Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930Various
Science
Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930
Various
Science fiction -- Periodicals; Science fiction, American -- Periodicals
No one paid the least attention to him. But a short, bare-headed
civilian, who was struggling in the crowd, heard, and shouted in
answer, waved his arms, and began to force his way toward the four. It
was Roscoe, the secretary of President Hargreaves. The President was a
childless widower, and Roscoe lived in the White House with him and
was intimately in his confidence.
Roscoe gained Stopford's side. "Say--they've got him!" he panted.
"They've got him somewhere--inside the building. They're trying to get
him out! We've got to save him--but we can't see them--or him. They've
made him invisible too, curse them! I heard him crying, 'Help me,
Roscoe!' He saw me, I tell you--and I didn't know where he was!"
* * * * *
The little secretary was almost incoherent with fear and anger. The
five men, forming a wedge, hurled themselves forward. Out of the White
House entrance appeared a tall officer, revolver in hand. It was
Colonel Simpson, of the President's staff. Half beside himself, he
swept the weapon menacingly about him, shouting incoherently, and
clearing a passage, into which the five hurled themselves.
Stopford seized his revolver hand, and after a brief struggle Simpson
recognized him.
"He's in the building!" he shouted wildly. "Somewhere upstairs! I'm
trying to form a cordon, but this damned mob's in the way. Kick those
civilians out!" he cried to the soldiers. "Shoot them if they don't
go! Guard the windows!"
Stopford and Dick, at the head of the wedge, pushed past into the
White House. The interior was packed, men were struggling frantically
on the staircase; it seemed hopeless to try to do anything.
Suddenly renewed yells sounded from above, a scream of anguish, howls
of terror. There came a downward surge, then a forward and upward one,
which carried the two men up the stairs and into the President's
private apartments above.
In the large reception-room a mob was struggling at a window, beneath
a blaze of electric light. A soldier was standing there like a statue,
his face fixed with a leer of horror. In his hands was a rifle, with a
blood-stained bayonet, dripping upon the hardwood floor at the edge of
the rug. Upon the rug itself a stream of blood was spouting out of the
air.
Dick looked at the sight and choked. There was something appalling in
the sight: it was the quintessence of horror, that widening pool of
blood, staining the rug, and flowing from an invisible body that
writhed and twisted, while moans of anguish came from unseen lips.
Colonel Stopford leaped back, livid and staring. "God, it's got
eyes--two eyes!" he shouted.
Dick saw them too. The eyes, which alone were visible, were about six
inches from the floor, and they were appearing and disappearing, as
they opened and shut alternately. It was a man lying there, a dying
man, pierced by the soldier's bayonet by pure accident, dying and yet
invisible.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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