United States or Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


"That means we'll have to make it on foot, and keep under cover all the way. Come on." As the three men moved rapidly over the great lawn toward the nearest covert, a little wood a quarter of a mile away, the horizon that was Great New York showed silhouetted against the westering sun numerous little black dots. The Mercutians were coming. Outlaws of Earth

No wonder the first Mercutian expedition had broached the subject of Earth as an easy conquest when they returned. The Mercutians treated the Earth people as slaves. Their rule was brutal and arrogant in the extreme. The Earth people revolted, under the leadership of Amos Peabody.

"They are taking no chances," said Grim, his countenance unchanged. Hilary looked swiftly around. The valley was a cul-de-sac, surrounded on three sides of its narrow oblong by precipitous hills. From the fourth side, the Mercutians were coming an army, from the sound of them. Overhead were a hundred fliers, and more coming. The trap was sprung! Hilary's voice rang out.

This meal was brought to us from inside the vehicle. While we were eating I could see many of the Mercutians going inside and coming out with pieces of this food in their hands, eating as they worked. Quite obviously the business of assembling their apparatus was uppermost in the minds of all of them.

No Earthman tried to stop them; one look at their grim faces would have been a most potent dissuader. And fortunately there were no Mercutians within hailing distance other than the rapidly nearing fliers. They flung themselves off the last slow-moving platform, panting. "Which way now?" Hilary asked. His quick eye raked the scene for possible hideouts.

But at one hundred feet aloft the fliers braked their headlong flight, hovered motionlessly in echelon formation. A moment's breathless pause to the hiding men it seemed eternity and all the uneven terrain, rocks, trees, bushes, the soil itself, burst into glowing white crystal clearness. The Mercutians had turned on their search beams.

Weather machine or none, in truth it seemed that it had forgotten to rain. Hilary was hard put to it to restrain the impatience of his men. Reports drifted in from the scouts. The premature revolt had been crushed in blood and agony. New York was deserted except for the Mercutians.

Hilary's first rush with swinging flashing ax had caught the Mercutians unawares. They had relied upon their sun-tubes, and in the mêlée succeeded only in inflicting frightful havoc on their own kind. Now, however, they came for Hilary in a solid mass, huge three-fingered hands flailing, seeking to thrust him down by sheer weight of numbers.

It was even more marked with the Mercutians here, for she had the assistance of wings, while they did not. The realization of this encouraged me tremendously. I knew now that physically these enemies were no match for me; that I could break away from them whenever I wished. But the way in which Mercer had been killed that I could not understand. It was that I had to guard against.

On each of the platforms we had mounted a projector of higher power than the hand cylinders, although of course of much less effective range than those the Mercutians had used in Wyoming. Thus equipped we rose into the air from the castle grounds in the Great City, with a silent, awed multitude watching us as strange an army, probably, as ever went forth to battle.