Chapter VII: The Heart of the Storm

Rain drummed on the roof and clattered on the windows. Wind shrieked outside the little stone building. A mountain-flank had protected it from the blast of air that Had blown all the day before, and the storm that raged during the night was merely a gale such as uproots trees and sinks ships at sea. But it was uncomfortable to listen to, with thunder making the tumult of a bombardment.

The smoke of Schaaf's pipe floated about the room. The loud-speaker had been turned off, Hines turned it on with an air of impatience.

"The lieutenant's been gone a long time. Do you suppose he was blown away?"

Schaaf grunted.

"Of course not, Hines. He is a smart young man. He got to his tank, and he has been gifing orders by radio to der other tanks that were left behind when der bridge gafe way. Breston will see that there is a cat at efery mouse-hole, in a little while."

"Preston probably has more than the six you marked down," said Hines shortly, "but we have eleven tanks."

He was worried, though. Abominably worried. All but four of the tank-force had been left behind early in the night, when one tank was destroyed as a bridge gave way under it. Those land-warships had now been ordered, separately, to make wide detours and somehow get to the six spots Schaaf had indicated.

They would approach the stations from which Preston was transmitting his darkness-waves. If the station did not cease to transmit, the tank could ride it down and crush it, or bomb it with heavy bombs and destroy it utterly.

Preston had undoubtedly planned to alternate in the use of his transmitters for the precise purpose of preventing their location. But if every station he had ready to transmit had a tank waiting to pounce upon it--It was exactly like the posting of a cat at every mouse-hole. If the mouse showed his head--if a known station emitted the waves that produced the opacity of the air--the tank would pounce. But Hines was worried. Preston was clever.

"I am thinking, Hines," said Schaaf placidly, "that it should be near sunrise. I go and look."

For the third time he unfastened and opened a screen. For the third time a seemingly solid mass of blackness stabbed into the room. Schaaf disappeared into the tangible darkness. The noises of the outer air were suddenly magnified as he opened a window.

And the outer noises were changing markedly. Rain still fell and thunder still boomed. But the rain diminished. The drops became fewer and less regular. Then the thunder dwindled.

The listeners in the laboratory realized that a steady, even wind was blowing. It was a strong wind when they first noticed it. It gave forth a low hum whose pitch rose in minutes. It became a scream, and then a whistle that grew more and more shrill until human ears could not detect it. And then a steady, regular roaring noise took its place. It was the wind of the Storm That Had to be Stopped. On the second day of the Storm it rose much more rapidly than on the first.

Hines and Kathryn looked at each other. Kathryn was pale, but she smiled at Hines.

"We've got to get out to the tank!" he said harshly.

Schaaf popped magically out of the blackness.

"Of all der double-barreled imbeciles!" he said bitterly. "We haff to reach der tank, and it is impossible! Der wind already is as strong as it was at its worst yesterday. Nobody could liff in it a second! Der laboratory nearly went yesterday! It will not stand another half hour if der wind increases!"

* * * * *

The wind did increase. Shielded though the laboratory was by a mountain-flank, and thick stone as its walls were, the beams that upheld the roof began to creak. The walls quivered. Plaster fell from the ceiling. Windows burst outward, suddenly, and all light and movable things leaped toward them and vanished. Hines seized Kathryn and bore her to the mountainward side of the laboratory.

"We haff," said Schaaf calmly, "maybe fife minutes. Maybe less. I am sorry as der deffil, Hines, that we did not get that _verdammt_ Breston."

Then there was a vibration which seemed to shake the very flooring. And suddenly a wall reeled and caved in, and a section of roof tore out. Then, quite incredibly, the monstrous beak of a tank thrust its way delicately into the laboratory and stopped. A door slid aside and the tank-officer stood beckoning in the opening.

"I figured it was the only thing to do," he shouted above the wind-roar as they struggled inside the tank. "The wind's unbelievable outside, and if you were kept from blowing away, you'd strangle."

"As der poet says," observed Schaaf calmly, "you said a libraryfull. What do we do now?"

"I've been getting reports from the other tanks," said the officer cheerfully. "Three of them have reached position. They know they're within a quarter of a mile of a darkness-transmitter, but each time it has turned off. The others are going on. We'll carry out the rest of the plan. All ready?"

The tank lurched backward. The laboratory collapsed, and instantly there was a savage bombardment by the wind. Beams, sections of roofs, stones, articles of furniture--everything the wind could wrench from the shattered building it flung with maniacal fury upon the tank.

