a barely audible whining noise high in the air to
+the west. It grew in volume and changed in pitch. From a whine it
+became a scream. From a scream it rose to a shriek. Something
+monstrous and red glittered in the dying sunlight. It was huge. It was
+of no design ever known on earth. Wings supported it, but they were
+obscured by the blasts of forward rockets checking its speed.</p>
+
+<p>It was dropping rapidly. Then lifting-rockets spouted flame to keep it
+from too rapid a descent. It cleared a mountain-peak by a bare two
+hundred feet, some two miles to the south. It was a hundred-odd feet
+in length. It was ungainly in shape, monstrous in conformation.
+Colossal rocket-tubes behind it now barely trickled vaporous
+discharges. It cleared the mountain-top, went heavily on in a steep
+glide downward, and vanished behind a mountain-flank. Presently the
+thin mountain air brought the echoed sound of its landing, of
+rapid-fire explosions of rocket-tubes, and then silence.</p>
+
+<p>Thorn Hard was snapping swift, staccato sentences into the
+report-transmitter. Describing the clumsy glittering monster, its
+motion; its wings; its method of propulsion. It seemed somehow
+familiar despite its strangeness. He said so.</p>
+
+<p>Then a vivid blue flame licked all about the rim of the world and was
+gone. Simultaneously the G.C. speaker crashed explosively and went
+dead. Thorn went on grimly, switching in the spare.</p>
+
+<p>"A very violent electrical discharge went out from it then. A blue
+light seemed to flash all around the horizon at no great distance and
+my speaker blew out. I have turned on the spare. I do not know whether
+my sender is functioning&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The spare speaker cut in abruptly at that moment:</p>
+
+<p>"It is. Stay where you are and observe. A squadron is coming."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>hen the voice broke off, because a new sound was coming from the
+speaker. It was a voice that was unhuman and queerly horrible and
+somehow machine-like. Hoots and howls and whistles came from the
+speaker. Wailing sounds. Ghostly noises, devoid of consonants but
+broadcast on a wave-length close to the G.C. band and therefore
+produced by intelligence, though unintelligible. The unhuman hoots and
+wails and whistles came through for nearly a minute, and stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay on duty!" snapped the G.C. speaker. "That's no language known on
+earth. Those are Martians!"</p>
+
+<p>Thorn looked up to see Sylva standing by the Watch-plane door. Her
+face was pale in the growing darkness outside.</p>
+
+<p>"Beginning duty sir," said Thorn steadily, "I report that I have with
+me Miss Sylva West, my fianc&eacute;e, in violation of regulations. I ask
+that her family be notified."</p>
+
+<p>He snapped off the lights and went with her. The red rocket-ship had
+landed in the very next valley. There was a glare there, which wavered
+and flickered and died away.</p>
+
+<p>"Martians!" said Thorn in fine irony. "We'll see when the Watch planes
+come! My guess is Com-Pubs, using a searchlight! Nervy!"</p>
+
+<p>The glare vanished. There was only silence, a curiously complete and
+deadly silence. And Thorn said, suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>"There's no wind!"</p>
+
+<p>There was not. Not a breath of air. The mountains were uncannily
+quiet. The air was impossibly still, for a mountain-top. Ten minutes
+went by. Twenty. The detector-whistles shrilled.</p>
+
+<p>"There's the Watch," said Thorn in satisfaction. "Now we'll see!"</p>
+
+<p>And then, abruptly, there was a lurid flash in the sky to northward.
+Two thousand feet up and a mile away, the unearthly green blaze of a
+hexynitrate explosion lit the whole earth with unbearable brilliance.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop your ears!" snapped Thorn.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>he racking concussion-wave of hexynitrate will break human eardrums
+at an incredible distance. But no sound came, though the seconds went
+by.... Then, two miles away, there was a second gigantic flash....
+Then a third.... But there was no sound at all. The quiet of the hills
+remained unbroken, though Thorn knew that such cataclysmic detonations
+should be audible at twenty miles or more. Then lights flashed on
+above. Two&mdash;three&mdash;six of them. They wavered all about, darting here
+and there.... Then one of the flying searchlights vanished utterly in
+a fourth terrific flash of green.</p>
+
+<p>"The watch planes are going up!" said Thorn dazedly. "Blowing up! And
+we can't hear the explosions!"</p>
+
+<p>Behind him the G.C. speaker barked his call. He raced to get its
+message.</p>
+
+<p>"The Watch planes we sent to join you," said a curt voice he
+recognized as that of the Commanding General of the United Nations,
+"have located an invisible barrier by their sonic altimeters. Four of
+them seem to have rammed it and exploded without destroying it. What
+have you to report?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen the flashes, sir," said Thorn unsteadily, "but they made no
+noise. And there's no wind, sir. Not a breath since the blue flash I
+reported."</p>
+
+<p>A pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Your statement bears out their report," said the G.C. speaker
+harshly. "The barrier seems to be hemispherical. No such barrier is
+known on Earth. These must be Martians, as the Com-Pubs said. You will
+wait until morning and try to make peaceful contact with them. This
+barrier may be merely a precaution on their part. You will try to
+convince them that we wish to be friendly."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe they're Martians, sir&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Sylva came racing to the door of the plane.</p>
+
+<p>"Thorn! Something's coming! I hear it droning!"</p>
+
+<p>Thorn himself heard a dull droning noise in the air, coming toward
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Occupants of the rocket-ship, sir," he said grimly, "seem to be
+approaching. Orders?"</p>
+
+<p>"Evacuate the ship," snapped the G.C. phone. "Let them examine it.
+They will understand how we communicate and prepare to receive and
+exchange messages. If they seem friendly, make contact at once."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>horn made swift certain movements and dived for the door. He seized
+Sylva and fled for the darkness below the plane. He was taking a
+desperate risk of falling down the mountain-slopes. The droning drew
+near. It passed directly overhead. Then there was a flash and a
+deafening report. A beam of light appeared aloft. It searched for and
+found Thorn's plane, now a wreck. Flash after flash and explosion
+after explosion followed....</p>
+
+<p>They stopped. Their echoes rolled and reverberated among the hills.
+There was a hollow, tremendous intensification of the echoes aloft as
+if a dome of some solid substance had reflected back the sound. Slowly
+the rollings died away. Then a voice boomed through a speaker
+overhead, and despite his suspicions Thorn felt a queer surprise. It
+was a human voice, a man's voice, full of a horrible amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"Thorn Hardt! Thorn Hardt! Where are you?" Thorn did not move or
+reply. "If I haff not killed you, you hear me," the voice chuckled.
+"Come to see me, Thorn Hardt. Der dome of force iss big, yes, but you
+can no more get out than your friends can get in. And now I haff
+destroyed your phones so you can no longer chat with them. Come and
+see me, Thorn Hardt, so I will not be bored. We will discuss der
+Com-Pubs. And bring der lady friend. You may play der chaperon!"</p>
+
+<p>The voice laughed. It was not pleasant laughter. And the humming drone
+in the air rose and dwindled. It moved away from the mountain-top. It
+lessened and lessened until it was inaudible. Then there was dead
+silence again.</p>
+
+<p>"By his accent, he's a Baltic Russian," said Thorn very grimly in the
+darkness. "Which means Com-Pubs, not Martians, though we're the only
+people who realize it; and they're starting a war! And we, Sylva, must
+warn our people. How are we going to do it?"</p>
+
+<p>She pressed his hand confidently, but it did not look promising. Thorn
+Hard was on foot, without a transmitter, armed only with his
+belt-weapons and with a girl to look after, and moreover imprisoned in
+a colossal dome of force which hexynitrate had failed to crack....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">I</span>t was August 20, 2037. There was a triple murder in Paris which was
+rumored to be the work of a Com-Pub spy, though the murderer's
+unquestionably Gallic touches made the rumor dubious. Newspaper
+vendor-units were screaming raucously, "Martians land in Colorado!"
+and the newspapers themselves printed colored-photos of hastily
+improvised models in their accounts of the landing of a blood-red
+rocket-ship in the widest part of the Rockies. The inter-continental
+tennis matches reached their semi-finals in Havana, Cuba. Thorn Hard
+had not reported to Watch headquarters in twelve hours. Quadruplets
+were born in Des Moines, Iowa. Krassin, Commissar of Commissars of the
+Com-Pubs, made a diplomatic inquiry about the rumors that a Martian
+space-ship had landed in North America. He asked that Com-Pub
+scientists be permitted to join in the questioning and examination of
+the Martian visitors. The most famous European screen actress landed
+from the morning Trans-Atlantic plane with her hair dyed a light
+lavender, and beauty-shops throughout the country placed rush orders
+for dye to take care of the demand for lavender hair which would begin
+by mid-afternoon. The heavy-weight champion of the United Nations was
+warned that his title would be forfeited if he further dodged a fight
+with his most promising contender. And ... Thorn Hard had not reported
+to Watch headquarters in twelve hours.</p>
+
+<p>He was, as a matter of fact, cautiously parting some bushes to peer
+past a mountain-flank at the red rocket-ship. Sylva West lay on the
+ground behind him. Both of them weary to the point of exhaustion. They
+had started their descent from Mount Wendel at the first gray streak
+of dawn in the east. They had toiled painfully across the broken
+country between, to this point of vantage. Now Thorn looked down upon
+the rocket-ship.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">I</span>t lay a little askew upon the ground, seeming to be partly buried in
+the earth. A hundred feet and more in length, it was even more
+obviously a monstrosity as he looked at it in the bright light of day.
+But now it was not alone. Beside it a white tower reared upward. Pure
+white and glistening in the sunshine, a bulging, uneven shaft rose a
+hundred feet sheer. It looked as solid as marble. Its purpose was
+unguessable. There was a huge, fan-shaped space where the vegetation
+about the rocket-ship was colored a vivid red. In air-photos, the
+rocket-ship would look remarkably like something from another planet.
+But nearby, Thorn could see a lazy trickle of fuel-fumes from a
+port-pipe on one side of the monster....</p>
+
+<p>"That tower is nothing but cellate foam, which hardens. And Sylva!
+See?"</p>
+
+<p>She came cautiously through the brushwood and looked down. She
+shivered a little. From here they could see beneath the bows of the
+rocket-ship. And there was a name there, in the Cyrillic alphabet
+which was the official written language of the Com-Pubs. Here, on
+United Nations soil, it was insolent. It boasted that the red ship
+came, not from an alien planet, but from a nation more alien still to
+all the United Nations stood for. The Com-Pubs&mdash;the Union of Communist
+Republics&mdash;were neither communistic nor republics, but they were much
+more dangerous to the United Nations than any mere Martians would have
+been.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have some heavy ships here to investigate, soon," said Thorn
+grimly. "Then I'll signal!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">H</span>e flung back his head. High up and far away, beyond that invisible
+barrier against which Watch-planes had flung themselves in vain, there
+were tiny motes in mid-air. These were Watch planes too, hovering
+outside the obstacle they could not see, but which even hexynitrate
+bombs could not break through. And very far away indeed there was a
+swiftly-moving small dark cloud. As Thorn watched, that cloud drew
+close. As his eyes glowed, it resolved itself into its component
+specks. Small, two-man patrol-scouts. Larger, ten-man cruisers of the
+air. Huge, massive dreadnaughts of the blue. A complete
+combat-squadron of the United Nations Fighting Forces was sweeping to
+position about the dome of force above the rocket-ship.</p>
+
+<p>The scouts swept forward in a tiny, whirling cloud. They sheered away
+from something invisible. One of them dropped a smoking object. It
+emitted a vast cloud of paper, which the wind caught and swept away,
+and suddenly wrapped about a definite section of an arc. More and more
+of the tiny smoke-bombs released their masses of cloudlike stuff. In
+mid-air a dome began to take form, outlined by the trailing streaks of
+gray. It began to be more definitely traced by interlinings. An aerial
+lattice spread about a portion of a six-mile hemisphere. The top was
+fifteen thousand feet above the rocket-ship, twenty-five thousand feet
+from sea-level, as high as Mount Everest itself.</p>
+
+<p>Tiny motes hovered even there, where the smallest of visible specks
+was a ten-man cruiser. And one of the biggest of the aircraft came
+gingerly up to the very inner edge of the lattice-work of fog and hung
+motionless, holding itself aloft by powerful helicopter screws. Men
+were working from a trailing stage&mdash;scientists examining the barrier
+even hexynitrate would not break down.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>horn set to work. He had come toilsomely to the neighborhood of the
+rocket-ship because he would have to do visual signaling, and there
+was no time to lose. The dome of force was transparent. The air fleet
+would be trying to communicate through it with the Martians they
+believed were in the rocket-ship. Sunlight reflected from a polished
+canteen would attract attention instantly from a spot near the red
+monster, while elsewhere it might not be observed for a long time.
