Tama Princes of Mercury

by Terry Pratchett

  The army of the Light Country had arrived to attack Dorrek in his mountain stronghold. The battle was bursting into an inferno around us I XIII FLIGHT TO BATTLE As TT LEFT the Hill City in the half-light of that noonday, the army of the Light Country consisted of two divisions: the forces on the ground and those in the air. Of the young men who marched on foot there were perhaps a thousand. It could have been more, but Grenfell decided against it.

  Warfare is different in every age, and far more does it differ in one world from another. Grenfell was not officially in commandthat was given to a Light Country scientist, named Arton. But the Hill City officials looked to Grenfell as actual leader. A set of conditions wholly strange was involved: electrical warfare. A battle of crossing rays, of blasting, withering heat. A single technician at a projector could do the work of a thousand soldiers.

  But Grenfell knew that no warefare, however supermodern, scientific, mechanical, will ever transcend the human factor.

  The young men to go on foot were not primarily fighters, but their principal mission was to transport supplies: The food and water, the housing equipment for camping in the desert, the amttiunition, electronic storage battery renewers, a renewal supply of the small hand weapons used by the air force. They carried a score of giant beat-ray projectors mounted upon little wheeled carts. Fifty additional carts were used for the supplies. They were drawn by domesticated brues.

  The thousand young men, commanded by Arton, were slow moving and needed supplies for their own maintenance.

  The number would have been unnecessarily large, save that Grenfell greatly feared Dorrek's giant insects, trained for fighttag. It was likely that Dorrek, when attacked, might loose his brues over the desert with a few men guiding them to raid the vulnerable Hill City. This the ground army was prepared to oppose.

  For defense, there was a black insulating fabrica thin flexible, cloth-like material, dead-black in color, woven of hairthin metallic thread. At a distance of thirty feet a man clothed in it could withstand the heat-rays for many seconds. Garments and hoods were made of it, and shields of various sizes. But, like all devices of war, it was only partially effective.

  The Light County air forces were of three kinds. The individual flying girls, of whom there were some eight hundred. They could not fly properly in the insulated suits.

  Some wore them, but most chose their filmy robes and carried six-foot flexible shields, folded for long distance flying, which could be opened in a moment. They wore belts with small ray projectors, knives and a variety of hand bombs to be thrown or dropped upon the enemy.

  Tama was in command of these girls. There were eight divisions of about a hundred each. They flew in eight separate squads, each with its girl commander.

  The second air division was that of the flying platforms, using from eight to thirty girls. The two largest carried ' a single giant projector each, which had an effective range of something like half a mile. Four Light Country men rode each of these platforms. Two others, carried four men with bombs. Three bore merely a single girl eachreserve platforms.

  One platform carried Jimmy and Roc. Guy had been assigned with them, but, perhaps because of his dislike for Roc, he persuaded Grenfell against it. He and Toh rode a platform together. And there was the Flying Cube. It was loaded now with reserve armament: weapons shields, fabric suits, food, medical equipment. It had a giant heat projector mounted now at . a port on the D-Face deck, and the long-range Earth gun.

  Grenfell rode in the Cube with his five associates. There were ten or fifteen Light Country men also now aboard the Cube, including four of the most skillful surgeons in the Hill City.

  Grenfell decided to go in advance and start the attack; the men on the ground could arrive as a reserve force later.

  Grenfell let the flying girls lead the way. He kept the Cube poised in the midst of them. They took it slowly, so that the girls would not be tired. Within a few minutes the queue of marching men upon the groundthe little swaying carts with harnessed insects slithering ahead of themall were left behind, out of sight beneath the horizon.

  The metal desert lay ahead. After twenty miles the girls descended to rest. The Cube sailed cautiously ahead to make sure no enemy was in sight and then returned. The girls started again. Fantastic sightl They fluttered up, giant birds with vivid blue and crimson wings, flowing draperies, braided hair fastened to their sides, white limbs gracefully poised. They formed themselves into the eight squadrons, each with its leader, and followed by the flying platforms, winged swiftly off into the gathering twilight.

