The Great War Syndicate | Page 5

were in charge of a small body of men, composed of two or
three scientific specialists, and some practical gunners and their
assistants. A few bomb-proof canopies and a curved steel deck
completed the defences of the vessel.
Besides equipping this little navy, the Syndicate set about the

construction of certain sea-going vessels of an extraordinary kind. So
great were the facilities at its command, and so thorough and complete
its methods, that ten or a dozen ship-yards and foundries were set to
work simultaneously to build one of these ships. In a marvellously
short time the Syndicate possessed several of them ready for action.
These vessels became technically known as "crabs." They were not
large, and the only part of them which projected above the water was
the middle of an elliptical deck, slightly convex, and heavily mailed
with ribs of steel. These vessels were fitted with electric engines of
extraordinary power, and were capable of great speed. At their bows,
fully protected by the overhanging deck, was the machinery by which
their peculiar work was to be accomplished. The Syndicate intended to
confine itself to marine operations, and for the present it was contented
with these two classes of vessels. The armament for each of the large
vessels, as has been said before, consisted of a single gun of long range,
and the ammunition was confined entirely to a new style of projectile,
which had never yet been used in warfare. The material and
construction of this projectile were known only to three members of the
Syndicate, who had invented and perfected it, and it was on account of
their possession of this secret that they had been invited to join that
body.
This projectile was not, in the ordinary sense of the word, an explosive,
and was named by its inventors, "The Instantaneous Motor." It was
discharged from an ordinary cannon, but no gunpowder or other
explosive compound was used to propel it. The bomb possessed, in
itself the necessary power of propulsion, and the gun was used merely
to give it the proper direction.
These bombs were cylindrical in form, and pointed at the outer end.
They were filled with hundreds of small tubes, each radiating outward
from a central line. Those in the middle third of the bomb pointed
directly outward, while those in its front portion were inclined forward
at a slight angle, and those in the rear portion backward at the same
angle. One tube at the end of the bomb, and pointing directly backward,
furnished the motive power.

Each of these tubes could exert a force sufficient to move an ordinary
train of passenger cars one mile, and this power could be exerted
instantaneously, so that the difference in time in the starting of a train at
one end of the mile and its arrival at the other would not be appreciable.
The difference in concussionary force between a train moving at the
rate of a mile in two minutes, or even one minute, and another train
which moves a mile in an instant, can easily be imagined.
In these bombs, those tubes which might direct their powers downward
or laterally upon the earth were capable of instantaneously propelling
every portion of solid ground or rock to a distance of two or three
hundred yards, while the particles of objects on the surface of the earth
were instantaneously removed to a far greater distance. The tube which
propelled the bomb was of a force graduated according to
circumstances, and it would carry a bomb to as great a distance as
accurate observation for purposes of aim could be made. Its force was
brought into action while in the cannon by means of electricity while
the same effect was produced in the other tubes by the concussion of
the steel head against the object aimed at.
What gave the tubes their power was the jealously guarded secret.
The method of aiming was as novel as the bomb itself. In this process
nothing depended on the eyesight of the gunner; the personal equation
was entirely eliminated. The gun was so mounted that its direction was
accurately indicated by graduated scales; there was an instrument
which was acted upon by the dip, rise, or roll of the vessel, and which
showed at any moment the position of the gun with reference to the
plane of the sea-surface.
Before the discharge of the cannon an observation was taken by one of
the scientific men, which accurately determined the distance to the
object to be aimed at, and reference to a carefully prepared
mathematical table showed to what points on the graduated scales the
gun should be adjusted, and the instant that the that the muzzle of the
cannon was in the position that it was when the observation