+But, trying every radio wave-band, and every system of visual
+signaling, and watching and testing for a reply, Thorn's signal ought
+to be picked up instantly.</p>
+
+<p>He handed his pocket speech-light receptor to Sylva. It is standard
+equipment for all flying personnel, so they may receive non-broadcast
+orders from flight leaders. He pointed to a ten-man cruiser from
+which shone the queer electric-blue glow of a speech-light.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen in on that," he commanded. "I'm going to call them. Tell me
+when they answer."</p>
+
+<p>He began to flash dots and dashes in that quaintly archaic telegraph
+alphabet Watch fliers are still required to learn. It was the Watch
+code call, sent over and over again.</p>
+
+<p>"They're trying to make the Martians understand," said Sylva
+unsteadily with the speech-light receiver at her ear.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">F</span>lash&mdash;flash&mdash;flash.... Thorn kept on grimly. The canteen top was
+slightly convex, so the sunlight-beam would spread. Accuracy was not
+needed, therefore. He covered and uncovered it, and covered and
+uncovered it....</p>
+
+<p>"They answered!" said Sylva eagerly. "They said 'Thorn Hard report at
+once!'"</p>
+
+<p>There was a hissing, roaring noise over the hillside, where the red
+rocket-ship lay. Thorn paid no attention. He began to spell out, in
+grim satisfaction:</p>
+
+<p>"R-o-c-k-e-t s-h-i-p i-s&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Look out!" gasped Sylva. "They say look out, Thorn!"</p>
+
+<p>Then she screamed. As Thorn swung his head around, he saw a dense mass
+of white vapor rushing over the hillside toward them. He picked Sylva
+up in his arms and ran madly....</p>
+
+<p>The white vapor tugged at his knees. It was a variation of a
+vortex-stream. He fought his way savagely toward higher ground. The
+white vapor reached his waist.... It reached his shoulders.... He
+slung Sylva upon his shoulder and fought more madly still to get out
+of the wide white current.... It submerged him in its stinging, bitter
+flood.... As he felt himself collapsing his last conscious thought was
+the bitter realization that the bulbous white tower had upheld
+television lenses at its top, which had watched his approach and
+inspection of the rocket-ship, and had enabled those in the red
+monster to accurately direct their spurt of gas.</p>
+
+<p>His next sensation was that of pain in his lungs. Something that
+smarted intolerably was being forced into his nostrils, and he battled
+against the agony it produced. And then he heard someone chuckle
+amusedly and felt the curious furry sensation of electric anesthesia
+beginning....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">W</span>hen he came to himself again a machine was clicking erratically and
+there was the soft whine of machinery going somewhere. He opened his
+eyes and saw red all about him. He stirred, and he was free.
+Painfully, he sat up and blinked about him with streaming,
+gas-irritated eyes. He had been lying on a couch. He was in a room
+perhaps fifteen feet by twenty, of which the floor was slightly
+off-level. And everything in the room was red. Floor and walls and
+ceiling, the couch he had lain on and the furniture itself. There was
+a monstrous bulk of a man sitting comfortably in a chair on the other
+side of the room, pecking at a device resembling a writing-machine.</p>
+
+<p>Thorn sat still for an instant, gaining strength. Then he flung
+himself desperately across the room, his fingers curved into talons.</p>
+
+<p>Five feet, ten, with the slant of the floor giving him added
+impetus.... Then his muscles tightened convulsively. A wave of pure
+agony went through his body. He dropped and lay writhing on the floor,
+while the high-frequency currents of an induction-screen had their way
+with him. He was doubled into a knot by his muscles responding to the
+electric stimulus instead of his will. Sheer anguish twisted him. And
+the room filled with a hearty bellow of laughter. The monstrous
+whiskered man had turned about and was shaking with merriment.</p>
+
+<p>He picked up a pocket-gun from beside him and turned off a switch at
+his elbow. Thorn's muscles were freed.</p>
+
+<p>"Go back, my friendt," boomed the same voice that had come from a
+speaker the night before. "Go to der couch. You amuse me and you haff
+already been useful, but I shall haff no hesitation in killing you.
+You are Thorn Hardt. My name is Kreynborg. How do you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where's my friend?" demanded Thorn savagely. "Where is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Der lady friendt? There!" The whiskered man pointed negligently with
+the pocket-gun. "I gafe her a bunk to slumber in."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>here was a niche in the wall, which Thorn had not seen. Sylva was
+there, sleeping the same heavy, dreamless sleep from which Thorn
+himself had just awakened. He went to her swiftly. She was breathing
+naturally, though tears from the irritating gas still streaked her
+face and her skin seemed to be pinkened a little from the same cause.</p>
+
+<p>Thorn swung around. His weapons were gone, of course. The huge man
+snapped on the induction-screen switch again and put down his weapon.
+With that screen separating the room into two halves, no living thing
+could cross it without either such muscular paralysis as Thorn had
+just experienced, or death. Coils in the floor induced alternating
+currents in the flesh itself, very like those currents used for
+supposed medical effects in "medical batteries," and "shockers."</p>
+
+<p>"Be calm!" said Kreynborg, chuckling. "I am pleased to haff company.
+This is der loneliest spot in der Rockies. It was chosen for that
+reason. But I shall be here for maybe months, and now I shall not be
+lonely. We of der Com-Pubs haff scientific resources such as your
+fools haff nefer dreamed of, but there is no scientific substitute for
+a pretty woman."</p>
+
+<p>He turned again to the writing device. It clicked half a dozen times
+more, and he stopped. A strip of paper came out of it. He inserted it
+into the slot of another mechanism and switched on a standard G.C.
+phone as the paper began to feed. In seconds the room was filled with
+unearthly hoots and wails and whistles. They came from the device into
+which the paper was feeding, and they poured into the G.C.
+transmitter. They went on for nearly a minute, and ceased. Kreynborg
+shut off the transmitter.</p>
+
+<p>"My code," he observed comfortably, "gifing der good news to
+Stalingrad. Everything is going along beautifully. I roused der fair
+Sylva and kissed her a few times to make her scream into a record, and
+I interpolated her screamings into der last code transmission. Your
+wise men think der Martians haff vivisected her. They are
+concentrating der entire fighting force of der United Nations outside
+der dome of force. And all for a few kisses!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>horn was white with rage. His eyes burned with a terrible fury. His
+hands shook. Kreynborg chuckled again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she is unharmed&mdash;so far. I haff not much time now. Presently der
+two of you will while away der time. But not now."</p>
+
+<p>He switched on the G.C. receiver and the room filled with a multitude
+of messages. Thorn sat beside Sylva, watching, watching, watching,
+while invisible machinery whined softly and Kreynborg listened
+intently to the crisp, curt official reports that came through on the
+Fighting Force band. Three combat-squadrons were on the spot now;
+One, Three and Eight. Four more were coming at fast cruising
+speed&mdash;four hundred miles an hour. One combat-squadron of the whole
+fleet alone would be left to cope with all other emergencies that
+might arise.... A television screen lighted up and Thorn could see
+where the lenses on the bulbous tower showed the air all about filled
+with fighting-planes, hovering about the dome of force like moths
+beating their wings against a screen. The strongest fighting-force in
+the world, helpless against a field of electric energy!</p>
+
+<p>"It is amusing," chuckled Kreynborg, looking at the screen
+complacently. "Der dome of force is a new infention. It is a
+heterodyning of one frequency upon another at a predetermined
+distance. It has all der properties of matter except mass and a limit
+of strength. There is no limit to its strength! But it cannot be made
+except in a sphere, so at first it seemed only a defensif weapon. With
+it, we could defy der United Nations to attack us. But we wished to do
+more. So I proposed a plan, and I haff der honor of carrying it out.
+If I fail, Krassin disavows me. But I shall not fail, and I shall end
+as Commissar for der continent of North America!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">H</span>e looked wisely at Thorn, who sat motionless.</p>
+
+<p>"You keep quiet, eh, and wait for me to say something indiscreet?
+Ferry well, I tell you. We are in a sort of gold-fish globe of
+electric force. Your air fleet cannot break in. You know that! Also,
+if they were in they could not break out again. So I wait, fery
+patiently pretending to be a Martian until all your Fighting Force has
+gathered around in readiness to fight me. But I shall not fight. I
+shall simply make a new and larger gold-fish globe, outside of this
+one. And then I go out and make faces at der Fighting Force of der
+United Nations imprisoned between der two of them&mdash;and then der
+Com-Pub fleet comes ofer!"</p>
+
+<p>He stood up and put his hand on a door-knob.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not pretty?" he asked blandly. "In two weeks der air fleet will
+begin to starfe. In three, there will be cannibalism, unless der
+Com-Pubs accept der surrender. Imagine...." He laughed. "But do not
+fear, my friendt! I haff profisions for a year. If you are amusing, I
+feed you. In any case I exchange food for kisses with der charming
+Sylva. It will be amusing to change her from a woman who screams as I
+kiss her, to one who weeps for joy. If I do not haff to kill you, you
+shall witness it!"</p>
+
+<p>He vanished through a doorway on the farther side of the room.
+Instantly Thorn was on his feet. The dead slumber in which Sylva was
+sunk was wholly familiar. Electric anesthesia, used not only for
+surgery, but to enforce complete rest at any chosen moment. He dragged
+her from that couch to his own. He saw her stir, and her eyes were
+instantly wide with terror. But Thorn was tearing the couch to pieces.
+Cover, pneumatic mattress.... He ripped out a loosely-fitting
+frame-piece of steel.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick,now," he said in a low tone, "I'm going to short the
+induction-screen. We'll get across it. Then&mdash;out the door!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">S</span>he struggled to her feet, terrified, but instantly game. Thorn slid
+the rod of metal across the stretch of flooring he had previously been
+unable to cross. The induced currents in the rod amounted to a
+short-circuit of the field. The rod grew hot and its paint blistered
+smokily. Thorn leaped across with Sylva in his wake. He pointed to the
+door, and she fled through it. He seized a chair, crashed it
+frenziedly into the television screen, and had switched on the G.C.
+phone when there was a roar of fury from Kreynborg. Instantly there
+was the spitting sound of a pocket-gun and in the red room the racking
+crash of a hexynitrate pellet. Nothing can stand the instant crash of
+hexynitrate. Its concussion-wave is a single pulsation of the air. The
+cellate diaphragm of the G.C. transmitter tore across from its
+violence and Thorn cursed bitterly. There was no way, now, of
+signaling....</p>
+
+<p>A second racking crash as a second pellet flashed its tiny green
+flame. Kreynborg was using a pocket-gun, one of those small terrible
+weapons which shoot a projectile barely larger than the graphite of a
+lead pencil, but loaded with a fraction of a milligram of hexynitrate.
+Two hundred charges would feed automatically into the bore as the
+trigger was pressed.</p>
+
+<p>Thorn gazed desperately about for weapons. There was nothing in sight.
+To gain the outside world he had to pass before the doorway through
+which the bullets had come.... And suddenly Thorn seized the
+code-writer and the device which transmitted that code as a series of
+unearthly noises which the world was taking for Martian speech. He
+swung the two machines before the door in a temporary barrier.
+Whatever else Kreynborg might be willing to destroy, he would not
+shoot into them!</p>
+
+<p>Thorn leaped madly past the door as Kreynborg roared with rage again.
+He paused only to hurl a chair at the two essential machines, and as
+they dented and toppled, he fled through the door and away.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">S</span>ylva peered anxiously at him from behind a huge boulder. He raced
+toward her, expecting every second to hear the spitting of Kreynborg's
+pocket-gun. With the continuous-fire stud down, the little gun would
+shoot itself empty in forty-five seconds, during which time Kreynborg
+could play it upon him like a hose that spouted death. But Thorn had
+done the hundred yards in eleven seconds, years before. He bettered
+his record now. The first of the little green flashes came when he was
+no more than ten yards from the boulder which sheltered Sylva. The
+tiny pellet had missed him by inches. Three more, and he was safe from
+pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>"But we've got to get away!" he panted. "He can shoot gas here and get
+us again! He can cover four hundred yards with gas, and more than that
+with guns."</p>
+
+<p>They fled down a tiny water-course, midget figures in an infinity of
+earth and sky, scurrying frenziedly from a red slug-like thing that
+lay askew in a mountain valley. Far away and high above hung the
+war-planes of the United Nations. Big ones and little ones, hovering
+in hundreds about the outside of the dome of force they could neither
+penetrate nor understand.</p>
+
+<p>A quarter of a mile. Half a mile. There was no sign from Kreynborg or
+the rocket-ship. Thorn panted.</p>
+
+<p>"He can't reach us with gas, now, and it looks like he doesn't dare
+use a gun. They'd know he wasn't a Martian. At night he'll use that
+helicopter, though. If we can only make those ships see us...."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>hey toiled on. The sun was already slanting down toward the western
+sky. At four&mdash;by the sun&mdash;Thorn could point to a huge air-dreadnaught
+hanging by lazily revolving gyros barely two miles away. He waved
+wildly, frantically, but the big ship drifted on, unseeing. The
+Fighting Force was no longer looking for Thorn and Sylva. They had
+been carried into the rocket-ship fourteen hours and more before.
