Charles Willard Diffin

“ A great figure stepped forth. In his hand was a rod like an elongated pencil attached to a heavy butt. And though nothing visible came from the rod, Danny saw it pointed back at the building where iron bars softened till they sent rivulets of molten steel splashing upon the pavement.
A squad of soldiers in the blood-red color of their service stood nearby. One gave an order, and a dozen rifles were swung toward their shoulders. But the rifles never came to rest.
Danny saw the quick swing of the slender rod. And he saw the men's mouths opened in screams that were never uttered. ”

“ Danny nodded mutely; he opened the exhaust to the full, and the rocket-plane swept out on whirlwinds of raging fire, and smoke, whose flames reached up even where they flew and licked hungrily at their ship. ”

“ Just because we haven't learned to generate it—focus it—shoot it out in a stream like water from a hose—there's no use in denying that someone else has beat us to the punch."
The Infant's calm blue eyes were upon the luminous plates of the ship's microscope where the swift moving terrain beneath them was pictured clearly. The mountains were behind them now; endless miles of ripening grain made the land a sea of yellow and brown and, across that ocean, like the lines of foam that mark the wake of ships, lay three straight lines of black. ”

“ He had even forgotten Morgan; perhaps he was never fully conscious of his coming from the moment when that other trembling, shaken man had shouted: "New York! New York's gone!"
"There aren't two more," the Infant was saying from his seat at the rear of the cabin: "there's just one. Those three lines were always parallel except when they widened out: that meant that he had gone up higher. If we ever see that ship, we'll see three discharge tubes for the ray."
Danny O'Rourke turned his eyes that had gone haggard and deep-sunk with the sights they had seen. He stared vacantly at the Infant. ”

“ And Pilot O'Rourke was glad enough to leave the answer to that one to the Infant. For had not the Infant alone seen the only reasonable answer to the puzzle of the mysterious man? And Danny had learned that it takes a real man and a real mind to track truth to her hiding place and accept the absurd improbabilities on which truth rests. ”

“ No use of your getting smashed up, too. Good-by, Infant; you're a good old scout."
Danny's mind was all on what lay ahead; he was wildly eager to be off on the hunt. It took him an instant to comprehend the look from Morgan's steady, blue eyes.
"Listen!" the younger man was ordering. "You're not going to do that; I am! And not just that way, either."
"Did you see that cable and the electric discharges?" he demanded excitedly. "It's just as I thought: he accumulates a negative charge; he has to get rid of it—he's just like a thunder-cloud loaded with static—and the heat ray does it. ”

“ There's nobody who knows."
But Danny was staring as if he saw through the high, instrument-covered walls. Back to a valley of flame that was like a doorway to hell, where rocks, gray with the frosty years, had been melted to pools ... back to a glinting light where something swift and scintillant had flashed once in a cloudless sky ... back—far back ... back to a street in a town half across the world, and a figure of a giant who strode away with a smile of triumph on his ill-formed face ... but first that giant had melted his way through walls of stone ”

“ For the love of Pete, get on that fire, Danny. Every instrument in the office is chattering. Every patrol ship has spotted that blaze. You can't all be crazy. It's in Section Eight—never mind the exact bearings—you'll find it without any trouble I imagine. ”

“ And a half hour later the first rocket ship of the A. F. F. was blasting its way through the thin gases of the stratosphere eastward bound. But by now Danny O'Rourke had a more sympathetic listener than before.
"In big puddles it was, and lakes! 'Twas still melted, some of it, in that valley."
"Why not?" asked the Infant casually. "Radiant heat moves with the speed of light. We wouldn't think anything of focusing ten million candle power of light energy into a spot like that. Why not heat? ”

“ There's one man who knows and 'tis myself is that one.... One man—and the other is a beast like no livin' man on the face of the earth! He knows—he and the devils he's brought with him!"
It was an unsatisfactory interview that Danny had with the Chief. ”

“ But I'll be droppin' in on him."
"Don't be an utter fool, Danny," urged the voice of the Chief; "there isn't a thing you can do. You try to come down on him, and he'll do as he did with the cruisers—just slip aside like lightning and nail you with his damned heat ray when you're below! I'm near Boston now. You keep away. Where can I meet you? We've got to think—got to do something!"
And Danny, before he opened the switch that ended their talk, said meditatively: "Like lightnin' he moves ... but he'll have to move faster than lightnin' to dodge me. And if you're near Boston, stick around ”

“ Cleveland has got it; reports a path of fire has cut across city melting steel and even stone.... Now Buffalo!... God knows what it is." The voice broke with excitement for an instant; Danny could almost see the distant man fighting for control of himself as a maze of instruments about him wrote incredible things.
"Orders!" said the voice now. "All A. F. F. ships report to your Division Headquarters. Division officers keep in communication with Washington. Mountain Division send all equipment east. Flying orders will be given you en route. The country—the whole world—is in flames!" ”

“ He laid a restraining hand on the pilot's arm while he explained:
"No death ray, Danny—that will come later; we haven't got it now. But we've got the disintegration of matter—the splitting of the atom, on something bigger than a laboratory scale. Sorenson did it. There is a flood of electrical energy poured out—streams of electrons—negative electricity. It leaves a positive charge that is tremendous if it isn't neutralized.
"I said that devilish white thing was like a thunder-cloud; well, I'll make your ship like the earth ”

“ Now think carefully, Danny, and tell me: was there anything fastened to it—a wire, perhaps—a connection of some kind with the ground?"
O'Rourke stared at the pink and white face of the cherub who sat with him in the control room of a rocket-ship that threw itself like a red meteor across the high skies. "You're a bit of a devil, yourself," he said wonderingly at last. "How in the names of the Saints did you know? Yes, there was a wire, and I had forgotten it myself. It hung down, I remember, from the butt of the thing. But not to the ground. Infant—you missed it there ”

“ Yet if you'd tell your story to some of these wise men they would die of laughing—and maybe that wouldn't be a bad idea, either; they will be dying in a way that's a damned sight more unpleasant unless someone finds how to catch these birds. ”

“ On the instrument at his side flashed the "Ascend!" order of the squadron commander, and an instant later the flight reappeared a half mile away.
The commander must have sighted O'Rourke's ship. "Shall we repeat over same course?" the instrument spelled out, while Danny, circling above, watched the effects of the drive.
It had checked the flames, that first blast of the CO_2 squadron; he saw blackened, jagged trees where a roaring furnace had been. But the flames were building up again. "Repeat!" O'Rourke answered; then watched them drive in again. ”