uneasy feeling. He got to hisfeet and picked up his gear. "The sounds could be deceiving. We mightas well get moving. It isn't going to get much cooler beforenightfall."
* * * * *
An hour later they were hotly engaged with a large force of Rumi. Rumiarmed for the first time with heavier weapons, mortar-like guns thathurled pods of smothering dust that caused almost instantstrangulation. Rumi who attacked suddenly, giving them time only todrop to the ground and set up the Bannings and machine guns beforethree hundred howling fiends came charging through the grass at a deadrun, firing as they came.
O'Mara was behind a machine gun and Fielding and Polasky each had aBanning in action. They met the Rumi charge with a withering hail oflead and fire. The Narakans lying as flat as their huge chests wouldallow them were firing as fast as the automatic rifles would fire. TheBannings swept the line of charging figures. As the beams paused for amoment, the charge would take effect and a ball of fire wouldmushroom skyward, leaving a dozen seared cat bodies on the ground.Terrence swept his machine gun along in a swath behind the Bannings,picking off what they left. Some dozen catmen made it to within tenyards of their front but sprawled still or lay kicking briefly until aGreenback put another bullet into him.
The Rumi were gone, withdrawing to the west and Terrence was yellingand cursing at his men to keep them from breaking ranks and followingthem. Three Riflemen and O'Toole were dead and Sergeant Polasky wascoughing out his life beside his Banning with a spring gun bolt in hisstomach.
"Those damn cats!" he was muttering when O'Mara reached him, "thosedamn cats. We showed 'em, didn't we, Lieutenant? That Banning's a goodgun if you...."
They buried the Greenbacks in eight foot graves and the Earthman in aseven foot one. "Those dirty, lousy, stinking...." Bill Fielding wasbeating his fist into the palm of his hand. "We got one of them alivethis time, Terrence. Hannigan knows a little of their lingo. His oldman escaped from one of their breeding pens on the other side of theMuddy. He's working him over."
In the twenty odd years that Terrans and Rumi had occupied differenthalves of the same planet, the number of men who had learned the Rumilanguage wouldn't have filled a small room. So Terrence was surprisedat Bill's information and hurried toward the place where theinterrogation was taking place. Before he got there, he heard apiercing cat cry which ended in a gurgle and when he reached the groupof Greenbacks, Hannigan was wiping his bayonet on the grass. He stoodlooking down at a Rumi officer whose throat was neatly slit from furryear to furry ear. Then fists clenched on his hips, he confronted hismen.
"I don't suppose it ever occurred to you bunch of dimwits that wemight have gotten some information out of this guy. He might havetalked, you know."
"He talk," grinned Hannigan, "he talk plenty. He feared we might hurthim. We tell him no hurt if he talk.... Ha!"
"He say big flyship down, Mr. Lieutenant," said O'Shaughnessy.
"What? What do you mean?" demanded O'Mara.
"Flyship ... _Sun Maid_ crash in storm.... Rumi find."
"Good God! The _Sun Maid_!" Terrence gasped, "That storm the firstnight!"
"They surround and attack Terrans. These ones on way to join attackwhen meet us," O'Shaughnessy went on.
"He tell where ship down," Hannigan said, "it near bend in Big Muddy ...place I know. Ten, twenty mile back."
The Greenbacks were watching the Terrans, fingering their bayonetseagerly and hugging their rifles. Terrence had the impression thatthey were beginning to like their jobs. He turned to Bill Fielding,"Well, Bill, it looks like we came about twenty miles too far."
Bill grinned, "Yep, I guess so. Come on, soldiers, fall in. We gotwork to do back here a piece."
A two hour's forced march with the sun beating down and the sound offiring growing closer. Only a column of Greenbacks could have done itand only a crazy Irishman would have asked them to. They came up overa rise and looked down a gentle slope toward the brown twisting snakethat was the Big Muddy. On its banks lay the broken shape of theairship and swarming across a burned circle around it were Rumi,thousands of them. The firing had slackened in the last few minutesand now they could see why. The Rumi were assaulting and were at closegrips with the ring of defending Terrans.
"Now?" questioned O'Shaughnessy, "we fix bayonets now?"
