The Hammer of Thor Read online

came to a smaller city and a broad expanse of roof thattook their wheels.

  Danny followed where his companion led into great buildings and aplace of offices where excited officials stood in knots aboutnews-casting cones; then they were in a quiet room, in the presence ofa lean-bodied man whose hawklike face turned flinty at some requestthe Infant made.

  "What the lad wants, I don't know," said Danny to himself, "butwhatever it is he won't be gettin' it from old Gimlet-eyes."

  * * * * *

  But he saw the Infant write something on a card and he heard him say,as he handed it to the official: "Send that to the President--_atonce_!" And though the words were hardly audible they had a qualitythat brought an instant response; while the written words brought aportly man who shook the Infant's hand fervently and inquired whatservice a great electric company could render.

  Danny heard Gimlet-eyes protesting; heard broken bits of sentences:"... the great Sorenson tube ... he knows of our disintegrator ...insists upon our furnishing ... preposterous...."

  The portly man cut him short. "You will give Mr. Morgan whatever hewishes," he ordered crisply. Then Danny saw him clutch at a desk forsupport as still another man appeared at the open door to shout:

  "New York! My God! New York's gone! Burning! The Empire State Buildingmelted! Crashed!... The whole city is being destroyed!"

  And in the moment of numbness that seized Danny O'Rourke he heard theInfant say: "How soon can we have it? I want it in our ship--upabove--an hour? We'll be there." But Danny had no further interest inthe Infant's arrangements for obtaining some unknown equipment; he wasplunging through the doorway and running at full speed toward the rampwhere they had descended.

  He knew dimly that the younger man had followed and was crowding intothe cabin after him. Danny, as he locked the port and lifted his redship off her guides, was fully conscious of only one fact: that ahundred miles south a city was being destroyed and that somewhere inthe vast heights above the city he would find the destroyer.

  * * * * *

  The Hudson that had been a thread of silver was no longer bright asthey approached the city at its mouth; burnished now with itsreflection of black smoke clouds and red tongues of flame, it vanishedat last under a mountain of black that heaped itself in turbulentpiles and whirling masses until the winds swept the smoke out over thesea.

  And high above it all--so high that all clouds were below it--therehung in a lucent sky one tiny, silvery speck. There was a delicatesteering sight on Danny's ship; he could direct the red craft as if itwere in very fact a projectile that could be controlled in flight. Andunder the cross hairs of that sight swung a silvery speck, while theman who looked along the telescopic tube cursed steadily andmethodically as if in some way his hate might span the gap and reachthat distant foe.

  And then the speck vanished. Danny followed it with the powerfulglasses of his sighting tube; he saw it swing inland--saw it move likea line of silvery light, almost, swifter in its motion than hisinstrument could follow. But even in that swift flight Danny's eyesobserved one fact: the enemy ship was coming down; it slanted in onthat long volplane that must have ripped the air apart like a bolt oflightning. And Danny's red rocket swept out and around in a long,looping flight, while he laid the ship on the course that other hadfollowed.

  "That's one of them," he said savagely; "there must be two more. ButI'll get this one if I have to crash him in air and smash my own shipright through him."

  * * * * *

  The mind of Danny O'Rourke was filled with only one idea; he hadsighted his prey--the ship in which sat a man-thing who had sent aterrible death to Danny's fellows. And, though his hands movedcarefully and methodically, though externally he was cool andcollected, within him was a seething maelstrom of hate. All he saw wasthat giant figure as he had seen it before; all he knew was that hemust overtake that speeding ship and send it to earth.

  He had even forgotten Morgan; perhaps he was never fully conscious ofhis coming from the moment when that other trembling, shaken man hadshouted: "New York! New York's gone!"

  "There aren't two more," the Infant was saying from his seat at therear of the cabin: "there's just one. Those three lines were alwaysparallel except when they widened out: that meant that he had gone uphigher. If we ever see that ship, we'll see three discharge tubes forthe ray."

  Danny O'Rourke turned his eyes that had gone haggard and deep-sunkwith the sights they had seen. He stared vacantly at the Infant.

  "Didn't know," he said thickly, "--didn't know you were here. I'll setyou down; I'll let you out before I ram him...."

  For reply, the other pointed ahead. The red ship had torn through alayer of thick clouds; Danny was flying below them above a mountainousworld of bare hill-tops and wooded valleys. Directly ahead, hoveringhigh over a mountain higher than its fellows, was the white craft ofthe enemy; Danny, saw it in hard outline against the darker masses ofclouds beyond. He saw that it was motionless, that a slender cable wassuspended for a thousand feet below, and that the end of the cable,hanging close above the mountain top, was split into a score of wiresthat stood out in all directions, while, from each, poured a stream ofblue fire.

  And once more all this that he saw was as nothing to the pilot; allthought, too, of his fellow victim went from his mind. He could seeonly the white ship, doubly hideous because of its seeming purity;and, as before, he brought the cross hairs of directional sights uponit while he opened the rocket exhaust to the full.

  But even pilot O'Rourke, with the highest rating in the A. F. F.,could not follow the lightning-swift leap of the snow-white thing thatburied itself in the smother of cloud banks above.

  * * * * *

  Danny set his red ship down on that same barren hilltop; he motionedMorgan to follow as he stepped out.

  "We're somewhere in Pennsylvania," he announced. "You're stayin' here.Sorry to dump you out like this, but you'll find a way out. Get to aradio--call a plane." He held out his hand in unspoken farewell.

  But the other man disregarded it. "What's the idea?" he inquired.

  Danny's reply came in short, breathless sentences. "Going up to findthat ship. Ram it. 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 offon the hunt. It took him an instant to comprehend the look fromMorgan'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 demandedexcitedly. "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 withstatic--and the heat ray does it. I had it figured that way."

  "Remember the little tube you saw before--that's why I asked about thewire. I knew he would have to ground it without its going through hisbody."

  Danny O'Rourke was an intent listener now. When the Infant talked likethis he was a person to be listened to with respect, even if all hesaid was not understood.

  "Now," said the Infant with finality, "let's forget this idea oframming him. You couldn't hit him anyway; even a cruiser couldn't doit. If it could you would have radioed for a squadron an hour ago--youknow that."

  * * * * *

  The pilot nodded his acknowledgment. "But, my God, man," he exploded,"I've got to do something; I've got to try!"

  "We'll do it," was the confident reply, "--or I will. Now we'll goback to the Consolidated Electric; they will have the Sorensondisintegrator ready. I'll put it in your machine and--"

  "And what?" broke in the pilot. "Is this some new death ray? We'vebeen hearing about them for years--just hearing about them. If that'swhat you mean, then your idea is all wet; it's worse than mine. I'mgoing up."

  Perhaps the younger man saw something of the wild impatience inDanny's d
eep-sunk eyes. He laid a restraining hand on the pilot's armwhile he explained:

  "No death ray, Danny--that will come later; we haven't got it now. Butwe've got the disintegration of matter--the splitting of the atom, onsomething bigger than a laboratory scale. Sorenson did it. There is aflood of electrical energy poured out--streams of electrons--negativeelectricity. It leaves a positive charge that is tremendous if itisn't neutralized.

  "I said that devilish white thing was like a thunder-cloud; well, I'llmake your ship like the earth; then I'll bring them near eachother--no need to ram