[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Comet March 41.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a stunned sensation in Downey's head as he slowly regainedconsciousness. He had the feeling of one who has been drugged, orsandbagged; and for a moment he could not quite recall where he was orwhat had happened to him. He was only aware of a dull, hammering soundfrom somewhere in the distance; and aware also of the aching pain andthe stiffness in every joint and muscle of his body. It seemed to himat first that his eyelids were glued together, and would never open;and when at length he forced them apart, he realized that he was indarkness, except for a faint light that slowly widened at the furtherend of a narrow gallery.
A low moan from just ahead of him caused him to reach out; and, more byfeeling than by sight, he recognized the slim form sprawled full-lengthon the floor. Judith Barclay! As this name flashed across his mind,recollection came back with a great leap, and his tortured brainreconstructed the scenes of the last hour or two. The announcement ofthe outbreak of war, followed almost immediately by the appearanceof the raiding planes! His appeal to Judith, when for the twentiethtime she had shrugged her thin shoulders and refused him; then thealarm, and their flight together through the panicky crowds towardthe air-raid shelters! Their terrified halt, when a bomb plowed upthe street just before them; and their dash into an immense sectionof concrete pipe, where some construction work was under way! And,finally, the thudding sound of a concussion; Judith's scream—anddarkness!
"Well, by thunder, that shell pretty near got us!" he reflected,scarcely wondering at the changed appearance of the pipe, which heattributed to the explosion. Then, as he reached out and felt for thegirl's arm, he asked, "How are you, Jude? Hurt?"
"No, I'm all right, Mort," she answered, weakly. "Only, a little—alittle funny in the head."
He glanced out along the tapering dimness of the pipe, and saw thelight at the further end slowly widening. At the same time, the noiseof renewed hammering came to his ears. "Well, the rescuers are gettinghere pretty quick," he remarked. "Guess the raid's over."
"Thank heaven!" she sighed. "I—I don't think this was a very wiseplace to choose, Mort."
He bit his lip, wondering why, even in their present grim location, herleast remark should have the power to torture him.
"Don't you—don't you smell something peculiar? A little like ether?"she went on, in faltering tones; while he, as the light at the end ofthe gallery brightened to a glare, tottered to his hands and knees, andthen fell back to the floor of the tube, feeling sick in the head.
"There's something wrong with the air, by Christopher!" he muttered;and then cried out in astonishment, "Say, do you see that?"
By the bright light at the end of the gallery, two figures werevisible. Two men wearing clothes like Scottish kilts, bright crimsonand emerald-hued, and with bare arms and knees! Over the lips andnostrils of each was a drooping, scarlet-tubed apparatus, a littlelike a gas-mask, though different from any gas-mask that Downey hadever seen. And in the hand of the foremost was a minute shining stick,from which suddenly a dazzlingly white searchlight ray shot out,illuminating the two trapped persons as if by a blaze of sunlight.
Downey thought that the strangers started back in surprise; but allthat he was certain of was that, after a second, they were motioninghim to come out of the tube.
This Downey was abl