Jonnie fired a round with the assassin gun. It was silent. The bush he aimed at began to burn. He gave the light gun to Pattie and took the belt gun back.
“Let me shoot him now,” said Pattie.
Thor said to Terl, in Psychlo, “The little girl over there is begging to shoot you.”
“I’ll be quiet here,” said Terl.
“Don’t go near him. Light a fire from that wreck over here to the side, Chrissie, so that Thor stays warm and you can see this area.” He turned to Thor. “Who was with you?”
“Glencannon,” said Thor. “He’s over there in the hills somewhere. I think he tried to get closer to the base. I tried to reach him on this mine radio twice. He’s got one but he doesn’t answer. They’ve only a five-mile range.” He looked curious. “Where are you going?”
At that moment there was an explosion flash at the compound. A battle plane had come out of the hangar and apparently been hit with a bazooka. It soared in a flame ball and crashed at the sound of the bazooka and then the plane explosion reached them. A second battle plane came out and met the same fate.
“See?” said Jonnie. “I’ll send back a mine car for you.” Be calm. At two thousand miles an hour you can catch that drone.
The girls looked numbly at Jonnie.
But what could he do? He had meant to send them to the Academy base, but Thor was in no shape to travel at all. Why not kill Terl? No, that would solve nothing. Sound calm to these people. The speed of the drone was 302 miles an hour, he remembered from the messages he had taken from the hand of a president a thousand years dead. A battle plane could go hypersonic at two thousand miles an hour. Even if it were halfway to Scotland, he could catch it hours before it arrived.
He swung up on Dancer. The base was about twenty miles away. Make it in an hour or so of hard riding.
“We can still make a deal, animal,” said Terl. “If you sent uranium to Psychlo, you’re really messed up. It’s been tried before. They have a force field around their receipt platform and if any uranium flashes on Psychlo, that force field triggers solid to enclose their whole platform. The flashback occurs at the sending point just like you saw today. Psychlo will be attacking this place, animal. You’ll need me to mediate.”
Jonnie looked at him. He raised his hand in farewell to the girls and Thor and thumped a heel into Dancer, and she streaked off through the declining sunlight.
Ahead of him pulsed and flickered the battle at the compound. He had wasted time. He could not have done anything else. Be calm, he told himself. Don’t panic. A battle plane could catch that drone.
As he raced across the plain, he put out of his mind a thought that kept crowding in. Not all the armed forces of the United States in its days of power had been able to do anything at all to that gas drone. Not with planes, missiles, atomic bombs, or even suicide crashes.
You have time. You can catch up with it. Don’t panic.
Part 13
1
One thing at a time, Jonnie told himself. Do each thing properly. Each one as it comes up and each one in its turn. He had read that in a book from the man-library. He had been looking for cures for radiation and he found some. And he’d also found a book about how to handle confusion. It came from too many things at once. And that was certainly happening now! The drone, the possibility of a Psychlo counterattack, the outcome of the compound battle still in question. No reports yet of the attacks on other minesites. One could easily get confused, make a mistake, even panic. Stay calm. One thing at a time.
Dancer had been racing flat-out southward. That was not the right thing to do. He could founder her. He began to alternate a trot with a run. She was breathing better. The light was failing. Something as silly as a tripped horse could wreck everything. Trot, run, trot, run. Twenty miles. They would make it.
He had a mine radio in his pocket, small by Psychlo standards. At ten miles he began to call Glencannon, Thor’s pilot. Jonnie spoke into the mike as he rode.
At about eleven miles, Glencannon’s voice came back. “Is that you, MacTyler?” The voice sounded a bit weak.
“Can you see a running horse from where you are?” said Jonnie.
There was a long pause. Then, “Yes, you’re about three miles northeast of me. You got Terl?”
“Yes, but he’s all tied up at the moment.”
There was a silence and then a short, barking laugh. Some of the tension had gone out of Glencannon’s voice when he spoke next: “What was he after up there?”
