+--------------------------------------------------------+|Transcriber's Note: || ||This etext was produced from "Astounding Stories", ||December 1931. Extensive research did not uncover any ||evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was||renewed. |+--------------------------------------------------------+

Morale

_A Story of the War of 1941-43_

By Murray Leinster

 [Illustration]

PART I

 ". .. The profound influence of civilian morale upon the course of modern war is nowhere more clearly shown than in the case of that monstrous war-engine popularly known as a 'Wabbly. ' It landed in New Jersey Aug. 16, 1942, and threw the whole Eastern Coast into a frenzy. In six hours the population of three States was in a panic. Industry was paralyzed. The military effect was comparable only to a huge modern army landed in our rear. .. . " (_Strategic Lessons of the War of 1941-43. _--U. S. War College. Pp. 79-80. )

Sergeant Walpole made his daily report at 2:15. He used a dinkytelephone that should have been in a museum, and a rural Central put himon the Area Officer's tight beam. The Area Officer listened drearily asthe Sergeant said in a military manner:

 [Illustration: _It spouted a flash of bluish flame. _]

"Sergeant Walpole, sir, Post Fourteen, reports that he has nothing ofimportance to report. "

 +--------------------------------------------------+ |The Wabbly, uncombatable engine of war, spreads | |unparalleled death and destruction--until Sergeant| |Walpole "strikes at the morale" of its crew. | +--------------------------------------------------+

The Area Officer's acknowledgment was curt; embittered. For he was anenergetic young man, and he loathed his job. He wanted to be in thewest, where fighting of a highly unconventional nature was taking placedaily. He did not enjoy this business of watching an unthreatenedcoast-line simply for the maintenance of civilian confidence and morale. He preferred fighting. 

Sergeant Walpole, though, exhaled a lungful of smoke at the telephonetransmitter and waited. Presently the rural Central said:

"All through?"

"Sure, sweetie, " said Sergeant Walpole. "How about the talkies tonight?"

That was at 2:20 P. M. There was coy conversation, while the civiliantelephone-service suffered. Then Sergeant Walpole went back to his postof duty with a date for the evening. He never kept that date, as itturned out. The rural Central was dead an hour after the first and onlyWabbly landed, and as everybody knows, that happened at 2:45. 

 * * * * *

But Sergeant Walpole had no premonitions as he went back to his hammockon the porch. This was Post Number Fourteen, Sixth Area, Eastern CoastObservation Force. There was a war on, to be sure. There had been a waron since the fall of 1941, but it was two thousand miles away. Evenlone-wolf bombing planes, flying forty thousand feet up, never came thisfar to drop their eggs upon inviting targets or upon those utterlyblank, innocent-seeming places where munitions of war were nowmanufactured underground. 

Here was peace and quiet and good rations and a paradise forgold-brickers. Here was a summer bungalow taken over for militarypurposes, quartering six men who watched a certain section of coast-linefor a quite impossible enemy. Three miles to the south there was anotherpost. Three miles to the north another one still. They stretched allalong the Atlantic Coast, those observation-posts, and the men in themwatched the sea, languidly observed the television broadcasts, and sleptin the sun. That was all they were supposed to do. In doing it theyhelped to maintain civilian morale. And therefore the Eastern CoastObservation Force was enviously said to be "just attached to the Armyfor rations, " by the other services, and its members rated with M. P. 'sand other low forms of animal life. 

Sergeant Walpole reclined in his hammock, inhaling comfortably. Theocean glittered blue before him in the sun. There was a plume of smokeout at sea indicating an old-style coal-burner, its hull down below thehorizon. Anything that would float was being used since the war began, though a coal-burning ship was almost a museum piece. A trim Dieseltramp was lazing northward well inshore. A pack of gulls were squabblingnoisily over some unpleasantness floating a hundred yards from thebeach. The Diesel tramp edged closer inshore still. It was all verypeaceful and placid. There are few softer jobs on earth than being amember of a "force in being" for the sake of civilian morale. 

 * * * * *

But at 2:32 P. M. The softness of that job departed, as far as SergeantWalpole was concerned. At that moment he heard a thin wailing sound highaloft. It was well enough known nearer the front, but the Eastern CoastObservation Force had had no need to become unduly familiar with it. With incredible swiftness the wailing rose to the shrillest of shrieks, descending as lightning might be imagined to descend. Then there was ashattering concussion. It was monstrous. It was ear-splitting. Windowscrashed in the cottage and tinkled to the sandy earth outside. There wasa pause of seconds' duration only, during which Sergeant Walpole staredblankly and gasped, "What the hell?" Then there was a second thinwailing which rose to a scream. .. . 

Sergeant Walpole was in motion before the second explosion came. He wasdiving off the veranda of Post Number Fourteen. He saw someone elsecoming through a window. He had a photographic glimpse of one of his menemerging through a doorway. Then he struck earth and began to run. Likeeverybody else in America, he knew what the explosions and thescreamings meant. 

But he had covered no more than fifty yards when the third bomb fellfrom that plane so far aloft that it was not even a mote in the sky. Upthere the sky was not even blue, but a dull leaden gray because of thethinness of the atmosphere yet above it. The men in that high-flightbomber could see the ground only as a mass of vaguely blending colors. They were aiming their bombs by filtered light, through telescopes whichused infra-red rays only, as aerial cameras did back in the 1920's. Andthey were sighting their eggs with beautifully exact knowledge of theirvelocity and height. By the time the bombs had dropped eight miles theywere traveling faster than the sound of their coming. The first two hadwiped out Posts Thirteen and Fifteen. The third made no sound before itlanded, except to an observer at a distance. Sergeant Walpole heardneither the scream of fall nor the sound of its explosion. 

 * * * * *

He was running madly, and suddenly the earth bucked violently beneathhis feet, and he had a momentary sensation of things flying madly byover his head, and then he knew nothing at all for a very long time. Then his head ached horribly and someone was popping at somethingvalorously with a rifle, and he heard the nasty sharp explosions of thehexynitrate bullets which have remodeled older ideas of warfare, andSergeant Walpole was aware of an urgent necessity to do something, buthe could not at all imagine what it was. Then a shell went off, theearth-concussion banged his nose against the sand, and the rifle-firestopped. 

"For Gawd's sake!" said Sergeant Walpole dizzily. 

