Morale | Page 6

said sardonically. "Those ships were carrying
five-hundred-pound bombs! It was those you heard going off!"
"Maybe," conceded Sergeant Walpole. "There was twenty or thirty
ships flyin' in formation, goin' hell-for-leather for the Wabbly. They
were trailin' it from the air. They were comin', natural, for me, because
I was between them an' it. Then my pants caught on fire--"
"What?"
"My pants caught on fire," said Sergeant Walpole, woodenly. "I was
sittin' on the monocycle, tryin' to figure out which way to duck. An' my
pants caught on fire. The bike was gettin' hot. I climbed off it an' it
blew up. My rifle was hot, too, an' I chucked it away. Then I saw a ship
go down, on fire. The Wabbly'd stopped still an' it didn't fire a shot. I'll
swear to that. Just my monocycle got hot an' caught on fire, an' then a
ship busted out in flames an' went down. A couple more eggs come
down an' three ships dropped. Didn't hit 'em. The concussion blew the
fabric off 'em. Another one caught fire an' crashed. Then another one. I
looked, an' saw the next one catch. Then the next. It was like a
searchlight beam hittin' 'em. They flamed up, blew up, an' that was that.
The last two tried to get away, but they lit up an' crashed."
* * * * *
The pilot's hand flicked up and down, interminably. There was the
steady fierce down-beat of the slip-stream from the vertical propellers.
The helicopter swept forward in a swooping dash.
"The whole east coast's gone crazy," said the 'copter man drily. "Crazy
fools trying to run away. Roads jammed. Work stopped. It leaked out
about the planes being wiped out to-day, and everybody in three states
has heard those eggs going off. You're the only living man who's seen

that crawling thing and lived to tell about it. I've sent your stuff back.
What's that about the thing on top?"
"I hid," said Sergeant Walpole, woodenly. "The Wabbly sent over
gas-shells where the ships landed. Then it went on. Headin' west. It's
got a crazy-lookin' dinkus on top like a searchlight. That moved, while
the ships were catchin' fire an' crashin'. Just like a searchlight, it moved
an' the ships went down. But the Wabbly didn't fire a shot."
The helicopter man's wrist flexed swiftly....
"Gawd!" said Sergeant Walpole in sudden agony. "Drop! Quick!"
The helicopter went down like a stone. A propeller shrieked away into
space. Metalwork up aloft glowed dully red. Then there were whipping,
lashing branches closing swiftly all around the helicopter. A jerk. A
crash. Stillness. The smell of growing things all about.
"Well?" said the 'copter pilot.
"They turned it on us--whatever it is," said Sergeant Walpole. "They
near got us, too."
* * * * *
A match scratched. A cigarette glowed. The Sergeant fumbled for a
smoke for himself.
"I'm waiting for that metal to cool off," said the helicopter pilot.
"Maybe we can take off again. They located us with a loop while I was
sending your stuff. Damn! I see what they've got!"
"What?"
"A way of transmitting real power in a radio beam," said the 'copter
man. "You've seen eddy-current stoves. Everybody cooks with 'em
nowadays. A coil with a high-frequency current. You can stick your
hand in it and nothing happens. But you stick an iron pan down in the
coil and it gets hot and cooks things. Hysteresis. The same thing that

used to make transformer-cores get hot. The same thing happens near
any beam transmitter, only you have to measure the heating effect with
a thermo-couple. The iron absorbs the radio waves and gets hot. The
chaps in the Wabbly can probably put ten thousand horsepower in a
damned beam. We can't. But any iron in the way will get hot. It blows
up a ship at once. Your monocycle and your rifle too. Damn!"
He knocked the ash off his cigarette.
"Scientific, those chaps. I'll see if that metal's cool."
Something whined overhead, rising swiftly to a shriek as it descended.
Sergeant Walpole cowered, with his hands to his ears. But it was not an
earth-shaking concussion. It was an explosion, yes, but subtly different
from the rending snap of hexynitrate.
"Gas," said the Sergeant dully, and fumbled for his mask.
"No good," said the 'copter man briefly. "Vesicatory. Smell it? I guess
they've got us. No sag-suits. Not even sag-paste."
The Sergeant lit a match. The flame bent a little from the vertical.
"There's a wind. We got a chance."
"Get going, then," said the 'copter man. "Run upwind."
* * * * *
Sergeant Walpole slid over the side and ran. A hundred yards. Two
hundred. Pine-woods have little undergrowth. He heard the helicopter's
engines start. The