In that confused instant, as though it were a still picture, he saw Zzt on fire just starting to fly out into s.p.a.ce. He saw the whole Mark 32 leap in an exploding ball high in the air.
Jonnie hit the floor plates just inside the open slots so he wouldn"t slide back.
The concussion had been too much for his head and he was pa.s.sing out again.
An idiot phrase pa.s.sed through his mind just before a deeper darkness blanketed his senses. "Old Staffor was wrong. I"m not too smart. I just cost myself the only target search beams can pick up."
The drone was not rolling now that it had been relieved of its unstabilizing weight.
The body on the icy floor just inside the door did not move.
The lethal cargo soared onward toward Scotland and the rest of the world, its goal the final obliteration of the remainder of the human race, the ones it had missed a thousand or more years ago.
Chapter 4.
The small boy sped on feet of fire through the underground pa.s.sages of the dungeons of the castle. He was soaked with the rain that fell outside. His bonnet was askew. His eyes were glowing with the urgency of a message he had carried for a two-mile sprint through the dawn twilight.
He identified a room ahead and tore into it, shouting: "Prince Dunneldeen!
Prince Dunneldeen! Wake up! Wake up!"
Dunneldeen had just settled down in his own room, in his own plaid blanket for a nice comfortable snooze, his first in quite some time.
The small boy was wrestling with excited hands to light a candle dip with a ratchet flint device.
So it was "Prince" Dunneldeen now.
They only called him that on feast days or when somebody wanted a favor. His uncle, Chief of Clanfearghus, was the last of the Stewarts and ent.i.tled to be called King, but he never made anything of it.
The light was burning now. It shone upon the spa.r.s.ely furnished stonewalled room. It showed the rain-drenched, excited black-eyed boy, Bittie MacLeod.
"Your squire Dwight, your squire Dwight ha" sent a message, who he say is most most urgent!" urgent!"
Ah, this was different. Dunneldeen got up and reached for his clothes. "Squire" Dwight. Probably Dwight had used that because "copilot" would be an unknown word to this child.
"Your gillies are afoot asaddling a mount. Your squire ha" said "twas most urgent!"
Dunneldeen glanced at his watch. It meant that the twelve-hour radio silence was over, that was all. Probably a babble of news. Dunneldeen had no idea at all that things had gone other than successfully at the other minesites or that they"d succeeded at the compound. He got back into his flight clothes. No hurry. He took his time.
What a busy night it had been. His and Dwight"s plan had been to bring the Chiefs across the sea to celebrate the victory. They had landed both ships on a flat place two miles off so as not to shock the people, and he had borrowed a horse from a startled farmer he had known and ridden in.
He had gotten his uncle, Chief of Clanfearghus, out of bed, and gillies had flown to light the fires on the hills to gather the clans to hear the news. The minesite in Cornwall was no more. They would be free to roam the whole of England!
The Chief was very fond of his nephew Dunneldeen who was, in fact, his heir. He liked Dunneldeen"s style. A true Scot. He had listened enraptured as Dunneldeen had given him a thumbnail but torrential account of all their doings. And if Dunneldeen were a bit incautious, the Chief gave his attention while making very sure to reserve judgment and act in a wise way on the general scene, without spoiling Dunneldeen"s flair. So he had ordered the beacons lighted. He was cautiously thrilled.
Dunneldeen had then gone to see a la.s.s and had asked her to marry him, and she had said, "Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, yes, Dunneldeen!"
That attended to, he had come home for a nice snooze.
Bittie seemed to be trying to remember something else. He was hopping from one bare foot to the other, squinting up his eyes, wiping at his nose. Then the boy seemed to abandon his effort. Dunneldeen was almost dressed.
The boy"s eyes caught the sword on the wall. It was a claymore, used in battles and for ceremony. It was a real claid heamh mar real claid heamh mar, five feet long, not just a basket hilt saber. Bittie was gesturing at it, indicating the prince should wear it. Dunneldeen shook his head to signify no, he wasn"t going to take it this time.
When he saw the eagerness die in Bittie"s eyes, Dunneldeen relented. He took it down and handed it to him. "All right, but you carry it!" The sword was a foot taller than the boy. Worship, awe, and joy sprang up in the boy again as he draped the hanger around his neck.
Dunneldeen checked his gear and went out. The castle pa.s.sages and halls were as warm with gillies. They had lochaber axes in their belts and were bustling around with a hundred ch.o.r.es in preparation for a gathering of the clans. Dunneldeen had really thrown a firebrand into the scene. n.o.body had been briefed. They didn"t know what was going on. Dunneldeen had come home. Orders had been given. Somebody said the Psychlo minesite was no more. There was an awful lot to do.