He staggered to his feet and looked behind him. Where the cottage hadbeen there was a hole. Quite a large hole. It was probably a hundredyards across and all of twenty deep, but sea-water was seeping in tofill it through the sand. Its edge was forty or fifty feet from where hestood. He had been knocked down by the heaving earth, and the sand andmud blown out of the crater had gone clean over him. Twenty feet back, the top part of his body would have been cut neatly off by the blast. Asit was. .. . 

 * * * * *

He found his nose bleeding and plugged it with his handkerchief. He wasstill rather dazed, and he still had the feeling that there wassomething extremely important that he must do. He stood rocking on hisfeet, trying to clear his head, when two men came along the sand-dunesbehind the beach. One of them carried two automatic rifles. The otherwas trying to bandage a limp and flapping arm as he ran. They saw theSergeant and ran to him. 

"Hell, Sarge, I thought y'were blown to little egg-shells. "

"I ain't, " said Sergeant Walpole. He looked again at the hole in theground and swore painedly. 

"Look at that, " said the man with the flapping arm. "Hell's goin' to poparound here, Sarge. "

The sergeant swung around. Then his mouth dropped open. Just half a mileaway and hardly more than two hundred yards from the shore-line, theDiesel tramp was ramming the beach. A wake still foamed behind it. Amonstrous bow-wave spread out on either hand, over-topping even thecombers that came rolling in. It was being deliberately run ashore. Itstruck, and its fore-mast crumpled up and fell forward, carrying itsderrick-booms with it. There was the squeal of crumpled metal plates. 

"Flyin' a yeller flag just now, " panted one of the two privates. "Westarted poppin' hexynitrate bullets at her an' she flung a shell at us. She's a enemy ship. But what the hell?"

Smoke spurted up from the beached ship. Her stern broke off and settledin the deeper water out from the shore. More smoke spurted out. Her bowsplit wide. There were the deep rumbles of black-powder explosions. Sergeant Walpole and his two followers stared blankly. More explosions, and the ship was hidden in smoke, and when it blew away her funnel wasdown and half or more of her upper works was sliding into the sea, andshe had listed suddenly. 

 * * * * *

Sergeant Walpole gazed upward. Futilely, of course; there was nothing insight overhead. But these explosions did look like the hexynitrate stuffthey put in small-arm bullets nowadays. A thirty-caliber bullet had theexplosive effect of an old-style six-pound T. N. T. Shell. Only, hexynitrate goes off with a crack instead of a boom. It wasn't anAmerican plane opening up with a machine-gun. 

Then the beached ship seemed to blow up. A mass of thick smoke coveredher from stem to stern, and bits of plating flew heavily through theair, and there were a few lurid bursts of flame. Sergeant Walpolesuddenly remembered that there ought to be survivors, only he hadn'tseen anybody diving overboard to try to get ashore. He half-startedforward. .. . 

Then the sea-breeze blew this smoke, too, away from the wreckage. Andthe tramp was gone, but there was something else left in its place--sothat Sergeant Walpole took one look, and swallowed a non-existentsomething that came up instantly into his throat again, and rememberedthe urgent thing he had to do. 

"Pete, " he said calmly, "you hunt up the Area Officer an' tell him whatyou seen. Here! I'll give you a report that'll keep 'em from slammin'you in clink for bein' drunk. Grab a monocycle somewheres. It's fasterthan a car, the way you'll be travelin'. First telephone you come tothat's workin', make Central put you in the tight beam to head-quarters. Then go on an' report, y'self. See?"

Pete started, and automatically fumbled with his limp and useless arm. Then he carefully tucked the unmanageable hand in the pocket of hisuniform blouse. 

"That don't matter now, " he said absurdly. 

He was looking at the thing left in place of the tramp, as SergeantWalpole scribbled on one of the regulation report-forms of the EasternCoast Observation Force. And the thing he saw was enough to upsetanybody. 

 * * * * *

Where the tramp had been there was a single bit of bow-plating stickingup out of the surf, and a bunch of miscellaneous floating wreckagedrifting sluggishly toward the beach. And there was a solid, rounded, metallic shape apparently quite as long as the original tramp had been. There was a huge armored tube across its upper part, with vision-slitsin two bulbous sections at its end. There were gun-ports visible hereand there, and already a monstrous protuberance was coming into viewmidway along its back, as if forced into position from within. Where thebow of the tramp had been there were colossal treads now visible. Therewas a sort of conning-tower, armored and grim. There was a ghastlysteel beak. The thing was a war-machine of monstrous size. It emitted asudden roaring sound, as of internal-combustion engines operating atfull power, and lurched heavily. The steel plates of the tramp stillvisible above water, crumpled up like paper and were trodden under. Thething came toward the shore. It slithered through the shallow sea, withwaves breaking against its bulging sides. It came out upon the beach, its wet sides glittering. It was two hundred feet long, and it lookedsomehow like a gigantic centipede. 

It was a tank, of sorts, but like no tank ever seen on earth before. Itwas the great-grandfather of all tanks. It was so monstrous that for itsconveyance a ship's hull and superstructure had been built about it, andits own engines had been the engines of that ship. It was so huge thatit could only be landed by blasting away a beached ship from aboutitself, so it could run under its own power over the fragments to theshore. 

Now it stopped smoothly on the sandy beach, in which its eight-foot-widesteel treads sank almost a yard. Men dropped down from ports in itsswelling sides. They made swift, careful inspections of predeterminedpoints. They darted back up the ladders again. The thing roared oncemore. Then it swung about, headed for the sand-dunes, and with anextraordinary smoothness and celerity disappeared inland. 

PART II

 ". .. The Wabbly was meant for one purpose, the undermining of civilian morale. To accomplish that purpose it set systematically about the establishment of a reign of terror; and so complete was its success that half the population of a state was in headlong flight within two hours. It was, first, mysterious; secondly, deadly, and within a very few hours it had built up a reputation for invincibility. Judged on the basis of its first twelve hours' work alone, it was the most successful experiment of the war. Its effect on civilian morale was incalculable. " (_Strategic Lessons of the War of 1941-43. _--U. S. War College. Pp. 80-81. )

Two of the members of Observation-Post Fourteen gaped after theretreating monster. Sergeant Walpole scribbled on the official form. Just as the monstrous thing dipped down out of sight there was avicious, crashing report from its hinder part. Something shrieked. .. . 

