The Trojan Beam

THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF THE 'WAKAMATSU'

George Saltry would have liked to smile, but he had spent a number of years of his life in learning dissimu­lation. One did not smile when engaged in offi­cial deal­ings with men of high rank; it imme­diately roused all their suspi­cions and lessened their confi­dence. A facade of unrelieved stem dignity was required, even though every­one knew it was only a facade. Particularly, one did not smile at Japa­nese head­quarters.

So it came about that George, as he waited in an ante­room for admis­sion to the presence of an impor­tant man, main­tained an expres­sion as unin­form­ative as that of the Japanese officers around him. But he was not un­aware of the thoughts passing behind their motion­less faces. He could feel their hosti­lity and he knew its causes — first, that he was a man with­out offi­cial rank and yet apparently un­ashamed of the fact; secondly, that he was a Euro­pean, and for all Euro­peans they felt a contempt mingled with mis­trust.

In the half-hour he waited no one spoke. The Japa­nese scarcely moved. They sat gazing steadily before them as if in con­tem­pla­tion. It was, he thought, appro­priate, for where the Emperor is both military and divine, his officers must be his priests.

At the other end, a door flanked by two sentries with fixed bayonets opened enough to admit a head. A secretary hurried across and exchanged a few low-toned words. He turned and came back. With a perfunctory bow, he informed George that the General was ready to see him.

George was aware of the close scrutiny of three staff officers to whom he paid no atten­tion. Before the General's desk he bowed slightly and waited.

General Kashai­hoto was a short man begin­ning to go bald. He lifted a round face deco­rated with a thin, dark drooping mous­tache and studied the Euro­pean face before him with a pair of bright, intelli­gent eyes. George, return­ing the gaze, could see behind the General's eyes a sugges­tion of reluc­tance and faint distaste, but he was used to that and no longer allowed it to disturb him.

He knew that the military man dislikes the spy and the informer, but that he must use him. He knew, more­over, that that dislike arises from the uncer­tainty of the spy's status as much as from uncer­tainty of his loyalty. A secret agent to do good work must be partly in the confi­dence of his employ­ers and more in that of the other side, but, it is to the interest of the employers to keep that confi­dence down to the mini­mum.

In a war between nations of the same stock, where a man of one nationality may pass as one of the other, it is not too difficult to find reliable agents, but in a racial war where each man of the alien race is an obvious suspect to the other side it is more difficult. One must either depend on the unsatis­factory method of bribing members of the enemy race and bribing them heavily, or one must employ the services of a third party whose interests are commer­cial only. It was as such an agent that George Saltry was employed at present. As a member of a neutral race his appearance did not iden­tify him with either cause. There were English­men helping the Japanese and there were English­men helping the Chinese. He could, if circum­spect, pass in either country as a friend.

General Kashaihoto deplored this necessity for using foreign agents; one could appeal to nothing but their acquisi­tive­ness and one was never quite sure whether the enemy might not have made a higher bid. However, this man Saltry had a use­ful record and on this occa­sion it was not necessary to confide impor­tant secrets — merely a few occurrences which were being with­held from general public know­ledge. He said severely:

“You should have reported yesterday.”

“Yes,” George agreed.

“Why did you not?”

“Because my house was watched. It is an un­neces­sary risk to have me report here at all,” he added shortly.

The General frowned. It was not a tone he liked or expected. He looked harder at the young man, but George Saltry knew better than to have his gaze borne down. He waited.

One of the aides brought a note and the situ­ation was relieved. The General read it, gave instruct­ions and then turned back to George.

“The Chinese have been using a new weapon,” he said.

“So I understand,” George nodded.

“You understand? And where did you hear it from?” demanded the General.

George shrugged his shoulders.

“These things leak out. It is my job to hear about them.”

The General frowned. It was true that such was an agent's job, but one preferred it to be prac­tised on one side only.

“What have you heard?” he said.

