Read Ebook: A Book of Natural History Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. by Jordan David Starr Editor

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Ebook has 190 lines and 5310 words, and 4 pages

But the size was still there! Five to ten feet in wing-spread--and behind, the thin, deadly, whip-like tails.

Rays! The queer creatures that fly bat-like under water--now thundering like giant bats through the air!

There were flying fish wheeling round them like queer rigid birds. They had grown legs like little dragons, and long tails.

A pair of huge eels slid over the rough earth, pulled down a man and fought over the body. Policemen began to appear, and there was a popping of guns. The sirens made a mad skirling above the din.

Some of the rays swooped to the crowded beach. Others came on, scenting human food.

Guns began to crack from the cliff-tops, from the windows of apartment houses. Fallon caught the chatter of sub-machine guns. One of the rays was struck almost overhead.

It went out of control like a fantastic plane and crashed into the hillside, just behind Fallon and the girl. Men died shrieking under its twenty-foot, triangular bulk.

It made a convulsive leap.

The girl slipped in the loose rubble, and lost her hold on Fallon. The broad tentacles on the ray's head closed in like the horns of a half moon, folding the girl in a narrowing circle of death.

Fallon raised his iron curtain rod. He was irrationally conscious, with a detached fragment of his brain, of the girl's sapphire eyes and the lovely strength of her body. Her face was set with terror, but she didn't scream. She fought.

Something turned over in Fallon's heart, something buried and unfamiliar. Something that had never stirred for Madge. He stepped in. The bar swung up, slashed down.

The leathery skin split, but still the feelers hugged the girl closer. The great ray heaved convulsively, and something whistled past Fallon's head. It struck him across the shoulders, and laid him in dazed agony in the dirt.

The creature's tail, lashing like a thin long whip.

Webb Fallon got up slowly. His back was numb. There was hot blood flooding across his skin. The girl's eyes were blue and wide, fixed on him. Terribly fixed. She had stopped fighting.

Fallon found an eye, set back on one of the tentacles. He set the end of the iron rod against it, and thrust downward....

Whether it was the rod, or the initial bullet, Fallon never knew, but the tentacles relaxed. The girl rose and came toward him, and together they went up the hill.

They were still together when sweating volunteers picked them up and carried them back into the town.

Fallon came to before they finished sewing up his back. The emergency hospital was jammed. The staff worked in a kind of quiet frenzy, with a devil's symphony of hysteria beating up against the windows of the wards.

They hadn't any place to keep Fallon. They taped his shoulders into a kind of harness to keep the wound closed, and sent him out.

The girl was waiting for him in the areaway, huddled in a blanket. They had given Fallon one, too, but his cotton trunks were still clammy cold against him. He stood looking down at the girl, his short brown hair unkempt, the hard lines of his face showing sharp and haggard.

"Well," he said. "What are you waiting for?"

"To thank you. You saved my life."

"You're welcome," said Fallon. "Now you'd better go before I contaminate you."

"That's not fair. I am grateful, Webb. Truly grateful."

Fallon would have shrugged, but it hurt. "All right," he said wearily. "You can tell Madge what a little hero I was."

"Please don't leave me," she whispered. "I haven't any place to go. All my clothes and money were in the apartment."

He looked at her, his eyes cold and probing. Brief disappointment touched him, and he was surprised at himself. Then he went deeper, into the clear sapphire eyes, and was ashamed--which surprised him even more.

"What's your name?" he asked. "And why haven't you fainted?"

"Joan Daniels," she said. "And I haven't had time."

Fallon smiled. "Give me your shoulder, Joan," he said, and they went out.

Catastrophe--or Weapon?

Santa Monica was a city under attack. Sweating policemen struggled with solid jams of cars driven by wild-eyed madmen. Horns hooted and blared. And through it all, like banshees screaming with eldritch mirth, the sirens wailed.

"They'll declare martial law," said Fallon. "I wonder how long they can hold those things back?"

Strangely, they hadn't asked that before.

They'd hardly had time even to think it.

Fallon shook his head. "God knows. But it's going to get worse. Hear that gunfire? My apartment isn't far from here. We'll get some clothes and a drink, and then...."

It was growing dark when they came out again. Fallon felt better, with a lot of brandy inside him and some warm clothes. Joan had a pair of his slacks and a heavy sweater.

He grinned, and said, "Those never looked as nice on me."

Soldiers were throwing up barricades in the streets. The windows of Corbin's big department store were shattered, the bodies of dead rays lying in the debris. The rattle of gunfire was hotter, and much closer.

"They're being driven back," murmured Fallon.

Fallon thought what must be happening in the towns farther south, with their flat low beaches and flimsy houses. How far did this invasion extend? What was it? And how long would it last?

He got his car out of the garage behind the apartment house. Joan took the wheel, and he lay down on his stomach on the back seat.

His back hurt like hell.

"One good thing," he remarked wryly. "The finance company won't be chasing me through this. Just go where the traffic looks lightest, and shout if you need me."

He went to sleep.

It was morning when he woke. Joan was asleep on the front seat, curled up under a blanket. She had spread one over him, too.

Fallon smiled, and looked out.

The first thing he noticed was the unfamiliar roar of motors overhead, and the faint crackling undertone of gunfire. They were still under siege, then, and the defenders were still giving ground.

They were parked on Hollywood Boulevard near Vine. Crowds of white-faced, nervous people huddled along the streets. The only activity was around the newsboys.

Fallon got out, stiff and cursing, and went to buy a paper. An extra arrived before he got there. The boy ripped open the bundle, let out a startled squawk, and began to yell at the top of his lungs.

A low, angry roar spread down the boulevard. Fallon got a paper, and smiled a white-toothed, ugly smile. He shook Joan awake and gave her the paper.

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