Sergeant Walpole got up, spitting sand. There was blood on thereport-form in his hand. He folded it painstakingly. Of the two men whohad been with him, one was struggling out of the sand as SergeantWalpole had had to do. The other was scattered over a good many squareyards of sandy beach. 

"Um. They seen us, " said Sergeant Walpole, "an' they got Pete. You'llhave to take this report. I'm goin' after the damn thing. "

"What for?" asked the other man blankly. 

"To keep it in sight, " said Sergeant Walpole. "That's tactics. Ifsomebody springs somethin' you ain't able to fight, run away but keep itin sight an' report to the nearest commissioned officer. Remember that. Now get on. There's monocycles in the village. Get there an' beat thatdamn Wabbly thing with the news. "

He saw his follower start off, sprinting. That particular soldier, bythe way, was identified by his dog-tag some days later. As nearly ascould be discovered, he had died of gas. But Sergeant Walpole picked upone of the two rifles, blew sand out of the breech-mechanism, andstarted off after the metal monster. He walked in the eight-foot trackof one of its treads. As he went, he continued the cleaning of sand fromthe rifle in his hands. The rifle was useless against such a monster, of course, but it is quaint to reflect that in that automatic rifle, firing hexynitrate bullets, each equivalent to a six-pounder T. N. T. Shell in destructiveness, Sergeant Walpole carried greater "fire-power"than Napoleon ever disposed in battle. 

The tread of the Wabbly made a perfect roadway. Presently SergeantWalpole looked up to find himself scrutinizing somebody's dining-roomtable, set for lunch. The Wabbly had crossed a house in its path withoutswerving. Walls, chimneys, timbers and planks, all had gone beneath itstreads. But they had been pressed so smoothly flat that until SergeantWalpole looked down at his footing, he would not have known he waswalking on the wreckage of a building. 

It was half an hour before he reached the village. The Wabbly had gonefrom end to end, backed up, and gone over the rest of it again. Therewas the taint of gas in the air. Sergeant Walpole halted outside thedebris. His gas-mask had been blown to atoms with Observation-PostFourteen. 

"They're tryin' to beat the news o' their comin', " he reflected aloud, "which is why they smashed up the village. The telephone exchange wasthere. .. . Tillie's under there somewheres. .. . "

He fumbled with the rifle, suddenly swearing queerly hate-distortedoaths. Tillie had not been the great love of Sergeant Walpole's life. She was merely a country telephone operator, reasonably pretty, andflattered by his uniform. But she was under a mass of splintered woodand crushed brick-work, killed while trying to connect with the tightbeam to Area Headquarters to report the monster rushing upon thevillage. That monster had destroyed the little settlement. There wasnothing left at all but wreckage and the eight-foot tracks of monstertreads. Sometimes those tracks crossed each other. Between them wreckagesurvived to a height of as much as four feet, which was the clearance ofthe Wabbly's body. 

Something roared low overhead. Sergeant Walpole swore bitterly, lookedupward, and waited to die. But the small plane was American, and old. Itwas a training-plane, useless for front-line work. It dived to earth, the pilot waved impatiently, and Walpole plunged to a place beside him. Instantly thereafter the plane took off. 

"What was it?" shouted the pilot, sliding off at panic-stricken speedacross the tree-tops. "They heard the bombs go off all the way toPhilly. Sent me. What in hell was it?"

 * * * * *

A thin, high, wailing sound coming down as lightning might be imaginedto descend. .. . The pilot dived madly and got behind a pine forest beforethe explosion and the concussion that followed it. Sergeant Walpole sawthe pine-trees shiver. The sheer explosion-wave of that egg, if it hitan old ship like this in mid-air, would have stripped the fabric fromits wings. 

"Set me down, " said Sergeant Walpole. "They're watchin' us from aloft. Isent a man on a monocycle to report. " But he told luridly of the thingthat 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 ofgettin' back. "

The pilot set him down, and began ticking away on a code sender even ashe landed. Then he climbed swiftly away from the Sergeant, headed in aweaving, crazy line to westward. Then things screamed downward and theSergeant clapped hands over his ears once more. The ground quiveredunderfoot, though the eggs landed a good three-quarters of a mile away. The training-plane dropped like a plummet. The sharpness of ahexynitrate explosion carries its effect to quite incredible distances. The fabric of its wings split to ribbons. The ship landed somewhere andsmoke 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 sawa school-house. The Wabbly had passed within a hundred yards of it. Theschool-house seemed deserted. Then the Sergeant saw the hole in itsroof. Then he caught the infinitely faint taint of gas. 

"Mighty anxious, " said Sergeant Walpole woodenly, "not to let news getahead of 'em. Yeah. .. . If it busts on places without warnin', it'll havethat much easier work. I hope I'm in on the party when we get this damnthing. "

There was no use in approaching the school-house, though he had agas-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 thesecond flight of home-defense planes made their attack. Sergeant Walpoleheard them droning overhead. He lit a fire instantly. A littlehelicopter dropped from the blackness above him and he began to heapdirt desperately on the blaze. 

"Who's there?" demanded a voice. 

"Sergeant Walpole, Post Fourteen, Eastern Coast Observation, " said theSergeant in a military manner. "Beg to report, sir, that the dinkus thatbrought down the other ships is housed in that big bulge on top of theWabbly. "

"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 hummingnoise had announced the flight of attack-planes. A lurid, cracklingdetonation lit up the sky. One of the ships of the night-flyingsquadron. From the helicopter they could see the rest of the flightlimned clearly in the flash of the explosion. Instantly thereafter therewas 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 calmabout it. "Five. Six. " The explosions lit the sky. Presently he saidgrimly. "That's all of them. I'd better report it. "

 * * * * *

He was silent for a while. Sergeant Walpole saw his hand flicking a keyup and down in the faint light of radio bulbs. 

"Now shoot the works, " said the helicopter man evenly. "All the shipsthat 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 onthem?"

"A dinkus on top, sir, " said Sergeant Walpole formally. "I'd found amonocycle, sir, and was trailing the thing. I'd come to the top of ahill and seen it moving through a pine-wood, crashing down the trees infront of it like they wasn't there. Then a egg came down fromGawd-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 said sardonically. "Those ships were carryingfive-hundred-pound bombs! It was those you heard going off!"