+Sylva's screaming had been broadcast with the weird hoots and
+whistles the United Nations believed to be the language of
+inter-planetary invaders. The United Nations believed them dead. Now a
+watch was being kept on the rocket-ship, to be sure, but it was
+becoming a matter-of-fact sort of vigilance, pending the arrival of
+the rest of the Fighting Force and the cracking of the dome of force
+by the scientists who worked on it night and day.</p>
+
+<p>On level ground, Thorn and Sylva would have reached the edge of the
+dome in an hour. Here they had to climb up steep hillsides and down
+precipitous slopes. Four times they halted to make frantic efforts to
+attract the attention of some nearby ship.</p>
+
+<p>It was six when they came upon the rim. There was no indication of its
+existence save that three hundred yards from them boughs waved and
+leaves quivered in a breeze. Inside the dome the air was utterly
+still.</p>
+
+<p>"There it is!" panted Thorn.</p>
+
+<p>Wearied and worn out as they were, they hurried forward, and abruptly
+there was something which impeded their movements. They could reach
+their hands into the impalpable barrier. For one foot, two, or even
+three. But an intolerable pressure thrust them back. Thorn seized a
+sapling and ran at the barrier as if with a spear. It went five feet
+into the invisible resistance and stopped, shot back out as if flung
+back by a jet of compressed air.</p>
+
+<p>"He told the truth," groaned Thorn. "We can't get out!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">L</span>ong shadows were already reaching out from the mountains. Darkness
+began to creep upward among the valleys. Far, far away a compact dark
+cloud appeared, a combat-squadron. It swept toward the dome and
+dissociated into a myriad specks which were aircraft. The fliers
+already swirling about the invisible dome drew aside to leave a
+quadrant clear, and Combat-Squadron Seven merged with the rest, making
+the pattern of dancing specks markedly denser.</p>
+
+<p>"With a fire," said Thorn desperately, "they'll come! Of course! But
+Kreynborg took my lighter!"</p>
+
+<p>Sylva said hopefully:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you know some way? Rubbing sticks together?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't," admitted Thorn grimly, "but I've got to try to invent one.
+While I'm at it, you watch for fliers."</p>
+
+<p>He searched for dry wood. He rubbed sticks together. They grew warm,
+but not enough to smoke, much less to catch. He muttered, "A drill,
+that's the idea. All the friction in one spot." He tugged at the ring
+under his lapel and the parachute fastened into his uniform collar
+shot out in a billowing mass of gossamer silk, flung out by the
+powerful elastics designed to make its opening certain. Savagely, he
+tore at the shrouds and had a stout cord. He made a drill and revolved
+it as fast as he could with the cord....</p>
+
+<p>A second dark cloud swept forward in the gathering dusk and merged
+into the mass of fliers about the dome. Five minutes later, a third.
+Dense as the air-traffic was, riding-lights were necessary. They began
+to appear in the deepening twilight. It seemed as if all the sky were
+alight with fireflies, whirling and swirling and fluttering here and
+there. But then the fire-drill began to emit a tiny wisp of smoke.
+Thorn worked furiously. Then a tiny flickering flame appeared, which
+he nursed with a desperate solicitude. Then a larger flame. Then a
+roaring blaze! It could not be missed! A fire within the dome could
+not fail to be noted and examined instantly!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">A</span>&nbsp;searchlight beam fell upon them, illuminating him in a pitiless
+glare. Thorn waved his arms frantically. He had nothing with which to
+signal save his body. He flung his arms wide, and up, and wide again,
+in an improvised adaption of the telegraphic alphabet to
+gesticulation. He sent the watch call over and over again....</p>
+
+<p>A little cloud of riding-lights swept toward the dome from an infinite
+distance away. Darkness was falling so swiftly that they were still
+merely specks of light as they swept up to and seemed to melt into the
+swirling, swooping mass of fliers about the dome....</p>
+
+<p>Cold sweat was standing out on Thorn's face, despite the violence of
+his exertions. He was even praying a little.... And suddenly the
+searchlight beam flickered a welcome answer:</p>
+
+<p>"W-e u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d. R-e-p-o-r-t."</p>
+
+<p>Thorn flung his arms about madly, sending:</p>
+
+<p>"G-e-t a-w-a-y q-u-i-c-k. C-o-m P-u-b-s h-e-r-e. W-i-l-l m-a-k-e
+o-t-h-e-r d-o-m-e o-u-t-s-i-d-e t-o t-r-a-p y-o-u."</p>
+
+<p>The searchlight beam upon him flickered an acknowledgment. He knew
+what was happening after that. The G.C. phones would flash the warning
+to every ship, and every ship would dash madly for safety.... A
+sudden, concerted quiver seemed to go over the whirling maze of lights
+aloft. A swift, simultaneous movement of every ship in flight. Thorn
+breathed an agonized prayer....</p>
+
+<p>There was a flash of blue light. For one fractional part of a second
+the stars and skies were blotted out. There was a dome of flame above
+him and all about the world, of bright blue flame which instantly
+was&mdash;and instantly was not!</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a ghastly blast of green. Hexynitrate going off. In
+this glare were silhouetted a myriad motes in flight. But there was no
+noise. A second flare.... And then Thorn Hard, groaning, saw flash
+after flash after flash of green. Monster explosions. Colossal
+explosions. Terrific detonations which were utterly soundless, as the
+ships of the Fighting Force, in flight from the menace of which Thorn
+had warned them, crashed into an invisible barrier and exploded
+without cracking it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">I</span>t was August 24th, 2037. For three days, now, seven of the eight
+great combat-squadrons of the United Nations Fighting Forces had been
+prisoners inside a monstrous transparent dome of force. There was a
+financial panic of unprecedented proportions in the great financial
+districts of New York and London and Paris. Martial law was in force
+in Chicago, in Prague, in Madrid, and in Buenos Aires. The Com-Pubs
+were preparing an ultimatum to be delivered to the government of the
+United Nations. Thorn and Sylva were hunted fugitives within the inner
+dome of force, which protected the red rocket-ship from the seven
+combat squadrons it had imprisoned. Newspaper vendor-units were
+shrieking, "Air Fleet Still Trapped!" and a prominent American
+politician was promising his constituents that if a foreign nation
+dared invade the sacred territories of the United Nations, a million
+embattled private planes would take the air. And he seemed not even
+trying to be humorous! Scientists were wringing their hands in utter
+helplessness before the incredible resistance of the dome. It had been
+determined that the dome was a force-field which caused particles
+charged with positive electricity to attempt to move in a right-hand
+direction about the source of the field, and particles charged with
+negative electricity to attempt to move in a left-hand direction. The
+result was that any effort to thrust an external object into the field
+of force was an attempt to tear the negatively charged electrons of
+every atom of that substance, free from the positively charged protons
+of nuclei. An object could only be passed through the field of force
+if it ceased to exist as matter&mdash;which was not an especially helpful
+discovery. And&mdash;Thorn Hard and Sylva were still hunted fugitives
+inside the inner dome.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>he sun was an hour high when the helicopter appeared to hunt for them
+by day. After the first time they had never dared light a fire,
+because Kreynborg in the helicopter searched the hills for a glow of
+light. But this day he came searching for them by day. Thorn had
+speared a fish for Sylva with a stick he had sharpened by rubbing it
+on a crumbling rock. He was working discouragedly on a little
+contrivance made out of a forked stick and the elastic from his
+parachute-pack. He was haggard and worn and desperate. Sylva was
+beginning to look like a hunted wild thing.</p>
+
+<p>Two hundred yards from them the most formidable fighting force the
+world had ever seen littered the earth with gossamer-seeming cellate
+wings and streamlined bodies at all angles to each other. And it was
+completely useless. The least of the weapons of the air-fleet would
+have been a godsend to Thorn and Sylva. To have had one ship, even the
+smallest, where they were would have been a godsend to the fleet. But
+two hundred yards, with the dome of force between, made the fleet just
+exactly as much protection for Sylva as if it had been a million miles
+away.</p>
+
+<p>The droning hum of the helicopter came across the broken ground. Now
+louder, now momentarily muted, its moments of loudness grew steadily
+more strong. It was coming nearer. Thorn gripped his spear in an
+instinctive, utterly futile gesture of defense. Sylva touched his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better hide."</p>
+
+<p>They hid. Thick brush concealed them utterly. The helicopter went
+slowly overhead, and they saw Kreynborg gazing down at the earth below
+him. Nearly overhead he paused. And suddenly Thorn groaned under his
+breath.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the flagship!" he whispered hoarsely to Sylva. "Oh, what fools
+we were! The flagship! He knows the General would have brought it to
+earth opposite us, to question us!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>he flagship was nearly opposite. To find the flagship was more or
+less to find where Thorn and Sylva hid. But they had not realized it
+until now.</p>
+
+<p>The speaker in the helicopter boomed above their heads.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, my friends! I think you hear me. Answer me. I haff an offer to
+make."</p>
+
+<p>Shivering, Sylva pressed close to Thorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Der Com-Pub fleet is on der way," said Kreynborg, chuckling.
+"Sefen-eights of der United Nations fleet is just outside. You haff
+observed it. In six hours der Com-Pub fleet begins der conquest of der
+country and der execution of persons most antagonistic to our regime.
+But I haff still weary weeks of keeping der air fleet prisoner, until
+its personnel iss too weak from starfation to offer resistance to our
+soldiers. So I make der offer. Come and while away der weary hours for
+me, and I except you both from der executions I shall findt it
+necessary to decree. Refuse, and I get you anyhow, and you will
+regret your refusal fery much."</p>
+
+<p>Thorn's teeth ground together. Sylva pressed close to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let him get me, Thorn," she panted hysterically. "Don't let him
+get me...."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>he droning, monotonous hum of the helicopter over their heads
+continued. The little flying-machine was motionless. The air was
+still. There was no other sound in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Silence, save for the droning hum of the helicopter. Then something
+dropped. It went off with an inadequate sort of an explosion and a
+cloud of misty white vapor reared upward on a hillside and began to
+settle slowly, spreading out.... The helicopter moved and other things
+dropped, making a pattern....</p>
+
+<p>"The air's still," said Thorn quite grimly. "That stuff seems to be
+heavier than air. It's flowing downhill, toward the dome-wall. It will
+be here in five minutes. We've got to move."</p>
+
+<p>Sylva seemed to be stricken with terror. He helped her to her feet.
+They began to move toward higher ground. They moved with infinite
+caution. In the utter silence of this inner dome, even the rustling of
+a leaf might betray them.</p>
+
+<p>It was the presence of the air fleet within clear view that made the
+thing so horrible. The defenders of a nation were watching the enemy
+of a nation, and they were helpless to offer battle. The helicopter
+hummed and droned, and Kreynborg grinned and searched the earth below
+him for a sign of the man and girl who had been the only danger to his
+plan and now were unarmed fugitives. And there were four
+air-dreadnaughts in plain sight and five thousand men watching, and
+Kreynborg hunted, for sport, a comrade of the five thousand men and a
+woman every one of them would have risked or sacrificed his life to
+protect.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed certain that they were below him. Presently he dropped
+another gas-bomb, and another. And then Sylva stumbled and caught at
+something, and there was a crashing sound as a sapling wavered in her
+grasp.... And Thorn picked her up and fled madly. But billowing white
+vapor spouted upward before him. He dodged it, and the helicopter was
+just overhead and more smoke spouted, and more, and more.... They were
+hemmed in, and Sylva clung close to Thorn and sobbed....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">F</span>ive thousand men, in a thousand grounded aircraft, shouted curses
+that made no sound. They waved weapons that were utterly futile. They
+were as impotent as so many ghosts. Their voices made not even the
+half-heard whisper one may attribute to a phantom.</p>
+
+<p>The fog-vapor closed over Thorn and Sylva as Kreynborg grinned
+mockingly at the raging men without the dome of force. He swept the
+helicopter to a position above the last view of Thorn and Sylva, and
+the downward-beating screws swept away the foggy gas. Thorn and Sylva
+lay motionless, though Thorn had instinctively placed himself in a
+position of defense above her.</p>
+
+<p>The Fighting Force of the United Nations watched, raging, while
+Kreynborg descended deliberately into the area the helicopter-screws
+kept clear. While he searched Thorn's pockets reflectively and found
+nothing more deadly than small pebbles which might strike sparks, and
+a small forked stick. While he grinned mockingly at the raging armed
+men and made triumphant gesticulations before carrying Sylva's limp
+figure to the helicopter. While the little ship rose and swept away
+toward the rocket-plane.</p>
+
+<p>It descended and was lost to view. Thorn lay motionless on the earth.
