Part 10

The platform was almost over the valley. Sonya sent out another pink disk. The girls bent over the grid, staring at the tiny movement image; a dim, starlit valley. At the bottom of it, a group of busy figures and a giant projector muzzle pointing vertically upward.

The girls watched the grid breathlessly. Its image, moving with constantly changing viewpoint, was clearly etched, but dim and very small: a cliff ledge with three figures upon it. From the ledge suddenly a small red ring of fire leaped out. It sped downward, struck a rock, and vanished with a puff.

It was Altho firing the weapon Jim had taken from the giant; in a moment the still distant girls heard a report, like a tiny clap of thunder, the sound of the red ring striking the rock. Down in the valley the giant muzzle of the vertical projector began issuing a stream of green light.

It mounted a hundred feet, sprayed out like a fountain column of water. From the ground, huge black figures tossed a balloon head into the column of light. The head rose, surged upward, until at the top it hung in the light spray, balancing itself like a ball held at the top of a jet of water.

It was all very swift, a moment or two while the girls stared at the glowing grid. The head was nearly level with the ledge. In the green light Altho’s figure showed plainly; he was standing at the ledge, firing his red rings of flame.

But they were futile now. They floated slowly, and from below, some hidden marksman was catching each of them with an upflung pencil point of black light, a narrow beam, so dead black that it showed clearly in the night. It caught the red fire rings; its rays exploded them harmlessly in the air.

The grid went dark; the second lens disk had burned out. But the platform itself now swept over the valley. The reality of the image scene was spread beneath the girls. Sonya saw the ledge was large enough to land upon; she guided the birds toward it.

She raised the electronic needle projector, fired it with a futile aim and then cast it away. There was no time for her to attempt to use it further. Her birds were swooping for the ledge, and they needed her guidance. A moment, and they would be there.

But too late! The head in the fountain of green light held something in his hands. A hum rose over the valley. Altho, standing on the ledge, suddenly flung up his arms. His weapon fell from him. He toppled, seemed trying to draw himself backward. But could not.

And then, forward from the ledge his struggling figure floated into the air. On the ledge, Ren and Jim were frantically clinging to avoid being drawn after him. The hum rose to a shrill whine.

In what seemed a whirlpool of air, or the levitation of an invisible magnetic stream, Altho was drawn to the head on the supporting green light beam. The green light slowly diminished.

The head, with arms holding Altho’s unconscious body, was lowered to the ground. A voice down there shouted hurried commands. The lights all went out sharply. In the starlight, Altho’s body was surrounded by dark surging figures, and dragged away.

The platform swooped to the ledge, landed with a thump.

“Jim! Jim! Are you all right?” It was Dolores’s anxious voice. But Sonya was cold, shuddering. All her hopes were vanished. She knew that they could not go down into the dark valley, with all those armed figures entrenched in the caves. Altho was lost to her.

Jim and Ren rushed to the platform. There was a moment of confused greeting. Jim never knew how it quite happened, but from the other ledge, ten feet above them, a head like Talon suddenly leaped down. It flashed to Jim that the head must all this time have been laboriously climbing in the darkness. Or perhaps had followed some underground passage to the cave up there.

Dolores was standing slightly apart from the others. The head seized her. On the upper ledge a giant bruteman was leaning down; the head tried to lift Dolores to where the dangling arms of the bruteman could reach her, arms which would have pulled her and the head both up to the upper ledge.

It happened so quickly, it was so utterly unexpected, that Jim and the other two girls were for an instant stricken with surprise. Dolores screamed. It was the first that they knew of her peril. She called, “Jim! Jim!”

But Ren was closer. He leaped before Jim, leaped in the dark for the girl’s terrified voice. He struck the head with his shoulder. His groping arms tore Dolores away.

There was a spurt of flame from some weapon the head was carrying. It caught Ren in the chest, drilled him. He fell backward, lay motionless. But he had saved Dolores from her captor. Jim and Alice had reached her.

