A Diversity of Creatures | Page 5

position. Then I clapped my hand before my mask lenses, for it was
as though the floor of Heaven had been riddled and all the
inconceivable blaze of suns in the making was poured through the
manholes.
'You needn't count,' said Arnott. I had had no thought of such a thing.
'There are two hundred and fifty keels up there, five miles apart. Full
power, please, for another twelve seconds.'
The firmament, as far as eye could reach, stood on pillars of white fire.
One fell on the glowing square at Chicago, and turned it black.
'Oh! Oh! Oh! Can men be allowed to do such things?' Dragomiroff
cried, and fell across our knees.

'Glass of water, please,' said Takahira to a helmeted shape that leaped
forward. 'He is a little faint.'
The lights switched off, and the darkness stunned like an avalanche.
We could hear Dragomiroff's teeth on the glass edge.
Pirolo was comforting him.
'All right, all ra-ight,' he repeated. 'Come and lie down. Come below
and take off your mask. I give you my word, old friend, it is all right.
They are my siege-lights. Little Victor Pirolo's leetle lights. You know
me! I do not hurt people.'
'Pardon!' Dragomiroff moaned. 'I have never seen Death. I have never
seen the Board take action. Shall we go down and burn them alive, or is
that already done?'
'Oh, hush,' said Pirolo, and I think he rocked him in his arms.
'Do we repeat, sir?' Arnott asked De Forest.
'Give 'em a minute's break,' De Forest replied. 'They may need it.'
We waited a minute, and then MacDonough's Song, broken but defiant,
rose from undefeated Chicago.
'They seem fond of that tune,' said De Forest. 'I should let 'em have it,
Arnott.'
'Very good, sir,' said Arnott, and felt his way to the Communicator
keys.
No lights broke forth, but the hollow of the skies made herself the
mouth for one note that touched the raw fibre of the brain. Men hear
such sounds in delirium, advancing like tides from horizons beyond the
ruled foreshores of space.
'That's our pitch-pipe,' said Arnott. 'We may be a bit ragged. I've never
conducted two hundred and fifty performers before.' He pulled out the

couplers, and struck a full chord on the Service Communicators.
The beams of light leaped down again, and danced, solemnly and
awfully, a stilt-dance, sweeping thirty or forty miles left and right at
each stiff-legged kick, while the darkness delivered itself--there is no
scale to measure against that utterance--of the tune to which they kept
time. Certain notes--one learnt to expect them with terror--cut through
one's marrow, but, after three minutes, thought and emotion passed in
indescribable agony.
We saw, we heard, but I think we were in some sort swooning. The two
hundred and fifty beams shifted, re-formed, straddled and split,
narrowed, widened, rippled in ribbons, broke into a thousand white-hot
parallel lines, melted and revolved in interwoven rings like
old-fashioned engine-turning, flung up to the zenith, made as if to
descend and renew the torment, halted at the last instant, twizzled
insanely round the horizon, and vanished, to bring back for the
hundredth time darkness more shattering than their instantly renewed
light over all Illinois. Then the tune and lights ceased together, and we
heard one single devastating wail that shook all the horizon as a rubbed
wet finger shakes the rim of a bowl.
'Ah, that is my new siren,' said Pirolo. 'You can break an iceberg in half,
if you find the proper pitch. They will whistle by squadrons now. It is
the wind through pierced shutters in the bows.'
I had collapsed beside Dragomiroff, broken and snivelling feebly,
because I had been delivered before my time to all the terrors of
Judgment Day, and the Archangels of the Resurrection were hailing me
naked across the Universe to the sound of the music of the spheres.
Then I saw De Forest smacking Arnott's helmet with his open hand.
The wailing died down in a long shriek as a black shadow swooped
past us, and returned to her place above the lower clouds.
'I hate to interrupt a specialist when he's enjoying himself,' said De
Forest. 'But, as a matter of fact, all Illinois has been asking us to stop
for these last fifteen seconds.'

'What a pity.' Arnott slipped off his mask. 'I wanted you to hear us
really hum. Our lower C can lift street-paving.'
'It is Hell--Hell!' cried Dragomiroff, and sobbed aloud.
Arnott looked away as he answered:
'It's a few thousand volts ahead of the old shoot-'em-and-sink-'em game,
but I should scarcely call it that. What shall I tell the Fleet, sir?'
'Tell 'em we're very pleased and impressed. I don't think they need wait
on any longer. There isn't a spark left