+Seven-eighths of the fighting force of the United Nations was
+imprisoned within the space between two domes of force no matter could
+penetrate. A ring two miles across and ten miles in outer diameter
+held the whole fleet of the United Nations paralyzed.</p>
+
+<p>There was sheer panic through the Americas and Europe and the few
+outlying possessions of the United Nations.... And it was at this
+time, with a great fleet already half-way across the Pacific, that the
+Com-Pubs declared war in a fine gesture of ironic politeness. It was
+within half an hour of this time that the Seventh Combat Squadron&mdash;the
+only one left unimprisoned&mdash;dived down from fifty thousand feet into
+the middle of the Com-Pub fleet and went out of existence in twenty
+minutes of such carnage as is still stuff for epics.</p>
+
+<p>The Seventh Squadron died, but with it died not less than three times
+as many of the foe. And then the Com-Pub fleet came on. Most of the
+original force remained; surely enough to devastate an undefended
+nation, to shatter its cities and butcher its people; to slaughter its
+men and enslave its women and leave a shambles and smoking ash-heaps
+where the very backbone of resistance to the red flag had been.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">I</span>t was twenty minutes before Thorn Hard stirred. His lungs seemed on
+fire. His limbs seemed lead. His head reeled and rocked. He staggered
+to his feet and stood there swaying dully. A vivid light, brighter
+than the sunshine, played upon him from the flagship of the fleet
+which now was helpless to defend its nation. Thorn's befogged brain
+stirred dazedly as the message came.</p>
+
+<p>"Com-Pub fleet on way. Seventh Combat-Squadron wiped out. Nation
+defenseless. You are only hope. For God's sake try something.
+Anything."</p>
+
+<p>Thorn roused himself by a terrific effort. He managed to ask a
+question by exhausted gestures in the Watch visual alphabet.</p>
+
+<p>"Kreynborg took her to rocket-ship," came the answer. "She recovered
+consciousness before being carried inside."</p>
+
+<p>And Thorn, reeling on his feet and unarmed and alone, turned and went
+staggering up a hillside toward the rocket-ship's position. He could
+only expect to be killed. He could not even hope for anything more
+than to ensure that Sylva, also, die mercifully. Behind him he left an
+unarmed nation awaiting devastation, with a mighty air fleet speeding
+toward it at six hundred miles an hour.</p>
+
+<p>As he went, though, some strength came to him. The fury of his toil
+forced him to breathe deeply, cleansing his lungs of the stupefying
+gas which, because it was visible as a vapor, had been carried in the
+rocket-ship. A visible gas was, of course, more consistent with the
+early pretense that the rocket-ship bore invaders from another planet.
+And Thorn became drenched with sweat, which aided in the excretion of
+the poisonous stuff. His brain cleared, and he recognized despair and
+discounted it and began to plan grimly to make the most of an
+infinitesimal chance. The chance was simply that Kreynborg had
+ransacked his pockets and ignored a little forked stick.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">S</span>crambling up a steep hillside with his face hardened into granite,
+Thorn drew that from his pocket again. Crossing a hill-top, he
+stripped off his coat.</p>
+
+<p>He traveled at the highest speed he could maintain, though it seemed
+painfully deliberate. An hour after he had started, he was picking up
+small round pebbles wherever he saw them in his path. By the time the
+tall, bulbous tower was in sight he had picked up probably sixty such
+pebbles, but no more than ten of them remained in his pockets. They,
+though, were smooth and round and even, perhaps an inch in diameter,
+and all very nearly the same size. And he carried a club in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>He went down the last slope openly. The television lenses on the tower
+would have picked him out in any case, if Kreynborg had repaired the
+screen. He went boldly up to the rocket-ship.</p>
+
+<p>"Kreynborg!" he called. "Kreynborg!"</p>
+
+<p>He felt himself being surveyed. A door came open. Kreynborg stood
+chuckling at him with a pocket-gun in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! Just in time, my friend! I haff been fery busy. Der Com-Pub fleet
+is just due to pass in refiew abofe der welcoming United Nations
+combat-squadrons. I haff been gifing them last-minute information and
+assurance that der domes of force are solid and can hold forefer. I
+haff a few minutes to spare, which I had intended to defote to der
+fair Sylva. But&mdash;what do you wish?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm offering you a bribe," said Thorn, his face a mask. "A billion
+dollars and immunity to cut off the outer dome of force."</p>
+
+<p>Kreynborg grinned at him.</p>
+
+<p>"It is too late. Besides being a traitor, I would be assassinated
+instantly. Also, I shall be Commissar for North America anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"Two billion," said Thorn without expression.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Kreynborg amusedly. "Throw away der club. I shall amuse
+myself with you, Thorn Hardt. You shall watch der progress of romance
+between me and Sylva. Throw away der club!"</p>
+
+<p>The pocket-gun came up. Thorn threw away the club.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want, if two billion's not enough?"</p>
+
+<p>"Amusement," said Kreynborg jovially. "I shall be bored in this inner
+dome, waiting for der air fleet to starfe. I wish amusement. And I
+shall get it. Come inside!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">H</span>e backed away from the door, his gun trained on Thorn. And Thorn saw
+that the continuous-fire stud was down. He walked composedly into the
+red room in which he had once awakened. Sylva gave a little choked cry
+at sight of him. She was standing, desperately defiant, on the other
+side of the induction-screen area on the floor. There was a scorched
+place on the floor where Thorn had shorted that screen and the bar of
+metal had grown red-hot. Kreynborg threw the switch and motioned Thorn
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not bother to search you for weapons," he said dryly. "I did it
+so short a time ago. And you had only a club...."</p>
+
+<p>Thorn walked stiffly beside Sylva. She put out a shaking hand and
+touched him. Kreynborg threw the switch back again.</p>
+
+<p>"Der screen is on," he chuckled. "Console each other, children. I am
+glad you came, Thorn Hardt. We watch der grand refiew of der Com-Pub
+fleet. Then I turn a little infention of mine upon you. It is a
+heat-ray of fery limited range. It will be my method of wooing der
+fair Sylva. When she sees you in torment, she kisses me sweetly for
+der prifilege of stopping der heat-ray. I count upon you, my friend,
+to plead with her to grant me der most extrafagant of concessions,
+when der heat-ray is searing der flesh from your bones. I feel that
+she is soft-hearted enough to oblige you. Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>He touched a button and the repaired television-screen lighted up.
+All the dome of mountains and sky was visible in it. There were
+dancing motes in sight, which were aircraft.</p>
+
+<p>"I haff remofed all metal-work from that side of der room," added
+Kreynborg comfortably, "so I can dare to turn my back. You cannot
+short der induction-screen again. That was clefer. But you face a
+scientist, Thorn Hardt. You haff lost."</p>
+
+<p>A sudden surge of flying craft appeared on the television screen. The
+grounded fleet of the United Nations was taking to the air again. In
+the narrow, two-mile strip between the two domes of force it swirled
+up and up.... Kreynborg frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what is der idea of that?" he demanded. He moved closer to the
+screen. The pocket-gun was left behind, five feet from his
+finger-tips. "Thorn Hardt, you will explain it!"</p>
+
+<p>"They hope," said Thorn grimly, "your fleet can make gaps in the dome
+to shoot through. If so, they'll go out through those gaps and fight."</p>
+
+<p>"Foolish!" said Kreynborg blandly. "Der only weapon we haff to use is
+der normal metabolism of der human system. Hunger!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">T</span>horn reached into his pocket. Kreynborg was regarding the screen
+absorbedly. Through the haze of flying dots which was the United
+Nations fleet, a darkening spot to westward became visible. It drew
+nearer and grew larger. It was dense. It was huge. It was deadly. It
+was the Com-Pub battle-fleet, nearly equal to the imprisoned ships in
+number. It swept up to view its helpless enemy. It came close, so
+every man could see their only possible antagonists rendered impotent.</p>
+
+<p>Such a maneuver was really necessary, when you think of it. The
+Com-Pub fleet had encountered one combat-squadron of the United
+Nations fleet, and that one squadron, dying, had carried down three
+times its number of enemies. It was necessary to show the Com-Pub
+personnel the rest of their enemies imprisoned, in order to hearten
+them for the butchery of civilians before them.</p>
+
+<p>Kreynborg guffawed as the Com-Pub fleet made its mocking circuit of
+the invisible dome. And Thorn raised his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Kreynborg!" he said grimly. "Look!"</p>
+
+<p>There was something in his tone which made Kreynborg turn. And Thorn
+held a little forked stick in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Turn off the induction-screen, or I kill you!"</p>
+
+<p>Kreynborg looked at him and chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"It is bluff, my friend," he said dryly. "I haff seen many weapons. I
+am a scientist! You play der game of poker. You try a bluff! But I
+answer you with der heat-ray!"</p>
+
+<p>He moved his great bulk, and Thorn released his left hand. There was a
+sudden crack on Kreynborg's side of the room. A pebble a little over
+an inch in diameter fell to the floor. Kreynborg wavered, and toppled
+and fell. Three times more, his face merciless, Thorn drew back his
+arm, and three times Kreynborg's head jerked slightly. Then Thorn
+faced the panel on which the induction-screen switch was placed.
+Several times he thrust his hand through the screen and abruptly drew
+it back with pain, in an attempt to throw the switch. At last he was
+successful, and now he walked calmly across the room and bent over the
+motionless Kreynborg.</p>
+
+<p>"Skull fractured," he said grimly. "All right, Sylva."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="f1">H</span>e went through the narrow doorway beyond, picking up the pocket-gun
+as he went. There was a noise of whining machinery. Now Thorn was
+emptying pellets into the mechanism that controlled the dome of force.
+There was a crashing of glass. It stopped. There were blows and
+thumpings. That noise stopped too.</p>
+
+<p>Thorn came back, his eyes glowing. He flung open the outer door of the
+rocket-ship, and Sylva went to him.</p>
+
+<p>He pointed.</p>
+
+<p>Far away, the Fighting Force of the United Nations was swirling
+upward. Like smoke from a campfire or winged ants from a tree-stump,
+they went up in a colossal, twisting spiral. Beyond the domes and
+above them. The domes existed no longer. Up and up, and up.... And
+then they swooped down upon the suddenly fleeing enemy. Vengefully,
+savagely, with all the fury of men avenging not only what they have
+suffered, but also what they have feared, the combat-squadrons of the
+United Nations fell upon the invaders. Green hexynitrate explosions
+lighted up the sky. Ear-cracking detonations reverberated among the
+mountains. There was battle there, and death and carnage and utter
+destruction. The roar of combat filled the universe.</p>
+
+<p>Thorn closed the door and looked down at Kreynborg, who breathed
+stentorously, his mouth foolishly open.</p>
+
+<p>"Our men will be back for us," he said shortly. "We needn't worry."
+Then he said, "Huh! He called himself a scientist, and he didn't know
+a sling-shot when he saw one!"</p>
+
+<p>But then Thorn Hard dropped a weapon made of a forked stick and strong
+elastic from his chute-pack, and caught Sylva hungrily in his arms.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Invasion, by William Fitzgerald Jenkins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Invasion
+
+Author: William Fitzgerald Jenkins
+
+Release Date: July 19, 2009 [EBook #29455]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INVASION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+     This etext was produced from Astounding Stories March 1933.
+     Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
+     U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+    [Illustration: He picked Sylva up in his arms and ran madly.]
+
+
+                               Invasion
+
+
+                          By Murray Leinster
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+[Sidenote: The whole fighting fleet of the United Nations is caught in
+Kreynborg's marvelous, unique trap.]
+
+
+It was August 19, 2037. The United Nations was just fifty years old.
+Televisors were still monochromatic. The Nidics had just won the World
+Series in Prague. Com-Pub observatories were publishing elaborate
+figures on moving specks in space which they considered to be Martian
+spaceships on their way to Earth, but which United Nations astronomers
+could not discover at all. Women were using gilt lipsticks that year.
+Heat-induction motors were still considered efficient prime movers.