The bruteman leaned swiftly down. The head held up one of its small arms. The bruteman drew his master to the upper ledge, with a jerk as though he were raising a large, light ball. In the valley they were trying to raise another beam of the green light.

Jim was carrying Dolores; he threw her to the platform and dragged Ren’s inert body aboard, with Alice grimly helping him. Sonya screamed at the birds.

From above, the head was sending down tiny spurts of flame. They struck the fur coverings with the acrid smell of burning hair. Jim flung the girls behind him; every moment he expected that the flame jets would strike him.

It was only an instant, then the platform lifted, sailed away. The ledge dropped beneath it. The dark, seemingly deserted valley dropped and merged into the tumbled mountain waste.

The platform struggled on, sailing low. It was the Virgins’ Island now. The moon was rising again with its flood of yellow radiance. Ahead, toward Kalima, they saw a blob in the sky.

It was the large flying platform I had hastily equipped and armed, coming out over the city to seek them.

But Ren was dead.

XVI DEPARTURE FOR BATTLE

We were ready at last for our attack upon Talon’s forces. The night had passed, and another long day, and night had come again. Jim’s return, with what he had to tell us about Talon, was of immeasurable help to me. I knew now what I was facing.

It was tremendously helpful also in arousing public enthusiasm for the war. The Nameless Horror was nameless no longer. The people recognized that a savage enemy was at their threshold, men who would have to be fought and conquered.

I did not want a large fighting force, but I wanted it well armed and trained, armed for defense also against what I could guess Talon’s weapons might be. Jim had seen something of them.

I sent out scouting platforms with the aerial image finders. But they brought me little information, for presently Talon realized what the pink balls of radiance in the sky meant. He began destroying them with his black flash beam.

This was to be a war of weapons, rather than fighting men. With Maxite, I labored to prepare a defense against Talon’s black flash, and the fire rings which Altho had used. Evidently Talon was armed chiefly with weapons of electronic basis. I hoped so, for we could insulate against them fairly efficiently.

The day had just turned to night when news came that Talon’s forces had left the mountains and now were encamped at the end of the Warm Sea. It was what I had hoped he would do. I had no intention of allowing him to attack Kalima, but I did not want to go up into the mountains after him. He was evidently ready now, but so was I.

It was a busy time, those last hours. Kalima was jammed with refugees. All along the shores of the Warm Sea the rural districts were deserted. I mobilized my men and girls on the castle grounds, and on the estuary there. The girls had had their way; they were an important unit of my forces. I could not refuse them, for they speedily demonstrated that in the air they were far superior to the men.

With Sonya and Maxite, I stood on the Castle terrace watching the last details of our departure. The night was clear, save for a low bank of clouds hanging over the sea, with the horn-shaped yellow moon rising above it.

The castle grounds were crowded with my eight hundred fighting men, two hundred girls, the land animals, birds and platforms. On the water were the boats, with sea animals to draw them. I had some four hundred men in this division—a total force of about fourteen hundred.

A busy scene of moving lights, voices, commands, the fluttering of the excited birds; behind us, on every housetop, in every window and point of vantage in the city, a throng of spectators watched.

The last preparations held a myriad details.

“Maxite,” I said, “the platform with the Frazier beam—have them hold it until last. Then I’ll come down.”

Maxite’s orders went out over the aerial he carried on his shoulder. I could hear the echo of his voice down there in the garden. I swung the grid on my chest to catch the rays from an image-finder erected on the waterfront. Alice and Dolores were down there. I had not wanted them in this fighting, but they insisted, and I had put them in the division of boats.

“All ready, Alice?”

She glanced up at the image finder; it stood on a post at the shore front. On my grid was the image of her figure standing there, with her insulated suit like a black cone around her, and her helmet in her hand.

“All ready, Leonard.” Her smile was grim, excited, tense, but I could see no fear in it.

“Be careful, Alice. Keep Dolores with you . . . and obey orders.”

“Yes.” She turned away.

Sonya, standing beside me, laid her hand on my arm. “We’re going to win, Leonard. And Altho—” She gestured. “I seem always to be getting his thoughts, Leonard. Again . . . just now.”