The ancient ruin had remained a ruin above ground so as to attract minimal attention from drones that had gone over for centuries. Some said the place had once been the seat of Scottish kings. It s dungeons had been expanded and it was a fortress in itself.
Two gillies had Dunneldeen"s own horse saddled and it was prancing about. The gillies were smiling broad welcomes to Dunneldeen.
He mounted, and at a signal they tossed the boy up behind him, claid heamh mar and all.
It was raining. A storm apparently had moved in. It had been clear when they landed but now the dawn was thick with overcast.
It was at that moment that Bittie MacLeod remembered the rest of the message. "Your squire," he said to Dunneldeen"s back, "also say to "squiggle"!"
The boy"s accent was thick, not the accent of an educated Scot. "To what?" demanded Dunneldeen.
"I misremembered, I couldna think of the word," apologized the boy. "But it did sound like "squiggle." "
"Scramble?" asked Dunneldeen. The word that meant emergency takeoff.
"Ah, so "twas, so "twas!"
Dunneldeen was off like a shot and two miles were never eaten up so fast by a horse.
They came plunging to a stop on the flat-topped knoll. Dunneldeen looked wildly about. Only the pa.s.senger plane was there. He flung himself off the horse and flung the reins to the boy. He opened the door and leaped into the pa.s.senger plane, reaching for the radio.
And then Dwight landed nearby, startling the horse into frantic plunging that lifted the boy and the sword off the ground at every rear.
Dunneldeen raced over to Dwight. "It"s gone now," said Dwight.
There had been no radio messages from the compound. Dwight, as arranged, had faithfully stayed on watch. He had waited for any break in radio silence and the end of the silence itself. The time period had ended, but pilots, not hearing from the compound and Robert the Fox, had not opened up.
But something else peculiar had happened. Dwight had picked up a Psychlo conversation on the planetary plane band, very loud and clear. It seemed loud enough to be within a thousand miles or so, maybe more, hard to tell.
"What did they say?" demanded Dunneldeen.
"I got it all on a disc," said Dwight. He started the disc. It said "Nup, you c.r.a.p brain, wake up!"
Dwight said he had at once sent the boy to tell Dunneldeen to scramble and then he himself had gone straight up. Yes, the sudden roar of Dwight"s own engines was there on the disc.
The disc played on.
"Drone?" said Dunneldeen. "Zzt? There was a transport chief named Zzt."
"Well, he was out there some place in a drone!" said Dwight. He had gone up as high as he could go. About two hundred thousand feet. As fast as he could go. "Almost tore my heart and lungs out with gravity," said Dwight.
Then he heard complete instructions in Psychlo about remanding on top of a drone in front of a door so Zzt could get out of the drone.
"There is no drone that big," said Dunneldeen. "Not that I know of."
Dwight had turned on every search instrument he had. The transmission had been coming from the northwest. He had sped in that direction. He had gotten it on his scope. It was traveling three hundred two miles per hour, a very positive blip. It was clear weather where the thing had been; this cloud cover and rain was ahead of it.
He played some more transmission. Somebody named "Snit" was still in the drone but no explanation why.
This was mad because drones didn"t have pilots. But how could anybody fly anybody out of a drone? And then somebody was taking fuel out of the drone in an ore basket and the other Psychlo said he was leaving the drone.
"Then why are you here?" demanded Dunneldeen, turning toward the pa.s.senger plane. "Why didn"t you attack it?"
"It blew up," said Dwight. "I saw it visual, eyeball! It looked like thirty lightning storms! It curved down. It probably went into the sea. I scanned the whole area. There was a little blip left; probably when it sank it had some debris. And then that was gone. It just isn"t out there anymore on any scope. So I came back here."
Dunneldeen played the disc through again. Dunneldeen pulled out the instrument recorders. They told the same story. Heat and then gone.
Dunneldeen looked at the sky. "You better go back up there and patrol in that direction."
"There won"t be any blip," said Dwight. "And this overcast is high. The thing was flying at about five thousand feet and you won"t be able to see a thing visually. The overcast goes up to at least ten. There"s no blip," finished Dwight.
Dunneldeen turned and looked at the castle ruin, gaunt and very old in the morning rain and mist. Two miles away and it was drifting in and out of visibility.
What was that all about? Had the battle of the compound been lost? What drone? And why had it blown up? The clan Chiefs would be a.s.sembling and he had a lot of things to do today.