Long story. No time now. Just be calm. Jonnie said aloud, “The girls are safe. Thor is hurt but all right.”
A sigh of relief at the other end.
“Can you still pilot a plane?” said Jonnie.
Pause. “My ribs are a bit caved in and I have a twisted ankle. That’s what’s taking so long getting back to the compound. But yes, MacTyler, of course I can still pilot a plane.”
“Keep traveling toward the compound. Have a light ready to flash. I’ll send a mine car for you. They’ll need air cover.”
“I have a light. I’m sorry about the air cover.”
“It was my fault,” said Jonnie. “Good luck.”
Dancer alternately trotted and ran. Keep calm. Things were not hopeless. They had a fighting chance. There were bright spots. They had agreed not to blow up the whole compound. The historian wanted the library, Angus wanted the machine shops. They evidently hadn’t sent any radioactive bullets into the domes. Except for the drone and its escort, they still apparently had air control.
At five and a half miles, he began calling Robert the Fox at the compound, hoping somebody was monitoring the mine radio. The schoolmaster answered; Jonnie was surprised, for there were several classified as noncombatants: the parson, the old women, the historian and the schoolmaster. Jonnie shortly heard a relieved Robert the Fox.
“The girls are safe,” said Jonnie. There was a pause at the other end as Robert the Fox apparently passed the word along. When the mike opened next from that end, Jonnie heard some cheering in the background. The news was evidently popular.
“We’re holding out here,” said Robert the Fox. “I have to talk to you about something when you get here, but not on this open line.”
Dancer skirted a clump of trees. It was getting pretty dark.
“Those apes can’t talk English,” said Jonnie.
“No matter, still can’t talk about it. When will you be here?”
“About fifteen minutes,” said Jonnie.
“Come in through the ravine to the north. There’s a lot of heavy return fire near the compound.”
“Right,” said Jonnie. “Are the planes okay?”
“We pulled them back to better cover in the ravine. We don’t have pilots.”
“I know. Listen now. Have somebody put the following items in one plane: warm clothing, a robe, mittens for me, something to eat; some plain, nonradioactive limpet mines; an assault rifle, an air mask with plenty of air bottles—I’ll be flying at one hundred fifty thousand feet.”
There was a silence at the other end and Jonnie prompted: “Got that?”
“Yes,” said Robert the Fox. “It will be done.” He certainly didn’t sound very eager.
“Send out a couple of mine cars,” said Jonnie. He gave the locations. “Better send a man or two to help bring in Terl.”
“Terl?” said Robert the Fox.
“It’s the naked truth,” said Jonnie. “Get that plane ready. I’ll be taking off just as soon as I arrive.”
A silence. Then, “Will do.” He went off the air.
About five minutes later, a mine car passed him going north in the twilight. It was the parson, one of the old women and a Scot with his arm in a sling. The parson raised his hand in a benediction—no, it was a salute! They were off to get Thor and the girls and Terl. A great length of hoist chain was flying out behind the mine car. Jonnie glanced back. The old woman was carrying a blast rifle.
The sound of the fire exchange was getting loud.
The spray of the fire system was shooting two hundred feet in the air. Under it winked the blue green of blast rifles. The stuttering orange flashes of assault weapons were plainer in the floodlights that were on all over the compound.
Jonnie sped Dancer down into the opening of the ravine and pulled to a halt beside the two remaining planes. Streaks of blast rifle shots laced the sky above their heads. The horse was blowing heavily, covered with lather, but not foundered. One thing at a time, Jonnie told himself. You can catch the drone.
2
Robert the Fox had his old cape thrown over his antiradiation battle dress. His grizzled hair was singed on one side. His face was composed but there was a hint of concern. He grabbed Jonnie’s wrist and gave it a hearty shake of welcome.
Jonnie looked at the singed hair. “How are casualties?”
“Light,” said Robert the Fox. “Surprisingly light. They don’t want to show themselves to us. It impeded their aim. And it’s like fighting in a rainstorm. Look, you’re not wearing antiradiation—”
“That water is washing radiation away as fast as you fire it in,” said Jonnie. “I have something to do. There’s no breathe-gas in that drone. I don’t need radiation cover.”
