"Funny. I kissed him the second time pretending he was you."
"That make it feel any better?" He was grinning in spite of himself.
"Not much." She smiled. "Are you going to kiss me or not?"
"I guess so, if you really want me to."
"I really want you to."
It took a while. He couldn"t figure out how to hold his mouth. When their lips met, his lips were pressed tightly together, and when he felt the soft warmth of her lips, something lurched inside him.
"Just relax a little," Cindy said.
He relaxed his lips a bit and tasted sweet moisture and felt his heart pick up a few counts in beat, and then for the first time he closed his eyes and thought about what he was doing. His eyes popped open, and he said, "Wow, Cindy!" "Wow," she echoed.
"Clay?" There was an urgency in the admiral"s voice that jerked him to his feet, laser in hand. Both attack groups were in the open now, moving toward them silently. The eastern group had been reinforced by over thirty members.
"Open fire when they get in range," the admiral ordered. "Shift quickly from group to group. You have the greater firepower. I"ll have to pick my shots carefully."
"Cindy, you get down and stay down!" Clay yelled. He saw her smile, felt a new sense of responsibility toward her, vowed that he"d tear five million stickmen apart with his bare hands before he"d let one of them touch her.
"Stand ready, Clay," the admiral said as the attackers broke into a silent, rapid run.
Mandy heard screams of agony. She lifted her head slowly. Her mouth was full of sand. She spat and raised one hand to wipe dirt from her left eye. She felt bruised, but not broken. She tried to move her legs, and they worked. She remembered the sound of the spear plunging into Rocky"s neck with all the force and gravity behind it, then felt a dull ache in her stomach. The laser pistol was lying a few feet in front of her. She crawled to it, seized it. The screams were still ringing terribly inside her head, and she turned to look back toward the caravan to see stickmen hacking at a woman who, even as Mandy watched, fell bloodily.
She started crawling, staying as deep in the gra.s.s as she could, pulling herself along on her stomach.
There were no more screams. Once she raised her head to look. The stickmen were plundering the unburned crawlers. Clothing, household items, all sorts of things were being tossed to the gra.s.s and trampled by the victors. She crawled, reached an old miner trap, and paused to rest. Ahead of her was nothing but open veld, and any enemy flyer would see her. She began to dig, using the b.u.t.t of the laser, and in a while she had dug through the sod into the cavity below ground. She enlarged the hole, trying to keep the gra.s.s sod in as near one circular piece as possible. When she had the hole large enough, she lowered herself into it, stood on the platform that surrounded the miners circular burrow, and pulled the sod to cover the hole she"d dug.
Her left knee began to let her know that it had taken a severe b.u.mp as she was thrown out of the crawler. Only a bit of light came in through her imperfectly concealed entrance hole. She shuddered, thinking of a miner suddenly appearing there.
Once she heard strange, high-pitched sounds, the voices of the flyers, and a party of them walked quite near, avoiding the trap. It seemed that she waited forever until she no longer heard the squabbling, high-pitched voices of the horde of stickmen who were looting the crawlers.
Mandy gave it what she estimated to be another hour. Then she stuck her head out of the hole, could see only the surrounding gra.s.s, and pulled herself out, her knee quite stiff now. She raised her head carefully and saw only devastation. The dead lay as they had fallen, all around the caravan. One crawler still smoked and smoldered. She turned and looked back toward Hamilton, and in the far distance she could see motes in the sky, a fleet of the airships, and they were moving in the direction of the city.
Hamilton City had to be warned. She started to run toward the tilted crawler nearest her but fell as the knee gave way and had to hop, then crawl the rest of the way, only to see Rocky hanging over thewindscreen, his eyes open and glazed in death. She choked back a quick urge to vomit, or scream, or both. She crawled to the vehicle and pulled herself up. The hydrogen engine had cut itself off automatically. The ready lights still glowed on the electronic equipment. She flipped the transmitter switch.
"Hamilton control, Hamilton control," she said, and waited for a reply. When it didn"t come she tried again, and again.
"What"s happening, Ito?" Rodrick asked via communicator as he ran from the meeting house.
"Explosions and fire from the direction of that expedition headed south, sir," Ito responded. He gave the bearing and the distance.
Rodrick wanted to ask, "What expedition?" but he was not ready to confess ignorance, not until he found out what the h.e.l.l was going on.
"Any scout, " Rodrick called up. "Any scout."
"Cap"n, Jacob West, " came a reply.
"Status?"
"Cranking up, sir," Jacob said.
"Armed readiness," Rodrick replied, still running for theSpirit of America . "Coordinates-" He gave the location of the smoke and fire to the south.
"Airborne, " Jacob said.
Four more scouts were airborne before Rodrick pounded onto the bridge, panting from his run.
"Jack Purdy"s on, " Ito said.
"Yeah, Jack," Rodrick said.
"Cap"n, I"m hovering over a dead campfire at-" He gave the position. "Crawler tracks headed south.
I"m following."
"We"re at Red One, Jack," Rodrick said. "Possible attack."
"I"ve had my ears on," Jack said.
"Apache Oneto control."
"Go, Jacob."
"You"re being closed by a fleet of the d.a.m.nedest things I"ve seen outside an aeronautical museum, lighter than air, about twenty of them in view to the south of you. "Weapons control, " Rodrick said, "do you detect?"
"On the scope," Renato Cruz responded. "Nineteen blips. Range twenty miles and closing at roughly fifteen miles per hour."
"Dinahmiteto control."
"Go, Jack. "
"I"ve got me one of those lighter-than-air ships on the ground in the valley at-" He gave coordinates.
"No crawler in sight, but there"s one h.e.l.l of an attack taking place on the admiral across a lake in a pile of rocks."
