At the same time, slipping on the earphones, I heard a confused wailing and groaning, like the agonized cries of a multitude; and so desolate, so heart-rending was this sound that I had to snatch the earphones off instantly.
"You have just beheld the attack of the radium bombs," the speaker was stating, in matter-of-fact tones. "Radium bombs, as you are aware, represent the most advanced method of scientific slaughter. They are more effective than dynamite or even than Mulflar, for they not only kill all who happen to be near when they fall, but, after falling, they continue indefinitely to be radioactive, so that all who approach are afflicted with terrible and incurable sores. That is why you see the surviving soldiers fleeing so madly. For the same reason, whole vast regions, far beyond the present battle lines, have been transformed into a permanent public menace."
I wondered how the chalk-faces obtained radium enough to use so widely; but the speaker was not long in informing me.
"At one time, you know, we could secure the element only in insignificant quantities. But science is great, and surmounts many obstacles. About twenty years ago, the renowned chemist Blo Bla discovered that, by means of a new solution composed of a chromium-phosphorus compound (the exact formula of which is strictly guarded) we might extract it efficiently from the pitchblend that abounds throughout our caverns.
"It was then that we first conceived the idea of using it for military purposes. Our main difficulty was not so much in securing the radium as in manufacturing it into bombs; and this problem we solved by devising a missile with a body of some less deadly metal, such as iron or lead, and with a radioactive surface. Unfortunately, there is one minor disadvantage; the bombs can be made only at a considerable cost to the workers, who—well, whose turnover, I am sorry to say, is one hundred per cent every ninety wakes. But such, my friends, is war! Is it not all for the honor of the country? To end one's days in a radium factory is considered a glorious turnover!"
For several minutes the speaker rambled on in this vein, telling how the enemy, Zu, had been so dastardly as to duplicate the radium bombs, at a great cost to the army of Wu.... Then, suddenly stopping in midsentence, he broke into an exclamation I could hardly catch: "Look carefully, my friends! Look carefully! The Subterrain is coming! The Subterrain! The Subterrain!"
Anxious not to miss anything of interest, I clapped the earphones on again and glanced once more at the battlefield. And, as I did so, a scene of shattering fury burst upon my view.
For one instant, I was aware of the wide cavern floor, with the stricken multitudes still writhing piteously, while other multitudes still fled toward the safety of the walls. But, the next instant, all this had vanished. There was a terrific upheaval of earth and rock, which for a fraction of a second covered all things in a great blur; the walls of the cavern sagged, and in places collapsed in avalanches; the floor became jagged as a lunar landscape, with sharp craters and deep ravines, and hillocks, bluffs, and gulches where all had been flat and smooth a moment before. And in my ears was such a thundering that I reeled and was all but knocked over.
Hastily snatching off the earphones, I remained gazing with absorbed interest upon that hideous scene. To my horror, I could no longer see any trace of the purple-and-yellow army. The fugitives, no less than the victims of the radium bombs, had all disappeared! And, as the visible sign of their destruction, a long, thin, dark metallic tube was projecting from the broken center of the floor, like the neck of some great carnivorous dinosaur.