“Yes, Jay,” she said, equally calm, seeming to recover from her first bewilderment.
“If we can find a bit of iron———”
John Star produced the broken shaft of the toy engine.
She took it in eager fingers, examined it swiftly.
“Yes, John. This will do.”
Dusk was red in the west.
Ghastly night came down.
Under the red, rising Moon the four stood silent about Aladoree and her weapon, tense with hope and dread.
They were alone on the mesa, cold in that dreadful light.
Behind them was the murdered Green Hall, a stark skeleton of dead human hopes, terrible and quiet against the murky afterglow.
Before them the mesa sloped up to the rugged Sandias, beneath the baleful Moon.
Silence hung over them—the awful silence of a world betrayed and slain.
Only once was it broken—by a fearful, hideously half-vocal howl of agony and terror from the ruin.
“What was that?” the girl whispered, shuddering.
It was something no longer human, stalked by another hungry beast, John Star knew.
But he said nothing.
Aladoree was busy with the weapon.
A tiny thing. It looked very simple, very crude, utterly useless.
The parts of it were fastened to a narrow piece of wood, which was mounted on a rough tripod, so that it could be turned, aimed.
John Star examined it—and entirely failed to see the secret of it.
He was amazed again at its simplicity, incredulous that such a thing could ever vanquish the terrible, ancient science of the Medusae.
Two little metal plates, perforated, so that one could sight through their centers.
A wire helix between them, connecting them. And a little cylinder of iron.
One of the plates and the little iron rod were set to slide in grooves, so that they could be adjusted with small screws.
A rough key—perhaps to close a circuit through the rear plate, though there was no apparent source of current.
That was all.
Aladoree made some adjustment to the screws.
Then she bent over, sighting through the tiny holes in the plates, toward the red Moon, with the black specks of the enemy fliers against it.
She touched the key and straightened to watch, with a curious, lofty serenity on her quiet, pale face.
John Star had vaguely expected some spectacular display about the machine, perhaps some dazzling ray.
But there was nothing.
Not even a spark when the key was closed. So far as he had seen, nothing had happened at all.
For a strange moment he fancied he must still be insane.
It was sheer impossibility that this odd little mechanism—a thing so small and so simple that a child might have made it—could defeat the Medusas.
Efficient victors over unknown planets and unknown ages, what had they to fear?
“Won’t it———?” he whispered, anxiously.
“Wait,” said Aladoree.
Her voice was perfectly calm, now without any trace of weakness or weariness.
Like her face, it carried something strange to him.
A new serenity.
A disinterested, passionless authority.
It was absolutely confident.
Without fear, without hate, without elation.
It was like— like the voice of a goddess!
Involuntarily, he drew back a step, in awe.
They waited, watching the little black flecks swarming and growing on the face of the sullen Moon.
Five seconds, perhaps, they waited.
And the black fleet vanished.
There was no explosion, neither flame nor smoke, no visible wreckage.
The fleet simply vanished.