George admitted to know­ing no details. He had heard only rumours, but the kind of rumours which obviously had something behind them. He had tried to learn more but with­out success. The General looked more pleased.

“You had heard nothing from the other side?” he asked.

George shook his head.

“No,” he said truth­fully. “That has been puzzling me. If it really is impor­tant, the secret was unusually well kept.”

“It's important, all right,” he was assured.

General Kashai­hoto described several of the occa­sions when the weapon had been employed.

The first recorded instance had been during a tank attack at the beginning of December. Ten heavy tanks and about a score of smaller ones had inex­plic­ably gone out of control. All of them had deviated precisely the same degree of the south of their planned course and made for a river. Sub­sequently, the Chinese had pulled them out of the river and were now using them — all save one which was intelli­gently destroyed by its commander — against their former owners.

On another occasion an infantry attack had been completely dis­orga­nized. The one or two survivors had told an extraordinary tale. Their rifles and bayo­nets had been suddenly wrenched from their hands, and their steel helmets from their heads. The helmets had rolled away ahead just as though the level ground were sloping down­hill. The rifles had clattered a few feet and then come to rest. When they picked them up they had to hold them back as against a strong pull. It was impossible to aim them or wield them for bayonet work. In the face of a counter-attack the men could not resist, and the pull was too strong for them to bring them back, so they had to be aban­doned.

“What weapons did the Chinese carry in the counter­attack?” George wanted to know.

But the General could not tell him that. Those who had been close enough to see had not been those who returned.

Another disaster, the General went on, had been the fate of the cruiser Waka­matsu. The Waka­matsu had been on patrol in the Hsing-hwa Sound in the province of Fu-Kien. She was cruising at about ten knots some three miles off shore but in sheltered waters on a perfectly calm day when she suddenly began to make great lee­way on the shore side.

Course was altered at once and speed increased, but the drift shore­ward continued. More speed made little difference. The magnetic compass was jammed, the entire elec­trical system of the ship includ­ing the wire­less was out of order. Before long she was pointed out to sea with her engines going full ahead, but even her whole power was not enough to break the hold of what­ever was pulling, she was still going astern at a rate of some­thing between a quarter and a half knot.

Once the hold seemed to be broken. The Wakamatsu shuddered all through and leaped forward, but the force gripped again almost imme­diately and continued to hold. The commander ordered a bombard­ment of the shore astern. This was accom­plished with diffi­culty, for the pull on the shells was immense, making them extremely diffi­cult to handle; but with­out result, The pull on the cruiser conti­nued. As she neared the shore her propellers were smashed on sub­merged rocks, and imme­diately orders were given to scuttle her rather than surrender.

There were, the General implied, more instances that he could give, but he did not proceed with them. Instead, he looked up at the young man sharply.

“Well, what do you make of it?” he said, watching him closely.

“Sounds to me like some direct­ional magnetic force,” George told him. “But what I should like to know is what happened to the shells the Waka­matsu fired. If it is magnetic, each of them should have made a direct hit.”

The General approved. “That's observant of you,” he said. “We also think it is mag­netic, but we fancy it is capable of being reduced to a narrow field. If that is so, the trajec­tory of the shells would carry them out of the field a moment after they left the muzzles — it would, in fact, have practi­cally no effect at all on them at muzzle velocity. In any case, the observers on the ship did not notice a deflec­tion of aim.”

“I see,” said George thought­fully. “Yes, a narrow beam would explain that. It sounds,” he added, “as though you are up against some­thing pretty difficult to tackle.”

The General did not seem unduly depressed. He replied with a touch of fata­lism:

“All new weapons are diffi­cult to tackle — at first. But there's always a way. More­over, this thing is clearly of limited and pri­marily defen­sive use. How­ever, we must learn its power and its limita­tions before we can consider methods of defence.”

“And it is my job to find out for you, I suppose?”

General Kashai­hoto nodded and fixed George with his bright eyes again.

“That is so, Mr. Saltry. We want to know as much as you can find out, and as soon as possible.”

“All right. You shall,” said George.