The metal monster shuddered and clanged and reeled, and then turned about and slid on downhill with a ponderous clanking of its mighty treads. But the noise of the wind sounded even above the internal roaring of the tank's machinery.

There were hootings, unbelievably faint, and the tank-officer shook his head. He spoke curtly into a speaking-tube, and turned apologetically to Hines.

"Sound-signals are useless, sir. We are having to use radio again. We'll have quite a time of it anyhow. Better find seats of some sort. Or you can come up in the control-room."

The control-room was a tiny cubby-hole. There was room for the man who steered the cumbersome war-engine, and normally there was bare space for the commander of the tank. Now Hines squeezed in between them for the second time, and there was only the light of the dimly-lit instrument-board and a curious fuzzy appearance about the vision-slits where the darkness came a little way into the tank's metal interior.

"Six of the tanks are going to their posts. The other four are following us," said the officer in Hines's ear. "We're going to try to keep hundred-yard intervals, but we're all blind."

And the tank went crawling on.

* * * * *

The instruments gave their varying indications. The wind roared without. In the dead blackness the air had assumed not only the appearance but the solidity of a substance. It pressed upon the forty-ton tank with such force that even the monstrous engine was edged steadily to one side.

The line of tanks, crawling through blackness, was following a concrete road by map and the feel of the treads.

There was no one in the tanks who did not think in shuddering horror of what the blinded monsters might be doing as they lurched and swayed across a place that had been inhabited. There might be people yet living who would be crushed beneath the tanks' broad treads.

But they went on. Their destination was a spot which Hines had chosen. The located transmitters of darkness formed an irregular circle, and Hines guessed that the form was not an accident. And if it were intentional, and if the transmitters were governed by remote control, then sheer efficiency would dictate that the controlling spot should be in the center of the circle. If anywhere, Preston would be at a spot nearly equidistant from all his transmitters.

Hines watched the vision-slits of the control-room. They were narrow slits in a bullet-proof steel wall. Wind came in them so fiercely that it stung exploring fingers. And the darkness crept in. The walls near the vision-slits looked fuzzy on the side nearest the darkness-transmitter then in action. A man outside could have taken the station-bearing accurately, while this method was rough at best; and no man could live outside now.

Hines craned his neck suddenly to look behind. The blurry little bands of darkness had vanished before him. Now they reappeared at the back of the control-room.

Hines clutched at the tank-officer's arm.

"A transmitter, behind us!" he barked in the officer's ear. "Have that last tank turn back and try to smash it!"

A snapped order went down the speaking-tube. The trailing tank turned about. Its steersman had but little to do save keep a certain disgusting fuzzy appearance at vision-slits exactly before him. The tank went blundering into heaps of still-standing masonry where the town had been. It surmounted or destroyed them. It careened and teetered upon the edge of a cellar, plunged boldly into it, crashed blindly to the other side and reared upward clumsily to crawl out.

The officer in command of the trailing tank saw that the fuzziness had vanished from the control-slits ahead. It had reappeared behind. As near as this, even the roughest of observations would serve. He yelled an order down below. A monstrous, misshapen egg went rolling down from the back of the tank. The monster went blundering on.

Thirty seconds, forty. There was a concussion which drowned out even the roar of the storm. Vast fragments of masonry struck the tank.

Suddenly there was a light outside the vision-slits. There had been a transmitter of darkness in the destroyed town. Deep in a sub-cellar, evidently, and sending out darkness from a buried a rial. Two hundred pounds of TNT had gone off above it. The transmitter might be destroyed, or it might be merely jammed. But for a space, there was light.

Those in the tank could see that there was a valley all about, and hill-sides rearing up on either hand. Except for the inevitable motion of objects past the tank, and four slug-like monsters crawling up a ribbon of concrete road, the tank-officer's main impression was that of utter deadness and lack of motion.

Wind blew upon his own machine with an unbearable, terrible force, but there was no sign of movement outside. There was no dust, no flying débris; there were no clouds. The wind blew with an awful force which had already demolished all things that could be destroyed, and now it kept up a horrible steady pressure that held all things immovable.

The sun shone down from a brazen sky, giving forth no heat, and wind blew and blew and blew.

Utter blackness fell again. Another transmitter of darkness had taken up the work of the one destroyed. And the wandering tank swung about and went crawling after the others on the now-blotted out concrete road.