“What good would that do?” Rhes snapped. “We crack the perimeter and they draw back — then counter-attack in force. How can we stand against their weapons?”
“We won’t have to. Their spaceport touches the perimeter, and I know the exact spot where the ship stands. That is the place where we will break through. There is no formal guard on the ship and only a few people in the area. We will capture the ship. Whether we can fly it or not is unimportant. Who controls the ship controls Pyrrus. Once there we threaten to destroy it if they don’t meet our terms. They have the choice of mass suicide or co-operation. I hope they have the brains to co-operate.”
His words shocked them into silence for an instant, then they surged into a wave of sound. There was no agreement, just excitement, and Rhes finally brought them to order.
“Quiet!” he shouted. “Wait until Jason finishes before you decide. We still haven’t heard how this proposed invasion is to be accomplished.”
“The plan I have depends on the talkers.” Jason said. “Is Naxa there?” He waited until the fur-wrapped man had pushed to the front. “I want to know more about the talkers, Naxa. I know you can speak to doryms and the dogs here — but what about the wild animals? Can you make them do what you want?”
“They’re animals… course we can talk t’them. Th’more talkers, th’more power. Make ‘em do just what we want.”
“Then the attack will work,” Jason said excitedly. “Could you get your talkers all on one side of the city — the opposite side from the spaceport — and stir the animals up? Make them attack the perimeter?”
“Could we!” Naxa shouted, carried away by the idea. “We’d bring in animals from all over, start th’biggest attack they ev’r saw!”
“Then that’s it. Your talkers will launch the attack on the far side of the perimeter. If you keep out of sight, the guards will have no idea that it is anything more than an animal attack. I’ve seen how they work. As an attack mounts they call for reserves inside the city and drain men away from the other parts of the perimeter. At the height of the battle, when they have all their forces committed across the city, I’ll lead the attack that will break through and capture the ship. That’s the plan and it’s going to work.”
Jason sat down then, half fell down, drained of strength. He lay and listened as the debate went back and forth, Rhes ordering it and keeping it going. Difficulties were raised and eliminated. No one could find a basic fault with the plan. There were plenty of flaws in it, things that might go wrong, but Jason didn’t mention them. These people wanted his idea to work and they were going to make it work.
It finally broke up and they moved away. Rhes came over to Jason.
“The basics are settled,” he said. “All here are in agreement. They are spreading the word by messenger to all the talkers. The talkers are the heart of the attack, and the more we have, the better it will go off. We don’t dare use the screens to call them, there is a good chance that the junkmen can intercept our messages. It will take five days before we are ready to go ahead.”
“I’ll need all of that time if I’m to be any good,” Jason said. “Now let’s get some rest.”
XXVI
“It’s a strange feeling,” Jason said. “I’ve never really seen the perimeter from this side before. Ugly is about the only word for it.”
He lay on his stomach next to Rhes, looking through a screen of leaves, downhill towards the perimeter. They were both wrapped in heavy furs, in spite of the midday heat, with thick leggings and leather gauntlets to protect their hands. The gravity and the heat were already making Jason dizzy, but he forced himself to ignore this.
Ahead, on the far side of a burnt corridor, stood the perimeter. A high wall, of varying height and texture, seemingly made of everything in the world. It was impossible to tell what it had originally been constructed of. Generations of attackers had bruised, broken, and undermined it. Repairs had been quickly made, patches thrust roughly into place and fixed there. Crude masonry crumbled and gave way to a rat’s nest of woven timbers. This overlapped a length of pitted metal, large plates riveted together. Even this metal had been eaten through and bursting sandbags spilled out of a jagged hole. Over the surface of the wall detector wires and charged cables looped and hung. At odd intervals automatic flame-throwers thrust their nozzles over the wall above and swept the base of the wall clear of any life that might have come close.
“Those flame things can cause us trouble,” Rhes said. “That one covers the area where you want to break in.”
