The flagship-spaceboat slanted into the moon's atmosphere with a whoop
and a holler, blazed across the ragged surface, and lowered outside the
great dome of Ganymede City. The clumsy hulks behind her wallowed after
at a more leisurely pace.
Lacking spacesuits, the amazons were faced with a certain problem of
entry. Dyann hovered over the spaceport and opened her disintegrators
full blast. The port disappeared in a sudden tornado of boiling rock
and leaping blue fires. When she had sunk a fifty-foot pit, she went
down into it, hung before the side of it facing the city, and narrowed
the dis-beam to a drill. In moments she had cut a tunnel through to the
lower levels of the city.
Air began streaming out, ghost-white with freezing water vapor, but
it would take quite a few minutes for the pressure within to fall
dangerously low. Meanwhile Dyann sailed blithely through her tunnel,
disintegrated various walls and bulkheads to clear a landing space, and
set down amid the ruins of the city's factory level.
"All out!" she cried. "Hai, Kathantuma!"
Ray buckled on his helmet with shaking fingers, drew his sword, and
followed her out the airlock, more because of the press of bodies
behind than from any desire for glory. In fact, he admitted to himself,
he was scared witless. Only Urushkidan stayed behind--the lucky devil.
The rest of the barbarian fleet streamed in one by one, landing
clumsily and discharging their clamorous hordes. When the clear
area was filled, they landed on top of each other and the armored
warriors jumped down in a flash of edged metal. After they were all
in, Urushkidan projected a beam and melted the passageway shut against
the escape of air and heat. Also, thought Ray sickly, against a quick
retreat.
"Hoo, hah!" Dyann's sword shrieked in the air above the helmeted heads
of her milling army. She started down the nearest corridor, running
and bounding and whooping. The amazons were hard on her heels, and the
racket of clashing armor and girlish voices was shattering.
Up a long staircase, five steps at a time, into the hall beyond that,
spilling out over a broad plaza--
A machine gun raved and Ray saw three Centaurians tumble to the floor.
As he dove for it himself, he looked across the square and into the
muzzle of the thing where it sat in one of the branch corridors.
There might be only a skeleton garrison left in the city but it had
reacted with terrifying swiftness. Ray tried to dig through the metal
floorplates.
The air was suddenly thick and whistling. A solid rain of spears and
arrows loosed. It didn't leave much of the machine gun crew. One of
the amazon officers--they had some notion of firearms--picked up
the .50-caliber under one arm. When a squad of Jovian soldiers appeared
down the hallway, she held it against her knee and used it tommy-gun
style. It worked.
Ray was carried along by the tide. In this weird struggle, modern
firearms weren't of decisive use. Boiling through the miles of
gloomy hallways and narrow apartments, the fight was almost entirely
hand-to-hand, and that was exactly what the Varannians loved.
Dyann vaulted over a row of bodies and hit a Jovian squad with all
her mass and momentum. She trampled two men underfoot while her sword
howled in a shearing arc around her. A Jovian grenadier hurled his
pineapple in her direction. She snatched it out of the air and tossed
it back. Wildly, he caught it and threw it again. Dyann laughed and
pitched it once more--very shortly before it went off. Turning, she
skewered one Jovian, kicked another in the belly, used her sword's
guard as a knuckle-duster against a third, and cut down a fourth in
almost the same motion. The squad broke up.
Ray saw an inviting door and scurried for it. There was a bed to
hide under. Two Jovian soldiers came in at that moment, fleeing the
barbarians.
Ray's helmet and cuirass were as good as a uniform, or he would have
shouted "Hail, Wilder!" As it was, the nearest man lunged at him with a
bayonet. Ray's sword clattered against the weapon, driving it briefly
aside. The Jovian snarled and probed inward, but a bayonet is clumsy
compared to a well-handled blade and Ray had done a little fencing. He
beat the assault back and thrust under the fellow's guard.
The other man had been circling, trying to get in on the fun. Now
he charged. Ray whirled to meet him and tripped on his scabbard. He
clanged to the floor and the rushing Jovian tripped on him. Ray got on
the man's back, pulled off his helmet, and beat his head against the
floor.
Rising, he checked the two rifles. Empty--the Jovians must have used
all their clips in an attempt to stem the Centaurian thrust, which
explained their choice of cold steel against him. But they had full
cartridge belts. Ray reloaded one of the guns and felt better.
Peering carefully out the door, he saw that the fight had moved
somewhere else. He started back toward the ships, the safest place he
could think of.
* * * * *
As he rounded a corner a tommy-gun blast nearly took his head off. He
yelled, dropped to the floor just in time, and let the gun fall from
his hands.