  Jimmy, lying with his broken leg stiff in its splints, on his platform with Roc, gazed eagerly ahead. Two or three more stops and the mountains would come up over the forward horizon where it seemed a storm was gathering. Jimmy's mfad was busy with stffl half formed personal plans. GrenfeB had the big advantage over Dorrek m this coming battle.

  But Dorrek had one advantage, which, to Jimmy, was likely to prove a great handicap to Grenfell's activities.

  For Rowenaand I, Jack Deanwere prisoners. It seemed to Grenfell likely that we would be kept confined in the silver ball. Dorrek would reason that Grenfell, fearing to loll us, would thus hesitate to attack the ball, his greatest weapon.

  It was a great handicap. Grenfell strode up and down the deck of the Cube that morning considering it, his shock of gray hair rumpled, his square-jawed face set in a frown, his shoulders hunched. Jimmy was lying in a deck chair regarding him.

  "I don't know how to get them out of that sphere," murmured Grenfell. "We'll have to watch our chance when we get there." He was talking half to himself.

  Jimmy called, "Oh, Doc, I'm thinking the same thing you are. Once we have them safe, you can feel free to blow that blamed ball to bits. I've got a plan; will you listen?"

  "Of course."

  "Well, we don't know yet what conditions we're liable to meet. But let us assume we take these savages by surprise. My idea is well have them penned in the mountains.

  They'll be on the defensive, won't they? And the ball wffl be lying insidewell, what you'd call the enemy lines.

  And it will be black night. Right?"

  "Jimmy, I have no way of guessing what the conditions will be. But I know one condition I'm afraid ofwhat these girls may do when they get in contact with the enemy.

  Eight hundred of themsupposed to be under my control.

  But they won't be! How can I control them? I've no adequate means of communication with them during a battle.

  A few flying platforms to take my orders!" Grenfell was vehement. "Your description of how those girls fought that giant insectthat brue thingin the Water City. Reckless! Never letup until they had it torn to shreds, and then collapsed into hysteria when it was over. If they get wild, if I can't control themthe whole eight hundred could kill themselves in half an hour."

  "Tama can control them. Doc."

  "I hope so. I've spoken to her. She stared at me with that little quizzical smile. 'Oh, yes. Doctor, we will be prudent.

  We look to you to tell us what to do.' That sounds fine. But" Jimmy interrupted. "What I was saying; my idea is well have these savages penned in the mountains. You're not going to attack at once. Make the girls take it slow; that will help control 'em. It will be dark, won't it?"

  "So I understand."

  "Abnormally dark. Roc tells me this sky looks as though a black storm is coming. And a cold one, from the Night ' Country. Well, my idea is to watch my chanceget my platform up close to the enemy lines. Wear a black insulator ,_suit, and creep through the lines. Get up to the ballunseen, why not? And the doorway would probably be open"

  "But, Jimmy, you can't walk with that leg."

  "I can creep, can't I? I may have no chance after the fighting starts, to consult with you. I want your permission now. It might be the lives of Rowena and Jackand it might make all the difference between your losing or winning the battle. You want those barbarians coming to the Earth againassaulting, abducting young girls like they did last y
ear? If I get Rowena and Jackyou'll be free to blow that ball to bits. Chances are that Dorrek and all the leaders will be in it.

  Grenfell hesitated; then he put his hands on Jimmy's shoulders and gazed into the flushed, freckled face with the tousled, brick-red hair above it.

  "Do what you think best, Jimmy. Onlydon't get killed." As Grenfell stood up, Jimmy saw Roc standing a short distance down the length of dimly illumined deck. He had come from a nearby door, or perhaps he had been standing there unobserved for some time. Jimmy called, "Oh, Roc come here." Roc was to be his companion on the platform. Jimmy was by nature impulsive, and he was keyed up, excited now.

  He gave Roc the general idea of his plan.

  "Suppose we try it together. Roc. You'll be a great help if we should be stopped by any of Dorrek's men, since you can talk their language." Roc said quietly, "We are riding together. Plenty of time to talk it over later, Turk." Roc turned to Grenfell. "Tama would like to see you for a moment, Dr. Grenfell. Some question about shields for the girls."