“It’ll be no problem,” Jason assured him. “It may look like it is firing a random pattern, but it’s really not. It varies a simple sweep just enough to fool an animal, but was never meant to keep men out. Look for yourself. It fires at regularly repeated two, four, three and one minute intervals.”
They crawled back to the hollow where Naxa and the others waited for them. There were only thirty men in the party. What they had to do could only be done with a fast, light force. Their strongest weapon was surprise. Once that was gone their other weapons wouldn’t hold out for seconds against the city guns. Everyone looked uncomfortable in the fur and leather wrappings, and some of the men had loosened them to cool off.
“Wrap up,” Jason ordered. “None of you have been this close to the perimeter before and you don’t understand how deadly it is here. Naxa is keeping the larger animals away and you all can handle the smaller ones. That isn’t the danger. Every thorn is poisoned, and even the blades of grass carry a deadly sting. Watch out for insects of any kind and once we start moving breathe only through the wet cloths.”
“He’s right,” Naxa snorted. “N’ver been closer’n this m’self. Death, death up by that wall. Do like ‘e says.”
***
They could only wait then, honing down already needle-sharp crossbow bolts, and glancing up at the slowly moving sun. Only Naxa didn’t share the unrest. He sat, eyes unfocused, feeling the movement of animal life in the jungle around them.
“On the way,” he said. “Biggest thing I ‘ver heard. Not a beast ‘tween here and the mountains, ain’t howlin’ ‘is lungs out, runnin’ towards the city.”
Jason was aware of part of it. A tension in the air and a wave of intensified anger and hatred. It would work, he knew, if they could only keep the attack confined to a small area. The talkers had seemed sure of it. They had stalked out quietly that morning, a thin line of ragged men, moving out in a mental sweep that would round up the Pyrran life and send it charging against the city.
“They hit!” Naxa said suddenly.
The men were on their feet now, staring in the direction of the city. Jason had felt the twist as the attack had been driven home, and knew that this was it. There was the sound of shots and a heavy booming far away. Thin streamers of smoke began to blow above the treetops.
“Let’s get into position,” Rhes said.
Around them the jungle howled with an echo of hatred. The half-sentient plants writhed and the air was thick with small flying things. Naxa sweated and mumbled as he turned back the animals that crashed towards them. By the time they reached the last screen of foliage before the burned-out area, they had lost four men. One had been stung by an insect, Jason got the medikit to him in time, but he was so sick he had to turn back. The other three were bitten or scratched and treatment came too late. Their swollen, twisted bodies were left behind on the trail.
“Dam’ beasts hurt m’head,” Naxa muttered. “When we go in?”
“Not yet,” Rhes said. “We wait for the signal.”
One of the men carried the radio. He sat it down carefully, then threw the aerial over a branch. The set was shielded so no radiation leaked out to give them away. It was turned on, but only a hiss of atmospheric static came from the speaker.
“We could have timed it — “ Rhes said.
“No we couldn’t,” Jason told him. “Not accurately. We want to hit that wall at the height of the attack, when our chances are best. Even
if they hear the message it won’t mean a thing to them inside. And a few minutes later it won’t matter.”
The sound from the speaker changed. A voice spoke a short sentence, then cut off.
“ Bring me three barrels of flour. ”
“Let’s go,” Rhes urged as he started forward.
“Wait,” Jason said, taking him by the arm. “I’m timing the flame-thrower. It’s due in… there !” A blast of fire sprayed the ground, then turned off. “We have four minutes to the next one — we hit the long period!”
***
They ran, stumbling in the soft ashes, tripping over charred bones and rusted metal. Two men grabbed Jason under the arm and half-carried him across the ground. It hadn’t been planned that way, but it saved precious seconds. They dropped him against the wall and he fumbled out the bombs he had made. The charges from Krannon’s gun, taken when he was killed, had been hooked together with a firing circuit. All the moves had been rehearsed carefully and they went smoothly now.