Chapter 5.
Jonnie drifted up out of a pit of black pain. He tried to orient himself. The drone motors were like shouting anger in his ears. His arms were hanging down into a gap in the floor plating. Blood had run along the sleeves and dried.
With a start of alarm he thought of Zzt and reached for the revolver. It was gone, the lanyard snapped in the blast. The blast! Zzt was also gone and so was the Mark 32. And so was anything that would let this ancient monster be located on a screen.
He lifted himself up with considerable effort. He was still tied with the safety line. He found it very hard to think connectedly, and he wondered for a bit why he was tied to the line. His back hurt, one more pain in a confused welter of it. He realized the safety line had pulled him back inside.
It was awfully hard to think, and he recognized that he was getting worse, not better. He was nauseated. Hunger. It must be that he was nauseated from hunger.
He got to his knees. The drone was no longer rolling. That was a relief. He turned and then stared.
Through the door, bright tendrils of mist and fog were curling in. It was a storm. He was flying through a storm.
Wait. It was light out there. Daylight. Well-advanced daylight.
How long had he been out? It must be hours.
He spun on his knees, thinking to see the gas canisters dropping gas. He had no way to tell that. Were they already past Scotland? Had the drone already done part of its work?
He got to the door and tried to spot a brighter area in the storm that might tell him where the sun was. It was too thick. He wasn"t thinking well; he realized he had reverted to being a mountain man. There were compa.s.ses in the plane. He opened the door and saw the havoc Zzt had made with the radio smashup. It distracted him. Then he realized he had opened the door to look at the compa.s.ses and did so. When he leaned over it felt like somebody was. .h.i.tting his skull with a sledge hammer. He felt for the compress on his head. It was still there. No, the compa.s.ses. Look at the compa.s.ses.
He was heading southeast. The course to Scotland would have curved over like that. He couldn"t be sure. He went back to the door and tried to look down. He nearly fell. He couldn"t see anything down there. All rain and mist.
Then he remembered the ship had gas ports in the bottom. He crawled painfully to the floor plate he had removed and looked past the motor housings. No daylight was coming up.
His air mask seemed to be suffocating him. He recalled it had been askew when he woke.
Of course! The drone had dropped no gas yet. He"d be dead.
Well, he wasn"t dead. Pretty well on the way to it with this head, but he wasn"t dead. Therefore the drone had not yet dropped gas.
Chapter 6.
Not until then had Jonnie thought about what was going to happen to himself. He had a feeling that it didn"t really matter. He knew his head was staved in. He had lost an awful lot of blood. But he ought to make a gesture, some rudimentary effort, just to say he had. Say to whom? He was out of radio contact. The drone was wave-neutralized to any screen. There was not the slightest chance of the drone being seen visually in this storm. Down under him would be sea or an even less friendly mountainside if the blast disabled his plane. Battle planes were pretty well armored, but firing his own guns in an enclosed s.p.a.ce, plus plus the mines, the mines, plus the plus the fuel of the drone, was going to make a pretty big bang. fuel of the drone, was going to make a pretty big bang.
His jet backpacks were gone. He rummaged about in the back of the plane. Must remember not to lean forward. That"s what blacked him out. A brief moment of hope. A life raft. He pulled it out. The automatic inflation cartridges were long since duds. It had a little manual pump. He started to pump it up. Orange colored. Some tinsel on it. Then he realized he was being stupid. If he inflated it he couldn"t get it back in the plane. He knew the plane would sink. He wouldn"t be able to get it out. The wind was tugging at the half-inflated raft. A wave of blackness came over him and the door draft casually flicked it out of his hands. It went away into the storm. Gone. It had all been a waste of time.
He got into the plane. He had some blankets. He had been hurt in the earlier crash; the map case had not been enough. So he padded his knees and the windscreen with blankets.
He realized he had not checked for loose objects. They were deadly. He took the blankets away and looked in the rear of the plane behind him. Littered! A backward jolt of the plane would have made them into projectiles.
Wearily he got out and began to chuck things out through the door. Clip after clip of a.s.sault rifle ammunition. A shovel, whatever that was doing here. A sample pick. Odds and ends. He snugged down the cable ladder and ore net equipment of the plane. He put the food bag and his own pouch under the seat.
More nauseated than ever, he got back in the seat and restored the blanket cushions. He wrapped the oversized security belts around him twice and up so they would keep his head from snapping forward.
All set.
He reached out for the gun controls and put them on "Full Barrage,"
"Flame," and "Ready." They were aimed at that box of blasting caps.