“Jonnie, can’t that drone wait until the minesites have been flattened? It will take the drone up to eighteen hours to get where it’s going overseas. We tracked it on the search equipment of this plane. Which is to say, we tracked the escort. The drone has wave cancellers.”
Jonnie opened the plane door. It was all ready. There was bread and meat on the seat. An old woman popped up beside him and handed him a cup of steaming herb tea that smelled suspiciously of whiskey. When he looked at her, questioning her presence in this battle zone, she said, “They can’t eat bullets!” and laughed a cackling laugh.
Robert’s hand was detaining him. “We still have radio silence successfully in.” They had agreed to give the remote minesite attack pilots twelve hours of radio silence to let them finish off the outlying areas with total surprise if possible. “That’s more than they need. We can shorten it and they can converge on that drone—”
“It’s headed for Scotland,” said Jonnie. “That’s its first stop.”
“I know.”
Jonnie finished off the hot drink and started to climb into the plane.
The detaining hand again. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you.” When Jonnie had stopped to listen, he continued, “We may not have hit Psychlo.”
“I know,” said Jonnie.
“That means that we may need all the planes and equipment we can get here. They’re in hangars under us. We don’t have men enough to take the place by assault and we mustn’t destroy it.”
“You can work this out with Glencannon. You’ll have a pilot in half an hour or so. You can bash it in from the air.” He made to get into the plane and again Robert’s hand was on his sleeve.
“We had a funny thing happen, just before sunset,” said Robert. “A tank surrendered!”
Jonnie stepped back onto the ground. He might as well spend this time getting into the warm clothing needed at high altitudes and he proceeded to do so. “Go on.”
Robert took a deep breath, but before he went on a runner came up to tell him the historian had delivered a new load of ammunition from the Academy. Robert told him to see it was passed out. The blast fire needles continued to lash overhead in the now quite dark night.
“The tank is a ‘Bash Our Way to Glory.’ It’s down there at the other end of the ravine. Oh, don’t be alarmed. It’s in our hands. It came out of the garage port and came right straight toward us. We hit it with bazookas and they didn’t even dent it. But it didn’t fire back. It went right straight down to the end of the ravine there and threw out an intercom through an atmosphere lock and said it wanted to talk to the ‘Hockner leader.’ It wanted a guarantee of safety in return for cooperation.”
Jonnie was getting into the warm boots. “Well, go on.”
“It’s a kind of weird scene,” continued Robert. “When they got a safety guarantee they came out of the tank. They said they were the Chamco brothers. We got interrogation going. They said they knew Terl had sold out. It seems there was a mine manager named Char, a friend of theirs, who turned up missing at the firing. Well, this Char told the Chamco brothers that there’d been a murder. That Terl had murdered the head of the planet so he could appoint a new Planet Head named Ker. And that Ker, this afternoon, had denied them ammunition for the tank. The Chamcos claim Terl and Ker have sold out to some race called the ‘Hockners of Duraleb’ and even launched the drone to wipe out the other minesites.”
“I suppose it’s mostly correct,” said Jonnie. “Except the parts about the Hockners and the drone. The Psychlos have a lot of enemies, but according to their histories they defeated the Hockners a couple of hundred years ago. Listen, Sir Robert, in all due respect, I’ve got to be going!”
“There’s more,” said Robert the Fox. “They haven’t got tank and plane fuel in there, and we’ve cut down four sorties of theirs to get to the fuel and ammunition dump way over there. But they have plenty of blast rifle ammunition. We don’t have men enough for an assault—”
“What else?” said Jonnie. “Sounds like good news, not bad.”
“Well, it’s not all good news. It seems there’s sixteen levels of compound under us. Each level stretches for acres. Quarters, shops, garages, hangars, offices, workrooms, libraries, supply warehouses—”
“I didn’t know it was that much, but that’s not bad news either.”
