The Earth-Tube by Gawain Edwards Page B

touched the ground.
    “Perceiving this, the civilians again set up a great shouting and catcalling, hooting their derision across the canal at the passive tanks. It was, for many of them, the last sound they ever uttered, for at that moment the whole terrain rose violently into the air, accompanied by such a crash that trees were mown to the ground for miles away by the explosion. It was as if a great finger had punched through the earth from underneath and had thrown the buildings and the pavements into the sea and left nothing of the city in its place. Out of the crater that was left of the artificial island came screaming demons of escaping steam, tongues of fire, and armies of Asian men, in scarlet coats.
    “Civilians who were lucky enough to be thrown into the water by the first explosion escaped the flames and the steam. Every one else in the city was either killed outright by the blast or scalded by the steam, which covered the place for more than an hour. Of the thousands who went into the water, many were drowned, but hundreds who kept their heads and could swim eventually escaped scalding and reached the shore of the mainland.
    “Upon the instant of the explosion the enemy tanks, instead of continuing their advance, turned swiftly and charged the ranks of the astonished infantry. What followed was too gruesome and horrible to recount. About four hours later a few hundred persons, many of them badly burned and virtually in rags, reached a little outlying station on the Trans-Andean railroad and were taken aboard a train there for Valparaiso. Among them was your correspondent.
    “How many other persons were safe it was impossible to tell. Advices and stories told by refugees indicate that a large part of the infantry escaped the first onslaught of the enemy by scattering and taking to their heels, but they have not yet reached a telegraph station from which they can report their safety.
    “A military officer who was among the refugees declared that the commanding officers in the American camp had been warned of the Asian tunneling operations under the city several days before the attack. A civilian had insisted that he heard the drilling of the sappers underneath his house. Instead of placing any credence in his story, however, the officers had laughed at the poor fellow for his pains, and he had been locked up later as a dangerous radical.” 12

CHAPTER III
    ONE MUST DARE

    THE clayey ball of the earth had passed another milestone in its yearly course around the sun. Now spring was coming in the northern hemisphere, and under the benign influence of the warm yellow rays the grass and buds and all manner of living things were stirring to life again.
    In the brown fields where snow had lain for many weeks the soil was fresh again with the spring, and farmers were preparing anew to plant their crops for another year’s food. In towns and cities where the gray mantle of winter had locked the smoky air in frosty embrace, the sky was clear and warm again. All life stretched out to greet the coming of the warm summer months.
    It was as all the springs had been for countless years. except that now the chill of winter had been replaced by a chill more dreadful still in the hearts of men. The danger of destruction was still to be viewed from afar, to be sure; it was a remote and by no means certain doom. But the fact that an alien race, equipped with machines capable of withstanding artillery and flame and heat, had set about it to conquer the continents of the West was, at the least, disquieting. Millions of persons, who had heard how all the armies and resources of the Americans had crumpled before the savage onslaughts of this determined foe, were puzzled and terrified.
    The news of fresh advances had come day by day, leaking through the absurd wall of silence which the military had tried to throw around the entire zone of the invasion. Now the Asians had captured the Trans-Andean railroad and following it to the