CHAPTER XI

Captain Blake's game of solitaire had become an obsession. He drove himself to the utmost in the line of duty, and, through the day, the demands of the flying field filled his mind to forgetfulness. And for the rest, he forced his mind to concentrate upon the turn of the cards.

He could not read--and he must not think!--so he sat through long evenings trying vainly to forget.

He looked up with an expressionless face as Colonel Boynton entered the room. The colonel saw the cards and nodded.

"Does that help?" he asked, and added without waiting for an answer, "I don't like cards, but I find my mathematics works well.... My old problems--I can concentrate on them, and stop this eternal, d.a.m.nable thinking, thinking--"

There was something of the same look forming about the eyes of both--that look that told of men who struggled gamely under the sentence of death, refusing to think or to fear, and waiting, waiting, impotently. Blake looked at the colonel with a carefully emotionless gaze. "It's h.e.l.l in the big towns, I hear."

The Colonel nodded. "Can't blame them much, if that's what appeals to them. A year and a half!--and they've got to forget it. Why not crowd all the recklessness and excesses they can into the time that is left?--poor devils! But for the most part the world is wagging along, and people are going through the familiar motions."

"Well," said Blake, "I used to wonder at times how a man might feel if he were facing execution. Now we all know. Just going dumbly along, feeling as little as we can, thinking of anything, everything--except the one thing. They've turned to using dope, a lot of them, I hear.

Maybe it helps; n.o.body cares much. Only a year and a half."

He raised his face from which all expression was consciously erased.

"Any possible hope?" he asked. "Or do we take it when it comes and fight with what we've got as long as we can? There was some talk in the papers of an invention--Bureau of Standards cooperating with the big General Committee to investigate. Anything come of it?"

"A thousand of them," said the colonel, "all futile. No, we can't expect much from those things. Though there's a whisper that came to me from Washington. General Clinton--you may remember him; he was here when the thing first broke--says that some scientist, a real one, not another of these half-baked geniuses, has worked out a transformation of some kind.

It was too deep for me, but it is based upon changing hydrogen into helium, I think. Liberates some perfectly tremendous amount of power.

The general had it all down pat--"

He stopped speaking at the change in Captain Blake's face. The careful repression of all emotions was gone; the face was suddenly alive--

"I know," he said sharply; "I remember something of the theory. There is a difference in the atoms or their protons--the liberation of an electron from each atom--matter actually transformed into energy; theoretical, what I have read. But--but--Oh my G.o.d, Boynton, do you mean that they've got it?--that it will drive us through s.p.a.ce?"

The colonel drove one fist into the palm of his other hand. "Fool!

Idiot!" he exclaimed, and it was evident that the epithets were intended for himself.

"I had forgotten that you had been trained along that line. The general wants a man to work with them, somewhat as a liason officer to link the army requirements closely with their developments; we are hoping to work out a s.p.a.ce ship, of course. You are just the man; I will radio him this minute. Be ready to leave--" The slamming of the door marked a hurried exit toward the radio room.

And abruptly, stifflingly, Captain Blake dared to hope. "Scientists will come through with something, some new method of propulsion. All the world is looking to them!" His thoughts were leaping from one possibility to another. "Some miracle of power that will drive a fleet through s.p.a.ce as they have done, to battle with the enemy on his own ground--"

Could he help? Was there one little thing that he could do to apply their knowledge to practical ends? The thought thrilled him with overpowering emotion an hour later as he felt the lift of the plane beneath him.

"Report to General Clinton," the colonel's reply had said. "Captain Blake will be a.s.signed to special duty." He opened the throttle to his ship's best cruising speed, but his spirit was soaring ahead to urge on the swift scout ship whose wings drove steadily into the gathering dusk.

And then, after long hours, Washington! Brief words with many men--and discouragement! The seat of government of the United States was a city of despondent men, weary, hopeless, but fighting. There was a look of strain on every face; the eyes told a story of sleepless nights and futile thinking and planning. Blake's elation was short lived.

He was sent to New York and on into the state, where the laboratories of a great electrical company had turned their equipment from commercial purposes to those of war. Here, surely, one might find fuel to feed the dying embers of hope; the new development must give greater promise than General Clinton had intimated.

"Nothing you can do as yet," he was told, when he had stated his mission. "It is still experimental, but we have worked out the transformation on a small scale, and harnessed the power."

Captain Blake was in no mood for temporizing; he was tired with being put off. He stared belligerently at the chief of this department.

"Power--h.e.l.l!" he said. "We've got power now. How will you apply it? How will we use it for travelling through s.p.a.ce?"

The great man of science was unmoved by the outburst. "That is poppyc.o.c.k," he replied; "the unscientific twaddle of the sensational press. We are practical men here; we are working to give you men who do the fighting better ships and better arms. But you will use them right here on Earth."

The calm a.s.surance of this man who spoke with a voice of such confidence and authority left the flyer speechless. His brain sent a chaos of profane and violent expletives to the lips that dared not frame them.

There was no adequate reply.

Blake jammed his hat upon his head and walked blindly from the room.

Heedless of the protests of those he jostled on the street he went raging on, but some subconscious urge directed his steps. He found himself at the railway. There was a station, and a grilled window where he was asking for a ticket back to Washington. And on the following day--

"There is nothing I can do," he told General Clinton. "It is hopeless. I ask to be relieved."

"Why?" The general snapped the question at him. What kind of man was this that Boynton had sent him?

"They are fools," said Blake bluntly, "pompous, well-meaning fools! They are planning better motors, more power"--he laughed harshly--"and they think that with them we can attack ships that are independent of the air."

"Still," asked General Clinton coldly, "for what purpose do you wish to be relieved? What do you intend to do?"

"Return to the field," said Captain Blake, "to work, and put my planes and personnel in the best possible condition; then, when the time comes, go up and fight like h.e.l.l."

An unusual phrasing of a request when one is addressing one's commander; but the older man threw back his shoulders, that were bending under responsibilities too great for one man to bear, and took a long breath that relaxed his face and seemed to bring relief.

"You've got the right idea,"--he spoke slowly and thoughtfully--"the right philosophy. It is all we have left--to fight like h.e.l.l when the time comes. Give my regards to Colonel Boynton; he sent me a good man after all."

Another long flight, westward this time, and, despite the failure of his hopes and of his errand, Blake was flying with a mind at peace. "It is all we have left," the general had said. Well, it was good to face facts, to admit them--and that was that! There was no use of thinking or worrying.... He lifted the ship to a higher level and glanced at his compa.s.s. There were clouds up ahead, and he drove still higher into the night, until he was above them.

And again his peace of mind was not to last.

It was night when he swung the ship over his home port and signalled for a landing. A flood of light swept out across the field to guide him down. He went directly to the colonel's quarters but found him gone.

"In the radio room, I think," an orderly told him.

Colonel Boynton was listening intently in the silent room; he scowled with annoyance at the disturbance of Blake's coming; then, seeing who it was, he motioned quickly for the captain to listen in.

"Good Lord, Blake," he told the captain in an excited whisper; "I'm glad you're here. Another ship had been sighted; she's been all over the earth; just scouting and mapping, probably. And there have been signals the same as before--the same until just now. Listen!--it's talking Morse!--it's been calling for you!"

He thrust a head set into Blake's hands, then reached for some papers.

"Poor reception, but there's what we've got," he said.

The paper held the merest fragments of messages that the operator had deciphered. Blake examined them curiously while he listened at the silent receiver.

"Maricopa"--the message, whatever it was, was meant for them, but there were only parts of words and disjointed phrases that the man had written down--"Venus attacking Earth ... Captain Blake ... Sykes and...."