We knew that Altho was still alive, that Talon was going to keep Altho with him. Sonya very often had fragmentary communication. She had seemed to be getting it a few hours ago, and now, suddenly, we realized what evidently Altho had been trying to tell her. A messenger rushed up. He had come from one of our scout platforms.

Talon’s forces had started for Kalima. The brutemen with the heads mounted upon them were dragging heavy apparatus along the shore road. And there were rafts on the sea drawn by swimming brutemen. The rafts were already half way to the Virgins’ Island!

There was no time to be lost. Maxite’s aerial sent his voice to the seventy men and twenty girls who were equipped to receive it. Each of them urged his squad to greater haste.

The individual girl flyers rose first. One by one, each mounted upon a giant bird, they rose from the castle grounds, and began circling in the air. These girls were not protected against Talon’s electric rays.

It was my plan to keep them very high in the air, beyond what we estimated was the effective range of Talon’s black flash. They were armed only with small explosive bombs, but were expert at dropping them upon a mark.

A hundred and fifty of these mounted girls gathered now in a hovering group, then in wedge-shape, flew in a wide, slow circle. The birds were well-trained, capable of flying swiftly to great heights. And the most agile of the young girls; Sonya had selected them carefully.

This unit was the swiftest, most mobile of my forces. Sonya was to lead it. She was presently ready, bringing up her great gray bird, with its rug saddle upon which she would recline on its back between its great spreading wings.

She was dressed, as were all the girls in the air squadron, in a single dark flowing garment from shoulder to knee, with her hair bound tightly in braids around her head. The small metallic bombs were in a belt at her waist, bombs fitted with a chemical most explosive.

She offered her hand in my own fashion.

“Good-bye,” I said. “And remember, Sonya, keep well up, and listen to my signals. Do not attack until I order it.”

She leaped upon her mount. It rose over me with dangling legs; the rush of air from its wings was on my face. In a moment I saw her up there, taking her place just below the girl at the point of the wedge.

From the garden, the first of the flying platforms rose. There were three of this size, each with twenty men and some ten girls. Forty birds were harnessed to each platform: birds in tandem along each side, and two long strings in front. Four girls were to drive them; the other girls had bombs, and the men had the smaller range electronic needle-pipes.

These platforms were fairly swift. They were insulated underneath, with the shaggy black fabric of woven wire through which the insulating current circulated. And they had side shields which could be raised; and dangling, insulating curtains beneath some of the birds.

I stood watching the three platforms as they rose majestically, joined the mounted girls, and circled with them over the city.

The land forces were starting. Jim was leading this division: eight hundred men, most of them mounted individually upon the giant _lops_—a four-footed animal, more like a giant cat than anything I can name; handsome beasts, larger than an earth-horse, with great claws, a mass of shaggy red hair, and a tail like a plume of fur.

Each with a rider, they padded through the village streets. Some were harnessed to our larger projectors, and our wind device, which I planned to have Jim establish down the shore opposite the Virgins’ Island. With it, Jim could lash the narrow channel waters to a fury.

The small land force passed into the city and vanished. From the distant housetops I could see the waving crowd to mark its progress. I turned away. The boats on the river had started, a fleet of ten long, narrow, metallic boats, with insulated sides and shields, boats drawn by sea-like mammals, agile, swift, and intelligent.

There were some forty men and a few girls on each of the boats. A large long-range needle projector was mounted in the bow, behind the black screen.

It could throw an electrified, imponderable blade of metal over a curved path, with almost the speed of light for an effective distance of over a mile. And these boats had light-flares, wind projectors, and horizontal bomb projectors.

They sped down the estuary, with the mammals leaping like dolphins in the water ahead of them; then they stopped, circled, came back, and waited in a line in midstream. From the city a great shout of enthusiasm went up at sight of them. On one of them were Alice and Dolores.

Our three other flying platforms were long strings of birds, our longest-range rising, heavier, smaller platforms, each with weapons—a giant projector on each of them, with a few men to handle it.

