Jahnt was choking now with the blood in his throat. Then he gasped,
"No--his men said they--could not handle it--so close to the
ground--such a--short distance. They are on foot--in the forest--"
Venta was with us now, bending down over the dying Jahnt. His glazing
eyes saw her, and he murmured, "You--if you had loved me--this would
not have happened. I'm dying--you'll all die when--Curtmann uses those
weapons against you. I'm--glad of that--"
His body twitched. Horribly the blood rattled in his throat, choking
him; and then in another moment he was gone.
"They're half way to the Forest City," Jim muttered. "Good Lord, we've
got to stop them. But how? How can we do it, Art?"
Venta was standing apart from us, with the tiny Meeta on her shoulder.
They were murmuring together, and abruptly Meeta flew to me.
"She says it is right and it can be done. We Midges--serve the Gods,
and surely now we know the good Gods from the evil."
* * * * *
An army of the Little People! Jim and I stood blankly listening while
Venta told us what she and Meeta had been planning. A myriad of Midges
could be rallied now. And they had human intelligence.... Only a foot
high, or less. But, especially the females, they could fly with the
agility of humming birds.
"And we can be armed," Meeta cried. She hummed away, came back in a
moment. In her tiny hand there was a thorn. It was no more than two
inches long, but to her it was a sword, stiff and sharp as a needle.
"The poisoned enta-thorn!" Venta exclaimed. "But I did not know that
any of the enta-shrub was near here."
"I found it," Meeta said proudly. "There is much of it."
"What's that noise?" Jim abruptly demanded.
With my nerves taut, I stood tense. A faint thrumming was audible. We
had left the cave where the weapons had been hidden, and were out in
the broken amphitheatre with the ruined ancient buildings like spectres
around us. Far overhead there was a little starlight, straggling
faintly down. The thrumming grew louder. A tiny blurred shape came down
through the darkness.... And then another--and another.
The Midges were arriving from Shan, expecting to carry the
Venus-weapons from here to the Forest City. In a moment a dozen were
here, then a hundred. They came in little groups, males and females,
keeping separate in the flight. Like huge insects they thrummed around
us, and then settled and stood awaiting our commands. Then Meeta was
among them, telling what had happened and explaining that they must
fight for the lives of the Forest City people.
For a moment there was awed silence; then a tiny blended chorus of
voices, and little shapes humming away to get the thorns.
Jim gripped me. "By the Lord, it's our only chance! You can see that,
Art."
"Yes. You and I in the spacesuits, if we can maneuver them. An army in
the air--the Midges and you and I to plan their battle--direct them."
"And I shall be with you," Venta cried.
Vaguely I had thought to leave her here, or send her off to the Forest
City on foot. She persuaded me at last.
"You talk of planning the battle," she cried. "But almost none of the
Midges speak your language. I shall give your commands to them."
Once we had decided, a desperate haste was on us. Midges were arriving
here now from the Forest City. Some of them had seen the oncoming
columns of Curtmann's men, down in the forest. They were more than half
way from Shan. Occasionally their Earth-flash weapons would stab into
the forest ahead of them.
Within ten minutes or so we were ready. I had sent a few of the
swiftest-flying Midges back to the Forest City to tell Prytan what had
happened. His young men were to arm themselves as best they could,
and take position. In a ring around the city, prepared to make a last
stand, if we should fail. All the Midges now in the Forest City were
to arm themselves with the poisoned thorns, and come to join us in the
battle as fast as they could.
Then Venta, Jim and I had donned the spacesuits. No need to inflate
them now; we only needed the anti-gravity mechanisms, and the
rocket-streams for balancing and for lateral movement.
We rose presently into the air, up into the starlight with the ruined
piles of the broken buildings and the forest dropping away beneath
us. At five hundred feet we poised. In thrumming groups the Midges,
more than two thousand of them now, circled around us. Then, with Jim,
Venta and me leading, our bodies in the baggy spacesuits poised almost
horizontal in the air and the Midges strung out in long thin lines like
insects behind us, we plunged forward to the battle.
V
"There they are!" Jim called.
Five hundred feet below us the forest tree-tops were a fantastic matted
mass of vivid vegetation. And suddenly, down in a glade, the line of
Curtmann's men was visible. More than I had thought--there seemed a
full four hundred of them. In two columns they plodded slowly forward.
With them was a great wheeled cart, like a clumsy barge. Evidently
Curtmann had built it in Shan. It toiled forward, with the marching
men in advance of it and behind it. We could see that it was drawn by
harnessed lines of Midges--hundreds of the tiny figures plodding on
the ground, bending hunched as they pulled the huge creaking vehicle.
The top of the cart was uncovered and a dozen men were riding in it.
Groups of them were seated, around a little raised platform on which
was mounted what seemed a huge projector.