+
+Thorn Hard was a high-level flier for the Pacific Watch. Bathyletis
+was the most prominent of nationally advertised diseases, and was to
+be cured by RO-17, "The Foundation of Personal Charm." Somebody named
+Nirdlinger was President of the United Nations, and somebody else
+named Krassin was Commissar of Commissars for the Com-Pubs. Newspapers
+were printing flat pictures in three colors only, and deploring the
+high cost of stereoscopic plates. And ... Thorn Hard was a high-level
+flier for the Pacific Watch.
+
+That is the essential point, of course--Thorn Hard's work with the
+Watch. His job was, officially, hanging somewhere above the
+twenty-thousand-foot level with his detector-screens out, listening
+for unauthorized traffic. And, the normal state of affairs between the
+Com-Pubs and the United Nations being one of highly armed truce,
+"unauthorized traffic" meant nothing more or less than spies.
+
+But on August 19th, 2037, Thorn Hard was off duty. Decidedly so. He
+was sitting on top of Mount Wendel, in the Rockies; he had a
+ravishingly pretty girl sitting on the same rock with him, and he was
+looking at the sunset. The plane behind him was an official Watch
+plane, which civilians are never supposed to catch a glimpse of. It
+had brought Thorn Hard and Sylva West to this spot. It waited now,
+half-hidden by a spur of age-eroded rock, to take them back to
+civilization again. Its G.C. (General Communication) phone muttered
+occasionally like the voice of conscience.
+
+[Illustration:]
+
+The colors of the mountain changed and blended. The sky to westward
+was a glory of a myriad colors. Man and girl, high above the world,
+sat with the rosy glow of dying sunlight in their faces and watched
+the colors fade and shift into other colors and patterns even more
+exquisite. Their hands touched. They looked at each other. They
+smiled queerly, as people smile who are in love or otherwise not quite
+sane. They moved inevitably closer....
+
+And then the G.C. phone barked raucously:
+
+"All Watch planes attention! Urgent! Extreme high-level traffic
+reported seven-ten line bound due east, speed over one thousand. All
+Watch planes put out all detectors and use extra vigilance. Note: the
+speed, course, and time of report of this traffic checks with Com-Pub
+observations of moving objects approaching Earth from Mars. This
+possibility should be considered before opening fire."
+
+Thorn Hard stiffened all over. He got up and swung down to the stubby
+little ship with its gossamer-like wings of cellate. He touched the
+report button.
+
+"Plane 257-A reporting seven-ten line. Thorn Hard flying. On Mount
+Wendel, on leave. Orders?"
+
+He was throwing on the screens even as he reported. And the vertical
+detector began to whistle shrilly. His eyes darted to the dial, and he
+spoke again.
+
+"Added report. Detector shows traffic approaching, bound due east,
+seven hundred miles an hour, high altitude.... Correction; six-fifty
+miles. Correction; six hundred." He paused. "Traffic is decelerating
+rapidly. I think, sir, this is the reported ship."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then there was a barely audible whining noise high in the air to
+the west. It grew in volume and changed in pitch. From a whine it
+became a scream. From a scream it rose to a shriek. Something
+monstrous and red glittered in the dying sunlight. It was huge. It was
+of no design ever known on earth. Wings supported it, but they were
+obscured by the blasts of forward rockets checking its speed.
+
+It was dropping rapidly. Then lifting-rockets spouted flame to keep it
+from too rapid a descent. It cleared a mountain-peak by a bare two
+hundred feet, some two miles to the south. It was a hundred-odd feet
+in length. It was ungainly in shape, monstrous in conformation.
+Colossal rocket-tubes behind it now barely trickled vaporous
+discharges. It cleared the mountain-top, went heavily on in a steep
+glide downward, and vanished behind a mountain-flank. Presently the
+thin mountain air brought the echoed sound of its landing, of
+rapid-fire explosions of rocket-tubes, and then silence.
+
+Thorn Hard was snapping swift, staccato sentences into the
+report-transmitter. Describing the clumsy glittering monster, its
+motion; its wings; its method of propulsion. It seemed somehow
+familiar despite its strangeness. He said so.
+
+Then a vivid blue flame licked all about the rim of the world and was
+gone. Simultaneously the G.C. speaker crashed explosively and went
+dead. Thorn went on grimly, switching in the spare.
+
+"A very violent electrical discharge went out from it then. A blue
+light seemed to flash all around the horizon at no great distance and
+my speaker blew out. I have turned on the spare. I do not know whether
+my sender is functioning--"
+
+The spare speaker cut in abruptly at that moment:
+
+"It is. Stay where you are and observe. A squadron is coming."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the voice broke off, because a new sound was coming from the
+speaker. It was a voice that was unhuman and queerly horrible and
+somehow machine-like. Hoots and howls and whistles came from the
+speaker. Wailing sounds. Ghostly noises, devoid of consonants but
+broadcast on a wave-length close to the G.C. band and therefore
+produced by intelligence, though unintelligible. The unhuman hoots and
+wails and whistles came through for nearly a minute, and stopped.
+
+"Stay on duty!" snapped the G.C. speaker. "That's no language known on
+earth. Those are Martians!"
+
+Thorn looked up to see Sylva standing by the Watch-plane door. Her
+face was pale in the growing darkness outside.
+
+"Beginning duty sir," said Thorn steadily, "I report that I have with
+me Miss Sylva West, my fiancee, in violation of regulations. I ask
+that her family be notified."
+
+He snapped off the lights and went with her. The red rocket-ship had
+landed in the very next valley. There was a glare there, which wavered
+and flickered and died away.
+
+"Martians!" said Thorn in fine irony. "We'll see when the Watch planes
+come! My guess is Com-Pubs, using a searchlight! Nervy!"
+
+The glare vanished. There was only silence, a curiously complete and
+deadly silence. And Thorn said, suddenly:
+
+"There's no wind!"
+
+There was not. Not a breath of air. The mountains were uncannily
+quiet. The air was impossibly still, for a mountain-top. Ten minutes
+went by. Twenty. The detector-whistles shrilled.
+
+"There's the Watch," said Thorn in satisfaction. "Now we'll see!"
+
+And then, abruptly, there was a lurid flash in the sky to northward.
+Two thousand feet up and a mile away, the unearthly green blaze of a
+hexynitrate explosion lit the whole earth with unbearable brilliance.
+
+"Stop your ears!" snapped Thorn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The racking concussion-wave of hexynitrate will break human eardrums
+at an incredible distance. But no sound came, though the seconds went
+by.... Then, two miles away, there was a second gigantic flash....
+Then a third.... But there was no sound at all. The quiet of the hills
+remained unbroken, though Thorn knew that such cataclysmic detonations
+should be audible at twenty miles or more. Then lights flashed on
+above. Two--three--six of them. They wavered all about, darting here
+and there.... Then one of the flying searchlights vanished utterly in
+a fourth terrific flash of green.
+
+"The watch planes are going up!" said Thorn dazedly. "Blowing up! And
+we can't hear the explosions!"
+
+Behind him the G.C. speaker barked his call. He raced to get its
+message.
+
+"The Watch planes we sent to join you," said a curt voice he
+recognized as that of the Commanding General of the United Nations,
+"have located an invisible barrier by their sonic altimeters. Four of
+them seem to have rammed it and exploded without destroying it. What
+have you to report?"
+
+"I've seen the flashes, sir," said Thorn unsteadily, "but they made no
+noise. And there's no wind, sir. Not a breath since the blue flash I
+reported."
+
+A pause.
+
+"Your statement bears out their report," said the G.C. speaker
+harshly. "The barrier seems to be hemispherical. No such barrier is
+known on Earth. These must be Martians, as the Com-Pubs said. You will
+wait until morning and try to make peaceful contact with them. This
+barrier may be merely a precaution on their part. You will try to
+convince them that we wish to be friendly."
+
+"I don't believe they're Martians, sir--"
+
+Sylva came racing to the door of the plane.
+
+"Thorn! Something's coming! I hear it droning!"
+
+Thorn himself heard a dull droning noise in the air, coming toward
+him.
+
+"Occupants of the rocket-ship, sir," he said grimly, "seem to be
+approaching. Orders?"
+
+"Evacuate the ship," snapped the G.C. phone. "Let them examine it.
+They will understand how we communicate and prepare to receive and
+exchange messages. If they seem friendly, make contact at once."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thorn made swift certain movements and dived for the door. He seized
+Sylva and fled for the darkness below the plane. He was taking a
+desperate risk of falling down the mountain-slopes. The droning drew
+near. It passed directly overhead. Then there was a flash and a
+deafening report. A beam of light appeared aloft. It searched for and
+found Thorn's plane, now a wreck. Flash after flash and explosion
+after explosion followed....
+
+They stopped. Their echoes rolled and reverberated among the hills.
+There was a hollow, tremendous intensification of the echoes aloft as
+if a dome of some solid substance had reflected back the sound. Slowly
+the rollings died away. Then a voice boomed through a speaker
+overhead, and despite his suspicions Thorn felt a queer surprise. It
+was a human voice, a man's voice, full of a horrible amusement.
+
+"Thorn Hardt! Thorn Hardt! Where are you?" Thorn did not move or
+reply. "If I haff not killed you, you hear me," the voice chuckled.
+"Come to see me, Thorn Hardt. Der dome of force iss big, yes, but you
+can no more get out than your friends can get in. And now I haff
+destroyed your phones so you can no longer chat with them. Come and
+see me, Thorn Hardt, so I will not be bored. We will discuss der
+Com-Pubs. And bring der lady friend. You may play der chaperon!"
+
+The voice laughed. It was not pleasant laughter. And the humming drone
+in the air rose and dwindled. It moved away from the mountain-top. It
+lessened and lessened until it was inaudible. Then there was dead
+silence again.
+
+"By his accent, he's a Baltic Russian," said Thorn very grimly in the
+darkness. "Which means Com-Pubs, not Martians, though we're the only
+people who realize it; and they're starting a war! And we, Sylva, must
+warn our people. How are we going to do it?"
+
+She pressed his hand confidently, but it did not look promising. Thorn
+Hard was on foot, without a transmitter, armed only with his
+belt-weapons and with a girl to look after, and moreover imprisoned in
+a colossal dome of force which hexynitrate had failed to crack....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was August 20, 2037. There was a triple murder in Paris which was
+rumored to be the work of a Com-Pub spy, though the murderer's
+unquestionably Gallic touches made the rumor dubious. Newspaper
+vendor-units were screaming raucously, "Martians land in Colorado!"
+and the newspapers themselves printed colored-photos of hastily
+improvised models in their accounts of the landing of a blood-red
+rocket-ship in the widest part of the Rockies. The inter-continental
+tennis matches reached their semi-finals in Havana, Cuba. Thorn Hard
+had not reported to Watch headquarters in twelve hours. Quadruplets
+were born in Des Moines, Iowa. Krassin, Commissar of Commissars of the
+Com-Pubs, made a diplomatic inquiry about the rumors that a Martian
+space-ship had landed in North America. He asked that Com-Pub
+scientists be permitted to join in the questioning and examination of
+the Martian visitors. The most famous European screen actress landed
+from the morning Trans-Atlantic plane with her hair dyed a light
+lavender, and beauty-shops throughout the country placed rush orders
+for dye to take care of the demand for lavender hair which would begin
+by mid-afternoon. The heavy-weight champion of the United Nations was
+warned that his title would be forfeited if he further dodged a fight
+with his most promising contender. And ... Thorn Hard had not reported
+to Watch headquarters in twelve hours.
+
+He was, as a matter of fact, cautiously parting some bushes to peer
+past a mountain-flank at the red rocket-ship. Sylva West lay on the
+ground behind him. Both of them weary to the point of exhaustion. They
+had started their descent from Mount Wendel at the first gray streak
+of dawn in the east. They had toiled painfully across the broken
+country between, to this point of vantage. Now Thorn looked down upon
+the rocket-ship.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It lay a little askew upon the ground, seeming to be partly buried in
+the earth. A hundred feet and more in length, it was even more
+obviously a monstrosity as he looked at it in the bright light of day.
+But now it was not alone. Beside it a white tower reared upward. Pure
+white and glistening in the sunshine, a bulging, uneven shaft rose a
+hundred feet sheer. It looked as solid as marble. Its purpose was
+unguessable. There was a huge, fan-shaped space where the vegetation
+about the rocket-ship was colored a vivid red. In air-photos, the
+rocket-ship would look remarkably like something from another planet.
+But nearby, Thorn could see a lazy trickle of fuel-fumes from a
+port-pipe on one side of the monster....
+
+"That tower is nothing but cellate foam, which hardens. And Sylva!
+See?"
+
+She came cautiously through the brushwood and looked down. She
+shivered a little. From here they could see beneath the bows of the
+rocket-ship. And there was a name there, in the Cyrillic alphabet
+which was the official written language of the Com-Pubs. Here, on
+United Nations soil, it was insolent. It boasted that the red ship
+came, not from an alien planet, but from a nation more alien still to
+all the United Nations stood for. The Com-Pubs--the Union of Communist
+Republics--were neither communistic nor republics, but they were much
+more dangerous to the United Nations than any mere Martians would have
+been.
