The Other Side of Here

TEN

As the scale-armored figures plunged toward him, bunched together for courage, Waldron slaughtered them. He rested the automatic rifle on a platform railing and deliberately traversed it. Bullets poured from its muzzle in a deadly stream. A storm of lead poured into the charge. It shattered it. Of the men who had composed the bunch, a dozen dropped at once. Ten more dropped as they recoiled from the slaughter. More flung lead dropped all but three of the balance. And two of the three were Leaders, judging by the whips which dangled from their wrists.

Waldron concentrated upon them. One crashed to the floor with half a dozen bullets between his shoulders. Another fell as a tree falls. The third screamed shrilly as bullets pulped his left arm. He careened through a doorway and continued to squeal.

"Not much nerve," said Waldron detachedly. "Those Leaders ought to learn to take it."

"Now what?" demanded Nick.

"Oh, there'll be more of them coming," said Waldron, "and we'll kill them, and presently they'll kill us." Lucy said: "W-will you tell me when you think you ... can't hold out any longer?"

Waldron jerked his head to face her. She was pale, but she smiled at him. If her voice wavered, she could not help that.

"W-we tried, didn't we? But after what Fran said, I don't want to take any chance of not being killed."

She touched the revolver in a holster at her side, over the invaders' armor she wore. Waldron swore savagely, then.

"We're fools, Nick!" he said bitterly. "Fools! Because we hate those devils, we've thrown away our lives! We could have headed for a place where they haven't struck. The cordon was down. There was nobody to stop us. We could have broken through, and told what we knew, and organized men to fight."

Nick pulled out a pack of cigarettes and was absurdly painstaking in taking one out.

"Rather late to think of that now," he said. "But we'd better be moving. We don't want to stay here!"

"What more can they do than kill us?"

"They had spies," said Nick. "And those spies would know something about tear gas. Your friend Fran didn't speak too highly of their methods of execution."

Waldron suddenly flung up a revolver and fired at a man dodging past a window. The window smashed. Something came in and exploded with a not-at-all alarming violence.

"That's gas now," said Waldron. "Come on!"

He took Lucy's hand. With Nick on one side and Waldron on the other, they broke into a sprint. They swerved as something else came in another window and burst. They plunged for the wall and tore open the small door there. A spiral stairway wound up and up, and then led down.

"We can't go down," said Waldron grimly. "There are mobs of them down below. So we're going up."

He led the way. For seconds, perhaps half a minute, their departure from the generator room went unnoticed. Initiative was not encouraged among the Underones by the leaders of the invaders. Waldron reached a landing with the others close behind. He halted and listened. A small window was close by. He peered out.

"I wish," he said between his teeth, "that we could convince them we'd gone down. Something to throw to make a noise in the courtyard below. What can I use?"

Nick was helpless. Concrete walls. Concrete floor. Steel spiral stairway. Nothing ... But Lucy reached up.

"Here's a light bulb," she said quietly. "It'll sound like a shot when it breaks."

Waldron took it and threw it out. There was a sharp cracking sound below. There was a babbling. Below them, on the stairs, there were voices. Men had pushed open the small door through which the three of them had disappeared. A voice bellowed arrogantly. Men started both up and down the stairs.

There were louder bellowings, farther away. The bulb had been mistaken for a shot. It was like enough, for ears not accustomed to firearms. Men halted and tramped down again.

"Go quietly," said Waldron, under his breath. Again he led the way.

He reached out and gathered electric light bulbs as he passed them. The powerhouse, of course, was lighted by a small auxiliary generator all its own. Lucy imitated him. When they reached the top of the stairs their arms were full.

The stairway ended at the powerhouse room. Here was a small plank platform and a sort of hut. From it a person should have been able to see far down to the Narrows. But there were no lights on the shore anywhere. The only lights visible were from the stars and from the aimless drifting tugs and other craft upon the harbor waters.

Waldron went to the edge of the roof. He peered down. All was still. He flung out half a dozen electric-light bulbs. When they struck, they created sharp bursts of sound. He saw light streak out into the street as a door was opened. Then Waldron, making due allowance for wind, threw two more, and then three, and four more. The result was a satisfying confusion and the use of flashlights to hunt for them.

