Fletcher Pratt

“ There was just enough cold in the air to make the Australians and South Africans lively, though the Americans found the temperature caused the oil to move sluggishly in their metallic joints.
At daybreak the whole American unit had been pushed out to the railroad line at Greenwood with the advance guard of tanks, and finding no opposition they continued on to Farmington, where there was an airport that would serve for the leading squadrons of planes.
“Do you know,” said Ben to Murray, “I wish those dodos would show a little more pep. Fighting them is no cinch. ”

“ In the four months since the conference with the Australian Scientific Committee it had been amply demonstrated to the three remaining governments of the world that there was not room for both man and dodos on the same planet. A carefully-worked out campaign had evidently been set in operation by whatever central intelligence led the four-winged birds with the object of wiping human life from the earth. ”

“ The decision of the conference was to mobilize every man and weapon to attack the birds in America and exterminate them there if possible; if impossible to do this, then to keep them so occupied at home that they would be unable to deliver any counter-attack. ”

“ At this evidence of the hostile intentions of the dodos radio apparatus began to tap in Australia, in the Dutch colonies and in South Africa; old guns forgotten since the last great war, were wheeled out; the factories began to turn out fighting airplanes and the young men drilled in the parks. ”

“ In view of the fact that the headquarters of the dodos seemed to be somewhere in the Catskills, it had been decided to land in New Jersey, form a base there and work northward.
In the preliminary training for the coming conflict the metal Americans had played an important part. Their construction made them impossible as aviators, which they would have preferred. But quite early it was discovered that they made ideal operators for tanks. The oil fumes and the lack of air did not in the least affect beings to whom breathing had become unimportant, and the oil was actually a benefit. ”

“ It was realized that whatever lay behind this attempt to conquer all there was left of the old earth must be in some way due to the coming of the great comet and must center somewhere in America, where the comet had struck. So for the first time the race of man began to learn what international cooperation meant. ”