+
+"We'll have some heavy ships here to investigate, soon," said Thorn
+grimly. "Then I'll signal!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He flung back his head. High up and far away, beyond that invisible
+barrier against which Watch-planes had flung themselves in vain, there
+were tiny motes in mid-air. These were Watch planes too, hovering
+outside the obstacle they could not see, but which even hexynitrate
+bombs could not break through. And very far away indeed there was a
+swiftly-moving small dark cloud. As Thorn watched, that cloud drew
+close. As his eyes glowed, it resolved itself into its component
+specks. Small, two-man patrol-scouts. Larger, ten-man cruisers of the
+air. Huge, massive dreadnaughts of the blue. A complete
+combat-squadron of the United Nations Fighting Forces was sweeping to
+position about the dome of force above the rocket-ship.
+
+The scouts swept forward in a tiny, whirling cloud. They sheered away
+from something invisible. One of them dropped a smoking object. It
+emitted a vast cloud of paper, which the wind caught and swept away,
+and suddenly wrapped about a definite section of an arc. More and more
+of the tiny smoke-bombs released their masses of cloudlike stuff. In
+mid-air a dome began to take form, outlined by the trailing streaks of
+gray. It began to be more definitely traced by interlinings. An aerial
+lattice spread about a portion of a six-mile hemisphere. The top was
+fifteen thousand feet above the rocket-ship, twenty-five thousand feet
+from sea-level, as high as Mount Everest itself.
+
+Tiny motes hovered even there, where the smallest of visible specks
+was a ten-man cruiser. And one of the biggest of the aircraft came
+gingerly up to the very inner edge of the lattice-work of fog and hung
+motionless, holding itself aloft by powerful helicopter screws. Men
+were working from a trailing stage--scientists examining the barrier
+even hexynitrate would not break down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thorn set to work. He had come toilsomely to the neighborhood of the
+rocket-ship because he would have to do visual signaling, and there
+was no time to lose. The dome of force was transparent. The air fleet
+would be trying to communicate through it with the Martians they
+believed were in the rocket-ship. Sunlight reflected from a polished
+canteen would attract attention instantly from a spot near the red
+monster, while elsewhere it might not be observed for a long time.
+But, trying every radio wave-band, and every system of visual
+signaling, and watching and testing for a reply, Thorn's signal ought
+to be picked up instantly.
+
+He handed his pocket speech-light receptor to Sylva. It is standard
+equipment for all flying personnel, so they may receive non-broadcast
+orders from flight leaders. He pointed to a ten-man cruiser from
+which shone the queer electric-blue glow of a speech-light.
+
+"Listen in on that," he commanded. "I'm going to call them. Tell me
+when they answer."
+
+He began to flash dots and dashes in that quaintly archaic telegraph
+alphabet Watch fliers are still required to learn. It was the Watch
+code call, sent over and over again.
+
+"They're trying to make the Martians understand," said Sylva
+unsteadily with the speech-light receiver at her ear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Flash--flash--flash.... Thorn kept on grimly. The canteen top was
+slightly convex, so the sunlight-beam would spread. Accuracy was not
+needed, therefore. He covered and uncovered it, and covered and
+uncovered it....
+
+"They answered!" said Sylva eagerly. "They said 'Thorn Hard report at
+once!'"
+
+There was a hissing, roaring noise over the hillside, where the red
+rocket-ship lay. Thorn paid no attention. He began to spell out, in
+grim satisfaction:
+
+"R-o-c-k-e-t s-h-i-p i-s--"
+
+"Look out!" gasped Sylva. "They say look out, Thorn!"
+
+Then she screamed. As Thorn swung his head around, he saw a dense mass
+of white vapor rushing over the hillside toward them. He picked Sylva
+up in his arms and ran madly....
+
+The white vapor tugged at his knees. It was a variation of a
+vortex-stream. He fought his way savagely toward higher ground. The
+white vapor reached his waist.... It reached his shoulders.... He
+slung Sylva upon his shoulder and fought more madly still to get out
+of the wide white current.... It submerged him in its stinging, bitter
+flood.... As he felt himself collapsing his last conscious thought was
+the bitter realization that the bulbous white tower had upheld
+television lenses at its top, which had watched his approach and
+inspection of the rocket-ship, and had enabled those in the red
+monster to accurately direct their spurt of gas.
+
+His next sensation was that of pain in his lungs. Something that
+smarted intolerably was being forced into his nostrils, and he battled
+against the agony it produced. And then he heard someone chuckle
+amusedly and felt the curious furry sensation of electric anesthesia
+beginning....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he came to himself again a machine was clicking erratically and
+there was the soft whine of machinery going somewhere. He opened his
+eyes and saw red all about him. He stirred, and he was free.
+Painfully, he sat up and blinked about him with streaming,
+gas-irritated eyes. He had been lying on a couch. He was in a room
+perhaps fifteen feet by twenty, of which the floor was slightly
+off-level. And everything in the room was red. Floor and walls and
+ceiling, the couch he had lain on and the furniture itself. There was
+a monstrous bulk of a man sitting comfortably in a chair on the other
+side of the room, pecking at a device resembling a writing-machine.
+
+Thorn sat still for an instant, gaining strength. Then he flung
+himself desperately across the room, his fingers curved into talons.
+
+Five feet, ten, with the slant of the floor giving him added
+impetus.... Then his muscles tightened convulsively. A wave of pure
+agony went through his body. He dropped and lay writhing on the floor,
+while the high-frequency currents of an induction-screen had their way
+with him. He was doubled into a knot by his muscles responding to the
+electric stimulus instead of his will. Sheer anguish twisted him. And
+the room filled with a hearty bellow of laughter. The monstrous
+whiskered man had turned about and was shaking with merriment.
+
+He picked up a pocket-gun from beside him and turned off a switch at
+his elbow. Thorn's muscles were freed.
+
+"Go back, my friendt," boomed the same voice that had come from a
+speaker the night before. "Go to der couch. You amuse me and you haff
+already been useful, but I shall haff no hesitation in killing you.
+You are Thorn Hardt. My name is Kreynborg. How do you do?"
+
+"Where's my friend?" demanded Thorn savagely. "Where is she?"
+
+"Der lady friendt? There!" The whiskered man pointed negligently with
+the pocket-gun. "I gafe her a bunk to slumber in."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a niche in the wall, which Thorn had not seen. Sylva was
+there, sleeping the same heavy, dreamless sleep from which Thorn
+himself had just awakened. He went to her swiftly. She was breathing
+naturally, though tears from the irritating gas still streaked her
+face and her skin seemed to be pinkened a little from the same cause.
+
+Thorn swung around. His weapons were gone, of course. The huge man
+snapped on the induction-screen switch again and put down his weapon.
+With that screen separating the room into two halves, no living thing
+could cross it without either such muscular paralysis as Thorn had
+just experienced, or death. Coils in the floor induced alternating
+currents in the flesh itself, very like those currents used for
+supposed medical effects in "medical batteries," and "shockers."
+
+"Be calm!" said Kreynborg, chuckling. "I am pleased to haff company.
+This is der loneliest spot in der Rockies. It was chosen for that
+reason. But I shall be here for maybe months, and now I shall not be
+lonely. We of der Com-Pubs haff scientific resources such as your
+fools haff nefer dreamed of, but there is no scientific substitute for
+a pretty woman."
+
+He turned again to the writing device. It clicked half a dozen times
+more, and he stopped. A strip of paper came out of it. He inserted it
+into the slot of another mechanism and switched on a standard G.C.
+phone as the paper began to feed. In seconds the room was filled with
+unearthly hoots and wails and whistles. They came from the device into
+which the paper was feeding, and they poured into the G.C.
+transmitter. They went on for nearly a minute, and ceased. Kreynborg
+shut off the transmitter.
+
+"My code," he observed comfortably, "gifing der good news to
+Stalingrad. Everything is going along beautifully. I roused der fair
+Sylva and kissed her a few times to make her scream into a record, and
+I interpolated her screamings into der last code transmission. Your
+wise men think der Martians haff vivisected her. They are
+concentrating der entire fighting force of der United Nations outside
+der dome of force. And all for a few kisses!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thorn was white with rage. His eyes burned with a terrible fury. His
+hands shook. Kreynborg chuckled again.
+
+"Oh, she is unharmed--so far. I haff not much time now. Presently der
+two of you will while away der time. But not now."
+
+He switched on the G.C. receiver and the room filled with a multitude
+of messages. Thorn sat beside Sylva, watching, watching, watching,
+while invisible machinery whined softly and Kreynborg listened
+intently to the crisp, curt official reports that came through on the
+Fighting Force band. Three combat-squadrons were on the spot now;
+One, Three and Eight. Four more were coming at fast cruising
+speed--four hundred miles an hour. One combat-squadron of the whole
+fleet alone would be left to cope with all other emergencies that
+might arise.... A television screen lighted up and Thorn could see
+where the lenses on the bulbous tower showed the air all about filled
+with fighting-planes, hovering about the dome of force like moths
+beating their wings against a screen. The strongest fighting-force in
+the world, helpless against a field of electric energy!
+
+"It is amusing," chuckled Kreynborg, looking at the screen
+complacently. "Der dome of force is a new infention. It is a
+heterodyning of one frequency upon another at a predetermined
+distance. It has all der properties of matter except mass and a limit
+of strength. There is no limit to its strength! But it cannot be made
+except in a sphere, so at first it seemed only a defensif weapon. With
+it, we could defy der United Nations to attack us. But we wished to do
+more. So I proposed a plan, and I haff der honor of carrying it out.
+If I fail, Krassin disavows me. But I shall not fail, and I shall end
+as Commissar for der continent of North America!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He looked wisely at Thorn, who sat motionless.
+
+"You keep quiet, eh, and wait for me to say something indiscreet?
+Ferry well, I tell you. We are in a sort of gold-fish globe of
+electric force. Your air fleet cannot break in. You know that! Also,
+if they were in they could not break out again. So I wait, fery
+patiently pretending to be a Martian until all your Fighting Force has
+gathered around in readiness to fight me. But I shall not fight. I
+shall simply make a new and larger gold-fish globe, outside of this
+one. And then I go out and make faces at der Fighting Force of der
+United Nations imprisoned between der two of them--and then der
+Com-Pub fleet comes ofer!"
+
+He stood up and put his hand on a door-knob.
+
+"Is it not pretty?" he asked blandly. "In two weeks der air fleet will
+begin to starfe. In three, there will be cannibalism, unless der
+Com-Pubs accept der surrender. Imagine...." He laughed. "But do not
+fear, my friendt! I haff profisions for a year. If you are amusing, I
+feed you. In any case I exchange food for kisses with der charming
+Sylva. It will be amusing to change her from a woman who screams as I
+kiss her, to one who weeps for joy. If I do not haff to kill you, you
+shall witness it!"
+
+He vanished through a doorway on the farther side of the room.
+Instantly Thorn was on his feet. The dead slumber in which Sylva was
+sunk was wholly familiar. Electric anesthesia, used not only for
+surgery, but to enforce complete rest at any chosen moment. He dragged
+her from that couch to his own. He saw her stir, and her eyes were
+instantly wide with terror. But Thorn was tearing the couch to pieces.
+Cover, pneumatic mattress.... He ripped out a loosely-fitting
+frame-piece of steel.
+
+"Quick, now," he said in a low tone, "I'm going to short the
+induction-screen. We'll get across it. Then--out the door!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She struggled to her feet, terrified, but instantly game. Thorn slid
+the rod of metal across the stretch of flooring he had previously been
+unable to cross. The induced currents in the rod amounted to a
+short-circuit of the field. The rod grew hot and its paint blistered
+smokily. Thorn leaped across with Sylva in his wake. He pointed to the
+door, and she fled through it. He seized a chair, crashed it
+frenziedly into the television screen, and had switched on the G.C.
+phone when there was a roar of fury from Kreynborg. Instantly there
+was the spitting sound of a pocket-gun and in the red room the racking
+crash of a hexynitrate pellet. Nothing can stand the instant crash of
+hexynitrate. Its concussion-wave is a single pulsation of the air. The
+cellate diaphragm of the G.C. transmitter tore across from its
+violence and Thorn cursed bitterly. There was no way, now, of
+signaling....
+
+A second racking crash as a second pellet flashed its tiny green
+flame. Kreynborg was using a pocket-gun, one of those small terrible
+weapons which shoot a projectile barely larger than the graphite of a
+lead pencil, but loaded with a fraction of a milligram of hexynitrate.