Nick said somberly: "It looks to me, Steve, like we made a mistake not getting killed down there. After all, they've won. At a guess, the only place anybody would be safe from those devils would be somewhere out at sea."

Then Waldron said curtly: "That's an ideal If we'd had it before it might have done some good. Now, how are we going to put it into action?"

In the night atop the wind-swept roof, Nick seemed to stare at him. Then he grunted.

"I'll see how much I can make out of the way the streets run," he said dourly.

He went across the roof. He found a place where he could see the rooftops below and began to study them by starlight.

Lucy said unsteadily: "Steve, it's not fair. You try so hard, and every break is against you. It's not fair!"

Waldron looked at her and grinned. "Woman," he said gruffly, "you are slightly insane, expecting the breaks to be tempered to the boy friend. But thanks. And since Nick is plotting our later escape—why, come here."

It was a peculiar moment and place to act in a more or less romantic fashion, even if Waldron's motive was at least partly to reassure Lucy. But she clung to hurt.

"I—I thought," she said unsteadily, an instant or two later, "I was thinking tonight—when it seemed we would be killed any instant—I was thinking that it was horrible to have it happen when we hadn't really kissed each other since all this began. We've been together for days without saying a word about caring for each other.

There was some sound. She did not seem to mind.

"But I'm glad," she said. "I'm glad you felt like kissing me now."

And then there were footsteps inside the shed—the penthouse at the top of the stairs. The door opened. A figure came cautiously out, looking curiously about it. It wore the scaly armor of the invaders. The figure gazed interestedly.

Waldron drew his revolver, disengaging his arm from around Lucy with a slow precision. She whirled. The invader—looter, alien—was less than fifteen feet away. He was obviously performing something like a routine examination. But Lucy gasped.

Waldron shot him. There was nothing else to do.

While Lucy wrung her hands, Waldron faced the penthouse door. The wind blew strongly at this height. The sound of the shot was loud, but most of it would blow upward. Unless there were other invaders very close, it might go unheard.

Nick came running, a revolver ready.

"Here's armor for you, too, Nick," said Waldron grimly. "If this lad came up just to look about, we may be all right. But if he's missed, it may be too bad."

For five minutes, for ten, they waited for the penthouse to erupt figures. No one came. Then Waldron opened the door, with Nick ready to pour a storm of fire within it The penthouse was empty. The man had come alone.

Nick stripped him of his scaly armor and sighed gustily in relief when he had donned it, though he left the high-frequency pack in place until he was sure.

"Now I feel better."

But then there was a faint rumbling sound in the air somewhere. They looked down. Trucks were beginning to move in the streets about the powerhouse. At first they moved away from the great building. Waldron guessed that they were moving out of the building. They would be bound upon some definite errand. This might well have been the way the looting of Newark had begun. Doubtless there was another such activity beginning in Manhattan....

They went down the stairs when the first of the trucks began to come back. They counted on those trucks for a diversion. They had checked over their weapons. Waldron, using Nick's high-frequency pack, had shifted his scaly armor outside his clothing again, In a dim light he might pass as an invader. All three of them might—maybe. Certainly they needed every advantage they could get. Because the powerhouse was a center of the activity of the invaders.

As they went quietly down the circular stairs, they heard the faint humming of dynamos set running again. Lower, they listened to the dull rumbling of trucks. Once they heard voices behind a door they had to pass on their way down.

They reached the level of the generator room floor. The sound of generators was distinctly loud, now, but there was a louder noise elsewhere. As they descended further, that other noise became loud. Suddenly they reached a hallway and someone moved nearby. They walked quietly but very quickly through the nearest open door—and they were in the middle of vast activity and flickering light.

The scene was singularly like the one in the building in Newark. A platform with a helix of heavy bronze bars was raised above the ground. It had not been brought to this place from outside, and certainly it had not been built here. It must have been translated from that strange other world from which the invaders came. A ramp led to the platform and a wavering, bluish light flickered about the surrounding coil. A truck rolled onto the platform, flickered—and was not. Then another and another and another. They were coming steadily from the darkness beyond the building. There was no particular need for secretiveness now. There were no watchers trying to detect signs of life here.

The fact that Waldron, Lucy and Nick knew that the trucks did not cease to exist, but that they merely had the direction of their atomic poles changed, did not make the vanishing of the trucks seem less magical. The atoms of their substance changed the direction of their poles, and they became matter of another sort than the matter of the trio's world, and vanished from it. But they also became matter of the same sort as that in the strange world from which the invaders came—and they appeared in it.

