_The Last Battle_
Dawn found the little band still struggling over the thick-forested
mountains in a desperate attempt to avoid detection. They were
footsore, weary, their clothes shredded by innumerable sharp thorns,
their eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. Overhead, the paling sky was
already dotted with the fliers of the Mercutians; faint sounds came to
them of the clumsy thrashing of enemy patrols as they beat the woods
for the fugitives. The Mercutians were putting forth all their
resources to seek out and destroy these irritant foci of revolt.
At length Hilary called a halt. They were in a little valley, not far
from Bear Mountain. It offered some protection from the searchers. The
enclosing hills would mask them, from all but search beams directly
overhead.
"It is no use going any farther," he said wearily. "We all need sleep
and rest. Sooner or later they'll find us, no matter where we go, and
then--" He shrugged his shoulders.
The weary, panting men threw themselves down upon the ground, too
tired even to eat. Immediately they were in a drugged sleep. Joan was
sleeping too, her face pale drawn, but like a little child's in her
slumber. Hilary watched her with a sharp pang in his heart. What would
the next few hours bring to her, to all of them?
Nor did Grim and Wat sleep either. The three of them squatted on their
heels, silent, as the cold dawn wind swept with a great sigh through
the valley.
The stars were paling now, the purple sky was enswathing itself in
pearly grays. Something glowed pinkly overhead; and was extinguished
almost immediately by the prevailing gray.
Hilary started violently. "Did you see that?"
"See what?" Grim was drunk for lack of sleep.
Hilary was on his feet, peering upward. "I thought I saw--there, there
it is again."
The other two were on their feet also, weariness forgotten, heads
thrown back.
High overhead, in the overturned cup of the sky, an irregular pink
wisp formed before their wondering eyes, and vanished again. But more
slowly, than the first time.
"Well?" asked Wat, puzzled.
"A cloud." Hilary's voice was a prayer.
"Hell," said Wat disgustedly. "If that's a cloud I'm a Mercutian.
There wouldn't be enough water there to moisten a canary seed."
"And even if there were it wouldn't matter now," said Grim calmly.
"We're discovered."
* * * * *
A long slim flier shot athwart the brightening sky, paused suddenly in
flight as though jerked by an invisible string. The next instant the
valley was illumined by a transparent glow. It enveloped the Earthmen,
made crystal figurines of the most solid among them. They seemed like
wraiths through which, as in a glass, more could be seen beyond. The
solid ground, the rocks, were transparencies floating in an ocean of
airy nothingness. A search beam!
The flier hung steady, high overhead, holding them in the dissolving
area of his beam. Too high to ray them but also too high for their
futile bullets. The Mercutians no longer underrated the fighting
abilities of their erstwhile slaves.
"He's sending out messages for help," observed Hilary.
"Let's take it on the run," Wat suggested.
"No good. Where could we run to that his beam couldn't follow?"
"Well, we can only die once," Wat observed cheerfully.
"And take as many Mercutians with us as we can," Grim amended. "That's
one lucky thing. Their rays have no greater range than our bullets."
"Except the diskoids," said Hilary. "Here's your chance, Wat, to play
with your rattle."
The red head, who had lugged the heavy machine gun all the way with
him, patted its snout affectionately. "It plays the devil's tattoo,"
he said.
More fliers materialized in the by now brighter blue of early morning.
The sun was just peeping over the serrated tops of the mountains. But
still they did not attack.
"Afraid of us," Wat chuckled. "Bet they'll send to Mercury for the
whole damn army before they come for us."
* * * * *
The first shock was over. With the inevitable staring them in the
face, the men had achieved something of a gay recklessness. Hilary
found some natural recessions under overhanging masses of rocks that
would afford protection from the searing power of the rays. To be
effective, the fliers would have to land in the valley or fly low,
thus exposing themselves to the raking fire of the Earthmen's weapons.
Hilary posted his little band skilfully underneath these natural
shelters in such a way that they would be able to command the bit of
sky from every angle.
The men jerked and fidgeted. The heavens darkened with massed fliers,
and still they came. The Mercutians were taking no chances.
"Plenty of guests at our funeral," Wat chuckled, sighting along the
barrel of his gun.
Hilary left the jesting to the others. He was watching the skies
intently.
Joan slipped her arm through his. "You see something that we don't.
What is it?"