+Two hundred charges would feed automatically into the bore as the
+trigger was pressed.
+
+Thorn gazed desperately about for weapons. There was nothing in sight.
+To gain the outside world he had to pass before the doorway through
+which the bullets had come.... And suddenly Thorn seized the
+code-writer and the device which transmitted that code as a series of
+unearthly noises which the world was taking for Martian speech. He
+swung the two machines before the door in a temporary barrier.
+Whatever else Kreynborg might be willing to destroy, he would not
+shoot into them!
+
+Thorn leaped madly past the door as Kreynborg roared with rage again.
+He paused only to hurl a chair at the two essential machines, and as
+they dented and toppled, he fled through the door and away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sylva peered anxiously at him from behind a huge boulder. He raced
+toward her, expecting every second to hear the spitting of Kreynborg's
+pocket-gun. With the continuous-fire stud down, the little gun would
+shoot itself empty in forty-five seconds, during which time Kreynborg
+could play it upon him like a hose that spouted death. But Thorn had
+done the hundred yards in eleven seconds, years before. He bettered
+his record now. The first of the little green flashes came when he was
+no more than ten yards from the boulder which sheltered Sylva. The
+tiny pellet had missed him by inches. Three more, and he was safe from
+pursuit.
+
+"But we've got to get away!" he panted. "He can shoot gas here and get
+us again! He can cover four hundred yards with gas, and more than that
+with guns."
+
+They fled down a tiny water-course, midget figures in an infinity of
+earth and sky, scurrying frenziedly from a red slug-like thing that
+lay askew in a mountain valley. Far away and high above hung the
+war-planes of the United Nations. Big ones and little ones, hovering
+in hundreds about the outside of the dome of force they could neither
+penetrate nor understand.
+
+A quarter of a mile. Half a mile. There was no sign from Kreynborg or
+the rocket-ship. Thorn panted.
+
+"He can't reach us with gas, now, and it looks like he doesn't dare
+use a gun. They'd know he wasn't a Martian. At night he'll use that
+helicopter, though. If we can only make those ships see us...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They toiled on. The sun was already slanting down toward the western
+sky. At four--by the sun--Thorn could point to a huge air-dreadnaught
+hanging by lazily revolving gyros barely two miles away. He waved
+wildly, frantically, but the big ship drifted on, unseeing. The
+Fighting Force was no longer looking for Thorn and Sylva. They had
+been carried into the rocket-ship fourteen hours and more before.
+Sylva's screaming had been broadcast with the weird hoots and
+whistles the United Nations believed to be the language of
+inter-planetary invaders. The United Nations believed them dead. Now a
+watch was being kept on the rocket-ship, to be sure, but it was
+becoming a matter-of-fact sort of vigilance, pending the arrival of
+the rest of the Fighting Force and the cracking of the dome of force
+by the scientists who worked on it night and day.
+
+On level ground, Thorn and Sylva would have reached the edge of the
+dome in an hour. Here they had to climb up steep hillsides and down
+precipitous slopes. Four times they halted to make frantic efforts to
+attract the attention of some nearby ship.
+
+It was six when they came upon the rim. There was no indication of its
+existence save that three hundred yards from them boughs waved and
+leaves quivered in a breeze. Inside the dome the air was utterly
+still.
+
+"There it is!" panted Thorn.
+
+Wearied and worn out as they were, they hurried forward, and abruptly
+there was something which impeded their movements. They could reach
+their hands into the impalpable barrier. For one foot, two, or even
+three. But an intolerable pressure thrust them back. Thorn seized a
+sapling and ran at the barrier as if with a spear. It went five feet
+into the invisible resistance and stopped, shot back out as if flung
+back by a jet of compressed air.
+
+"He told the truth," groaned Thorn. "We can't get out!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Long shadows were already reaching out from the mountains. Darkness
+began to creep upward among the valleys. Far, far away a compact dark
+cloud appeared, a combat-squadron. It swept toward the dome and
+dissociated into a myriad specks which were aircraft. The fliers
+already swirling about the invisible dome drew aside to leave a
+quadrant clear, and Combat-Squadron Seven merged with the rest, making
+the pattern of dancing specks markedly denser.
+
+"With a fire," said Thorn desperately, "they'll come! Of course! But
+Kreynborg took my lighter!"
+
+Sylva said hopefully:
+
+"Don't you know some way? Rubbing sticks together?"
+
+"I don't," admitted Thorn grimly, "but I've got to try to invent one.
+While I'm at it, you watch for fliers."
+
+He searched for dry wood. He rubbed sticks together. They grew warm,
+but not enough to smoke, much less to catch. He muttered, "A drill,
+that's the idea. All the friction in one spot." He tugged at the ring
+under his lapel and the parachute fastened into his uniform collar
+shot out in a billowing mass of gossamer silk, flung out by the
+powerful elastics designed to make its opening certain. Savagely, he
+tore at the shrouds and had a stout cord. He made a drill and revolved
+it as fast as he could with the cord....
+
+A second dark cloud swept forward in the gathering dusk and merged
+into the mass of fliers about the dome. Five minutes later, a third.
+Dense as the air-traffic was, riding-lights were necessary. They began
+to appear in the deepening twilight. It seemed as if all the sky were
+alight with fireflies, whirling and swirling and fluttering here and
+there. But then the fire-drill began to emit a tiny wisp of smoke.
+Thorn worked furiously. Then a tiny flickering flame appeared, which
+he nursed with a desperate solicitude. Then a larger flame. Then a
+roaring blaze! It could not be missed! A fire within the dome could
+not fail to be noted and examined instantly!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A searchlight beam fell upon them, illuminating him in a pitiless
+glare. Thorn waved his arms frantically. He had nothing with which to
+signal save his body. He flung his arms wide, and up, and wide again,
+in an improvised adaption of the telegraphic alphabet to
+gesticulation. He sent the watch call over and over again....
+
+A little cloud of riding-lights swept toward the dome from an infinite
+distance away. Darkness was falling so swiftly that they were still
+merely specks of light as they swept up to and seemed to melt into the
+swirling, swooping mass of fliers about the dome....
+
+Cold sweat was standing out on Thorn's face, despite the violence of
+his exertions. He was even praying a little.... And suddenly the
+searchlight beam flickered a welcome answer:
+
+"W-e u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d. R-e-p-o-r-t."
+
+Thorn flung his arms about madly, sending:
+
+"G-e-t a-w-a-y q-u-i-c-k. C-o-m P-u-b-s h-e-r-e. W-i-l-l m-a-k-e
+o-t-h-e-r d-o-m-e o-u-t-s-i-d-e t-o t-r-a-p y-o-u."
+
+The searchlight beam upon him flickered an acknowledgment. He knew
+what was happening after that. The G.C. phones would flash the warning
+to every ship, and every ship would dash madly for safety.... A
+sudden, concerted quiver seemed to go over the whirling maze of lights
+aloft. A swift, simultaneous movement of every ship in flight. Thorn
+breathed an agonized prayer....
+
+There was a flash of blue light. For one fractional part of a second
+the stars and skies were blotted out. There was a dome of flame above
+him and all about the world, of bright blue flame which instantly
+was--and instantly was not!
+
+Then there was a ghastly blast of green. Hexynitrate going off. In
+this glare were silhouetted a myriad motes in flight. But there was no
+noise. A second flare.... And then Thorn Hard, groaning, saw flash
+after flash after flash of green. Monster explosions. Colossal
+explosions. Terrific detonations which were utterly soundless, as the
+ships of the Fighting Force, in flight from the menace of which Thorn
+had warned them, crashed into an invisible barrier and exploded
+without cracking it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was August 24th, 2037. For three days, now, seven of the eight
+great combat-squadrons of the United Nations Fighting Forces had been
+prisoners inside a monstrous transparent dome of force. There was a
+financial panic of unprecedented proportions in the great financial
+districts of New York and London and Paris. Martial law was in force
+in Chicago, in Prague, in Madrid, and in Buenos Aires. The Com-Pubs
+were preparing an ultimatum to be delivered to the government of the
+United Nations. Thorn and Sylva were hunted fugitives within the inner
+dome of force, which protected the red rocket-ship from the seven
+combat squadrons it had imprisoned. Newspaper vendor-units were
+shrieking, "Air Fleet Still Trapped!" and a prominent American
+politician was promising his constituents that if a foreign nation
+dared invade the sacred territories of the United Nations, a million
+embattled private planes would take the air. And he seemed not even
+trying to be humorous! Scientists were wringing their hands in utter
+helplessness before the incredible resistance of the dome. It had been
+determined that the dome was a force-field which caused particles
+charged with positive electricity to attempt to move in a right-hand
+direction about the source of the field, and particles charged with
+negative electricity to attempt to move in a left-hand direction. The
+result was that any effort to thrust an external object into the field
+of force was an attempt to tear the negatively charged electrons of
+every atom of that substance, free from the positively charged protons
+of nuclei. An object could only be passed through the field of force
+if it ceased to exist as matter--which was not an especially helpful
+discovery. And--Thorn Hard and Sylva were still hunted fugitives
+inside the inner dome.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was an hour high when the helicopter appeared to hunt for them
+by day. After the first time they had never dared light a fire,
+because Kreynborg in the helicopter searched the hills for a glow of
+light. But this day he came searching for them by day. Thorn had
+speared a fish for Sylva with a stick he had sharpened by rubbing it
+on a crumbling rock. He was working discouragedly on a little
+contrivance made out of a forked stick and the elastic from his
+parachute-pack. He was haggard and worn and desperate. Sylva was
+beginning to look like a hunted wild thing.
+
+Two hundred yards from them the most formidable fighting force the
+world had ever seen littered the earth with gossamer-seeming cellate
+wings and streamlined bodies at all angles to each other. And it was
+completely useless. The least of the weapons of the air-fleet would
+have been a godsend to Thorn and Sylva. To have had one ship, even the
+smallest, where they were would have been a godsend to the fleet. But
+two hundred yards, with the dome of force between, made the fleet just
+exactly as much protection for Sylva as if it had been a million miles
+away.
+
+The droning hum of the helicopter came across the broken ground. Now
+louder, now momentarily muted, its moments of loudness grew steadily
+more strong. It was coming nearer. Thorn gripped his spear in an
+instinctive, utterly futile gesture of defense. Sylva touched his
+hand.
+
+"We'd better hide."
+
+They hid. Thick brush concealed them utterly. The helicopter went
+slowly overhead, and they saw Kreynborg gazing down at the earth below
+him. Nearly overhead he paused. And suddenly Thorn groaned under his
+breath.
+
+"It's the flagship!" he whispered hoarsely to Sylva. "Oh, what fools
+we were! The flagship! He knows the General would have brought it to
+earth opposite us, to question us!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The flagship was nearly opposite. To find the flagship was more or
+less to find where Thorn and Sylva hid. But they had not realized it
+until now.
+
+The speaker in the helicopter boomed above their heads.
+
+"Ah, my friends! I think you hear me. Answer me. I haff an offer to
+make."
+
+Shivering, Sylva pressed close to Thorn.
+
+"Der Com-Pub fleet is on der way," said Kreynborg, chuckling.
+"Sefen-eights of der United Nations fleet is just outside. You haff
+observed it. In six hours der Com-Pub fleet begins der conquest of der
+country and der execution of persons most antagonistic to our regime.
+But I haff still weary weeks of keeping der air fleet prisoner, until
+its personnel iss too weak from starfation to offer resistance to our
+soldiers. So I make der offer. Come and while away der weary hours for
+me, and I except you both from der executions I shall findt it
+necessary to decree. Refuse, and I get you anyhow, and you will
+regret your refusal fery much."
+
+Thorn's teeth ground together. Sylva pressed close to him.
+
+"Don't let him get me, Thorn," she panted hysterically. "Don't let him
+get me...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The droning, monotonous hum of the helicopter over their heads
+continued. The little flying-machine was motionless. The air was
+still. There was no other sound in the world.
+
+Silence, save for the droning hum of the helicopter. Then something
+dropped. It went off with an inadequate sort of an explosion and a
+cloud of misty white vapor reared upward on a hillside and began to
+settle slowly, spreading out.... The helicopter moved and other things
+dropped, making a pattern....
+
+"The air's still," said Thorn quite grimly. "That stuff seems to be
+heavier than air. It's flowing downhill, toward the dome-wall. It will
+be here in five minutes. We've got to move."
+
+Sylva seemed to be stricken with terror. He helped her to her feet.
+They began to move toward higher ground. They moved with infinite
+caution. In the utter silence of this inner dome, even the rustling of
+a leaf might betray them.