"Maybe, " conceded Sergeant Walpole. "There was twenty or thirty shipsflyin' in formation, goin' hell-for-leather for the Wabbly. They weretrailin' it from the air. They were comin', natural, for me, because Iwas between them an' it. Then my pants caught on fire--"

"What?"

"My pants caught on fire, " said Sergeant Walpole, woodenly. "I wassittin' on the monocycle, tryin' to figure out which way to duck. An' mypants caught on fire. The bike was gettin' hot. I climbed off it an' itblew up. My rifle was hot, too, an' I chucked it away. Then I saw a shipgo 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 comedown an' three ships dropped. Didn't hit 'em. The concussion blew thefabric off 'em. Another one caught fire an' crashed. Then another one. Ilooked, an' saw the next one catch. Then the next. It was like asearchlight beam hittin' 'em. They flamed up, blew up, an' that wasthat. 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 steadyfierce down-beat of the slip-stream from the vertical propellers. Thehelicopter swept forward in a swooping dash. 

"The whole east coast's gone crazy, " said the 'copter man drily. "Crazyfools trying to run away. Roads jammed. Work stopped. It leaked outabout the planes being wiped out to-day, and everybody in three stateshas heard those eggs going off. You're the only living man who's seenthat crawling thing and lived to tell about it. I've sent your stuffback. What's that about the thing on top?"

"I hid, " said Sergeant Walpole, woodenly. "The Wabbly sent overgas-shells where the ships landed. Then it went on. Headin' west. It'sgot a crazy-lookin' dinkus on top like a searchlight. That moved, whilethe ships were catchin' fire an' crashin'. Just like a searchlight, itmoved 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 intospace. Metalwork up aloft glowed dully red. Then there were whipping, lashing branches closing swiftly all around the helicopter. A jerk. Acrash. Stillness. The smell of growing things all about. 

"Well?" said the 'copter pilot. 

"They turned it on us--whatever it is, " said Sergeant Walpole. "Theynear got us, too. "

 * * * * *

A match scratched. A cigarette glowed. The Sergeant fumbled for a smokefor 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 wassending your stuff. Damn! I see what they've got!"

"What?"

"A way of transmitting real power in a radio beam, " said the 'copterman. "You've seen eddy-current stoves. Everybody cooks with 'emnowadays. A coil with a high-frequency current. You can stick your handin it and nothing happens. But you stick an iron pan down in the coiland it gets hot and cooks things. Hysteresis. The same thing that usedto make transformer-cores get hot. The same thing happens near any beamtransmitter, only you have to measure the heating effect with athermo-couple. The iron absorbs the radio waves and gets hot. The chapsin 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 atonce. 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 anearth-shaking concussion. It was an explosion, yes, but subtly differentfrom 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 guessthey'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. Twohundred. Pine-woods have little undergrowth. He heard the helicopter'sengines start. The ship tried to lift. He redoubled his speed. Presentlyhe broke out into open ploughed land. 

In the starlight he saw a barn, and he raced toward that. Someone elseplunged out of the woods toward him. The helicopter-engine was stillroaring faintly in the distance. Then a thin whine came down fromaloft. .. . 

When the echoes of the explosion died away the pilot was grinningqueerly. 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 thatup aloft. There's a ship up there, forty thousand feet or so. Maybe halfa dozen ships. Refueling in air, I guess, and working with the thing youcall a Wabbly. When I started the 'copter's engine they got thespark-impulses and sighted on them. We'd better get away from here. "

"Horses in here, " said Sergeant Walpole. "The Wabbly came by. No peopleleft. "

They brought the animals out. The horses reared and plunged as therewere other infinitely sharp, deadly explosions of the eggs coming downeight 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 tolick it. "

They went clattering through darkness. It was extraordinary whatdesolation, what utter lack of human life they moved through. They cameto a town, and there was a taint of gas in the air. No lights burned inthat 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 showthat the Wabbly had gone through it, and then crashed back and forthruthlessly. There was a great gash through the center of the buildingsnearest the edge, and there were other gashes visible here and there. Everything was crushed down utterly flat in two eight-foot paths; andthere was a mass of crumbled debris four feet high at its highest inbetween the tread-marks. 

They looked, silently, and went on. They reached a railroad track, thequadruple track of a branch-line from New York to Philadelphia. TheWabbly was going along that right-of-way. There was no right-of-way leftwhere it had been. Rails were crushed flat. Culverts were brokenthrough. But the horses raced along the smoothed tread-trails. Once abroken, twisted rail tore at Sergeant Walpole's sleeve. Somehow the lastgreat plate of a tread had bent it upward. Presently they saw a mass ofsomething dark off to the left. Flames were licking meditatively at oneof 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 thedistance. The horses, going down the crushed-smooth trail of the treads, gained upon the din. Then they saw the cause of it, miles distant. Atrain 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, slidingsmoothly out of sight. 

 * * * * *

"Ten miles of railroad, " said the 'copter pilot calmly, "mashed out ofexistence. That's going to scare our people into fits. They can dropeggs till the cows come home, and every egg'll smash up a hundred yardsof right-of-way, and we can build it back up again in four hours withmobile track-layers. But ten miles to be regraded and laid is different. Half of America will be imagining all our railroads smashed andstarvation 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 hugetwo-wheeled car, whose gyroscopes hummed softly while its driver triedto extract it from something it was tangled in. 

"I commandeer this car, " said the 'copter pilot. "Military necessity. Wehave to trail that Wabbly. "

Someone grunted. Lights flashed on within. The 'copter pilot andSergeant Walpole stiffened to attention. The stars of a major-generalshone on the collar of the stout man within. 

"Beg pardon, sir, " said the pilot, and was still. 

"Umph, " said the major-general. "There seem to be just four of us alive, who've seen the thing clearly. I hit on it by accident, I'll admit. Whatdo you know about it?"

"It come on a tramp-steamer--" began Sergeant Walpole. 

"Hm. You're Sergeant Walpole. Mentioned in dispatches to-morrow, Sergeant. You, sir?"