He nodded with an intent frown. "There are clouds forming up there.
The first I've seen since I came back to this planet. Rain clouds,
too, if I know anything about it. Look."
Joan tilted her head backward. Thin scuds of vapor darted across the
sky, driven by the morning breeze; dissolved and reformed a little
farther on. Tenuous wisps, evanescent, wraithlike. The sun shone
steadily, unobscured.
"Those little things," said Joan unbelievingly. "Why, if that's all
you're depending on, we're finished."
"Nevertheless they are rain clouds. But _when_ the rain will come is
another matter. Very likely too late."
Grim came hurriedly over from his post near the entrance to the little
valley. His face was placid as ever, but his eyes were worried.
"We are being surrounded," he stated calmly.
* * * * *
Hilary sprang to his feet. "What do you mean?"
"Listen. Do you hear it?"
Far down the overgrown trail they had followed into the valley came
the noise of heavy stumbling feet, innumerable feet.
"They are taking no chances," said Grim, his countenance unchanged.
Hilary looked swiftly around. The valley was a cul-de-sac, surrounded
on three sides of its narrow oblong by precipitous hills. From the
fourth side, the Mercutians were coming--an army, from the sound of
them. Overhead were a hundred fliers, and more coming. The trap was
sprung!
Hilary's voice rang out. "All men without guns down the valley to
repel invaders. Those with guns remain at your positions; watch the
fliers. Wat Tyler in command."
With a joyous cry the Earthmen started for the narrow mouth of the
valley, all without guns. Gone was the helpless feeling of before; now
they could fight too. Axes, spades, pitchforks, sticks and stones
even, were their weapons.
Hilary thrust his automatic into Joan's hand. "You use it, dear. I
won't need it. Come on, Grim."
Morgan smiled slowly, handed over his dynol pistol without a word to a
weaponless man and stalked after his leader. His great hand clutched
and unclutched unconsciously. This was what he wanted, hand-to-hand
fighting.
* * * * *
By the time they reached the foot of the valley, the noise of the
oncoming Mercutians sounded like the rumbling of thunder. Secure in
their numbers there was no thought of concealment.
The Earthmen were pitifully few, only thirty of them, and wretchedly
armed. Hilary disposed of them up the slope of the hill on either
side, set them to loosening jutting boulders. He was in command on one
slope. Grim on the other.
In a minute the Mercutians would be upon them. A simultaneous attack,
no doubt; the fliers dropping low to loose their deadly rays from
above as the land force attacked with their hardly less deadly hand
rays.
Hilary shot a last hasty glance aloft. His heart gave a great bound.
The thin insubstantial vapors of a little before had solidified, taken
on a grosser leaden hue. The sky was a sullen gray, shot through
intermittently with the broad flares of a sun valiantly struggling to
reassert its long undisputed sway. Little flickers of lightning played
around the ragged edges of the clouds.
To the most unobservant it was evident now that a storm was in the
making. But might it not be too late? The sun still shone, and as long
as its light pierced through, the weapons of the Mercutians held all
their deadly potency.
The alien invaders sensed the urgent necessity for quick action, for
the fliers were dropping now, hundreds of them, to within range.
Hilary heard the shouted orders of the Mercutians Cors, the crashing
forward of a mighty host, and then the front of the attack burst out
of the trees in an engulfing flood of gigantic unwieldy bodies and
gray warty faces.
A quick view of the stout ungainly Viceroy, Artok, another of the
coldly saturnine visage of Urga in the front rank, and with a roar of
gutturals, the attack was on.
* * * * *
Down from above came a myriad blinding flashes, turning the inclosed
valley into an inferno of heat and rocking, boiling, shattered ground.
Up the valley shot the massed hand rays of the hundreds as they swept
along in close-packed trot.
It seemed as if nothing could exist in that blazing, screaming hell.
Hilary, stunned, shaken, scorched, felt as if he were the only one
alive. Yet as the front of the attack washed up before him, he did not
hesitate. He sprang to his feet, swung the nicely hefted long-handled
ax he had picked up, uttered a war whoop that went back to remote
ancestors, and flung himself headlong into the boiling mass of
Mercutians.
As he did so, he caught a fleeting, comforting glimpse of Grim rising
to his full height on the other slope, huge hands raised, and crashing
down barehanded, silent, into the ranks of the enemy. A cheer went up,
a faint ragged cheer, and other figures popped up out of nowhere and
dropped feet first into the fray.