There was a warning flash of light. The stream of trucks checked. Men materialized from nowhere upon the platform. They were clad in scaly armor. They were Underones, and they gaped at their surroundings as they shuffled docilely off the platform to the ground. Voices roared harsh orders at them. They formed up over at one side of the open space. The light flashed once more and the movement of trucks began again.

The men from the invaders' world moved toward the entrance in groups of four and five and six. They went out. Obviously, they were going out to find trucks, to load them, and then to bring them back.

"Efficiency!" said Waldron under his breath. "They've been taught to drive in the other world. I'll bet they've studied street maps in preparation for this."

There was a muffled clanking sound immediately behind. Men came out of the doorway through which the trio had just come. The flickering light of the helix lighted up their bodies. Their armor, though scaled, glittered with the prismatic coloring of many jewels. They carried the metal-studded whips which were the symbols of nobility or leadership. There was arrogance in every movement, in every pose.

The three Americans stood in deep shadow. They were heavily armed, as Underones seemed not to be, but otherwise they would pass a quick glance. Waldron searched for a plausible way of leaving this place. With the noise about him and the urgency of his need, he did not hear the just-emerged group. Nick stared open-mouthed at the incredible disappearance of the trucks, ceasing to exist as if they were soap-bubbles. Only Lucy heard, and turned and gasped.

The group swaggered on. One of the lesser Leaders brushed against Lucy. He rasped at her. He raised his whip and lashed at her. Lucy cried out in mingled terror and pain, and Waldron turned into a madman.

He whirled, to see the lash descending on Lucy's face. He became an entirely primitive man. He had a sub-machine gun slung across his back and four revolvers at his waist. But he roared inarticulately and sprang. His hands closed about the throat of the man with the whip just as that man realized that Lucy was a girl and was stunned with amazement. Snarling, Waldron bore him to the ground.

Lucy cried out for Waldron's danger. The balance of the arrogant group gasped in shocked incredulity at the sight of an apparent Underone daring to lay hands on one of their superior mold. Voices raised in thick cries of fury. Whips flashed aloft, their metal lashes glittering, to rake the flesh from the bones of these unspeakably insolent-Nick opened fire from the hip. He, alone, had kept his head. He pulled the continuous-fire stud on his weapon and played it upon the armored men as if it were a water hose. The men collapsed in a kicking and suddenly shrieking heap. One of them howled, choking, and a wave of horror filled the whole courtyard with panic greater than the mere terror felt by Waldron and Nick and Lucy. Nick had killed men who were important among the invaders. He had killed, in fact, seven of the Leaders of the highest rank of all.

Some of the invaders gasped and fled. The Underones, especially, scuttled off into the dark like rabbits. Lesser Leaders, who an instant before had been the very embodiment of authority, ran agitatedly about, bawling orders which an instant later they countermanded.

"Crazy fool!" panted Nick. "You've raised hell! But come on. Let's get out of here before they get back their senses."

He shook Waldron's arm. Waldron wrenched horribly. Then he stood up and said thickly: "Show the way. We'll follow you!"

They ran out, the three of them, and once blundered into a knot of scaly figures who shouted and fled—though not before Waldron had emptied a revolver into their midst. Then they came to the dark street and the passenger car. But they did not take it. Instead, they plunged into the darkness of an alley which Nick, pantingly, indicated. Behind them there was sheer confusion. The killing of highest officers had produced horror which paralyzed all other activity.

Presently—not many blocks away, and yet far enough-three armored figures came out into starlight, and Nick busily hunted among the boats at the dock. Suddenly, he grunted gleefully and dived down below deck of one of the craft and almost immediately created the rushing, droning sound of a high-power marine engine running smoothly.

Waldron anxiously inspected Lucy's cheek by a beam of light coming up from below. Meanwhile, Nick bobbed above the hatchway and roared profanely at him. Waldron cast off the lines. Water thrashed somewhere and the boat backed out into the river. Nick wrestled mightily with gears and sent the boat forward. Waldron swung the wheel. The boat swept downriver, its speed surprising. Nick bobbed below again and the speed increased. They headed for the lower harbor, leaving the dead city behind.