  "Oh-yes, Roc." He and Roc hurried away, leaving Jimmy alone, nursing his leg, pondering his plan.

  And he was still pondering it, when in the midst of the cloud of flying girls, he rode the platform with Rocthe metallic desert beneath them, and overhead the lowering black sky. A black storm was coming.

  Roc was stretched now at the platform stem; Jimmy was fa front. At the handles, jutting out, their girls flew, seven on each side. Only one of them spoke English, and hers was very limited. A girl named Grazia. She flew at the lefthand leading position, her wing-stroke setting the beat for the others. Her small, earnest face, flushed with exertion, was only a few feet from Jimmy's. Occasionally, as she turned to glance at him, he would smile and nod to her, or call a chasing jovial encouragement. The girls of this crew all seemed to like Jimmy. But they obviously did not like Roc.

  At last, far ahead against the dark horizon, the black peaks of the mountains loomed up.

  Like a great gash in the tumbled mountainous ridge wound the black canyon. Its smooth metallic walls were for the most part sheerly perpendicular, a thousand feet high. It was narrow, frequently curving in broad sweeps, or again turning sharply. In places it was five hundred feet wide, in others less than two hundred.

  The walls were eroded with lateral ridges, one above the other as though left by nature to mark the ages of the drying river which once had surged through here. In the heart of the Dark Mountains, the canyon widened abruptly into a great irregularly shaped bowl, where once a lake must have been. Nearly circular, it was some six miles in diameter: A broken, ridged floor of strewn boulders, gullies and ravines, surrounded by sheer circular walls like a crater rim, broken and jagged on top.

  In this great bowl, Dorrek had set his encampment. His forces were arriving from the upper canyon entrance at the Cold Country side; and it was from the lower canyon entrance that Grenfell and his army approached. Grenfell learned afterward that Dorrek's force was already almost complete. What few came later, seeing the distant conflict, undoubtedly turned back and fled.

  As Jimmy rode his swaying platform, winging low over the narrowing black canyon, he could see very little of the region's formation. It was now almost black night. The Cube had sailed ahead. Twenty girls had gone cautiously with the Cube. They came winging back, flying in broken formation, scattering to the flying platforms and to the leaders of the various crops of girls with Grenfell's orders.

  Jimmy and Roc saw the alarm given long before their platform arrived upon the scene. Light flares bursting in the distance, illumed the black sky and the towering jagged mountain peaks. The steady, rumbling hiss of giant projectors.

  Jimmy thought that the attack had already begun. The Cube came sailing back, high overhead, turned in a tenmile semicircle, and swept forward again.

  One of the largest platforms carrying a huge projector with four men to operate it dropped down and landed upon the canyon rim at the entrance to the six-mile bowl. The canyon here was no more than two hundred feet wide. The projector, mounted upon the rim, would dominate this exit.

  Half of Grenfell's force landed at this point. The other half, including Jimmy and Roc, swept a mile back to the left, avoiding the open bowl. Jimmy saw great shafts of blue-green light rays standing like searchlight beams into the air. A cir-ular curtain of deadly hght in the center of the bowl.

  Jimmy and Roc, following orders, flew in a wide detour to the left and landed on the crater rim, where the canyon stretched off toward the Cold Country. There were a few of Dorrek's guards on the top of these walls, but at once they scattered and fled.

  Dorrek was now trapped in the rocky bowl. As Grenfell had foreseen, he went instantly on the defensive. When the alarm came, the silver ball had been resting at the bottom of the valley near one of its side walls. Dorrek immediately moved it to the center of the bowl, three miles from the nearest enclosing cliffs.

  Two hours passed, which were horribly irksome to the waiting Jimmy.

  Near the top of the thousand-foot precipice at the opening to the valley, Grenfell's encampment was springing into existence on a boulder-strewn plateau. The Cube had landed on a nearby rocky eminence which dominated the scene.

  The men and the four hundred girls unloaded the Cube's supply of tents, lights, cables, batteries and light mechanisms; the food supplies; weapons and defensive armament.