"Its weapon against our planes, sir, " said the 'copter man precisely, "is a radio beam carrying several thousand horsepower of energy. When ithits iron, sir, the energy is absorbed and the iron heats up and blowsup the ship. The Wabbly's working with a bomber well aloft, sir, whichspots planes from below by picking up their spark-plug flashes in adirectional loop. The bomber aloft, sir, drops eggs when the Wabbly'sattacked. Sergeant Walpole reports several planes disabled by theirfabric being blown off their wings. "

 * * * * *

"I know, " said the major-general. "Dammit, the front takes every shipthat's fit to go aloft. We have only wrecks back here. You're sure aboutthat spark-plug affair?"

"Yes, sir, " said the 'copter pilot. "My ship crashed, sir. I started themotors again, trying to take off. Eggs began to drop about meinstantly. "

"Nasty!" said the major-general. "I was going to join my men. We'veflung a line of artillery ahead of the thing. Motor-driven, of course. But if they can pick up motors by the spark-waves, the bomber knows allabout it. Nasty!"

He lit a cigar, calmly. The gyrocar shifted suddenly and backed awayfrom the thing it had been tangled in. 

"Why ain't the bombers been shot down?" demanded Sergeant Walpoleangrily. "Dammit, sir, if it wasn't for them bombers--"

"Up to an hour ago, " said the major-general, "we had lost sixty-eightplanes trying to get those bombers. You see, it works both ways. Thebombers drop eggs to help the Wabbly defend itself. And the Wabbly usesthat power-beam you spoke of to wipe the sky clean about the bombers. Iwondered how it was done, before you explained, sir. Do you men want tocome with me? Get on the running-board if you like. We shall probably bekilled. "

The gyrocar purred softly away, with two horses left wandering and twomen clinging fast in a sweep of wind. They found a ribbon of concreteroad and the wind sang as the car picked up speed. Then, suddenly, itbucked madly and went out of control, and, as suddenly, was passingalong the road again. The Wabbly had passed over the roadway here. 

 * * * * *

And then they heard gunfire ahead. Honest, malevolent gunfire. Flasheslit the horizon. The gyrocar speeded up until it fairly hummed, and thewind rushed into the nostrils and mouths of the men on therunning-boards. The cannonade increased. It reached really respectableproportions, until it became a titanic din. As the road rose up a longincline, a shell burst in mid-air in plain view, and the driver of thegyrocar jammed on the brakes and looked down upon the strangest ofsights below. 

There were other hills yet ahead, and from behind them came that faint, indefinite glow which is the glow of the lights of a city. At the bottomof a valley, a mile and a half distant, there was the Wabbly. Star-shells flared near it, casting it into intolerable brightness andclear relief. And other shells were breaking upon it and all about it. From beyond the rim of hills came the flashes of guns. The air was fullof screamings and many crashes. 

The Wabbly was motionless. It looked more than ever like a monstrous, deadly centipede. It was under a rain of fire that would have shattereda dreadnaught of the 1920's. Its monstrous treads were motionless. Itseemed queerly quiescent, abstracted; it seemed less defiant of theshell-fire that broke upon it like the hail of hell, than indifferent toit. Yes, it seemed indifferent!

Only the queer excrescence on its top moved, and that stirred vaguely. Star-shells floated overhead and bathed it in pitiless light. And itremained motionless. .. . Sergeant Walpole had a vague impression ofcolossal detonations taking place miles above his head, but the soundwas lost in the drumfire of artillery nearer at hand. 

 * * * * *

Then a gun on the Wabbly moved. It spouted a flash of bluish flame, andthen another and another. It seemed to fire gas-shells into the town, atthis moment, ignoring the batteries playing upon it. It was still again, while the queer excrescence on its back moved vaguely and shells burstabout it in a very inferno. 

Then the treads moved, and with a swift celerity the Wabbly movedsmoothly forward and up the incline toward the cannonading guns. It wentover the top of the incline, and those in the gyrocar saw its reception. Guns opened on it at point-blank range. Now the Wabbly itself went intoaction. In the light of star-shells and explosions they saw its gunsbegin to bellow. It went swiftly and malevolently forward, moving withcentipedean smoothness. 

It dipped out of sight. The cannonade lessened. Two guns stopped. Three. .. . Half a dozen guns were out of action. A dozen guns ceased tofire. .. . One last weapon boomed desperately at its maximum rate offire. .. . 

That stopped. The night became strangely, terribly still. Themajor-general put aside his radivision receiver. Though neither thehelicopter pilot nor Sergeant Walpole had noticed it, he had openedcommunication the instant the gyrocar came to a stop. Now themajor-general was desperately, terribly white. 

"The artillery is wiped out, " he observed detachedly. "The Wabbly, itseems, is going on into the town. "

They did not want to listen, those men who waited futilely by thegyrocar which had witnessed the invulnerability of the Wabbly to allattack. They did not want to listen at all. But they heard the noises asthe Wabbly crashed across the town, and back and forth. 

"Morale effect, " said the major-general, through stiff lips. "That'swhat it's for. To break down the morale behind the lines. Good God! Whathellish things mere words can mean!"

PART V

 ". .. The only weak spot in the Wabbly's design, apparently, was the necessity of using its entire engine-power in the power-beam with which it protected itself and its attendant bombers from aerial attack. For a time, before New Brunswick, it was forced to remain still, under fire, while it fought off and destroyed an attacking fleet eight miles above it. With sufficiently powerful artillery, it might have been destroyed at that moment. But it was invulnerable to the artillery available. .. . Deliberately false statements were broadcast to reassure the public, but the public was already skeptical, as it later became incredulous, of official reports of victories. The destruction of New Brunswick became known despite official denials, and colossal riots broke out among the inhabitants of the larger cities, intent upon escape from defenseless towns. .. . Orders were actually issued withdrawing a quarter of a million men from the front-line reserve, with artillery in proportion to their force. " (_Strategic Lessons of the War of 1941-43. _--U. S. War College. P. 92. )

The major-general left them at the town, now quite still and silent. Sergeant Walpole said detachedly:

"We'll prob'ly find a portable sender, sir, an' trail the Wabbly. That'sabout all we can do, sir. "

"It looks, " said the major-general rather desperately, "as if that isall anybody can do. I'm going on to take command ahead. "

The 'copter pilot said politely:

"Sir, if you're going to sow mines for the Wabbly--"

"Of course!"

"That power-beam can explode them, sir, before the Wabbly gets to them. May I suggest, sir, that mine-cases with no metal in them at all wouldbe worth trying?"