Jason had picked the metal wall as being the best spot to break in. It offered the most resistance to the native life, so the chances were it wouldn’t be reinforced with sandbags or fill, the way other parts of the wall were. If he was wrong, they were all dead.
The first men had slapped their wads of sticky congealed sap against the wall. Jason pressed the charges into them and they stuck, a roughly rectangular pattern as high as a man. While he did this the detonating wire was run out to its length and the raiders pressed back against the base of the wall. Jason stumbled through the ashes to the detonator, fell on it and pressed the switch at the same time.
Behind him a thundering bang shook the wall and red flame burst out. Rhes was the first one there, pulling at the twisted and smoking metal with his gloved hands. Others grabbed on and bent the jagged pieces aside. The hole was filled with smoke and nothing was visible through it. Jason dived into the opening, rolled on a heap of rubble and smacked into something solid. When he blinked the smoke from his eyes he looked around him.
He was inside the city.
The others poured through now, picking him up as they charged in so he wouldn’t be trampled underfoot. Someone spotted the spaceship and they ran that way.
A man ran around the corner of a building towards them. His Pyrran reflexes sent him springing into the safety of a doorway the same moment he saw the invaders. But they were Pyrrans, too. The man slumped slowly back onto the street, three metal bolts sticking out of his body. They ran on without stopping, running between the low storehouses. The ship stood ahead.
Someone had reached it ahead of them, they could see the outer hatch slowly grinding shut. A hail of bolts from the bows crashed into it with no effect.
“Keep going!” Jason shouted. “Get next to the hull before he reaches the guns.”
This time three men didn’t make it. The rest of them were under the belly of the ship when every gun let go at once. Most of them were aimed away from the ship, still the scream of shells and electric discharges was ear-shattering. The three men still in the open dissolved under the fire. Whoever was inside the ship had hit all the gun trips at once, both to knock out the attackers and summon aid. He would be on the screen now, calling for help. Their time was running out.
Jason reached up and tried to open the hatch, while the others watched. It was locked from the inside. One of the men brushed him aside and pulled at the inset handle. It broke off in his hand but the hatch remained closed.
The big guns had stopped now and they could hear again.
“Did anyone get the gun from that dead man?” he asked. “It would blow this thing open.”
“No,” Rhes said, “we didn’t stop.”
Before the words were out of his mouth two men were running back towards the buildings, angling away from each other. The ship’s guns roared again, a string of explosions cut across one man. Before they could change direction and find the other man he had reached the buildings.
He returned quickly, darting into the open to throw the gun to them. Before he could dive back to safety the shells caught him.
***
Jason grabbed up the gun as it skidded almost to his feet. They heard the sound of wide-open truck turbines screaming towards them as he blasted the lock. The mechanism sighed and the hatch sagged open. They were all through the air lock before the first truck appeared. Naxa stayed behind with the gun, to hold the lock until they could take the control room.
Everyone climbed faster than Jason, once he had pointed them the way, so the battle was over when he got there. The single city Pyrran looked like a pin-cushion. One of the techs had found the gun controls and was shooting wildly, the sheer quantity of his fire driving the trucks back.
“Someone get on the radio and tell the talkers to call the attack off,” Jason said. He found the communications screen and snapped it on. Kerk’s wide-eyed face stared at him from the screen.
“ You! ” Kerk said, breathing the word like a curse.
“Yes, it’s me,” Jason answered. He talked without looking up, while his hands were busy at the control board. “Listen to me, Kerk — and don’t doubt anything I say. I may not know how to fly one of these ships, but I do know how to blow them up. Do you hear that sound?” He flipped over a switch and the faraway whine of a pump droned faintly. “That’s the main fuel pump. If I let it run — which I won’t right now — it could quickly fill the drive chamber with raw fuel. Pour in so much that it would run out of the stern tubes. Then what do you think would happen to your one and only spacer if I pressed the firing button? I’m not asking you what would happen to me, since you don’t care — but you need this ship the way you need life itself.”
