The workers were inadequately armed. A few revolvers and little ammo.
Lead pipes and with things that looked like weapons but were actually
odds and ends of tools they'd snatched up when they'd heard the battle
start. They were armed with guts, but it wasn't enough.
They swept across the field, dropping and struggling up, bulling ahead
to come to grips with an enemy they didn't understand, couldn't fathom.
Perhaps a score of them survived the tommyguns, got in amongst the
Neanderthals. I saw one big fellow grab two ape-necks and smash the
brutish skulls together, and even thirty feet off I could hear the bone
splinter. When that man went down writhing I was as shocked as though
he'd been my brother.
Where _was_ Howard, anyway?
No one was watching me. I stepped swiftly backward, turned and ran for
the satellite. There was no hiding place there worth a damn. I stood
against its gleaming silver side towering high above my head. I saw
the end of the fight; even had my chance to take a small crack at the
devils myself. A workman was brawling with a carbine as Old One came up
behind him lifting him over his head and bringing his body down across
an uplifted knee. There was a hoarse scream and then a loud crack as
the man's back snapped. I lifted my automatic and shot the creature
through the heart.
I looked for Skagarach then, and for my cousin, but they weren't in
sight. I shoulder holstered my gun. The last worker now had been
dropped and the Old Companions came toward the great wheel and me.
There were--I counted, automatically and hopefully--there were some
fifty or more on their feet. Bill Cuff strode ahead of the horde,
untouched and grinning wolfishly. And there was the ugly figure of
Skagarach beside him.
I tackled Cuff immediately. "Skagarach says I can't have a gun, but I
sure could have used one just now," I said, hoping he hadn't seen me
firing the gun now, safely out of sight under my shirt.
Bill looked wickedly at Skagarach. Then he pulled a revolver from his
belt and stuck it out to me. "Take it, you earned it."
Skagarach smirked; but his gray eyes flashed sullen hate at the big
man, and I hoped anew that I could split them and make a rebellion in
the ranks of the Neanderthals.
"I am second leader now," said Skagarach loudly, "as Old One is dead. I
should have a voice in decisions such as that," and he gestured toward
the gun I held. "However, I think Ray has earned it, too. Now let's
get to business. We have to let the other musters know at once, so the
three-stage rockets will come to Odo as fast as possible," he said,
lifting his voice until it was a hoarse bellow. "Everyone quiet. This
is a distance job, and difficult."
Bill Cuff watched him impatiently as the fox-face crinkled into furrows
of thought. Then he said to me, not bothering to lower his voice, "You
might think they'd have radioed for help, or that the scientists would
be doing that now. Well, we've got hand-jammers on the LCPs that have
been working since we touched the coast." Hand-jammers, invented only
this year, tiny boxes that could jam radio, phone, television, in fact
any method of communication from one spot to another. Odo was therefore
isolated!
"Won't silence be suspicious?" I asked him. "Don't you suppose they'll
begin to wonder, over on the mainland?"
"Hell, no. Too dangerous to keep up steady communications to a place
that's supposed to be as dead secret as this hunk of rock. You can bet
only emergencies would make 'em radio from here." He laughed. "You see,
we laid our plans well."
* * * * *
I had just thought of something, something big. I blurted it out before
I'd more than recognized it as a possibility. "Here, Bill, for God's
sake, how do we know this thing is ready to leave the earth?" I pointed
to the metal moon. "How do we know it won't just come apart when we try
to lift it?"
"There again," said Cuff, as Skagarach gave him a dirty look and
obviously tried to concentrate, "we haven't just presumed, or taken our
chances. We've been watching the three-stage rockets--and for two days
they've been ready to go in an instant's notice. And two of our fellows
reported that they had stand-by orders; they're on the rocket crews,"
he added smugly.
Skagarach said, "I've established contact with Milo. Now will you clamp
your goddam jaws shut!"
Bill Cuff nearly hit him. I caught Bill's eye and gave a grin, as one
who would say, Let the jerk strut, _you_ can handle him later. Then,
Bill turning away, I winked at Skagarach. Both ends had to be played
against the middle fast and furious in this game.
"All right," said Skagarach finally. "Milo will keep touch while they
make their moves, and so will Summers from post three. Now we have to
get into this thing."
Cuff, overbearingly, shouted orders; and the Old Companions scattered
to look for the entrance. A strange thing happened then, a weird thing
to watch. Two of them remained standing before us as the others left.
Cuff shouted at them. They did not move. Skagarach shook them by a
shoulder each, and they collapsed without a sound. They had died on
their feet, of wounds sustained in the fight. I was glad to see two
more gone and at the same time I felt a chill at the tenacity of such a
race.
A cry announced that the door had been found. We three ran over. There
was a portable ramp running up to the sleek side. A door like that in
a commercial plane showed its outline above the incline. Eagerly Cuff
and several others leaped upward. And now they hit their first real
unexpected obstruction, for the door could not possibly be opened from
the outside. Not without TNT. It had been closed from within and it
stared blindly at the Old Companions and in a moment they began to
snarl and curse.
I turned away from them so that they wouldn't see my face, which I
knew must be hopeful; and across the brilliant field toward us I saw
a man and a woman approaching. The man, or rather brute, was the
gray-eyed Trutch. The girl was my wife Nessa, and she was walking as
though she were in pain.