When he turned away, he saw the stranger standing not far off, beneath
a great stone promontory that thrust out into the sea of sand, his back
to a deep black cleft in the rock. Torcred could see his face clearly
this time, and this time it was unsmiling, the brows drawn together
and lips compressed in an expression of anxiety. The stranger beckoned
with a jerky urgency, half-turned, and pointed toward the crevice of
the cliff.
Torcred took a step toward him, his anger boiling up dangerously, blood
drumming in his ears. "What are you?" he shouted. "What do you want?
You've dogged my steps, watched me, and applauded my downfall. Now
what--"
The stranger's eyes shifted, and he moved his head as if listening to
a voice that Torcred did not hear. His eyes widened with alarm, and he
vanished like a blown-out flame.
Torcred blinked baffledly. The hand on the hilt of his knife relaxed,
but the roaring in his ears grew louder. Almost it might be real....
He threw back his head and looked up. Far above, individually almost
indistinguishable in the pale twilight sky but making it alive with
their massed formations, V after V of black flying shapes were moving.
The air throbbed with the vibrant roar of many engines.
The leading squadrons were already over the mountain when the first
dart of flame leaped from it and climbed with a whistling rush to meet
them. Others followed, the clatter of their guns mingling with the
multiple crescendo shriek of the first sticks of falling bombs.
Torcred crouched involuntarily, bracing himself for the concussions
that must shake earth and air.... But only dull thudding sounds
rolled down from the mesa, as if the rain of projectiles fell without
exploding.
Over the mountain two buzzards dropped out of formation and wobbled
earthward, trailing smoke down the sky, and a third burst into bright
flame and disintegrated in a meteoric shower. New formations still came
droning out of the north--the buzzards were attacking in force. Their
bombs kept landing with sullen thumps, almost inaudible under the roar
of motors, the sputter of guns and the flat reports of aerial cannon.
But to Torcred, hugging the lee of a great boulder and trying with
straining eyes to pierce the darkness that increasingly shrouded the
mesa, those dull incessant impacts became an ominous sound. Ladna had
gone up there--she had had plenty of time to reach safety in the buried
heart of the eyrie, which even the mightiest explosives could scarcely
touch--but without knowing why, Torcred edged out of his shelter and
began once more, creeping from rock to rock, to clamber up the steep
ravine that the two of them had ascended together.
He had not progressed far--in the dark the uncertain footing was
dangerous--when the breeze, sighing down the canyon with cool
mountain-top air for the hot plain, brought confirmation of his fear
with it.
A whiff of strange odor that stung in his nostrils and tickled his
windpipe harshly. Then his eyes began to smart as it grew rapidly
stronger; the gas the buzzards had used to blanket the mesa was a
dense one, designed to seek out the aero people in the depths of their
underground fortress.
Torcred halted, blinking, struggling with the growing need to cough. He
recognized the odor after a moment--the same poison that the machines
called skunks used against their enemies. He knew that enough of it was
deadly. And a cold hand of terror clutched at his heart.
* * * * *
He flung caution from him and started to scramble recklessly,
planlessly upward. Denser clouds of gas met him, and, half-blinded,
he stumbled against sharp rocks and almost fell when fits of coughing
shook him. His chest became a rasping furnace, and each deep panting
breath was a flame. Bitterly he knew that his will could not drive him
much longer into that torment....
In the air something flew burning, and the light of its destruction
fell bright as day into the canyon and threw shifting shadows.
Torcred's tear-filled eyes blurred the glare, but he glimpsed a small
dark-clad figure huddled on the rocks not ten feet from him, across a
black crevice that might be five or fifty feet deep.
He crouched and sprang; weakened knees betrayed him, he landed clawing
on the rounded lip of the chasm and barely managed to pull himself up
to the girl's side. But new strength steeled him as he gathered his
feet under him and dragged both her and himself erect.
Ladna was alive and conscious; she leaned against him, coughing weakly.
"I was coming back," she gasped in his ear. "I'd have been up there ...
but I was coming back ... to you...."