From here the central buildings of the hive were plainly visible, standing out against the sunrise. Around them moved many of the tireless worker machines; and the parked aircraft seemed more numerous than they had been the night before. Among them a score or more of winged shapes loomed conspicuous for their great size; when you made proper allowance for the distance, you realized that they were immense.
Those would be the queens--loaded and ready to take flight on their one-way journey to found new colonies wherever their evil destiny might lead them. The time of swarming was near.
Dworn scowled darkly, squinting against the light in an effort to judge the enemy"s numbers. He grunted, "I hope ..." and bit his lip.
"What"s wrong?" said Qanya tensely.
"Nothing.... Only it would have been well if we"d had time to bring up more reinforcements. But don"t worry--we"ll smash them." He was a little surprised to note that he said "we"--and meant any and all of the machine-peoples, united now in a common cause.
Dworn was bitterly wishing at this moment that he had had his beetle-machine again, and had been able to take an active part. As it was, he didn"t even know surely just where in the battle line the beetles had taken up their position.
A distant explosion, a single gunshot, rolled echoless across the flats.
It was a signal. Even as the sh.e.l.l hit the ground close to the ranked drone aircraft, motors had begun to pulse and snarl all along the farflung line. The desert began to spew forth attackers. A motley horde of metal things, they darted, stalked, and lumbered from their lurking-places, and as they advanced to the a.s.sault the firing commenced in earnest, became a staccato thunder that blanketed but failed to drown out the beginning alarm-wail of a huge mechanical voice from the fortress of the drones.
The enemy was not slow to react. Almost as the first rain of projectiles smashed down among them, jet engines began howling into life, and some of the fighter craft rocked into motion, wheeling out onto the runways.
The encircling attackers well knew the peril of letting any of those pilotless killers get into the air. Sh.e.l.lfire was being concentrated on the airstrips, striving to block them, plow them up with craters.
A fighter drone came roaring out one of the runaways gathering speed and beginning to lift. Dworn followed it with his eyes, feeling sweat spring out on his forehead, repeating under his breath without conscious awareness of what he was saying: "Stop him, _stop_ him--"
Then the enemy craft spun round in the air, belching smoke, came apart and spilled along the runway for a hundred yards. A second, coming close behind it, plowed into the wreckage of its comrade, rolled over and over and became a furiously burning pyre. That strip was blocked.
All round the central hive smoke and flame were rising in innumerable places, from the paved ways and from the open desert. On another launching strip, just visible through the mounting inferno, one of the big queen-craft had sought to take to the air, and had been knocked out by heavy sh.e.l.lfire. Now its upended and blazing hulk tilted slowly over and collapsed burying beneath it several of the little wingless workers.
In all the confusion these still scurried hither and yon, oblivious to the bombardment, laboring frantically but futilely to clear away the debris. Their efforts were useless, while the rain of explosives from the tightening ring of a.s.sault forces continued adding to the ruin and disorder within the hive....
Dworn sprang to his feet for a better view. He hugged Qanya to him till she gasped for breath, shouted in her ear over the thunder of the barrage, "_We"ve got them!_"
Close to the ridge where they stood a line of many-wheeled monsters rolled past--scorpions, moving along the battle front and, whenever the thickening smoke up ahead revealed a target, halting to wheel round and discharge their heavy-caliber tail guns.
Dworn had never liked scorpions, but he watched these with heartfelt approval.
Then he stared, bewilderedly aware that something had gone wrong. The big machines had turned and begun heading toward the ridge, clattering along at their top speed and no longer pausing to fire.
Within moments, Dworn perceived that all the other attackers were doing likewise; everywhere on the blazing battlefield, they had ceased their advance and were scattering to seek cover.
Only then, as the firing slackened, did he realize that the sky had begun to echo with a spiteful screaming of flying things. Against the brightening daylight hurtled some two dozen dark winged shapes ...
fighter drones.
Dworn realized they must have been out on patrol, and summoned back by the drones" mysterious means of communication to defend the threatened hive. Now the flight was splitting into groups of two or three, diving to attack at one point and another and flitting away again so swiftly that human reflexes could scarcely act to train a gun.
Dworn glimpsed Qanya"s horrified face beside him, and the girl threw her weight against him and dragged him down among the sheltering rocks.
Overhead, from out of the sun, shot three of the winged drones. They pa.s.sed over before the shrieking of their flight could reach the ears, and Dworn caught a glimpse of bombs tumbling earthward. Thunder crashed as the scorpions hugging the ridge threw up a vicious defensive barrage, and was drowned out as the bombs landed all around. The rocks heaved, and dust and splinters showered down from above.
Only a dozen yards away, a scorpion came rumbling up across the crest, its many wheels jolting over the rocks, and halted there, its tail gun weaving angrily as it sought vainly for targets in the sky. Along one of its gray-painted sides was a long bright gash where something had barely glanced from its armor. And Dworn saw, too, the black outline of a mythological arachnid on its observation turret, which signified that the machine belonged to a scorpion chief.
