Morale | Page 5

was it?"
* * * * *
A thin, high, wailing sound coming down as lightning might be
imagined to descend.... The pilot dived madly and got behind a pine
forest before the explosion and the concussion that followed it.
Sergeant Walpole saw the pine-trees shiver. The sheer explosion-wave
of that egg, if it hit an old ship like this in mid-air, would have stripped
the fabric from its wings.
"Set me down," said Sergeant Walpole. "They're watchin' us from aloft.
I sent a man on a monocycle to report." But he told luridly of the thing
that had come ashore, and of its destructiveness. "Now set me down.
Gimme a gas-mask an' clear out. You ain't got a burglar's chance of
gettin' back."
The pilot set him down, and began ticking away on a code sender even
as he landed. Then he climbed swiftly away from the Sergeant, headed
in a weaving, crazy line to westward. Then things screamed downward
and the Sergeant clapped hands over his ears once more. The ground
quivered underfoot, though the eggs landed a good three-quarters of a
mile away. The training-plane dropped like a plummet. The sharpness
of a hexynitrate explosion carries its effect to quite incredible distances.

The fabric of its wings split to ribbons. The ship landed somewhere and
smoke rose from it.
"He shouldn't ha' gone up so high," said Sergeant Walpole.
He struck across country for the treads of the Wabbly once more. He
saw a school-house. The Wabbly had passed within a hundred yards of
it. The school-house seemed deserted. Then the Sergeant saw the hole
in its roof. Then he caught the infinitely faint taint of gas.
"Mighty anxious," said Sergeant Walpole woodenly, "not to let news
get ahead of 'em. Yeah.... If it busts on places without warnin', it'll have
that much easier work. I hope I'm in on the party when we get this
damn thing."
There was no use in approaching the school-house, though he had a
gas-mask now. Sergeant Walpole went on.


PART III
"... The Wabbly made no attempt to do purely military
damage. The Enemy command realized that the destruction of civilian
morale was even more important than the destruction of munitions
factories. In this, the Enemy displayed the same acumen that makes the
war a fruitful subject of study to the strategic student." (Strategic
Lessons of the War of 1941-43.--U. S. War College. Pp. 81-82.)
At nightfall the monster swerved suddenly and moved with greater
speed. It showed no lights. It did not even make very much noise. Then
the second flight of home-defense planes made their attack. Sergeant
Walpole heard them droning overhead. He lit a fire instantly. A little
helicopter dropped from the blackness above him and he began to heap
dirt desperately on the blaze.

"Who's there?" demanded a voice.
"Sergeant Walpole, Post Fourteen, Eastern Coast Observation," said the
Sergeant in a military manner. "Beg to report, sir, that the dinkus that
brought down the other ships is housed in that big bulge on top of the
Wabbly."
"Get in," said the voice.
The Sergeant obeyed. With a purring noise the helicopter shot upward.
Then something went off in mid-sky, miles ahead, where a faint
humming noise had announced the flight of attack-planes. A lurid,
crackling detonation lit up the sky. One of the ships of the night-flying
squadron. From the helicopter they could see the rest of the flight
limned clearly in the flash of the explosion. Instantly thereafter there
was another such flash. Then another.
"Three," said the voice beside Sergeant Walpole. Another flash.
"Four...." The invisible operator of the screw-lifted ship was very calm
about it. "Five. Six." The explosions lit the sky. Presently he said
grimly. "That's all of them. I'd better report it."
* * * * *
He was silent for a while. Sergeant Walpole saw his hand flicking a key
up and down in the faint light of radio bulbs.
"Now shoot the works," said the helicopter man evenly. "All the ships
that attacked this afternoon went down. One of them started to report,
but didn't get but two words through. What did that damned thing use
on them?"
"A dinkus on top, sir," said Sergeant Walpole formally. "I'd found a
monocycle, sir, and was trailing the thing. I'd come to the top of a hill
and seen it moving through a pine-wood, crashing down the trees in
front of it like they wasn't there. Then a egg came down from
Gawd-knows-where up aloft. I stopped up my ears, thinkin' it was
aimin' for me. Then I seen the ships. Two of 'em were fallin'. They

landed, an' I heard a coupla other explosions. Little ones, they sounded
like."
The helicopter man's wrist was flicking up and down.
"Little ones!" he