Maxite said, “We’re ready for you, Leonard.” He had dropped, for the first time, my royal title. We stood, two friends, parting with a handclasp. His face was very solemn. I think he, too, was thinking of the homecoming. “I’ll follow you with the finders, Leonard. Keep voice connection if you can. Perhaps . . . I will see what you might overlook, and I can advise you.”

I nodded. A simple handclasp. He turned away, to watch our fate from his room beneath the castle.

My platform with the giant Frazier thought-beam we had constructed, was ready. I was to operate it alone. I had learned to fly its six birds. I clasped my black, cone-shaped robe about me. My black helmet dangled like a hood behind my shoulders.

I ran down the castle stairway. From the city a roar of enthusiasm went up. I turned and waved a hand.

Departure for battle! The people expected a martial gesture, and I gave it to them. But within me was a shudder.

I leaped on the black platform. It was no more than six feet wide and twice as long, crowded with the projector, the batteries and intensifiers, and much other scientific apparatus.

I gripped the reins, shouted to the six birds whom I had trained to know my voice and respond to my commands.

My platform rose over the castle grounds. Around me, the girls and the other platforms circled. Down in the estuary the ten black boats were starting in a double line. Out beyond the city, on the road toward the sea, a thin black line showed in the yellow moon glow—Jim’s land division. The city beneath me was a frantic, waving mass of humanity.

I shouted through my aerial. The girls and the platforms broke their circle and started forward. With my platform leading them, we swept in a great arc over the city, and away into the moonlit sky.

XVII THE BATTLE

The Warm Sea was a body of water some one hundred miles long by ten miles wide at most places. It lay in a bowl-like depression of rolling country. Bays and caves indented its shores in some places; in others cliffs came sheer to the water.

Kalima lay at what I might term its southern end. The sea broadened here into a sheet of water nearly twenty miles wide, which I had learned to call Kalima Bay. To the north it narrowed. The Virgins’ Island divided it, with a narrow channel on each side, beyond which it opened again.

To the left along the west side of the sea, the road from Kalima wound northward. The west channel of the Virgins’ Island was very narrow—two thousand feet at the utmost—but it was deep, with a sandy strip of beach on the mainland, a bluff of fifty feet, with the road on top. It was along the west side that Talon’s land forces were coming. And on the same road from Kalima Jim’s force was marching to oppose them.

Our water division of ten boats headed into the center of Kalima Bay, and there I halted them. They lay drawn in a black ring on the placid water. To one side of me, the squadron of girls flew now in a circle at about the threshold foot level. The platforms hovered near them.

Along the shore I could see the slow-moving line of Jim’s army, crawling like a black snake over the winding, moonlit road. I had hoped that the head of it would be approaching the bluff near the west channel of the Virgins’ Island. But it was not that far as yet.

I spoke into my aerial. “Make it faster, Jim!” The image of him showed his smiling face. Good old Jim, always smiling. “Right,” he said.

From this height there was no sign of Talon. Behind me, from Kalima, Maxite had sent out an aerial image-finder. Its pink whirling ball came sailing past me overhead.

I sat enshrouded in my black insulated suit. I switched the current into it; I could hear the current hum; smell its faint acrid odor. The apparatus of the Frazier projector was already assembled. The pulse-motor was on my wrist; the head-band I now adjusted on my forehead. I made all the connections, but I did not turn on the current.

Before me were my smaller instruments. A bank of image-grids was lashed here; voice receivers were at my ears, my speaker aerial was on my shoulder. I caught the rays from the image lens mounted in Maxite’s castle room. I tuned into it, saw his pale, intent face, heard his grave voice.

“No sign of Talon, Leonard?”

“No. I’m holding the girls and the boats ready. I’ll go higher myself—your lens just passed me.”

“Yes. But it shows nothing yet.”

“I’ll send one beyond it.”

“Good luck, Leonard.”

I nodded and disconnected. Sonya was calling me.

“Can’t we go forward?”

“No.”

