held a small electric torch to his watch.
“The first should be here in ten minutes,” he announced.
“Guido Pellini is the pilot,” Berati muttered.
“Much too brave a man to be the victim of such a ghastly enterprise,” one of the Italian staff officers declared.
“I agree with you,” Fawley said emphatically. “It was Air Marshal Bastani here who insisted upon the test being carried out in such a fashion. It was he who asked for the ten volunteers.”
“I asked only,” the Marshal announced harshly, “for what our brave Italian soldiers offer always freely—the risk of their lives for the good of their country. I myself have a nephew in the clouds somewhere.”
Some one whispered a warning. There was an intense silence. They all heard what sounded like the muffled thunder of a coming earthquake from the sides of the mountain. The ground beneath their feet trembled, startled birds flew over their heads. From the unseen distance they heard, too, the trampling of a flock of goats or sheep galloping madly towards the valley. The sound died away.
“The dynamos,” Fawley muttered. “The hellnotter is at work.”
They listened again. Another sound became audible, a sound at first like the ticking of a watch, then unmistakable. Somewhere in the hidden world above an aeroplane was travelling. Every one was now standing in the road. Berati was breathing heavily. The excitement amongst the group was such that Bastani, the Chief of the Italian Air Staff, found himself moaning with pent-up anxiety. Then, when their eyes were red with the strain of watching, there shot into the sky a long, ever-widening shaft of light—pale violet light—which seemed to illuminate nothing, but stayed like a ghastly finger piercing the clouds. There was a second rush of light, this time towards the sea. The intervening clouds seemed to melt away with its passage, until it burst like a rocket into a mass of incongruous flame and then passed onwards and upwards. Through the silence of the night came a crash from the other side of the precipice, as though a meteor had fallen. The staff officer saluted.
“A brave man,” he muttered, “dead!”
“It was a ghastly test, this,” Fawley observed sorrowfully. “There was no need. The thing could have been proved without human sacrifice.”
Again there came the sound of that horrible, nerve-shattering crash. This time closer at hand. They even fancied that they heard a human cry. Fawley would have stepped into his car but the staff officer by his side checked him.
“They were flying at over two thousand feet,” he said. “No one could live till the end.”
Fawley pointed upwards to where that faint violet light seemed to have discoloured the whole sky.
“You see that area, General,” he pointed out. “Nothing living could exist within it. No form of explosive could be there which would not ignite. No metal that would not be disintegrated. The man who works the hellnotter has no need to aim. He has an illimitable range, a range which in theory might reach the stars, and a field of ever-increasing miles as the ray flashes. A hellnotter is the last word in horrors. It has been your own choice to sacrifice your men, but you will not find a single machine which exists except in charred fragments, or a single recognisable human being. If the squadron to-night, instead of ten aeroplanes, had consisted of a thousand, the result would have been precisely the same. There would not have been a human being alive or a wing of a machine to tell the story.”
Fawley spoke with no elation—sorrowfully though convincingly. Berati spoke only once and his thoughts seemed far away.
“Von Salzenburg knew. God!”
The violet tinge in the sky seemed to lean in their direction. There was a warning shout from Fawley. In a crowd they dashed into the wide opening of the shelter, outside which the cars had stopped. Fawley called out to them.
“Keep well away from the mouth,” he directed. “There was one about a mile up. I heard the humming.”
His voice echoed and re-echoed down the smoothly tunnelled aperture. Bastani opened his lips to reply but for the next few moments no speech was possible. From outside came a sound like the battering of the earth by some gigantic flail, the crashing of metal striking the rocks, the roar of an explosion. An unnatural calm fell upon them all. They were in almost complete darkness, but when Berati pulled out his electric torch, their faces were like white masks in the velvety blackness. Outside in a matter of seconds the fierce rain had ceased. There was the hissing and crackling of flames, a lurid light which for the moment showed them the whole countryside. The silence, which lasted for a few seconds, was broken once more by the screaming of birds and the galloping back and forth of terrified cattle. Bastani pushed his way to the front.
“It is my duty to see something of this in the moment of its opening.”
The French officer in charge remonstrated violently.
“Marshal Bastani,” he begged, “you have been placed in my care. This is all new to us. There may be another explosion. In any case, nothing will have changed if we wait.”
Bastani pushed him gently but with force on one side.
“It is my duty,” he repeated. “I must be the first to investigate. It is for that that I am here.”
He disappeared into the mists outside and they saw the flash of his torch as he turned towards the ascent. The French officer shrugged his shoulders.
“You will bear witness, gentlemen, that I did my best to stop the Marshal. We have had no experience in the after events of such a cataclysm as this.”
They talked in desultory fashion. Berati smoked furiously. The seconds were drawn out. Conversation was spasmodic and disconnected. Then Fawley, who was nearest to the entrance, pointed out a thin pencil of light between two mountains eastward.
“The morning comes quickly here,” he said. “In half an hour at the most we can leave.”
Almost as he spoke, there was another explosion which shook large fragments of rock from the sides of their shelter. In one place the cement floor beneath their feet cracked. Then there was silence.
“I wish Bastani had stayed with us,” Berati murmured.
* * * * *
The dawn through which they started their short ride to Colonel Dumesnil’s headquarters brought its own peculiar horrors. With every yard they found strange distorted fragments of metal—nothing recognisable. A bar of steel transposed into the likeness of a Catherine wheel. What might have been the wing of an aeroplane rolled up like a sheet of paper. At different points on the mountainside there were small fires burning. At the last bend they came suddenly upon a man, walking round in circles in the road. He wore the rags of a portion of torn uniform. One side of his face was unrecognisable. Blood was dripping from a helpless arm.
“Count Bastani! My God!” one of the Italian staff officers cried.
They were near enough to see him now. He looked at them with wild eyes, threw up one arm and called out. Then, as though he had tripped, he fell backwards heavily. There was plenty of help at hand but Air Marshal Bastani was dead.
*