"Keep the Midges high," I called to Venta who was near me. "Wait until
I give the signal."
Our Midges were circling, wildly excited now that the enemy was in
sight beneath them. Jim and I had discussed our tactics. In groups
of about a hundred we would send the Midges plummeting down. Each
would try to stab one of Curtmann's men and then come up again. The
enta-poison, Venta had told us, was deadly--sure death if enough of it
got into the blood-stream. But it did not act at once; five minutes or
more was necessary before the victim would feel its lethal effect.
We made a great sweeping half-circle, plunging down as though to attack
and leveling at above two hundred feet. As we passed over the lines of
watching men and the cart, two or three bolts stabbed up, fell short.
Then a man's voice roared orders to withhold the fire.
Curtmann. As we passed at the lower altitude over the cart I saw him
standing on a raised platform near its front. We swept past, and up
again.
"We better swoop now," Jim urged. "This is as good a place to attack as
any we'll ever get."
That was obvious. The lines of men were in an open glade. A few hundred
feet ahead of them, the forest was dense again. It would be far more
difficult for our Midges to swoop down and attack amid the enveloping
lacery of vegetation.
And Curtmann, even though probably he had not as yet the least fear
of us, already was starting to advance again. The men in front were
marching on. Orders were being roared at the harnessed Midges. The cart
went into motion. And the Forest City certainly was no more than a few
miles ahead. Curtmann's murderous band would be there in an hour or two.
But still I hesitated to give the signal.
Little Meeta hovered before me. "The Master-God will order us down
now?" she pleaded. "We will serve you well."
My heart was pounding. I nodded, with a lump in my throat that choked
my voice as I shouted the signal sending so many of them to die.
* * * * *
A designated quarter of them swooped down. From up at this height,
Venta, Jim and I hovered, with the rest of the Midges in a gathered
group around us. All of us staring down.
The cloud of some five hundred Midges swooped, circled, and then
plummeted. For a second or two the startled Curtmann men merely seemed
to stare upward. Then the Midges were upon them, fluttering into their
faces, jabbing at them. The men's arms wildly failed to fend off the
viciously attacking little bodies.
Some of the Midges were caught, bashed into pulp and hurled away with
a single flailing blow. Some were caught in huge hands, squeezed to
death and flung to the ground. The oaths of the startled men came up,
mingled with the cries of the Midges, then the tiny fluttering shapes
were rising again. A shot stabbed at them, its crackling bolt stabbing
through a group of them. It was like a monstrous blow-torch stabbing
into fluttering moths. It left a trail of wisps of light as their
bodies were consumed.
The rest of them came up and joined us, panting, flopping.
"Good enough," Jim murmured. "Five minutes more and we'll see what
really happened."
But I was cold inside. No more than half the Midges had come back. Two
hundred or more of them gone already. And here in the air, some of
them, wounded, were bravely struggling not to fall.
The men and the huge cart down in the glade had started forward again.
Suddenly it was apparent that the harnessed lines of Midges on the
ground were in revolt. They milled in confusion, struggling to cast off
the lines that held them. We heard Curtmann roaring threats at them.
And then he fired a bolt horizontally through them. It cut a ghastly
swath; a burst of trailing little wisps of fire. Beside me, Venta
gasped in horror; and Jim murmured,
"Fool! With what's left of those Midges that heavy cart will never move
again."
The cart had stopped. Curtmann, doubtless regretting his shot of
exasperation, was roaring more orders. The straggling columns of his
men came toward the cart, and all of them bunched around it in a solid
group, out there in the center of the open glade.
"Got them stalled," Jim said grimly. "Much better for us."
If the poison would work. But would it? At three hundred feet we were
still circling in great humming sweeps while again I withheld my
signal. Did I dare send the Midges down for a general attack? Every
shot cut them so horribly into nothingness. Off to the side, in the
direction of the Forest City, other Midges were appearing now. Little
groups of them, males and females, humming toward us, joining our
circling ranks. Reinforcements. In a minute or two it seemed that a new
thousand were here to swell our weird little army.
"Look!" Jim suddenly cried triumphantly. "The enta-poison!"
Up to now, in these tentative exchanges, Curtmann and his men doubtless
had contemptuously figured that this engagement was harassing, but
certainly nothing worse. Some of his men had been stabbed by little
thorns. What of it? But down there now a new confusion was apparent.
One of his men on the ground beside the cart suddenly staggered and
fell. Then another. In the cart a group of them called with startled
questions. Two of them by the big projector abruptly slumped in their
seats with their fellows bending anxiously over them.
A moment of startled confusion. A dozen stricken men. And then others.
What was happening must have dawned on Curtmann. In the starlit dimness
down there on the cart we saw the blob of his figure leap erect.
