The Mysterious Air Balls
: The Airlords Of HanThe American barrage had been a long distance bombardment, designed,
apparently, to draw the Han disintegrator ray batteries into operation
and so reveal their positions on the mountain tops and slopes, for the
Hans, after the destruction of Nu-Yok, had learned quickly that
concealment of their positions was a better protection than a
surrounding wall of disintegrator rays shooting up into the sky.
The Ha
already this arm, which formerly they had believed invincible, was being
restricted to a limited number of their military units, and their
factories were busy turning out explosive rockets not dissimilar to
those of the Americans in their motive power and atomic detonation.
They had replied with these, shooting them from unrevealed positions,
and at the estimated positions of the Americans.
Since the Americans, not knowing the exact location of the Han outer
line, had shot their barrage over it, and the Hans had fired at unknown
American positions, this first exchange of fire had done little more
than to churn up vast areas of mountain and valley.
The Hans appeared to be elated, to feel that they had driven off an
American attack. I knew better. The next American move, I felt, would be
the occupation of the air, from which they had driven the Hans, and from
swoopers to direct the rocket fire at the city itself. Then, when they
had destroyed this, they would sweep in and hunt down the Hans, man to
man, in the surrounding mountains. Command of the air was still
important in military strategy, but command of the air rested no longer
in the air, but on the ground.
The Hans themselves attempted to scout the American positions from the
air, under cover of a massed attack of ships in "cloud bank" or beaming
formation, but with very little success. Most of their ships were shot
down, and the remainder slid back to the city on sharply inclined
repeller rays, one of them which had its generators badly damaged while
still fifty miles out, collapsed over the city, before it could reach
its berth at the airport, and crashed down through the glass roof of the
city, doing great damage.
Then followed the "air balls," an unforeseen and ingenious resurrection
by the Americans of an old principle of air and submarine tactics,
through a modern application of the principle of remote control.
The air balls took heavy toll of the morale of the Hans before they were
clearly understood by them, and even afterward for that matter.
* * * * *
Their first appearance was quite mysterious. One uneasy night, while the
pulsating growl of the distant barrage kept the nerves of the city's
inhabitants on edge, there was an explosion near the top of a pinnacle
not far from the Imperial Tower. It occurred at the 732nd level, and
caused the structure above it to lean and sag, though it did not fall.
Repair men who shot up the shafts a few minutes later to bring new
broadcast lamps to replace those which had been shattered, reported what
seemed to be a sphere of metal, about three feet in diameter, with a
four-inch lens in it, floating slowly down the shaft, as though it were
some living creature making a careful examination, pausing now and then
as its lens swung about like a great single eye. The moment this "eye"
turned upon them, they said, the ball "rushed" down on them, crushing
several to death in its vicious gyrations, and jamming the mechanism of
the elevator, though failing to crash through it. Then, said the wounded
survivors, it floated back up the shaft, watchfully "eyeing" them, and
slipped off to the side at the wrecked level.
The next night several of these "air balls" were seen, following
explosions in various towers and sections of the city roof and walls. In
each case repair gangs were "rushed" by them, and suffered many
casualties. On the third night a few of the air balls were destroyed by
the repair men and guards, who now were equipped with disintegrator
pistols.
This, however, was pretty costly business, for in each case the ray
bored into the corridor and shaft walls beyond its target, wrecking much
machinery, injuring the structural members of that section, penetrating
apartments and taking a number of lives. Moreover, the "air balls,"
being destroyed, could not be subjected to scientific inspection.
After this the explosions ceased. But for many days the sudden
appearances of those "air balls" in the corridors and shafts of the city
caused the greatest confusion, and many times they were the cause of
death and panic.
At times they released poison gases, and not infrequently themselves
burst, instead of withdrawing, in a veritable explosion of disease
germs, requiring absolute quarantine by the Han medical department.
There was an utter heartlessness about the defense of the Han
authorities, who considered nothing but the good of the community as a
whole; for when they established these quarantines, they did not
hesitate to seal up thousands of the city's inhabitants behind hermetic
barriers enclosing entire sections of different levels, where deprived
of food and ventilation, the wretched inhabitants died miserably, long
before the disease germs developed in their systems.
