The Project Gutenberg EBook of When the Sleepers Woke, by Arthur Leo Zagat

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Title: When the Sleepers Woke

Author: Arthur Leo Zagat

Release Date: July 5, 2009 [EBook #29322]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Astounding Stories November 1932.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

[Illustration: All his strength went into that trick.]

When the Sleepers Woke

By Arthur Leo Zagat

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Only two small groups of people--enemies--survive the vast
desolation of the Final War.]

"Prepare for battle!" The command crackled in Allan Dane's helmet.
"Enemy approaching from southeast! Squadron commanders execute plan
two!" Allan settled back in the seat of his one-man helicopter, his
broad frame rendered even bulkier by the leather suit that incased
it. He was tensed, but quiescent. Action would be first joined sixty
miles away, and his own squadron was in reserve.

Over New York and its bay the American air fleet was in motion.
Suddenly movement ceased, and the formation froze. Ten flying forts
were each the apex of a far-spread cone, axis horizontal, whose body
was the fanned back-ranging of its squadron of a thousand helicopter
planes. The cones bristled oceanward from the sea-margin of New York,
their points a fifty-mile arc of defiance, their bases tangent to one
another, almost touching the ground at their lower edges, then
circling upward for ten thousand feet. From van to rear each formation
was five miles in length.

Behind and above, the main body of the fleet sloped in echeloned
ranks, hiding the threatened city with an impenetrable terraced wall
of buzzing helios and massive forts. Up, back, up, back, the serried
masses reached, till the rearmost were twenty-five thou