"Thank you, " said the major-general grimly. "I'll have concrete onesmade. "

Sergeant Walpole grunted suddenly. 

"Look here, sir! The Wabbly stops when it uses that dinkus on top. Thisguy here says it uses a lotta power--four or five thousan' horsepower. "

"More likely ten or twenty, " said the 'copter pilot. 

"Maybe, " said Sergeant Walpole profoundly, "it takes all the power theygot to work that dinkus. They were workin' it just now when theartillery was slammin' 'em. So next time you want to tackle it, stick aflock o' bombs around an' attack the bombers too. If they're kept busydown below, maybe the planes can get the bombers, or otherwise they'llget a chance to use a big gun on the Wabbly. "

The major-general nodded. 

"We four, " he observed, "are the only living men who've actually seenthe Wabbly and gotten away. I shall use both your suggestions. And Ishall not send those orders by radio--not even tight beam radio. I'llcarry them myself. Good luck!"

A non-commissioned officer of the Eastern Coast Observation Force and ayet uncommissioned flying cadet waved a cheerful good-by to themajor-general in charge of home defense in three states. Then they wenton into the town. 

"Monocycles first, " said Sergeant Walpole. "An' a sender. "

 * * * * *

The 'copter man nodded. The street-lights of the town dimmed andbrightened. The Wabbly had paused only to create havoc, not to produceutter chaos. It had gone back and forth over the town two or threetimes, spewing out gas as it went. But most of the town was stillstanding, and the power-house had not been touched. Only its untendedDiesels had checked before a fuel-pump cleared. 

They found a cycle-shop, its back wall bulged in by wreckage against it. Sergeant Walpole inspected its wares expertly. A voice began to speaksuddenly. A television set had somehow been turned on by the crash thatbulged the back wall. 

"The monster tank has been held in check, " said a smug voiceencouragingly. "Encountered by home-defense troops and artillery, itproved unable to face shell-fire. .. . "

"Liars!" said the 'copter man calmly. He picked up the nearest looseobject and flung it into the bland face of the official news-announcer. The television set went dead, but there were hissings and sputterings inits interior. He had flung a Bissel battery at it, one of adisplay-group, and its high-tension terminals hissed and sparked amongthe stray wires in the cabinet. 

"That makes me mad, " said the 'copter man grimly. "Lying for morale! Theother side murders our civilians to break down morale, and our side liesabout it to build morale back up again. To hell with morale!"

Sergeant Walpole reached in and pulled out the battery. Bissel batteriesturn out six hundred volts these days, and they make a fat spark whenshort-circuited. 

"For Gawd's sake!" said Sergeant Walpole. "If they can pick up sparksfrom a motor, can't they pick 'em up from this? What the hell y'doin'?Y'want 'em droppin' eggs on us? Say!"

 * * * * *

He stopped short, his eyes burning. He began to talk, suddenly gropingfor words while he waved the high-powered small battery in his hand. Thehelicopter man listened, at first skeptically and then with an equallyhungry enthusiasm. 

"Sergeant, " he said evenly, "that's an idea! A whale of an idea! A hellof a fine idea! Let's get some rockets!"

"Why rockets?" demanded Sergeant Walpole in his turn. "Whatcha want todo? Celebrate the Fourth o' July?"

The 'copter man explained, this time, and Sergeant Walpole seized uponthe addition. Then they began a hunt. They roved the town over, and itwas not pleasant. When the Wabbly had gone into that town there hadstill been very many living human beings in it. Some of them hadbelieved in the ability of the artillery to defend the town against asingle monster. Some had had no means of getting away. But all of themhad tried to get away when the Wabbly went lurching in among the houses. 

For them, the Wabbly had spewed out deadly gases. Also it had simplyforged ahead. And the two living men in their gas-masks paid as littleattention as possible to the bodies in the streets, most of them inflimsy night-clothing, struck down in frenzied flight, but they couldnot help seeing too much. .. . 

In the end they went back to the artillery-positions and foundsignal-rockets there. Two full cases of them, marvelously unexploded. Alittle later two monocycles purred madly in the beaten-down paths of themonstrous treads. Sergeant Walpole bore very many Bissel batteries, which will deliver six hundred volts even on short-circuit for half anhour at a time. The 'copter man carried some of them, too, and both menwere loaded down. 

 * * * * *

When dawn came they were hollow-eyed and gaunt and weary. It had startedto rain, too, and both of them were drenched. They could see no morethan a couple of hundred yards in every direction, and they were hungry, and they had seen things no man should have to look upon, in the way ofdestruction. They came upon a wrecked artillery-train just as the worldlightened to a pallid gray. Guns twisted and burst. Caissons, no morethan shattered scraps of metal, because of the explosion of the shellswithin them. And the tread-tracks of the Wabbly led across the mess. Steam still rose, hissing softly, from the bent and twisted guns whichhad burst when they were heated to redness by the power-beam. And therewas a staff gyrocar crumpled against a tree where it had been flung bysome explosion or other. There were neither sound nor wounded men about;only dead ones. The Wabbly had been here. 

"Hullo, " said the helicopter man in a dreary levity, "there's a portablevision set in this car. Let's call up the general and see how he is?"

Sergeant Walpole spat. Then he held up his hand. He was listening. Faroff in the drumming downpour of the rain there was a rumbling sound. Hehad heard it before. It was partly made up of the noise ofinternal-combustion engines of unthinkable power, and partly ofgrumbling treads forcing a way through reluctant trees. It was a longway off, now, but it was coming nearer. 

"The Wabbly, " said Sergeant Walpole. "Comin' back. Why? Hell's bells!Why's it comin' back?"

"I don't know, " said the 'copter man, "but let's get some rockets fixedup. "

The two of them worked almost lackadaisically. They were tired out. Butthey took the tiny Bissel batteries and twisted the attached wiresabout the rocket-heads. They had twenty or thirty of them fixed by thetime the noise of the Wabbly was very near. There was the noise offelled trees, pushed down by the Wabbly in its progress. Great, crackling crashes, and then crunching sounds, and above them thethunderous smooth purring rumble of the monster. The 'copter man climbedinto the upside-down staff car. He turned the vision set on and fiddledabsurdly with the controls. 