Hilary found himself engulfed in a welter of figures that towered
heads above him. His ax swung up and down, bit into something soft and
yielding. The Mercutian screamed horribly; blood spouted from his
wide-split shoulder. He fell stumbling to his knees, and Hilary
stepped into the little open space. That gave him more elbow room. A
furious towering monster swung his tube around in the press. Hilary
ducked as the sizzling ray sped over his head. There were howls of
pain as the spreading beam cut a burning swath through the packed
Mercutians.
Thereafter no more tubes were raised. The quarters were too close. It
was to be hand-to-hand fighting; thousands of giant Mercutians against
a handful of puny Earthmen.
* * * * *
Hilary swung his red-dripping ax in ever-widening circles. At every
swing a Mercutian tumbled. A little space opened around him, literally
hewn out of living flesh. But with strange fierce cries he threw
himself again and again into the wall of bodies. There and there only
was salvation possible where the sun-tubes could not be used.
Far over to one side he caught glimpses of bodies in violent
upheavings, bodies that thrust explosively to either side as from the
sharp prow of an invisible ship. Then a great figure heaved staggering
into view, bloody, gashed, great arms encircling Mercutian heads,
smashing them together like eggshells, flinging them apart, seizing
others. Grim Morgan, berserk with bare hands.
Here and there in his own travail Hilary sighted little foci of
struggle, Earthmen with ax and pitchfork and spade battling valiantly
in a sea of Mercutians. A swirl, an eddy, and all too often a sudden
surge and flowing of gray warty faces, and smooth rippleless heads
where an Earthman had gone down, trampled into pulp.
Hilary's first rush with swinging flashing ax had caught the
Mercutians unawares. They had relied upon their sun-tubes, and in the
melee succeeded only in inflicting frightful havoc on their own kind.
Now, however, they came for Hilary in a solid mass, huge
three-fingered hands flailing, seeking to thrust him down by sheer
weight of numbers. He swung and swung again, the ax bit deep, but
still they came. His arm grew weary from so much slaughter, it rose
more and more slowly, and then it rose no more. The bloody ax was
wrenched from his nerveless fingers, and he was down, smothered by
innumerable trampling bodies. Over him the tide swirled smooth. Heavy
feet kicked and battered at his body, hands reached down to pluck and
rip at him.
* * * * *
Feebly he tried to fend them off, but the shodden hoofs smashed him
down again, gouged at his unprotected face. He struggled, but soon he
would not struggle any more.
From afar came to his dimming ears below, a huge shout that shook the
ground. Feet pounded him down into semi-unconsciousness; there was a
mighty shuffling to and fro over him, and then the feet were gone. A
huge well-remembered hand, caught him, heaved him upright. It was
Grim. His face was a wreck, battered out of all semblance, but those
blue mild eyes were flaming with an unholy light.
Hilary tottered, and the giant shook him.
"Wake up," he bawled; "they're coming again."
With a great effort Hilary cleared his numbed brain, saw the
resurgence of the temporarily beaten herd. His fists clenched
automatically.
"Good boy," Grim whooped. "Let's get them."
Then they were engulfed, fighting back to back. Hilary seemed to be
fighting in a dream. He never had a clear conception of what happened.
Faces thrust themselves into his own, furious, contorted; his fist
went out mechanically, thudded against something soft, and the face
disappeared. Hands reached plucking for him; he thrust them off, and
swung left and right again.
Once he looked dully upward. The sky was gray slate now, festooned
with bellying black. No sign of the sun; not the least ray could
pierce. The fliers hung aimless overhead, no sparkle to their hulls.
The valley was dark too; the terrible rays had ceased raking it with
an inferno of heat.
* * * * *
Just before he lowered his upflung face to smash his fist into another
face, something wet blobbed on his forehead. A raindrop? Perhaps, but
he was too far gone to care now. Life was an endless series of howling
Mercutians to thrust fists into.
A cheer rose high, punctured by quick sharp explosions of sound. Guns.
Those few remaining of the fighting Earthmen farther up the valley, no
longer menaced by the futile fliers, had come down to help their
weaponless brethren. Wat's voice was shrill in the land, yelling,
exhorting, screaming. A familiar _rat-a-tat-a-tat_ came down the
wind. The submachine gun was spitting steel-jacketed death. Where was
Joan? Hilary wondered wearily.
