Spawn of the Comet Part 3

Were they building their city from the sand of the desert, these h.e.l.lish glaciers?

Carter decided to find out.

"Well, here goes!" he muttered, diving straight for that dazzling citadel, one hand on the stick, the other gripping the trigger of his automatic camera. "This'll make a picture for the Old Man, all right!"

Off to the east the dawn was breaking, and he saw, as he swept down, its pearly pastel shades blending weirdly with that blinding orange glare.

Pressing the trigger now, he drove his screaming plane on with throttle wide--and yes, it was gla.s.s!--gla.s.s of some sort, that crazy nightmare down there.

"Whew!" gasped Carter as waves of dazing heat rose about him. "Boy, but it's hot! I can't stand much of this. Better get out while the getting's good."

But he clenched his teeth, and dove on down to see what those fiery demons looked like. Funny they didn't make any effort to attack.

Surely they must see him now.

"Take that, my beauties!--and that!" he gasped, pressing the trigger of his camera furiously.

Then, at a scant two thousand feet, he levelled off, his wings blistering with the heat, and zoomed up again--when to his horror, his engine faltered; died.

In that agonizing moment it came to Jim that this perhaps was why neither the Television News nor the War Department pilots had been able to get pictures of the h.e.l.l below.

Had something about that daring heat killed their motors, too, as it had his? Had they plunged like fluttering, sizzling moths into that inferno of orange flame?

"Well, I guess it's curtains!" he muttered.

A glance at his altimeter showed a scant eighteen hundred now. Another glance showed the western boundary of the city, agonizing miles ahead.

Could he make it? He'd try, anyway!

So, nursing his plane along in a shallow glide, Jim slipped down through that dazing heat.

"Got to keep her speed up!" he told himself, half deliriously, as he steadily lost alt.i.tude. "Can't pancake here, or I'll be a flapjack!"

At an alt.i.tude of less than a thousand he levelled off again, eased on down, fully expecting to feel his plane burst into flames. But though his eyebrows crisped and the gas must have boiled, the st.u.r.dy little plane made it.

On a long last glide, he put her wheels down on the sandy desert floor, a bare half mile beyond that searing h.e.l.l.

The heat was still terrific but endurable now. He dared breathe deeper; he found his head clearing. But what was the good of it? It was only a respite. The monsters had seen him, all right--no doubt about that! Already they were swooping out of their weird citadel like a pack of furious hornets.

On they came, incredibly fast, moving in a wide half-circle that obviously was planned to envelop him.

Tense with horror, like a doomed man at the stake, Jim watched the flaming phalanx advance. And now he saw what they really were; saw that his first, fantastic guess had been right.

They were _ants_--or at least more like ants than anything on earth--great fiery termites ten feet long, hideous mandibles snapping like steel, hot from the forge, their huge compound eyes burning like greenish electric fire in their livid orange sockets.

And another thing Jim saw, something that explained why the fearful insects had not flown up to attack him in the air. Their wings were gone!

They had molted, were earthbound now.

There was much food for thought in this, but no time to think. Already the creatures were almost on him.

Jim turned his gaze from them and bent over his dials in a last frantic effort to get his motor started. The instinct of self-preservation was dominant now--and to his joy, suddenly the powerful little engine began to hum with life.

He drew one deep breath of infinite relief, then gave her the gun and whirled off down the desert floor, the enraged horde after him.

For agonizing instants it was a nip-and-tuck race. Then as he felt his wheels lift, he pulled hard back on his stick, and swept up and away from the deadly claws that clutched after him in vain.

Climbing swiftly, Jim banked once, swept back, put the bead full on that scattering half-circle of fiery termites, and pressed the trigger of his automatic camera.

"There, babies!" he laughed grimly. "You're in the Rogues' Gallery now!"

Then, swinging off to the northeast, he continued to climb, giving that weird ant-hill a wide berth.

Funny, about those things losing their wings, he was thinking now.

Would they grow them again, or were they on the ground for good? And what was their game out there in the desert, anyway?

Questions Jim couldn't answer, of course. Only time would tell.

Meanwhile, he had some pictures that would make the Old Man sit up and take notice, not to mention the War Department.

"They'd better get the Army on the job before those babies get air-minded again!" he told himself, as he winged on into the rising sun. "Otherwise the show they've already staged may be only a little curtain-raiser."

Jim's arrival in the city room of _The New York Press_ that afternoon was a triumphant one, for he had radio-phoned the story ahead and extras were out all over the metropolitan area, with relays flas.h.i.+ng from the front pages of papers everywhere.

No sooner had he turned over his precious pictures to the photographic department for development than Overton rushed him to a microphone, and made him repeat his experience for the television screen.

But the city editor's enthusiasm died when the negatives came out of the developer.

"There are your pictures!" he said, handing over a bunch of them.

Carter looked at them in dismay. They were all blank--just so much plain black celluloid.

"Over-exposed!" rasped Overton. "A h.e.l.l of a photographer you are!"

"I sure am!" Jim agreed, still gazing ruefully at the ruined negatives. "Funny, though. The camera was checked before I started. I had the range before I pulled the trigger, every shot." He paused, then added, as though reluctant to excuse himself: "It must have been the heat."

"Yeah. I suppose so! Well, that was d.a.m.n expensive heat for you, my lad. It cost you ten thousand bucks."

"Yes, but--"

Jim had been going to say it had nearly cost him his life but thought better of it. Besides, an idea had come.

"Give me those negatives!" he said, "I'm going to find out what's wrong with 'em."

And since they were of no use to Overton, he gave them to Jim.