"I'm getting something, " he announced suddenly. "The bomber up aloft issending its stuff down a beam, a tight beam to the Wabbly. Listen toit!"

 * * * * *

The uncouth, clacking syllables of the enemy tongue came from the visionset. Someone was speaking crisply and precisely somewhere. Blurred, indistinct flashes appeared on the vision set screen. 

"They ought to be worried, " the 'copter man said wearily. "Even aninfra-red telescope can't pick up a damned thing through clouds likethis. And the Wabbly's in a mess without a bomber to help. .. . "

Sergeant Walpole did not reply. He was exhausted. He sat looking tiredlyoff through the rain in the direction of the approaching noise. Somehowit did not occur to him to run away. He sat quite still, smoking a soggycigarette. 

Something beaked and huge appeared behind a monstrous oak-tree. It cameon. The oak-tree crackled, crashed, and went down. It was ground underby the monstrous war-engine that went over it. The Wabbly wasunbelievably impersonal and horrible in its progress. There had been afilling-station for gyrocars close by the place where theartillery-train had been wrecked. One of the eight-foot treads loomedover that station, descended upon it--and the filling-station was nomore. The Wabbly was then not more than a hundred yards from SergeantWalpole, less than a city block. He looked at it in a weary detachment. It was as high as a four-story house, and it was two hundred feet long, and forty feet wide at the treads with the monstrous gun-bulges reachingout an extra ten or fifteen feet on either side above. And it camegrumbling on toward him. 

PART VI

 ". .. Considered as a strategic move, the Wabbly was a triumph. Eighteen hours after its landing, the orders for troops called for half a million men to be withdrawn from the forces at the front and in reserve, and munitions-factories were being diverted from the supply of the front to the manufacture of devices designed to cope with it. This, in turn, entailed changes in the front-line activities of the Command. .. . Altogether, it may be said that the Wabbly, eighteen hours after its landing, was exerting the military pressure of an army of not less than half a million men upon the most vulnerable spot in our defenses--the rear. .. . And when its effect upon civilian morale is considered, the Wabbly, as a force in being, constituted the most formidable military unit in history. " (_Strategic Lessons of the War of 1941-43. _--U. S. War College. P. 93. )

As Sergeant Walpole saw the Wabbly, there was no sign of humanityanywhere about the thing. It was a monstrous mass of metal, powder-stained now where shells had burst against it, and it seemedmetallically alive, impersonally living. The armored tube withvision-slits at its ends must have been the counterpart of a ship'sbridge, but it looked like the eye-ridge of an insect's face. Thebulbous control-rooms at the ends looked like a gigantic insect'smulti-faceted eyes. And the huge treads, so thick as to constitute armorfor their own protection, were so cunningly joined and sprung that they, too, seemed like part of a living thing. 

It came within twenty yards of the staff-car with the 'copter man in itand Sergeant Walpole smoking outside. It ignored them. It had destroyedall life at this place. And Sergeant Walpole alone was visible, and hesat motionless and detached, unemotionally waiting to be killed. TheWabbly clanked and rumbled and roared obliviously past them. SergeantWalpole saw the flexing springs in the tread-joints, and there werehundreds of them, of a size to support a freight-car. He saw arefuse-tube casually ejecting a gush of malodorous stuff, in which thegarbage of a mess-table was plainly identifiable. A drop or two of thestuff splashed on him, and he smelled coffee. 

And then the treads lifted, and he saw the monstrous gas-spreading tubesat the stern, and the exhaust-pipes into which he could have ridden, monocycle and all. Then he saw a man in the Wabbly. There wereventilation-ports open at the pointed stern and a man was looking out, some fifteen feet above the ground, smoking placidly and looking out atthe terrain the Wabbly left behind it. He was wearing an enemy uniformcap. 

 * * * * *

The monster went on. The roar of its passing diminished a little. Andthe 'copter man came suddenly out of the staff-car, struggling with theportable vision set. 

"I think we can do it, " he said shortly. "It's in constant beamcommunication with a bomber up aloft, and I think they're worried upthere because they can't see a damned thing. But it's a good team. Withthe Wabbly's beam, which takes so much power no bomber could possiblycarry it, the bombers are safe, and the bombers can locate anymotor-driven thing that might attack the Wabbly and blow it to hell. Butright now they can't see it. So I think we can do it. Coming?"

Sergeant Walpole threw away his cigarette and rose stiffly. Even thosefew moments of rest had intensified his weariness. He flung a leg overthe monocycle's seat and pointed tiredly to the trail of the Wabbly. Itnearly paralleled, here, a ribbon of concrete road which once had been areasonably important feeder-highway. 

"Let's go. "

They went off through the rain along the road, nearly parallel to theroute the Wabbly was taking. Rain beat at them. Off in the woods totheir right the Wabbly's noise grew louder as they overtook it. Theypassed it, and came abruptly out of the wooded area upon cultivatedfields, rolling and beautifully cared-for. There had been afarm-headquarters off to one side, a huge central-station for all theagricultural work on what once would have been half a county, but therewere jagged walls where buildings had been, and smoke still rose fromthe place. 

Then the Wabbly came out of the woods, a dim gray monstrous shape in therain. 

 * * * * *

The helicopter man pulled the ignition-cord and a rocket began tosputter. He made a single wipe with his knife-blade along the twistedinsulated wires of the Bissel battery, and a wavering blue spark leapedinto being. The rocket shot upward, curved down, and landed with enoughforce to bury its head in the muddy ploughed earth and conceal thesignal-flare that must have ignited. 

"That ought to do it, " said the 'copter man. "Let's send some more. "

Sergeant Walpole got exhaustedly off his monocycle and duplicated the'copter man's efforts. A second rocket, a third. .. . A dozen or morerockets went off, each one bearing a wavering, uncertain blue spark atits tip. And that spark would continue for half an hour or more. In aloop aerial, eight miles up, it might sound like a spark-plug, or itmight sound like something else. But it would not sound like the sort ofthing that ought to spring up suddenly in front of the Wabbly, and itwould sound like something that had better be bombed, for safety's sake. 

The Wabbly was moving across the ploughed fields with a deceptivesmoothness. It was drawing nearer and nearer to the spot where therockets had plunged to earth. 

It stopped. 

