Argosy All-Story Weekly, August 9, 1924 — page 140: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

290 through the water by ranks of harnessed dogs swimming before them. Loto momentarily had shut off his cyl- inder; his speed was slackening. Georgie overtook him, put an arm on his shoulder. The nearest of the barges was now less than a mile ahead. A flash upward from the leading barge was followed in a few seconds by a crack of thunder. The bolt dissipated harmless- ly into the air. But obviously it was power- ful, with an effective range of some two thousand feet—twice the range of the An- glese coast defense. Toroh’s plan now became apparent. He could batter the Anglese coast projectors while still beyond reach of them, and then make his landing. The cages over the barges were for protection from the smaller thunderbolts of the attacking aerial army. Georgie knew the cages were only partial- ly effective. A bolt was difficult to aim but it did queer things when it struck. From a short distance—a hundred feet or less— the barges could be set on fire and sunk. Their thin metal hulls were not protected. They could be pierced. The wooden super- structure could be fired; the swimming dogs struck and killed. In hurried whispers Loto was constantly talking with Fahn back in the cavern. The Scientist’s orders he repeated with his elec- trically magnified voice that could be heard easily by everyone of the little aerial army. For a time they circled about, above the barges but keeping well beyond the two thousand-foot range. Against the blue of the sky their figures must have shown plain- ly to the Noths. Occasionally a bolt would flash up—harmless at that distance. And the barges pushed steadily forward. At last Fahn decided the moment for at- tack had arrived. Loto repeated the order. Georgie’s division and Mogruud’s, separated from the rest. One hundred turned sea- ward, the others toward the land. They dropped swiftly—straight down, like divers heavily laden with lead, dropping through water. And then—a darting, twisting swarm of insects—from every side at once they attacked the leading barge. In the depths of the cavern at Anglese ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. City, Fahn sat in his room of mirrors. A metal band about his head held a receiver to his ear. A black mouthpiece hung against his chest; by lowering his head he could bring his lips to it. Rogers was at his side. The mirrors in every part of the room were lighted—the viewpoints of the coast towers near the mouth of the channel. In several of the mirrored scenes, over the distant water and in the air, black specks were visible—the enemy and Fahn’s army above it. But these were not the vital crystal mir- rors. A small one—a foot square perhaps —stood on the table before Fahn. He and Rogers were gazing into it intently. The mirror was connected with a tiny lens strapped to Loto’s forehead; it gave Loto’s viewpoint of the battle—showed the scene exactly as Loto saw it. Fahn was silent—a stern, anxious old man, with all his science around him, sit- ting in seclusion to direct this warfare upon which the fate of his people depended. Oc- casionally he would murmur something to Rogers; and the other man would speak into a mouthpiece—an order for the oper- ator of the broadcasted aerial voices, con- trolled from another part of the cavern. Then, throughout the island, cheering words to the Bas would resound—news of the progress of the battle. But Fahn’s gaze at the little mirror never wavered. Georgie’s and Mogruud’s divisions de- scended upon the leading barge. The barge spat forth its bolts, but it could discharge only one or two against a hundred of the tiny ones of its attackers. Looking down, from Loto’s viewpoint overhead, the barge was assailed on every side by the pencils of electrical flame. Figures dropped inert into the water; others, wounded, wavered upward. The wire cage over the barge was sizzling and crackling; the swimming dogs, a dozen or more of them, crumpled in the water and were dragged forward in their harness by the others. The engagement had lasted no more than a minute when the air about the barge was suddenly plunged into blackness. Every- thing down there was blotted out—a patch of solid ink on the sea. The Noth vessel had. exploded a bomb whose etheric vibra- GOMIIGIOO S C©