And then Curtmann, at last realizing the deadliness of this menace,
went into action! From the cart there was a little puff, with the
hissing, popping sound of it coming up to us a few seconds later. A
small round blob rose toward us, went harmlessly through us and burst
up in the starlight. An electrolite-flare. It glared with a lurid,
prismatic splash of color in the sky, illumined brightly the tiny
flying dots of our Midges.
Just that few seconds and then the great projector hurled its missile
at us--a blob coming slowly up in an arc. The blob burst. It seemed as
though suddenly there was an earthquake in the air-split columns of
air rushing together with a deafening thunderclap. The air rocked me,
hurled me sidewise; the brief roar was deafening.
"A thunder-thrower!" Venta gasped as she clung to me.
In the cataclysm of air the cloud of Midges was hurled into chaos,
their bodies knocked together, whirling end over end, some of them
dropping with broken wings.
Just a few seconds, and now the blue-white starlit night had been
transformed into a chaos of glaring light and roaring, clapping sound.
Flares were bursting everywhere; the cracking thunderclaps came one
upon the other in a chaos of prismatic horror. Curtmann's hand-flashes
were stabbing recklessly up through it. One of longer range burned a
wide swath with the bodies of Midges bursting into a myriad pin-points
of light.
In the rocking turmoil I heard Jim shouting, "Good God, we can't stay
up here!"
* * * * *
Half our Midges already were gone! Everywhere little broken dots were
drifting or falling down.
"Down!" I shouted. "Venta--Meeta--tell them! Everyone down. Don't come
back up--everyone for himself, now!"
[Illustration: _Downward plunged the weird armada._]
In the roaring chaos of pyrotechnic glare what was left of our Midges
swooped to the attack. With the rocket-streams at last righting my
whirling body, head down I plummeted. The glare from above revealed
Curtmann's men far more plainly now. Everywhere the men were
staggering. In the cart some of them had fallen, but others were still
erect, frantically working the projectors and stabbing with the hand
heat-flashes. Our Midges were among them now, desperate fluttering
little figures, stabbing at their faces. On the ground some of the
staggering men were trying to get into the forest underbrush. I
plummeted toward a group of them.
I hit the ground in the midst of a staggering group, with a thump that
all but knocked the breath from me. Two of the men staggered at me. I
was unarmed. My fist knocked one down, and I gripped the other as he
half fell upon me. He was still clutching his flash-gun. I seized it,
knocked him away and rose again into the roaring tumult of the air.
"Art! You got a gun? So did I."
Jim was here with me; side by side we rose. I saw the cart directly
underneath me. His figure painted lurid, the desperate Curtmann was
still erect. Almost the last one now. And I saw that he was struggling
with a projector which had not yet been in use. A tiny figure flapped
against my face. Little Meeta. She gripped my shoulder, clung, and her
tiny voice gasped in my ear.
"That weapon Curtmann has--the big molecule-melter--very
long-range--the Forest City."
With a burst of numbing horror I understood it. This projector would
cut the forest and the ground into a leprous molten swath, out to the
Forest City itself.
I plummeted down, with Meeta still clinging desperately to my neck.
Curtmann saw me coming. With a wild oath he dropped the projector and
fired at me with a hand-flash. It missed. There was just a second
when I leveled off, heading horizontally at him. The glare was on
his sweat-bathed face, contorted with his lust; but I saw a look of
despairing terror there as my flash drilled him and he fell as I
swooped close over him.
We rose at last, high into the starlight. So pitifully few of us,
gathering in a little broken, circling group. Beneath us now there
was only a lurid red-yellow fire-pit of molten bubbling rocks where
the forest glade had been. Then the heavy turgid smoke and gas-fumes
settled upon it like a shroud.
Almost silently we struggled back through the starlight to the Forest
City. Jim and Venta and little Meeta were here with me, but our little
Midges were struggling to keep aloft. Dozens of them were clustering
upon Jim and Venta and me. Their tiny, gasping voices were horrible.
And we were the victors! It came to me then that surely whatever has
been said and written of the futility of human killing, can never
adequately picture it.
* * * * *
I think that is all I need recount. You have all heard how we returned
to Earth, and the stir that my news brought. I should have been
considered a charlatan perhaps, with my wild tale. But there was the
spaceship; and Jim, Venta, and little Meeta. Scientists have inspected
Venta now. It was an ordeal. But mostly they have been interested in
Meeta.
That is passed. There are others on Venus like Venta, and others
like our little Midge. We are living now on Earth, with Jim near us.
Certainly neither here, nor on Venus, do we want any turmoil.
With Jim for my friend, and the adoration of little Meeta who thinks me
in very truth, a God--and the love of my dear wife--certainly I am a
mortal very singularly blessed.