Morale | Page 7

ship tried to lift. He redoubled his speed. Presently
he broke out into open ploughed land.
In the starlight he saw a barn, and he raced toward that. Someone else
plunged out of the woods toward him. The helicopter-engine was still
roaring faintly in the distance. Then a thin whine came down from
aloft....

When the echoes of the explosion died away the pilot was grinning
queerly. The helicopter's engine was still.
"I said it could be done! Pack of fat-heads at Headquarters!"
"Huh?"
"Picking up a ship by its spark-plugs, with a loop. They're doing that up
aloft. There's a ship up there, forty thousand feet or so. Maybe half a
dozen ships. Refueling in air, I guess, and working with the thing you
call a Wabbly. When I started the 'copter's engine they got the
spark-impulses and sighted on them. We'd better get away from here."
"Horses in here," said Sergeant Walpole. "The Wabbly came by. No
people left."
They brought the animals out. The horses reared and plunged as there
were other infinitely sharp, deadly explosions of the eggs coming down
eight miles through darkness.
"Let's go. After the Wabbly?" said the 'copter man.
"O' course," said Sergeant Walpole. "Somebody's got to find out how to
lick it."
They went clattering through darkness. It was extraordinary what
desolation, what utter lack of human life they moved through. They
came to a town, and there was a taint of gas in the air. No lights burned
in that town. It was dead. The Wabbly had killed it.


PART IV
"... which panic was enhanced by the destruction of a
second flight of fighting planes. However, the destruction of Bendsboro

completed civilian demoralization.... A newscasting company
re-broadcast a private television contact with the town at the moment
the Wabbly entered it. Practically all the inhabitants of the Atlantic
Coast heard and saw the annihilation of the town--hearing the cries of
'Gas!' and the screams of the people, and hearing the crashings as the
Wabbly crushed its way inexorably across the city, spreading terror
everywhere.... Frenzied demands were made upon the Government for
the recall of troops from the front to offer battle to the Wabbly.... It is
considered that at that time the one Wabbly had a military effect equal
to at least half a million men." (Strategic Lessons of the War of
1941-43.--U. S. War College. Pp. 83-84.)
They did not enter the town. There was just enough of starlight to show
that the Wabbly had gone through it, and then crashed back and forth
ruthlessly. There was a great gash through the center of the buildings
nearest the edge, and there were other gashes visible here and there.
Everything was crushed down utterly flat in two eight-foot paths; and
there was a mass of crumbled debris four feet high at its highest in
between the tread-marks.
They looked, silently, and went on. They reached a railroad track, the
quadruple track of a branch-line from New York to Philadelphia. The
Wabbly was going along that right-of-way. There was no right-of-way
left where it had been. Rails were crushed flat. Culverts were broken
through. But the horses raced along the smoothed tread-trails. Once a
broken, twisted rail tore at Sergeant Walpole's sleeve. Somehow the
last great plate of a tread had bent it upward. Presently they saw a mass
of something dark off to the left. Flames were licking meditatively at
one of the wrecked cars.
Then they heard explosions far ahead. Flames lighted the sky.
"Our men in action!" said Sergeant Walpole hungrily.
He flogged his mount mercilessly. Then the sky became bright in the
distance. The horses, going down the crushed-smooth trail of the treads,
gained upon the din. Then they saw the cause of it, miles distant. A
train was burning luridly. Its forepart was wreckage, pure and simple.

The rest was going up in flames and detonations. Munitions, of course.
The Wabbly was off at one side, flame-lit and monstrous, sliding
smoothly out of sight.
* * * * *
"Ten miles of railroad," said the 'copter pilot calmly, "mashed out of
existence. That's going to scare our people into fits. They can drop eggs
till the cows come home, and every egg'll smash up a hundred yards of
right-of-way, and we can build it back up again in four hours with
mobile track-layers. But ten miles to be regraded and laid is different.
Half of America will be imagining all our railroads smashed and
starvation ahead."
A piercing light fell upon them.
"Shut it off!" roared Sergeant Walpole. "D'y'want to get us killed?"
He and the 'copter pilot swerved. There was a car there, a huge
two-wheeled car, whose gyroscopes hummed softly while its driver
tried to extract it from something it was tangled in.