The room quieted down.
"We've got to go at once. Our destination is the Times Square subway station. They can't get us there. Anybody who gets separated meet the rest there. We'll go in groups of three to a car; one to carry a gun, one a sword and one a light. Everybody got it?... Good.... Somebody give Gloria one of those express rifles.... Here's the list then. First party—Miss Rutherford, gun; Yoshio, sword; O'Hara, light. Go ahead."
A coil of smoke drifted across the room from somewhere above—the sough of the burning made the only background to his words. With a quick handshake the three made ready; a volley from the windows flashed out, and they dashed off. Those inside caught a glimpse of the dark form of their car as it rolled into the night. They were safe at all events. The second carload, in Yoshio's armored vehicle, also got free, but the third had trouble. They had hardly made half the distance to the parked cars before there was a whir of wings, a scream, and the quick burst of a bomb, luckily too far behind them to do damage. Those inside saw the light-man stop suddenly, flashing his beam aloft, saw an orange flame spring from the gun and then their view of the three was blotted out in a whirl of wings and action.
"Everybody out!" yelled Ben. "Now! While they're busy." In a concerted rush the colonists poured through the door.
Nobody could remember clearly what did happen. Someone was down—hurt somewhere—but was flung into a car. Through the turmoil the tossing form of one badly-wounded bird struggled on the ground, and with a roar of motors the cavalcade started.
CHAPTER VI
The Terror by Night
It would be futile—and impossible—to chronicle all the events of that wild ride; to tell how the light-bombs dropped unceasingly from above; how the driver of one car, blinded by the glare, hurtled his vehicle through the plate-glass window of a store, and how McAllister, the artilleryman, fought off the birds with a huge shard of glass from the window; how the passengers in another car, wrecked by a bomb, got a fire-engine and cleared their way to Times Square with clanging bell and clouds of malodorous fire-extinguisher chemicals; or how Mrs. Roberts decapitated one of the monsters with a single blow of the cleaver she carried.
Dawn found them, a depressed group of fourteen, gathered in the protection of the underground passages.