From the boats down there I caught Alice’s voice, but her image did not register; it was dark in the boat behind the black shields which enshrouded it.

“Len, have you seen Talon’s rafts yet? Mett says he wants to know what our boats are to do?”

“Nothing. Stay as you are.”

“Be . . . very careful of yourself, Leonard.”

“Yes,” I said. I cut off, urged my birds upward. At nearly ten thousand feet I hung poised. Far up the Warm Sea, on the west road Talon’s approaching force was visible. And on the water, I saw the black blobs of his rafts, four of them, evidently huge affairs, crowded with men and apparatus. One of them was in the yellow moonlit path. I could see the swimming figures in the water, harnessed, drawing the raft slowly forward.

The pink ball I had sent out passed Maxite’s. It sped toward Talon’s rafts. On my grid I caught a glimpse of the wooden raft, with dead black beams standing up from it vertically in the air. Hundreds of figures crowded there. A black beam caught my whirling lens, burned it. The grid went dark.

Talon’s land force was almost to the Virgins’ Island channel to the north. The rafts were over near that shore. It was what I wanted to know. Talon would use the west channel.

I dropped my platform downward, and adjusted my helmet, though I kept its visor open. Talon’s land force would reach the channel before mine could get there. I had hoped that Jim would be able to set up our wind projector on the bluff there to command the narrow water. But Talon would be there first unless I could halt him.

I turned to my aerial and gave the order for a general attack.

I rose again, high in the air, and urged my birds forward. Beneath me, the scene of battle spread out like a map of three dimensions. Far down, our boats showed as tiny blobs speeding through the west channel.

They were fast, but not so fast as the squadron of flying girls.

Sonya came leading them upward. They passed me, a giant flying wedge heading over Talon’s rafts. There were four rafts, three close to the shore, perhaps for protection of the land force. But one of the rafts was farther out, separated from the others. It was still several miles beyond the north tip of Virgins’ Island.

Sonya’s squadron was the first to make contact with the enemy. The girls headed for this isolated raft. They were ten thousand feet or more above it. My heart was heavy with apprehension. I could see the black rays from the raft standing up into the air. Would they reach that high?

It seemed not. The girls went safely over them, wheeled, and came back. They had dropped a bomb. I saw a glowing spot of light as it fell. It struck the water, wide of the raft. A surge of water mounted upward, with a spot of red light where the bomb had burst, then another, a score of them. I began to hear their sharp reports.

The raft was lashed by the waves, but still unhit. But the brutemen pulling it were disorganized, many of them killed, no doubt. The raft stopped its forward progress. Its black beam wavered, then seemed to connect into one narrow black ray.

It shot up through the girls, cut a wide swath through them. Some wavered, came fluttering down, falling, recovering, limping slowly back toward Kalima, struggling to keep above the water. Others fell like plumets into the sea. Half our girls, undoubtedly, were killed or wounded by that single black blast.

Our boats swept through the channel. Three stopped in midstream; seven surged on. Lights flared, our lurid but penetrating red flare of light went up in an arc from one of our halted boats, and burst over Talon’s land force. It seemed that thousands of figures were there on the land. They had spread out from the road; over by the bluff, just beyond the north end of the channel, they were erecting a huge piece of apparatus.

The light flares died. But the gunners on our three boats which had stopped in the channel had the range. I could see the streams of their electronic needles, straight paths to the shore. Dim violet beams, with white radiance where the great metallic needles were striking Talon’s army.

There must have been a chaos on shore. Then from a projector there in the darkness, a great hissing rose. A yellow glow, almost like the moonlight, became visible. It waved, fanshaped from its source: a light that lingered, persisted in the darkness, spread until all along that section of the shore it hung like hovering yellow smoke, a barrage against which our electronic needles launched harmlessly. I could see them materialized into white solidity as they struck it, then flaring red, and yellow as they fused and burned.

The gunners on our boats tried curving their beams. Some were effective, curving in a great violet arc, up over the barrage, or sidewise around its edges. I judged that some were finding their mark, though the barrage was constantly shifted to check them.