Scarcely knowing what he intended, he shook off Qanya"s panic grip and plunged recklessly toward the big machine. As he scrambled over the rugged hilltop, he saw fleetingly what went on in the arena of battle--the allied peoples were being driven back, forced to concentrate their fire power on beating off aerial onslaughts. Meantime, the wingless drones about their beleaguered citadel worked feverishly to clear the way for their fighters that still remained undamaged on the ground.... Within minutes, unless something happened to turn the tide, there would be enough flying drones aloft to break the attack and inflict terrible losses.
Dworn found himself alongside the scorpion, just as its tail gun fired once more. The muzzle blast almost knocked him down, but he clawed his way up the side of the machine and began hammering on the observation turret hatch-cover.
"You in there!" he shouted. "Listen to me--"
The hatch cracked open and a grizzled head peered out, blinking at him with bewilderment and an automatic fierce suspicion. But at a time like this anything human was an ally.
"What"s the idea?" demanded the scorpion.
The racket of gunfire and of jets made speech almost impossible. But Dworn pointed out across the sink, shouted: "Fire on the buildings--the central tower! They"re controlled from somewhere--"
Luckily the scorpion leader--if that was who he was--was a man of quick understanding. He nodded vigorously and dropped out of sight again into the interior of his vehicle, bawling something to its driver. Dworn dropped off the machine"s side as it lurched abruptly into motion. He watched, hardly breathing, as it slid to a halt at the bottom of the hill beside another of its tribe, and with shouts and gestures the word was pa.s.sed on.
Inside a minute, all the nearby scorpions had begun banging away at the structures some three miles distant. The heavy scorpion guns were quite capable of carrying that far, and their sh.e.l.ls had enough punch to do much damage to the buildings or to the central tower which still loomed occasionally visible through the drifting smoke....
But it was only a hope, perhaps even a forlorn hope. Dworn was fairly confident of his guess that the drones possessed some sort of central communication and control system--but it would take a lucky hit to disable that nerve center in time.
Qanya stumbled to his side. She cried something he couldn"t hear over the continuous firing, tugged at him and pointed skyward with terror in her eyes.
The flying drones aloft had suddenly abandoned their scattered strafing attacks. With deadly machine-precision they wheeled into a single formation once more, and the whole flight came diving straight at the scorpion battery"s position.
Dworn stood rigid, fists clenched at his sides, watching them scream nearer.
He ignored Qanya"s pleading with him to take cover. No point to that--the drones" full force would blast the whole ridge to rubble and blanket it with their liquid flame.
At least, the enemy"s reaction proved his inspiration correct. He noticed with fierce satisfaction that the scorpions were still doggedly firing....
The foremost drone came on, slanting down the sky until the gaping rocket-ports were plainly visible along its swept-back wings. But those sports still spat no flame. And it came on. It cleared the hilltop by no more than fifty feet, still diving faster than the speed of sound. It hit the desert slope beyond and ricocheted like a great projectile, bursting apart into fiery fragments that strewed themselves for a thousand yards across the rolling plateau.
Dworn picked himself up from among the rocks where he had been flung by the shock-wave of its near pa.s.sage, and was knocked sprawling again by the earthquake impact of a second drone that thundered headlong into the earth a few hundred feet away, burying itself under a crater like that of a huge bomb.
He glimpsed a third craft going down to the west of them, just missing the rim of the Barrier cliffs and plunging out of sight without a sign of coming out of its dive.
Those which remained in the air were flying aimlessly. Two of them pa.s.sed over side by side, gradually converging until, a couple of miles away, they locked wings and went spinning down toward the horizon in a deadly embrace.
On the ground, a like confusion had befallen the wingless workers. Their scurrying suddenly lost all its busy, planned efficiency. Some buzzed round and round in drunken circles; others ran head-on into one another, or tumbled into sh.e.l.l-holes to lie futilely spinning their wheels.
A hush descended on the field of battle. After the fury of bombardment and counterattack, the relative silence was deafening.
Dworn got to his feet for the second time and helped Qanya up; he grinned exultantly at her, oblivious of a trickle of blood running down his face where a rock-splinter had hit.
The scorpion lying nearest the foot of the slope opened its hatch-cover.
A man climbed out, clasped hands together over his head and stamped on the gray monster"s back in an awkward impromptu victory-dance. Cheers rang faintly from far off down the silenced firing-line.
Then--the spell of premature triumph was rudely shattered.
From the direction of the breached and smoking buildings, there rose yet again the soughing roar of jet engines gathering speed. Onto the runway to the west--the only one which the workers had managed to clear before their central control was knocked out--came waddling an enormous winged thing.