* * * * *
At the end of two weeks the entire population of the city was in a mood
of panicky revolt. News service to the public had been suspended, and
the use of all viewplates and phones in the city were restricted to
official communications. The city administration had issued orders that
all citizens not on duty should keep to their apartments, but the order
was openly flouted, and small mobs were wandering through the corridors,
ascending and descending from one level to another, seeking they knew
not what, fleeing the air balls, which might appear anywhere, and being
driven back from the innermost and deepest sections of the city by the
military guard.
I now made up my mind that the time was ripe for me to attempt my
escape. In all this confusion I might have an even break, in spite of
the danger I might myself run from the air balls, and the almost
insuperable difficulties of making my way to the outside of the city and
down the precipitous walls of the mountain to which the city clung like
a cap. I would have given much for my inertron belt, that I might simply
have leaped outward from the edge of the roof some dark night and
floated gently down. I longed for my ultrophone equipment, with which I
might have established communication with the beleaguering American
forces.
My greatest difficulty, I knew, would be that of escaping my guard. Once
free of them, I figured it would be the business of nobody in
particular, in that badly disorganized city, to recapture me. The knives
of the ordinary citizens I did not fear, and very few of the military
guard were armed with disintegrator pistols.
I was sitting in my apartment busying my mind with various plans, when
there occurred a commotion in the city corridor outside my door. The
captain of my guard jumped nervously from the couch on which he had been
reclining, and ordered the excited guards to open the door.
In the broad corridor, the remainder of the guard lay about, dead or
groaning, where they had been bowled over by one of these air balls, the
first I had ever seen.
The metal sphere floated hesitantly above its victims, turning this way
and that to bring its "eye" on various objects around. It stopped dead
on sighting the door the guard had thrown open, hesitated a moment, and
then shot suddenly into the apartment with a hissing sound, flinging
into a far corner one of the guards who had not been quick enough to
duck. As the captain drew his disintegrator pistol, it launched itself
at him with a vicious hiss. He bounded back from the impact, his chest
crushed in, while his pistol, which fortunately had fallen with its
muzzle pointed away from me, shot a continuous beam that melted its way
instantly through the apartment wall.
* * * * *
The sphere then turned on the other guard, who had thrown himself into a
corner where he crouched in fear. Deliberately it seemed to gauge the
distance and direction. Then it hurled itself at him with another
vicious hiss, which I now saw came from a little rocket motor, crushing
him to death where he lay.
It swung slowly around until the lens faced me again, and floated gently
into position level with my face, seeming to scan me with its blank,
four-inch eye. Then it spoke, with a metallic voice.
"If you are an American," it said, "answer with your name, gang and
position."
"I am Anthony Rogers," I replied, still half bewildered, "Boss of the
Wyomings. I was captured by the Hans after my swooper was disabled in a
fight with a Han airship and had drifted many hundred miles westward.
These Hans you have killed were my guard."
"Good!" ejaculated the metal ball. "We have been hunting for you with
these remote control rockets for two weeks. We knew you had been
captured. A Han message was picked up. Close the door of your room, and
hide this ball somewhere. I have turned off the rocket power. Put it on
your couch. Throw some pillows over it. Get out of sight. We'll speak
softly, so no Hans can hear, and we'll speak only when you speak to us."
The ball, I found, was floating freely in the air. So perfectly was it
balanced with ultron and inertron that it had about the weight of a
spider web. Ultimately, I suppose, it would have settled to the floor.
But I had no time for such an idle experiment. I quickly pushed it to my
couch, where I threw a couple of pillows and some of the bed clothes
over it. Then I threw myself back on the couch with my head near it. If
the dead guards outside attracted attention, and the Han patrol entered,
I could report the attack by the "air ball" and claim that I had been
knocked unconscious by it.
"One moment," said the ball, after I reported myself ready to talk.
"Here is someone who wants to speak to you." And I nearly leaped from
the couch with joy when, despite the metallic tone of the instrument, I
recognized the eager, loving voice of my wife, almost hysterical in her
own joy at talking to me again.
More
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