"Yes," replied Terrence, "now we fix bayonets."
At his word three hundred big clumsy hands reached for three hundredbayonets and fixed them to three hundred rifles.
"O'Shea, take O'Toole's squad and stand by up here with the Bannings.O'Shaughnessy, take the left flank. Bill, you take the right. Let'sgo!"
There wasn't a sound out of the Rifles as they started down the hill,none of their usual croakings and bellowings, just silence and theheavy thud of their feet. The Rumi had seen them. Many of those inthe rear of the attack were swinging about to face them. Spring gunbolts began to whiz in their direction. One or two Narakans fell. Theywere closer to the struggle now, closer to the tightly packed Rumi andthe hand to hand struggle about the _Sun Maid_.
Terrence was firing, throwing lead into the gray-bodied mass ahead ofhim but his men were just thundering along with their little blackeyes fixed on their old oppressors, bayonets leveled in front of themin approved training school method. They resembled nothing so much asa regiment of tanks hurtling at an enemy. The momentum of their chargecarried them half way through the Rumi ranks, the terrific force ofthe plunging amphibians bowling over the lighter catmen.
Bayonets, clubbed rifle and heavy webbed fist fought against claw,teeth and knife. There was almost no firing, almost no sound save forthe cries of the Rumi and an occasional cheer from the Terrans.
Terrence emptied his Tommy gun, hurled it in the face of a Rumi andreached for his knife and automatic. A Rumi knocked him off his feetwith the butt end of a spring gun but before he could do more,Hannigan stepped over his lieutenant and plunged his bayonet into thecatman. The Irishman scrambled to his feet amidst the gray furrybodies, thrust his .45 into a snarling face and pulled the trigger.The face disappeared but another took its place and he fired again. ARumi with a knife grabbed at him from behind and he raised his pistolagain but the cat was already down with a bayonet between hisshoulders.
The Greenbacks were yelling now, lifting those great voices of theirsin full throated bullfrog croaks. The Rumi, trapped and desperate,were scattering and trying to flee down river. O'Mara stumbled over abarricade of rocks and boxes and almost got a Terran slug in himbefore he realized that they had cut their way through to the brokenship. He was up in a minute and urging his men on after the scatteringenemy. Twenty or thirty of them tried to make a stand around a tallRumi officer but O'Shaughnessy at the head of a wedge of Narakansswept into them at a full run.
Their bayonets flashed for a few seconds and then flashed no more, thesteel was covered with blood. A few hundred Rumi made it to the riverunder a hail of fire from O'Shea and his squad on the hill. Hardlypausing to consider their cat-like aversion to water, most of themplunged in and struck out for the other shore. The rest were cut downon the bank by onrushing Greenbacks. Terrence grabbed hold of one ofhis buglers and then had to practically beat the man over the head toget him to sound Recall.
Bill Fielding picked his way among the bodies and came toward Terrenceholding his left arm. O'Shaughnessy was leaping up and down and wavinghis fist across the river.
"Things different now! All different now! One Greenback better thanfour, five, eight Rumi!"
"At least that many," Terrence said under his breath before he roaredat O'Shaughnessy, "Fall the men in on the double now! We're going tomarch back to the _Sun Maid_ in proper military style."
There was a blowing of sergeant's whistles, the shouting of corporals,and the Narakan Rifles slowly formed ranks. Some were missing andothers were limping and holding wounds but they stepped out smartly asthe column headed back up the river. Every rifle was at the correctslope, every man was in step as they marched through the makeshiftbarricade and pa
st where Chapelle was standing. The drum and buglecorps struck up _The Wearing of the Green_ just as O'Mara shouted,"_Eyes Right!_" and every eye swung right in perfect unison. Atattered and weary Chapelle brought a surprised hand up to salute andthe Narakan Rifles came to a snappy halt.
A small, black haired figure threw itself at Terrence and his armswere again holding Joan Allen. "I knew you'd come," she said, "only abig, crazy Irishman like you could do it."
He kissed her and then pressed his mud-caked face against hers as hesaid into her ear. "Only three hundred big, crazy Irishmen, baby.There's not a drop of anything else in me boys."
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