There was only silence in the cabin now, the men who had won the ship turned to face him. Kerk’s voice grated loudly through the room.
“What do you want, Jason — what are you trying to do? Why did you lead those animals in here…” His voice cracked and broke as anger choked him and spilled over.
“Watch your tongue, Kerk,” Jason said with soft menace. “These men you are talking about are the only ones on Pyrrus who have a spaceship. If you want them to share it with you, you had better learn to talk nicely. Now come over here at once — and bring Brucco and Meta.” Jason looked at the older man’s florid and swollen face and felt a measure of sympathy. “Don’t look so unhappy, it’s not the end of the world. In fact, it might be the beginning of one. And another thing, leave this channel open when you go. Have it hooked into every screen in the city so everyone can see what happens here. Make sure it’s taped too, for replay.”
Kerk started to say something, but changed his mind before he did. He left the screen, but the set stayed alive. Carrying the scene in the control room to the entire city.
XXVII
The fight was over. It had ended so quickly the fact hadn’t really sunk in yet. Rhes rubbed his hand against the gleaming metal of the control console, letting the reality of touch convince him. The other men milled about, looking out through the viewscreens or soaking in the mechanical strangeness of the room.
Jason was physically exhausted, but he couldn’t let it show. He opened the pilot’s medbox and dug through it until he found the stimulants. Three of the little gold pills washed the fatigue from his body, and he could think clearly again.
“Listen to me,” he shouted. “The fight’s not over yet. They’ll try anything to take this ship back and we have to be ready. I want one of the techs to go over these boards until he finds the lock controls. Make sure all the air locks and ports are sealed. Send men to check them if necessary. Turn on all the screens to scan in every direction, so no one can get near the ship. We’ll need a guard in the engine room, my control could be cut if they broke in there. And there had better be a room-by-room search of the ship, in case someone else is locked in with us.”
The men had something to do now and felt relieved. Rhes split them up into groups and set them to work. Jason stayed at the controls, his h
and next to the pump switch. The battle wasn’t over yet.
“There’s a truck coming,” Rhes called, “going slow.”
“Should I blast it?” the man at the gun controls asked.
“Hold your fire,” Jason said, “until we can see who it is. If it’s the people I sent for, let them through.”
As the truck came on slowly, the gunner tracked it with his sights. There was a driver and three passengers. Jason waited until he was positive who they were.
“Those are the ones,” he said. “Stop them at the lock, Rhes, make them come in one at a time. Take their guns as they enter, then strip them of all their equipment. There is no way of telling what could be a concealed weapon. Be specially careful of Brucco — he’s the thin one with a face like an ax edge — make sure you strip him clean. He’s a specialist in weapons and survival. And bring the driver too, we don’t want him reporting back about the broken air lock or the state of our guns.”
Waiting was hard. His hand stayed next to the pump switch, even though he knew he could never use it. Just as long as the others thought he would.
***
There were stampings and muttered curses in the corridor; the prisoners were pushed in. Jason had one look at their deadly expressions and clenched fists before he called to Rhes.
“Keep them against the wall and watch them. Bowmen keep your weapons up.” He looked at the people who had once been his friends and who now swam in hatred for him. Meta, Kerk, Brucco. The driver was Skop, the man Kerk had once appointed to guard him. He looked ready to explode now that the roles had been reversed.
“Pay close attention,” Jason said, “because your lives depend upon it. Keep your backs to the wall and don’t attempt to come any closer to me than you are now. If you do, you will be shot instantly. If we were alone, any one of you could undoubtedly reach me before I threw this switch. But we’re not. You have Pyrran reflexes and muscles — but so do the bowmen. Don’t gamble. Because it won’t be a gamble. It will be suicide. I’m telling you this for your own protection. So we can talk peacefully without one of you losing his temper and suddenly getting shot. There is no way out of this. You are going to be forced to listen to everything I say. You can’t escape or kill me. The war is over.”
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