The Onslaught from Rigel Part 2

"Don't know," said Ben. "Who did it, though? That's what boggles your scheme. Everybody's changed to metal and n.o.body left to make the changes you mention. However, let's go get the rest of your folks. I wonder if we ought to have weapons. You two wait here."

He clanked off with the lawyer to the taxi. A moment later, the tooting of the horn announced their return. The party consisted, beside Roberts himself, of his daughter, Ola Mae, a girl of sixteen, petulant over the fact that her high-heeled shoes were already breaking down under her weight; a j.a.panese servant named Yos.h.i.+o; and Mrs. Roberts, one of those tall and billowy women of the earlier life who, to the irritation of the men, turned out to be the strongest of any of them. Fat, apparently, had no metallic equivalent, and her ample proportions now consisted of bands of metal that made her extraordinarily powerful.

With these additions the little group adjourned to Times Square to watch the billowing clouds of smoke rising above the ruins of the opera house.

"What next?" asked Gloria, seating herself on the curbstone.

"Look for more people," said Murray. "Surely we can't be the only frogs in the puddle."

"Why not?" put in Ben, argumentatively, with a swing of his arm toward the wreckage-strewn square. "You forget that this catastrophe has probably wiped out all the animal life of the world, and we seven owe our survival to some fortunate chance."

The j.a.panese touched him on the arm. "Perhaps sir can inform inquirer, in such case, what is curious avian object?" he said, pointing upward.

They heard the beat of wings as he spoke and looked up together to see, soaring fifty feet past their heads a strange parody of a bird, with four distinct wings, a long feathered tail, and bright intelligent eyes set in a dome-like head.

There was a moment of excited babbling.

"What is it?"

"Never saw anything like it before."

"Did the comet do _that_ to chickens?" And then, as the strange creature disappeared among the forest of spires to the east, the voice of the lawyer, used to such tumults, a.s.serted its mastery over the rest.

"I think," he said, "that whatever that bird is, the first thing to be done is find a headquarters of some kind and establish a mode of life."

"How about finding more people?" asked Gloria. "The more the merrier--and there may be some who don't know how nice castor oil is."

She smiled a metallic smile.

"The fire--" began Ben.

"It would keep some people away."

They debated the point for several minutes, finally deciding that since those present had all come from the top floors or penthouses of tall buildings, the search should be confined to such localities. Each was to take a car--there were any number for the taking around Times Square--and cover a certain section of the city, rallying at sundown to the Times building, where Ola Mae and Murray, who could not drive, were to be left.

Roberts was the first one back, swinging a big Peugeot around with the skill of a racing driver. He had found no one, but had a curious tale.

In the upper floors of the New Waldorf three of the big windows were smashed in, and in one corner of the room, amid a maze of chairs fantastically torn as though by a playful giant, a pile of soft cloths.

In the midst of this pile, four big eggs reposed. He had picked up one of the eggs, and after weighing the advisability of bringing it with him, decided he had more important things to do. The owners of the nest did not appear.

As he emerged from the building, however, the quick motion of a shadow across the street caused him to look up in time to catch a glimpse of one of the four-winged birds they had seen before, and just as he was driving the car away, his ears were a.s.sailed by a torrent of screeches and "skrawks" from the homecomer. He did not look up until the shadow fell across him again when he perceived the bird was following close behind him, flying low, and apparently debating the advisability of attacking him.

Roberts waved his arms and shouted; it had not the slightest effect on the bird, which, now that it was closer, he perceived to move its hind wings only, holding its fore-wings out like those of an airplane. He wished he had a weapon of some kind; lacking one, he drew the car up to the curb and ran into a building. The bird alighted outside and began to peck the door in, but by the time it got through Roberts had climbed a maze of stairs, and though he could hear it screaming throatily behind him, it did not find him and eventually gave up the search.

The end of this remarkable tale was delivered to an enlarged audience.

Gloria had arrived, bringing a chubby little man who announced himself as F. W. Stevens.

"The boy plunger?" queried Murray absent-mindedly, and realized from Gloria's gasp that he had said the wrong thing.

"Well, I operate in Wall Street," Stevens replied rather stiffly.

Ben came with three recruits. At the sight of the first, Murray gasped.

Even in the metal caricature, he had no difficulty in recognizing the high, bald forehead, the thin jaws and the tooth-brush moustache of Walter Beeville, the greatest living naturalist. Before dark the others were back--Yos.h.i.+o with one new acquisition and Mrs. Roberts, whose energy paralleled her strength, with no less than four, among them an elaborately gowned woman who proved to be Marta Lami, the Hungarian dancer who had been the sensation of New York at the time of the catastrophe.

They gathered in the Times Square drug store in a strange babble of phonographic voices and clang of metal parts against the stone floor and soda fountains. It was Roberts who secured a position behind one of these erstwhile dispensers of liquid soothing-syrup and rapped for order.

"I think the first thing to be done," he said, when the voices had grown quiet in answer to his appeal, "is to organize the group of people here and search for more. If it had not been for the kindness of Mr. Ruby here, my family and I would not have known about the necessity of using oil on this new mechanical make-up nor of the value of electrical current as food. There may be others in the city in the same state. What is the--ah--sense of the gathering on this topic?"

Stevens was the first to speak. "It's more important to organize and elect a president," he said briefly.

"A very good idea," commented Roberts.

"Well, then," said Stevens, ponderously, "I move we proceed to elect officers and form as a corporation."

"Second the motion," said Murray almost automatically.

"Pardon me." It was the voice of Beeville the naturalist. "I don't think we ought to adopt any formal organization yet. It hardly seems necessary. We are practically in the golden age, with all the resources of an immense city at the disposal of--fourteen people. And we know very little about ourselves. All the medical and biological science of the world must be discarded and built up again. At this very moment we may be suffering from the lack of something that is absolutely necessary to our existence--though I admit I cannot imagine what it could be. I think the first thing to do is to investigate our possibilities and establish the science of mechanical medicine. As to the rest of our details of existence, they don't matter much at present."

A murmur of approval went round the room and Stevens looked somewhat put out.

"We could hardly adopt anarchy as a form of government," he offered.

"Oh, yes we could," said Marta Lami, "Hurray for anarchy. The Red Flag forever. Free love, free beer, no work!"

"Yes," said Gloria, "what's the use of all this metallizing, anyway? We got rid of a lot of old applesauce about restrictions and here you want to tie us up again. More and better anarchy!"

"Say," came a deep and raucous voice from one of the newcomers. "Why don't we have just a straw boss for a while till we see how things work out? If anyone gets fresh the straw boss can jump him, or kick him out, but those that stick with the gang have to listen to him. How's that?"

"Fine," said Ben, heartily. "You mean have a kind of Mussolini for a while?"

"That's the idea. You ought to be it."

There was a clanging round of metallic applause as three or four people clapped their hands.

"There is a motion--" began Roberts.

"Oh, tie a can to it," said Gloria, irreverently, "I nominate Ben Ruby as dictator of the colony of New York for--three months. Everybody that's for it, stick up your hands."

Eleven hands went up. Gloria looked around at those who remained recalcitrant and concentrated her gaze on Stevens. "Won't you join us, Mr. Stevens?" she asked sweetly.

"I don't think this is the way to do things," said the Wall Street man with a touch of asperity. "It's altogether irregular and no permanent good can result from it. However, I will act with the rest."

"And you, Yos.h.i.+o?"

"I am uncertain that permission is granted to this miserable worm to vote."