Part 9 (1/2)

Confusion became apparent among the hostile planes. The one Yugna s.h.i.+p was identified as the source of disaster. Tommy worked his rifle in cold fury. He aimed at no man, but the propelling grids were large.

For a one-man s.h.i.+p they were five feet in diameter, and for the big freight s.h.i.+ps, they were circles fifteen feet across. They were perfect targets, and Aten seemed to grasp the necessary tactics almost instantly. Dead ahead or from straight astern, Tommy could not miss a shot. The fleet of Rahn went fluttering downward. Fifteen of the biggest were down, and six of the two-man planes. A sixteenth and seventeenth flashed at their bows and drifted helplessly....

Then the one-man s.h.i.+ps attacked. Six of them at once. Aten grinned and dived for all of them. One by one, Tommy smashed their crystal grids and watched them sinking unsteadily toward the towers of the city. As his own s.h.i.+p drove over them, little golden flashes licked out.

Electric-charge weapons. One flash struck the wingtip of their plane, and flame burst out, but Aten flung the s.h.i.+p into a mad whirl in which the blaze was blown out.

Another freight s.h.i.+p helpless--and another. Then the air fleet of Rahn turned and fled. The ornithopters winged away in heavy, creaking terror. The others dived for speed and flattened out hardly above the tree-fern jungle. They streaked away in ignominious panic. Aten darted and circled above them and, as Tommy failed to fire, turned and went racing back toward the city.

”After the first ones went down,” observed Tommy, ”they knew that if they ga.s.sed the city we'd shoot them down into their own gas cloud. So they ran away. I hope this gives us a pull.”

The city's towers loomed before them. The lacy bridges swarmed with human figures. Somewhere a fight was in progress about a grounded plane from Rahn. Others seemed to have surrendered sullenly on alighting. For the first time Tommy saw the city as a thronging ma.s.s of humanity, and for the first time he realized how terrible must be the strain upon the city if with so large a population so few could be free for leisure in normal times.

The little plane settled down and landed lightly. There were a dozen men on the landing platform now, and they were herding disarmed men from Rahn away from a big s.h.i.+p Tommy had brought down. Tommy looked curiously at the prisoners. They seemed freer than the inhabitants of Yugna. Their faces showed no such signs of strain. But they did not seem well-fed, nor did they appear as capable or as resolute.

”_Cuyal_,” said Aten in an explanatory tone, seeing Tommy's expression. He put his shoulder to the big s.h.i.+p, to wheel it back into its shed.

”You son of a gun,” grunted Tommy, ”it's all in the day's work to you, fighting an invading fleet!”

A messenger came panting through the doorway. Tommy grinned.

”The Council wants us, Evelyn. Now maybe they'll listen.”

The atmosphere of the resumed Council meeting was, as a matter of fact, considerably changed. The white-bearded Keeper of Foodstuffs thanked them with dignity. He invited Tommy to offer advice, since his services had proved so useful.

”Advice?” said Tommy, in the halting, fumbling phrases he had slaved to acquire. ”I would put the prisoners from Rahn to work at the machines, releasing citizens.” There was a buzz of approval, and he added drily in English: ”I'm playing politics, Evelyn.” Again in the speech of Yugna he added: ”And I would have the fleet of Yugna soar above Rahn, not to demand tribute as that city did, but to disable all its aircraft, so that such piracy as to-day may not be tried again!”

There was a second buzz of approval. ”And third,” said Tommy earnestly, ”I would communicate with Earth, rather than a.s.sa.s.sinate it. I would require the science of Earth for the benefit of this world, rather than use the science of this world to annihilate that!

I--”

For the second time the Council meeting was interrupted. An armed messenger came pounding into the room. He reported swiftly. Tommy grasped Evelyn's wrist in what was almost a painful grip.

”Noises in the Tube!” he told her sharply. ”Earth-folk doing something in the Tube Jacaro came through. Your father....”

There was an alert silence in the Council hall. The white-bearded old man had listened to the messenger. Now he asked a grim question of Tommy.

”They may be my friends, or your enemies,” said Tommy briefly. ”Ma.s.s thermit-throwers and let me find out!”

It was the only possible thing to do. Tommy and Evelyn went with the Council, in a body, in a huge wheeled vehicle that raced across the city. Lingering groups still searched the sky above them, now blessedly empty again. But the Council's vehicle dived down and down to ground level, where the rumble of machines was loud indeed, and then turned into a tunnel which went down still farther. There was feverish activity ahead, where it stopped, and a golden thermit-thrower came into sight upon a dull-colored truck.

Questions. Feverish replies. The white-bearded man touched Tommy on the shoulder, regarding him with a peculiarly noncommittal gaze, and pointed to a doorway that someone was just opening. The door swung wide. There was a confusion of prismatically-colored mist within it, and Tommy noticed that tanks upon tanks were ma.s.sed outside the metal wall of that compartment, and seemingly had been pouring something into the room.

The mist drew back from the door. Saffron-red lighting panels appeared dimly, then grew distinct. There were small, collapsed bundles of fur upon the floor of the storeroom being exposed to view. They were, probably, the equivalent of rats. And then the last remnant of mist vanished with a curiously wraithlike abruptness, and the end of Jacaro's Tube came into view.

Tommy advanced, Evelyn clinging to his sleeve. There were clanking noises audible in this room even above the dull rumble of the city's machines. The noises came from the Tube's mouth. It was four feet and more across, and it projected at a crazy angle out of a previously solid wall.