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“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 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.