"Take appropriate action, Jack," Rodrick ordered.
"Apache Oneto control. "
"Go, Jacob."
"I"m over a halted column of thirty-two crawlers. They"ve been hit and hit hard. Dead all around."
"Hostile action?" Rodrick asked.
"None now," Jacob said. "I think they"re all moving toward Hamilton. I don"t know what they"ve got, Captain, but several of these crawlers are pretty beat up. Watch yourself up there. "
"Mopro," Rodrick said.
"Screen two," Ito said as Mopro, voiceless, flashed his response through the computer.
"Position, Mopro?"
The TR5-A defense robot had chosen a spot on the cliffs where he would have an open field of fire in all directions.
"Mopro, you have permission to open fire against any hostile action," Rodrick said.
"Apache Oneto control."
"Go,Apache One ."
"There is at least one survivor."
"Pick him up and get back here at speed," Rodrick said. "We"ll call Mandy Miller and get a med team down there as quickly as possible. Take your position at the rear of that fleet closing on Hamilton and await orders. Fire if you"re fired upon or if the fleet begins hostile action against the town. "
Clay was beginning to think that his first kiss was going to be his last. He was firing as fast as he could aim accurately, and there were tears of anger and fear and frustration running down his cheeks and afeeling in his stomach of purely wanting to puke because he"d never killed anything in his life and now he was killing running, living, manlike things as fast as he could pull the trigger. Jumper was barking furiously, and the admiral"s projectile pistol was making sharp little evenly s.p.a.ced sounds. The ma.s.ses of the stickmen were closing fast, too fast, their spears beginning to fly close by now.
"Apache Oneto control."
"Control."
"I have Dr. Mandy Miller here, sir."
Rodrick"s heart lurched.
"Captain?"
How could that voice sound so dear to him? He had just said, "I do" to another woman. "Yes, Mandy?"
"They have an explosive device that they drop from either the airships or from wings, which they use individually. Don"t let them get overhead."
"Roger, thank you, Mandy."
No time to ask what the h.e.l.l she was doing outside Hamilton in a column of crawlers not authorized to be in the field.
"Fire control to bridge."
"Go, Paul."
"I have nineteen lighter-than-air vessels ranged. And I have forty blips to seaward, range five miles."
"Stand by, Paul."
"Apache Oneto control."
"Jacob."
"Dr. Miller says that aside from the explosives, which they drop by hand, these dudes are armed with bronze-tipped spears, which they throw on the wing, and with bows and arrows."
"That"s roger,Apache One" Rodrick said. "We can slaughter them," he said to Ito, who was standing next to him on the bridge, "but do we want to?"
"d.a.m.ned shame we have to fight the first alien intelligence we meet," Ito commented.
"All scouts," Rodrick said. "I want you to form a line between Hamilton and the fleet approaching from the south. The lighter-than-air ships apparently have nothing that can hurt a scout ship. My intention is to prevent the fleet from pa.s.sing over Hamilton, since they seem to have the capacity to drop explosives. It is my wish to prevent further bloodshed if possible. Report when you"re in position."
"The laser, Clay," the admiral said, and Clay knew that all the admiral"s explosive projectiles were gone.The slaughter around them was sickening, and yet the flyers came on and on, screaming now, so close that he could see their odd, huge, faceted eyes-yellow, ovate protrusions on their upper heads. He pa.s.sed the laser to the admiral and looked for Cindy. She was huddled back under the overhanging rock, Jumper in one arm, Cat in the other. Her eyes were wide. He wanted to go to her, but the stickmen were almost upon them. He stooped quickly and seized two baseball-sized rocks and c.o.c.ked his arm, waiting for one of them to get close enough. And then, just as he threw and was looking right down the mouths of dozens of them, there was a frightful wail, and he recognized the alarm siren of a scout ship.
The good oldDinahmite was fifty feet directly over them, with port and starboard lasers extended.
"Get down, Admiral," Clay yelled, just as the lasers blazed, the beams seeming to pa.s.s right over his head to cut down stickmen in heaped piles until the survivors could halt their rush, turn, and flee.
"Admiral," came an amplified voice from the scout, "I"m coming down. Have your party ready to board in a hurry."
They didn"t have to be told twice. They lifted Cindy into the scout first, then Clay, Jumper, Cat, the admiral. It was a bit crowded, but no one cared.
There was no time for lengthy talk or explanations. Purdy reported that he had the missing persons aboard and received orders to blast at speed for Hamilton to put himself between the city and a fleet of airships moving in from the ocean.
Jacob West was concerned about Dr. Miller. She had strapped herself into the second seat and was sitting as if frozen, her wide eyes staring at nothing, but he had his orders.
"I know you"re not all right, Dr. Miller," he said, as he flew to join the others before reaching Hamilton, "but can you hold up for a while longer?"
"No, I"m all right," Mandy insisted, shaking her head to dispel the memory of the woman being chopped down with axes. "Do what you have to do, Jacob. Don"t worry about me."
"We"ll get you back to theSpirit as soon as possible," Jacob promised.
"We can"t let these killers get into the colony," Mandy said. "If you like, I can handle communications for you."
That would give her something to do, he thought, and keep her mind off what she"d seen. He flew Apache One into a gap between two of the other scouts. "Tell control we"re in position," he told her.
She obeyed.
The fleet of lighter-than-air craft came to a halt and began to drift east on the prevailing wind.
"Why aren"t you firing?" Mandy asked.
"Orders. We"re to avoid bloodshed if possible."
"They killed over two hundred people," Mandy replied angrily. "Women and children among them."
"I guess they didn"t know any better," Jacob said.