"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.