Another rocket left the weary pair of men, its nearly flashless exhaustinvisible in the daytime, anyway. The Wabbly backed slowly from theirregular line where the first rockets sparked invisibly. It was no morethan a distinct gray shadow in the falling rain, but the queer bulk atopits body moved suddenly. Like a searchlight, the power-beam swept theearth before the Wabbly. But nothing happened. 

The 'copter man turned on the vision set he had packed from the staffgyrocar. Voices, crisp and anxious, came out of it. He caressed the setaffectionately. 

"Listen to 'em, Sergeant, " he said hungrily. "They're worried!"

 * * * * *

The voice changed suddenly. There was a sudden musical buzzing in theset, as of two dozen spitting sparks, in as many tones, all going atonce. 

"Letting the guys in the Wabbly hear what they hear, " said the 'copterman grimly. "If God's good to us, now. .. . "

The voices changed again. They stopped. 

The Wabbly itself was still, halted in its passage across a clear andrain-swept field by little sparking sounds which seemed to indicate thepresence of something that had better be bombed for safety's sake. 

A thin whining noise came down from aloft. It rose to a piercing shriek, and there was a gigantic crater a half mile from the Wabbly, from whichsmoke rose lazily. The Wabbly remained motionless. Another whining noisewhich turned to a shriek. .. . The explosion was terrific. It was a bitnearer the Wabbly. 

"We'll send 'em some more rockets, " said the 'copter man. 

They went hissing invisibly through the rain. The Wabbly backedcautiously away from the spot where they landed, because they werewholly invisible and they made a sound which those in the Wabbly couldnot understand. Always, to a savage, the unexplained is dangerous. Modern warfare has reached the same high peak of wisdom. The Wabbly drewoff from the sparks because it could not know what made them, andbecause it had used its power-beam and the bomber had dropped its bombswithout stopping or destroying them. It was not conceivable to anybodyon either the Wabbly or the bombers aloft that inexplicable things couldbe especially contrived to confront the Wabbly, unless they werecontrived to destroy it. 

"They don't know what in hell they're up against, " said the 'copter manjoyously. "Now lets give 'em fits!"

 * * * * *

Rockets went off in swift succession. To the blinded men in the bomberabove the clouds it seemed that unexplained mechanisms were springinginto action by dozens, all about the Wabbly. They were mechanisms. Theywere electric mechanisms. They were obviously designed to have someeffect on the Wabbly. And the Wabbly had no defense against theunguessed-at effects of unknown weapons except. .. . 

Bombs began to rain from the sky. The Wabbly crawled toward the last gapleft in the ring of mysterious mechanisms. That closed. Triumphant, singing sparks sang viciously in the amplifiers. Nothing was visible. Nothing! Perhaps that was what precipitated panic. The bombers raineddown their deadly missiles. And somebody forgot the exact length of timeit takes a bomb to drop eight miles. .. . 

Sergeant Walpole and the 'copter man were flat on the ground with theirhands to their ears. The ground bucked and smote them. The unthinkableviolence of the hexynitrate explosions tore at their nerves, even attheir sanity. And then there was an explosion with a subtle differencein its sound. Sergeant Walpole looked up, his head throbbing, his eyeswatering, dizzy and dazed, and bleeding at the nose and ears. 

Then he bumped into the 'copter man, shuddering on the ground. He did itdeliberately. There was a last crashing sound, and some of the blastedearth spattered on them. But then the 'copter man looked where SergeantWalpole pointed dizzily. 

The Wabbly was careened crazily on one side. One of its treads wasuncoiling slowly from its frame. Its stern was blown in. Someone hadforgotten how long it takes a bomb to drop eight miles, and the Wabblyhad crawled under one. More, from the racked-open stern of the Wabblythere was coming a roaring, spitting cloud of gas. The Wabbly'sstorage-tanks of gas had been set off. Inside, it would be a shambles. Its crew would be dead, killed by the gas the Wabbly itself hadbroadcast in its wake. .. . 

PART VII

 ". .. It is a point worth noticing, by any student of strategy, that while the Wabbly in working solely for effectiveness in lowering civilian morale worked upon sound principles, yet the destruction of the Wabbly by Sergeant Walpole and Flight Cadet Ryerson immediately repaired all the damage done. Had it worked toward more direct military aims, its work would have survived it. It remains a pretty question for the student, whether the Enemy Command, with the information it possessed, made the soundest strategic use of its unparalleled weapon. .. . But on the whole, the raid of the Wabbly remains the most startling single strategic operation of the war, if only because of its tremendous effect upon civilian morale. .. . " (_Strategic Lessons of the War of 1941-43. _--U. S. War College. Pp. 94-96. )

A major-general climbed out of a staff gyrocar and waded through mud forhalf a mile, after which he, in person, waked two sleeping men. Theywere sprawled out in the puddle of rain which had gathered in atorn-away tread from the Wabbly. They waked with extreme reluctance, andthen yawned even in the act of saluting in a military manner. 

"Yes, sir;" said Sergeant Walpole, yawning again. "Yes, sir; thebombers've gone. We heard 'em tryin' to raise the Wabbly for about halfan hour after she'd blown up. Then they cut off. I think they went home, sir. Most likely, sir, they think we used some new dinkus on the Wabbly. It ain't likely they'll realize they blew it up themselves for us. "

The major-general gave crisp orders. Men began to explore the Wabbly, cautiously. He turned back to the two sleepy and disreputable men whohad caused its destruction. His aspect was one of perplexity andadmiration. 

"What did you men do?" he demanded warmly. "What in hell did you do?"

Sergeant Walpole grinned tiredly. The 'copter man spoke for him. 

"I think, sir, " said the helicopter man, "that we affected the morale ofthe Wabbly's and the bombers' crews. "

+-----------------------------------------------------------+|Transcriber's Note: || ||The following words have been changed in the above text. || ||Page 404 closed ||Diesel tramp edged closer inshore || ||Page 405 though ||"Hell, Sarge, I thought y'were blown to little egg-shells. || ||Page 414 Moral ||Morale effect, " said the major-general || ||Page 417 Pp. 93 (Normalized to match other epigram styles. )||War College. P. 93 || ||Page 406 protuberence ||there, and already a monstrous protuberance || ||Page 416 Lets ||of a fine idea! Let's get some rockets!" || ||Page 411 Hysterisis ||and it gets hot and cooks things. Hysteresis. The same |+-----------------------------------------------------------+