+
+It was the presence of the air fleet within clear view that made the
+thing so horrible. The defenders of a nation were watching the enemy
+of a nation, and they were helpless to offer battle. The helicopter
+hummed and droned, and Kreynborg grinned and searched the earth below
+him for a sign of the man and girl who had been the only danger to his
+plan and now were unarmed fugitives. And there were four
+air-dreadnaughts in plain sight and five thousand men watching, and
+Kreynborg hunted, for sport, a comrade of the five thousand men and a
+woman every one of them would have risked or sacrificed his life to
+protect.
+
+He seemed certain that they were below him. Presently he dropped
+another gas-bomb, and another. And then Sylva stumbled and caught at
+something, and there was a crashing sound as a sapling wavered in her
+grasp.... And Thorn picked her up and fled madly. But billowing white
+vapor spouted upward before him. He dodged it, and the helicopter was
+just overhead and more smoke spouted, and more, and more.... They were
+hemmed in, and Sylva clung close to Thorn and sobbed....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five thousand men, in a thousand grounded aircraft, shouted curses
+that made no sound. They waved weapons that were utterly futile. They
+were as impotent as so many ghosts. Their voices made not even the
+half-heard whisper one may attribute to a phantom.
+
+The fog-vapor closed over Thorn and Sylva as Kreynborg grinned
+mockingly at the raging men without the dome of force. He swept the
+helicopter to a position above the last view of Thorn and Sylva, and
+the downward-beating screws swept away the foggy gas. Thorn and Sylva
+lay motionless, though Thorn had instinctively placed himself in a
+position of defense above her.
+
+The Fighting Force of the United Nations watched, raging, while
+Kreynborg descended deliberately into the area the helicopter-screws
+kept clear. While he searched Thorn's pockets reflectively and found
+nothing more deadly than small pebbles which might strike sparks, and
+a small forked stick. While he grinned mockingly at the raging armed
+men and made triumphant gesticulations before carrying Sylva's limp
+figure to the helicopter. While the little ship rose and swept away
+toward the rocket-plane.
+
+It descended and was lost to view. Thorn lay motionless on the earth.
+Seven-eighths of the fighting force of the United Nations was
+imprisoned within the space between two domes of force no matter could
+penetrate. A ring two miles across and ten miles in outer diameter
+held the whole fleet of the United Nations paralyzed.
+
+There was sheer panic through the Americas and Europe and the few
+outlying possessions of the United Nations.... And it was at this
+time, with a great fleet already half-way across the Pacific, that the
+Com-Pubs declared war in a fine gesture of ironic politeness. It was
+within half an hour of this time that the Seventh Combat Squadron--the
+only one left unimprisoned--dived down from fifty thousand feet into
+the middle of the Com-Pub fleet and went out of existence in twenty
+minutes of such carnage as is still stuff for epics.
+
+The Seventh Squadron died, but with it died not less than three times
+as many of the foe. And then the Com-Pub fleet came on. Most of the
+original force remained; surely enough to devastate an undefended
+nation, to shatter its cities and butcher its people; to slaughter its
+men and enslave its women and leave a shambles and smoking ash-heaps
+where the very backbone of resistance to the red flag had been.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was twenty minutes before Thorn Hard stirred. His lungs seemed on
+fire. His limbs seemed lead. His head reeled and rocked. He staggered
+to his feet and stood there swaying dully. A vivid light, brighter
+than the sunshine, played upon him from the flagship of the fleet
+which now was helpless to defend its nation. Thorn's befogged brain
+stirred dazedly as the message came.
+
+"Com-Pub fleet on way. Seventh Combat-Squadron wiped out. Nation
+defenseless. You are only hope. For God's sake try something.
+Anything."
+
+Thorn roused himself by a terrific effort. He managed to ask a
+question by exhausted gestures in the Watch visual alphabet.
+
+"Kreynborg took her to rocket-ship," came the answer. "She recovered
+consciousness before being carried inside."
+
+And Thorn, reeling on his feet and unarmed and alone, turned and went
+staggering up a hillside toward the rocket-ship's position. He could
+only expect to be killed. He could not even hope for anything more
+than to ensure that Sylva, also, die mercifully. Behind him he left an
+unarmed nation awaiting devastation, with a mighty air fleet speeding
+toward it at six hundred miles an hour.
+
+As he went, though, some strength came to him. The fury of his toil
+forced him to breathe deeply, cleansing his lungs of the stupefying
+gas which, because it was visible as a vapor, had been carried in the
+rocket-ship. A visible gas was, of course, more consistent with the
+early pretense that the rocket-ship bore invaders from another planet.
+And Thorn became drenched with sweat, which aided in the excretion of
+the poisonous stuff. His brain cleared, and he recognized despair and
+discounted it and began to plan grimly to make the most of an
+infinitesimal chance. The chance was simply that Kreynborg had
+ransacked his pockets and ignored a little forked stick.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Scrambling up a steep hillside with his face hardened into granite,
+Thorn drew that from his pocket again. Crossing a hill-top, he
+stripped off his coat.
+
+He traveled at the highest speed he could maintain, though it seemed
+painfully deliberate. An hour after he had started, he was picking up
+small round pebbles wherever he saw them in his path. By the time the
+tall, bulbous tower was in sight he had picked up probably sixty such
+pebbles, but no more than ten of them remained in his pockets. They,
+though, were smooth and round and even, perhaps an inch in diameter,
+and all very nearly the same size. And he carried a club in his hand.
+
+He went down the last slope openly. The television lenses on the tower
+would have picked him out in any case, if Kreynborg had repaired the
+screen. He went boldly up to the rocket-ship.
+
+"Kreynborg!" he called. "Kreynborg!"
+
+He felt himself being surveyed. A door came open. Kreynborg stood
+chuckling at him with a pocket-gun in his hand.
+
+"Ha! Just in time, my friend! I haff been fery busy. Der Com-Pub fleet
+is just due to pass in refiew abofe der welcoming United Nations
+combat-squadrons. I haff been gifing them last-minute information and
+assurance that der domes of force are solid and can hold forefer. I
+haff a few minutes to spare, which I had intended to defote to der
+fair Sylva. But--what do you wish?"
+
+"I'm offering you a bribe," said Thorn, his face a mask. "A billion
+dollars and immunity to cut off the outer dome of force."
+
+Kreynborg grinned at him.
+
+"It is too late. Besides being a traitor, I would be assassinated
+instantly. Also, I shall be Commissar for North America anyhow."
+
+"Two billion," said Thorn without expression.
+
+"No," said Kreynborg amusedly. "Throw away der club. I shall amuse
+myself with you, Thorn Hardt. You shall watch der progress of romance
+between me and Sylva. Throw away der club!"
+
+The pocket-gun came up. Thorn threw away the club.
+
+"What do you want, if two billion's not enough?"
+
+"Amusement," said Kreynborg jovially. "I shall be bored in this inner
+dome, waiting for der air fleet to starfe. I wish amusement. And I
+shall get it. Come inside!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He backed away from the door, his gun trained on Thorn. And Thorn saw
+that the continuous-fire stud was down. He walked composedly into the
+red room in which he had once awakened. Sylva gave a little choked cry
+at sight of him. She was standing, desperately defiant, on the other
+side of the induction-screen area on the floor. There was a scorched
+place on the floor where Thorn had shorted that screen and the bar of
+metal had grown red-hot. Kreynborg threw the switch and motioned Thorn
+to her.
+
+"I do not bother to search you for weapons," he said dryly. "I did it
+so short a time ago. And you had only a club...."
+
+Thorn walked stiffly beside Sylva. She put out a shaking hand and
+touched him. Kreynborg threw the switch back again.
+
+"Der screen is on," he chuckled. "Console each other, children. I am
+glad you came, Thorn Hardt. We watch der grand refiew of der Com-Pub
+fleet. Then I turn a little infention of mine upon you. It is a
+heat-ray of fery limited range. It will be my method of wooing der
+fair Sylva. When she sees you in torment, she kisses me sweetly for
+der prifilege of stopping der heat-ray. I count upon you, my friend,
+to plead with her to grant me der most extrafagant of concessions,
+when der heat-ray is searing der flesh from your bones. I feel that
+she is soft-hearted enough to oblige you. Yes?"
+
+He touched a button and the repaired television-screen lighted up.
+All the dome of mountains and sky was visible in it. There were
+dancing motes in sight, which were aircraft.
+
+"I haff remofed all metal-work from that side of der room," added
+Kreynborg comfortably, "so I can dare to turn my back. You cannot
+short der induction-screen again. That was clefer. But you face a
+scientist, Thorn Hardt. You haff lost."
+
+A sudden surge of flying craft appeared on the television screen. The
+grounded fleet of the United Nations was taking to the air again. In
+the narrow, two-mile strip between the two domes of force it swirled
+up and up.... Kreynborg frowned.
+
+"Now, what is der idea of that?" he demanded. He moved closer to the
+screen. The pocket-gun was left behind, five feet from his
+finger-tips. "Thorn Hardt, you will explain it!"
+
+"They hope," said Thorn grimly, "your fleet can make gaps in the dome
+to shoot through. If so, they'll go out through those gaps and fight."
+
+"Foolish!" said Kreynborg blandly. "Der only weapon we haff to use is
+der normal metabolism of der human system. Hunger!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thorn reached into his pocket. Kreynborg was regarding the screen
+absorbedly. Through the haze of flying dots which was the United
+Nations fleet, a darkening spot to westward became visible. It drew
+nearer and grew larger. It was dense. It was huge. It was deadly. It
+was the Com-Pub battle-fleet, nearly equal to the imprisoned ships in
+number. It swept up to view its helpless enemy. It came close, so
+every man could see their only possible antagonists rendered impotent.
+
+Such a maneuver was really necessary, when you think of it. The
+Com-Pub fleet had encountered one combat-squadron of the United
+Nations fleet, and that one squadron, dying, had carried down three
+times its number of enemies. It was necessary to show the Com-Pub
+personnel the rest of their enemies imprisoned, in order to hearten
+them for the butchery of civilians before them.
+
+Kreynborg guffawed as the Com-Pub fleet made its mocking circuit of
+the invisible dome. And Thorn raised his head.
+
+"Kreynborg!" he said grimly. "Look!"
+
+There was something in his tone which made Kreynborg turn. And Thorn
+held a little forked stick in his hand.
+
+"Turn off the induction-screen, or I kill you!"
+
+Kreynborg looked at him and chuckled.
+
+"It is bluff, my friend," he said dryly. "I haff seen many weapons. I
+am a scientist! You play der game of poker. You try a bluff! But I
+answer you with der heat-ray!"
+
+He moved his great bulk, and Thorn released his left hand. There was a
+sudden crack on Kreynborg's side of the room. A pebble a little over
+an inch in diameter fell to the floor. Kreynborg wavered, and toppled
+and fell. Three times more, his face merciless, Thorn drew back his
+arm, and three times Kreynborg's head jerked slightly. Then Thorn
+faced the panel on which the induction-screen switch was placed.
+Several times he thrust his hand through the screen and abruptly drew
+it back with pain, in an attempt to throw the switch. At last he was
+successful, and now he walked calmly across the room and bent over the
+motionless Kreynborg.
+
+"Skull fractured," he said grimly. "All right, Sylva."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He went through the narrow doorway beyond, picking up the pocket-gun
+as he went. There was a noise of whining machinery. Now Thorn was
+emptying pellets into the mechanism that controlled the dome of force.
+There was a crashing of glass. It stopped. There were blows and
+thumpings. That noise stopped too.
+
+Thorn came back, his eyes glowing. He flung open the outer door of the
+rocket-ship, and Sylva went to him.
+
+He pointed.
+
+Far away, the Fighting Force of the United Nations was swirling
+upward. Like smoke from a campfire or winged ants from a tree-stump,
+they went up in a colossal, twisting spiral. Beyond the domes and
+above them. The domes existed no longer. Up and up, and up.... And
+then they swooped down upon the suddenly fleeing enemy. Vengefully,
+savagely, with all the fury of men avenging not only what they have
+suffered, but also what they have feared, the combat-squadrons of the
+United Nations fell upon the invaders. Green hexynitrate explosions
+lighted up the sky. Ear-cracking detonations reverberated among the
+mountains. There was battle there, and death and carnage and utter
+destruction. The roar of combat filled the universe.
+
+Thorn closed the door and looked down at Kreynborg, who breathed
+stentorously, his mouth foolishly open.
+
+"Our men will be back for us," he said shortly. "We needn't worry."
+Then he said, "Huh! He called himself a scientist, and he didn't know
+a sling-shot when he saw one!"
+
+But then Thorn Hard dropped a weapon made of a forked stick and strong
+elastic from his chute-pack, and caught Sylva hungrily in his arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Invasion, by William Fitzgerald Jenkins
+
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