“Wait. If that thing were to be hit with radiation this whole assault force would be blown to bits. We’re fighting on a loaded bomb. We must save those planes and equipment if we have to defend Earth. And we need them for reconstruction if we really did blow up Psychlo.”
“You’ll have air support shortly,” said Jonnie. “You can withdraw—”
“Well, the Chamco brothers say they know what will happen in there. That we’ll flood the place with air! They said they know how ‘us Hockners’ took the Duraleb system back. They say there aren’t enough breathe-gas masks and vials but the recirculating system has plenty. These Chamco brothers are design and maintenance engineers. They promised to help us if we paid them. They say the whole planet has been on half-pay and no bonuses. And they don’t want to be killed in an ‘air flood’ as they called it.”
Jonnie had on the warm clothing and was finishing a sandwich of oat bread and dried venison. “Sir Robert, as soon as you get air support you can plan something—”
“The Chamco brothers told us the breathe-gas recirculating system was exterior to the base and air-cooled, and they were tricked into admitting all one had to do was shoot up the intake pipes from the cooling system and the pumps would fill the whole compound with air.”
“You got it all solved,” said Jonnie.
“Yes, but we need the intakes shot up at long range from the air.”
“That shouldn’t take long. As soon as Glencannon gets here—”
“Well, I think you ought to do it,” said Robert. “It’s not very dangerous and if you fire from about a half-mile off—”
“I can do that as I take off.”
“But you should come back down here to verify—”
Suddenly Jonnie knew what Robert was up to. Robert the Fox was going to wait until all planes could converge on that drone. And that was taking a chance. The planes to other minesites might be in trouble themselves. “Sir Robert, are you trying to keep me from making a single-handed attack on that drone?”
The veteran spread his hands. “Jonnie, laddie, you’ve done too much already to get yourself killed now!” His eyes were pleading.
Jonnie swung up into the plane.
“Then I’m coming with you!” said Robert the Fox.
“You’re going to stay right here and direct this assault!”
A mine car ricocheted into the end of the ravine and came to a halt. The driver grabbed an assault rifle an
d ran up to the lines to get back into the battle. Glencannon stepped down and limped over to them.
“Damn!” said Robert the Fox.
“What’s the matter?” said Glencannon, a bit taken aback with the greeting. “I’m all right. If somebody will tape up my ribs and put something around this ankle, I can fly.”
Robert the Fox put an arm around Glencannon’s shoulder. “It was something else,” he said. “I’m glad you got back alive. We’ve got a job for you. A lot of them, in fact. The snipers on the old Chinko quarters—”
“Goodbye, Sir Robert,” Jonnie said and closed the door.
“Good luck,” said Robert sadly. He knew Jonnie would suicide-crash the drone if everything else failed. He didn’t expect to see him again. Then he turned and began to issue orders to two waiting runners. He had a little trouble seeing them.
Jonnie sent the plane soaring out of the ravine, too fast to be spotted and hit, and was on his way to attempt something the combined military powers of Earth had failed to do. And on his way to do it all alone.
Waiting until the drone was—what, five hours?—from Scotland was cutting it a bit close. If attacks on it did succeed they might blow gas canisters, and a freak wind could wipe out Scotland and Sweden as well. There was much to be said for attack in force. But even that guaranteed no success. And no one had ever tried a head-on smash at the drone with a Psychlo battle plane traveling at maximum with all guns blazing at the moment of collision. As a last resort, that would destroy almost anything. He hadn’t said anything about it to Sir Robert. Surely, the old man hadn’t guessed it.
3
Dunneldeen was a very happy man. The Cornwall compound of the British Isles was dead ahead, lit up like the onetime cities must have been.
They had drawn straws for Cornwall. This was the minesite that sent out hunting parties and made it death for Scots to go south. The Psychlos at this place, over the centuries, had gunned down people beyond count just for sport on their days off. There was even a tale of a raiding party captured and tied to trees and shot tiny bit by tiny bit and man by man for eighteen agonizing days. And many tales like it.