"Doc Savage Adventure 1939-07 Merchants of Disaster" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

They were not sure just what the test was to be, but rumor had it that they were to try out a new type of smoke screen. All had gas masks ready to don.

The gas masks really were not needed, the officers had reported, except that the glass in the goggles had been treated with a special preparation which it was hoped would make it fairly easy to see while passing through the smoke screen.

What the officers did not add was that intelligence reports were to the effect that a certain power had developed a combination smoke screen and poison gas, and it was hoped the preparation on the goggles would enable American troops to combat such an attack should it ever prove necessary.

That the tests were considered important was shown by the number of high army officers present. These high officials, however, made themselves as inconspicuous as possible. They had withdrawn to a nearby hill, and also expected to watch the test through field glasses.

Only a slight breeze was blowing. Everything was considered perfect for the business in hand.

The airplane that drifted overhead attracted no attention whatsoever. It was up so high, for one thing, and its motors could scarcely be heard. For another, thin banks of clouds made it impossible to see from the ground.

Then the smoke screen tests began.


SMOKE was released suddenly from a dozen points. It was caught in the slight breeze, gradually covered the big parade ground.

The smoke was dense. It was impossible to see through it with the naked eye. The troops had been drawn up at one side of the field. Gas masks were adjusted.

Clouds of the thick smoke drifted toward the soldiers, billowed high into the air. Officers gave arm signals. The troops advanced.

The first passage through the smoke screen was made successfully. The watching high command noticed that it took the soldiers just fifteen minutes to make the trip.

And the troops came through in perfect skirmish line. Evidently the preparation used on the goggles had been highly successful.

Then officers signaled briskly. The troops pivoted, reentered the smoke screen.

That was when the unexpected happened. The first impression the watchers got was that of a receding picture. Smoke screen, proving ground and all appeared to move backward, rapidly.

The effect was that of watching a movie fadeout, where she camera is drawn back suddenly, changing from a close-up to a distant view.

Some of the high military officers yanked their field glasses from their eyes. Still the scene seemed to be dropping backward.

Then gasps came from the officers. A pyrotechnic display of great intensity appeared before them. It started some fifty feet in the air and continued all the way to the ground.

There was a maze of tiny blue and red sparks. The air was so full of them the smoke screen could hardly be seen - but the men beneath that smoke screen remained invisible.

The scene might have been one of awe-inspiring beauty had it not been so unexpected and inexplainable.

A cold chill of dread gripped the watching high command. Hands clenched, faces became tense.

Something was wrong, radically wrong.

The strange sparks laced through the smoke screen as if They had been darts of lightning - but lightning gone mad. The sparks made circles, then seemed to condense into an almost solid sheet of tiny points of fire. Again they appeared like darting light-signals.

A general shouted a command. The watchers darted for automobiles, racing downward toward the proving ground.

Minutes went by before they arrived. But the troops remained hidden in the smoke screen.