  Within an hour the tents and lights were erecteda little huddled group of dark-fabric shelters, strewn amid the rocks.

  Tiny hooded green lights dotted it, their dim radiance disclosing the figures of the winged girls moving busily about The first meal was in preparation.

  Jimmy called to Roc as the Mercurian laboriously hauled the base section of a projector to a spot where someone had said it should be taken.

  "How far is the brink from here? I'm going there." Roc answered his smile. "Of course, Turk." He called a passing' girl, instructed her to have the projector assembled.

  very well, Turk. Come put your arm on my shoulder." Jimmy found that he could almost hobble. He weighed hardly sixty pounds here on Mercury. With his arm over Roc's shoulders, they made a fair speed, passing beyond the lights of the camp, heading to the nearby brink where they could see over the valley.

  Fragments of information which Roc had picked up he now gave Jimmy. Dorrek was caught in the valley. His m."" and brues were dovm there clustered around the silver ba~ In all, they occupied a space of about a mile-wide circle, out in the center of the valley. There was no projector in either camp which could reach the other.

  On the heights of the lower canyon entrance, Grenfell's second camp was being established. There was no way for Dorrek's men and brues to get out of the valley without passing through one of these two narrow gorges, both of which Grenfell's projectors now dominated.

  Across the dark rocky distance, in the direction of the Light Country, Jimmy thought he could distinguish the tiny lights of the other camp six miles away. Overhead a small group of girls winged off in that direction.

  "Look!" exclaimed Roc suddenly.

  They turned. Behind them, in the darkness a mile back on this upper plateau, was turmoil. Vague blurred sounds in the heavy, motionless night air. Tiny flashes of blue-green lightlittle beams leaping down, crossing with others leaping up. It lasted only a moment or two. The beams were extinguished; the sounds died. Jimmy learned afterward that a small group of armed girls, flying to investigate the surrounding country, had come upon a few of Dorrek's lurking men. And a brue. The men and the brue were killed, and three of the girls.

  Grenfell now established patrols for all this neighborhood.

  At intervals they passed overhead, flying low with their searchbeams sweeping the crags.

  It was a painfully long hobble for Jimmy, but at last he and Roc came to the brink of the cliff. In the center of the valley Dorrek had set up a ring of giant projectors, a mile in diameter, within which his army was enclosed. They were pointed directly upward, spreading beams of blue-green. At a
few hundred feet above the ground they crossed, mingled into a solid curtain of light, a circular, mile-wide upstanding funnel.

  It was queerly non-radiant, this barrage; inherently bluegreen, but it did not illumine the valley. The rocky floor, even close to where the projectors were set, was solid black. Nor did it radiate much heat. Within the beams of that thin, glowing curtain, the temperature must have been several thousand degrees centigradeforty times the boiling point of water perhaps. But twenty feet away, its heat could scarcely be felt.

  The effective height of this heat barrage was two miles, or less. The Cube could sail over it, drop a bomb, blow the Mercurian ball to bits.

  Jimmy's thoughts raced. At the base of the barrage curtain, where the spreading beams came from the projectors, there were triangular holes of unprotected darkness. Five hundred feet on the rocks, narrowing to the point where the beams met overhead. Into those triangular holes Grenfell could creepup to the silver ball. A vague glow of light seemed to disclose the round silver shape of the ball lying in the center of the encampment.

  Jimmy had conceived that Dorrek's barrage was immovable.

  The holes in it so easy to penetrate) But within a minute he saw that was not so. One of the projectors swung suddenly forward. Its beam swept the empty valley floor, almost reached the base of the cliff, darted sidewise, then upward and back to its former position. It made Jimmy shudder.

  Nothing living could have withstood the briefest touch of that faint lurid glow.

  GrenfelTs projector at the canyon mouth presently sent down an answering beam. Its source was along the clifftop not far from where Rooand Jimmy were crouching. Its range was something near a mile; it swept the nearby valley floor, dominated the exit, but could not reach Dorrek's projectors.

  After a moment it was extinguished.

  "The storm is coming," said Roc.

  "A black storm?"