The Air Trust Part 42

Flint struck savagely at some who barred his way; and Waldron elbowed through, with curses.

"Get out of the way, you swine!" shrilled the old Billionaire. "Make way, there! Way!"

The two men reached a door that led by a private pa.s.sage, through to the steel-and-concrete laboratories.

"Here, this way, Flint!" shouted Waldron. "If those h.e.l.l-devils drop a bomb on us, this building will cave in like jackstraws! Our only safety is here, _here_!"

Thoroughly cowed now, with all the brutal bl.u.s.ter and half-drunken swagger gone, Waldron whipped out a bunch of keys, tremblingly unlocked the door and blundered through. Flint followed. Behind them, others tried to press, on toward the armored laboratories; but with vile blasphemies the plutocrats beat them back and slammed the door.

"To h.e.l.l with _them_!" shouted Flint, perfectly ashen now and shaking like a leaf, the fear of death strong on his withered soul. "We've got all we can do to look after ourselves! Quick, Waldron, quick!"

Both men, sick with panic, with fear of the unknown terror from above, stumbled rather than ran along the pa.s.sage, and presently reached the laboratory.

Here Waldron unlocked another door, this time a steel one, and--as they both crowded through--pressed a hand to his dizzy head.

"Safe!" he gulped, slamming the door again. "They can't get us _here_, at any rate, no matter what happens! This place is like a fort, and--"

His speech was interrupted by a dazing, deafening tumult of sound. The earth trembled, and the laboratory, steel though it was, with concrete facing, rocked on its foundation. A glare through the windows, quickly fading, told them the building they had just quitted was now but a smoking pile of ruin.

Flint gasped, unable to speak. Waldron, shaking and cowed, tried to moisten his dry lips with a thick tongue.

"We--we weren't any too soon!" he gulped, without one thought of the doomed scabs in the Administration Building. Stern justice was now overtaking these wretches. False to the working-cla.s.s, and eager to serve the Air Trust--not only eager to serve, but zealous in any attack on the proletariat, and by their very employment serving to rivet the shackles on the world--now they were abandoned by their masters.

Between upper and nether millstone, moving with neither, they were caught and crushed. And as the great building quivered, gaped wide open, swayed and came thundering down in a vast pile of flame-lit ruin, whence a volcanic burst of fire, smoke and dust arose, they perished miserably, time-servers, cowards and self-seekers to the last.

But Flint and Waldron still survived. Though the very earth shook and trembled with the roar of bombs, the crumbling of ma.s.sive walls, the rattle of volley-fire and the cras.h.i.+ng of the terrible grenades that mowed down hundreds as they spread their poisonous gas abroad--though the shriek of projectiles, the thunder of the air-s.h.i.+p guns now sweeping the sky in blind endeavor to shatter the attackers all swelled the tumult to a frightful storm of terror and of death; they still lived, cowered and cringed there in the bomb-proof steel-and-concrete of the inner laboratories.

"Come, come!" Flint quavered, peering about him at the deserted room, still glaring with electric light--the room now abandoned by all its workers, who, members of Herzog's regiment, had run to take their posts at the first signal of attack. "Come--this isn't safe enough, even here.

In--in there!"

He pointed toward a vault-like door, leading to the subterranean steel chambers where Herzog eventually counted on storing some hundreds of thousands of tons of liquid oxygen--the reserve-chambers, impregnable to lightning, fire, frost or storm, to man's attacks or nature's--the chambers blasted from the living rock, deep as the Falls themselves, vacuum-lined, wondrous achievement of the highest engineering skill the world could boast.

"There! There!" repeated Flint, plucking at the dazed Waldron's sleeve.

"Tool-steel and concrete, twenty-five feet thick--and vacuum chambers all about--_there_ we can hide! There's safety! Come, come quick!"

Staring, white-faced (he who had been so red!) and dumb, Waldron yielded. Together, furtive as the criminals they were, these two world-masters slunk toward the steel door, while without, their empire was cras.h.i.+ng down in smoke, and flame, and blood!

They had almost reached it when a smash of gla.s.s at the far end of the laboratory whipped them round, in keener terror.

Staring, wild-eyed, they beheld the crouching figure of Herzog. Running, even as he cringed, he had upset a gla.s.s retort, which had shattered on the concrete floor. And as he ran, he screamed:

"_They're in! They're coming! Quick--the steel vaults! Let me in, there!

Let me in!_"

The coward was now a maniac with terror, his face perfectly white, writhen with panic, and with staring eyes that gleamed horribly under the greenish vacuum-lights.

"Back, you! Get out!" roared Waldron, raising a fist. "We--"

A sudden belch of flame, outside, split the night with terrible virescence. The whole steel building trembled and swayed. Some of its girders buckled; and the east wall, nearest the oxygen-tanks, caved inward as a ma.s.s of many tons was hurled against it.

A stunning concussion flung all three men to the floor; and, as they fell, a withering heat-wave quivered through the place.

"The oxygen-tanks!" gasped Flint. "They're blown up--they're burning--G.o.d help us!"

Scorching, yet still eager to live, he crawled on hands and knees toward the steel door. Waldron dragged himself along, half-dead with terror.

Now, dripping gouts of inextinguishable fire were raining on the roof of the building. A whirlwind of flame was sweeping all its eastern side; and a glare like that of h.e.l.l itself seared the eyes of the fugitives.

Quivering, trembling, slavering, the old man and Waldron wrenched the steel door open.

"_Me! Me! Let me in! Me! Save me!_" howled Herzog, dragging himself toward them.

They only laughed derisively, with howls of demoniacal scorn.

"You slave! You cur!" shouted Waldron, and spat at him as he drew the vault door shut. "You cringing dog--stay there, now, and face it!"

The great door boomed shut. In the cool of the winding stairway of steel which led, lighted by electricity, to the trap-door and the ladder down into the tremendous vaults, the world-masters breathed deeply once more, respited from death.

Herzog, screaming like a fiend in torment, clawed at the impenetrable steel door, raved, begged, entreated, and tore his fingers on the lock.

No answer, save the m.u.f.fled echo of a jeer, from within.

_Boom!_

What was that?

Mad with terror though he was, he whirled about, and faced the room now quivering with heat.

Even as he looked, a great gap yawned in the western wall, farthest from the flame-belching oxygen-tank that had been struck.

Through this gap, pouring irresistibly as the sea, swept a tide of attackers, storming the inner citadel of the infernal, world-strangling Air Trust.

At the head of this victorious army, this flood triumphant of the embattled proletaire, Herzog's staring eyes caught a moment's glimpse of a dreaded face--the face of Gabriel Armstrong.

Gasping, the coward and tool of the world-masters made one supreme decision. Close by, a rack of vials stood. He whirled to it, s.n.a.t.c.hed out a tiny bottle and waiting not even to draw the cork--craunched the bottle, gla.s.s and all, in his fang-like, uneven teeth.

An instant change swept over him. His staring eyes closed, his head fell forward, his whole body collapsed like an empty sack. He fell, twitched once or twice, and was dead--dead ere the attackers could reach the door of steel where his b.e.s.t.i.a.l masters had betrayed him.

Thus perished Herzog, coward and tool, a victim of the very forces he himself had helped create.

And at the moment of his death, the masters he had cringed to and had served, sneering with scorn at him even in their mortal terror, were tremblingly descending the long metal ladder to the impregnable vaults of steel below.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

THE STORMING OF THE WORKS.