A face towered over him, a face he knew. Urga. The Mercutian was no
longer impassive; his gray countenance was distorted with hideous
hate. "I'll break you in two," he mouthed, and lunged for Hilary.
The Earthman came out of his daze at the sight of the other. Strength
seemed to flow back into his weary body. His fist came up, clean with
all the power that was left in him. It went home with a
soul-satisfying crunch. Urga's gray gash of a mouth seemed to smear
slowly over the rest of his face. A wild animal scream burst from him
as he sagged. Then a swirl of other Mercutians anxious to get at the
Earthman eddied him out of view.
Hilary felt better. Now he could die content. Even with their guns,
what could a handful of Earthmen do against the resistless,
ever-coming tide of Mercutians, thousands of them?
* * * * *
It was raining now, slowly at first, large scattered drops, then
heavier and heavier, until the fogged air was a driving sheet of
water.
What of it?--thought Hilary bitterly as he fought and slipped and
stumbled in the slimy, bloody muck that was now the ground. The
Mercutians' weapons were useless, but they did not need them any more.
Sheer numbers would overwhelm the Earthmen.
Then to his amazement something happened. The heavens, long outraged
by the artificial repression of the weather machine, kicked over all
traces and opened their sluices in earnest. The sky was one vast
waterfall. The elements roared and rocked; the valley was knee deep
already in a spate of waters.
Hilary splashed and waded after his enemies. But they were going. They
staggered and trembled in every shaking limb, heedless now of the
Earthmen. They slipped and fell into the flood, and stayed there,
motionless under the waters. Like Pharaoh's army they were being
drowned before the amazed Earthmen's very eyes.
On their own planet it never rained; there was no water except for
carefully hoarded underground lakes. This first taste of real Earth
weather was too much for them. They could not withstand the driving
rain, the water swirling round their knees. All the strength went out
of their shaggy frames, their knees buckled and down they went,
helpless, destroyed by a natural phenomenon to which they were
unaccustomed. They had actually been smothered by the humidity!
Hilary's voice was strong again. With great shouts, he rallied his
men. A pitiful handful; only fifteen of the fifty that had entered the
valley. But Joan was alive, her face black with burned skin, otherwise
unhurt. Wat's grin rose superior to a mask of raw flesh, and Grim,
bleeding from a hundred wounds, was still a tower of strength.
* * * * *
It was a strange sight as they stood almost waist deep in the flood,
the storm beating down upon them, hundreds and hundreds of bodies
floating, bumping against them.
"We must clinch our victory, men," Hilary shouted above the roar of
the elements. "We must go to arouse the Earth, sweep the Mercutians
into the oceans while the storm lasts, or all our work will go for
naught."
A great cheer went up from the little band, and without resting,
without food or sleep, they waded their way out of the valley, into
civilization once more, carrying their message, arousing the peoples,
gathering to themselves like a tiny snowball rolling down a
mountainside, a huge swelling army of jubilant Earthmen, Earthwomen,
too, moving in resistless flood down upon New York.
The rest is history. Like a torrent they swept down upon the cowed,
weakened Mercutians. Those that did not escape in the great diskoids
back to their own torrid, waterless planet were searched out, torn to
pieces by the infuriated Earth peoples.
For five days and five nights the storm raged, all over the world. The
floodgates were opened; outraged nature was taking her revenge. For
five days and five nights the sun was hidden behind bucketing gray
skies. And for five days and five nights, Americans, English, Chinese,
Zulus, Australians, Russians, Bushmen, Argentinians, animated by a
common purpose, rose gleefully and smote the invaders. When the sun
finally peeped once more from behind the thick blanket of clouds, not
a Mercutian remained. Few had escaped; the rest would never see
Mercury again.
"We've won," Joan sighed happily, after it was all over, and was able
to nestle once more comfortably in Hilary's arms. "Thanks to you."
"You forget Grim Morgan and Wat Tyler, dear."
"Ye-es, they helped, too," she admitted grudgingly; "but without you,
what could they have done?"
Hilary started to protest, but over her crown of shining hair, he saw
Grim and Wat watching him, grinning like two monkeys. Wat's thumb was
raised to his nose in an immemorial gesture.
"You're right," said Hilary defiantly. "What could they have done?"
* * * * *