Chrissie straightened up. She guided Old Pork well around Terl and then lit out to the south, her hair streaming back as Old Pork raced away.
The gunfire was picking up in volume to the south. Being gentle with Pattie and walking sideways while keeping a gun on Terl, Jonnie got to a position where he could see the compound. They stood on a slightly higher rise than it.
In the clear afternoon air he could see it, in miniature, but vividly.
White water was spraying two or three hundred feet in the air. It looked like a waterfall in reverse. Then he knew what had happened. The automatic fire sprinkler system had let go.
Those Scots down there were fighting in a torrent of water!
What he was afraid of was that the Psychlos would get out a tank or some additional battle planes. He surveyed the sky. It was free of planes.
As he watched he saw a flash of fire and then the distant boomp came to them, the sound bazookas make. He was not sure the bazookas could get through a Psychlo tank.
They needed air support down there! And here he was twenty miles away! There wasn’t another single pilot in those assault teams. They had committed their all.
He shifted the gun impatiently. Terl was sitting there laughing again. By rights he should simply shoot him full of daylight. But he had a feeling Terl knew something, and was up to something more.
“How’d the girls get away?” said Jonnie to Terl.
“Why, animal, how can you doubt me? I promised you I’d let them loose as soon as you delivered the gold. I simply kept my word this morning. I didn’t suspect you’d be so false you would . . .”
“Come off it, Terl. Why’d you let them loose?”
Terl laughed again, more loudly.
Pattie had gone over to get Dancer who was wandering off. She was coming back. “I don’t know why this nasty-old-awful thing did it. But just before dawn, he cut off our collars and told us to get on the horses and ride away. We went about ten miles and hid, thinking maybe you’d show up. We had no place to go. Then this afternoon the whole place seemed to blow up, bang, bang, and we rode toward the mountains.”
Suddenly Jonnie added it up. He spoke to Terl. “So you murdered Char, did you, and left him in the cage with that man-knife in him so that man could be blamed for his death. The question is, Terl, how were you going to wipe out the humans?”
Terl had been looking at his watch. He reached toward his pocket. Jonnie abruptly made him desist.
“Just two talons,” said Terl, holding them up.
Jonnie indicated he could but was very watchful.
Terl plucked something that was about a foot square from his side pocket, moving very delicately and gingerly under the watchful gun. It was a large remote computer board. Thin. Familiar in machine operation but a bit bigger and dirtier than usual.
With a laugh Terl tossed it toward Jonnie, who backed up in case it exploded.
“You took the wrong remote off me, rat brain.”
Jonnie stared down at it, not comprehending. The keyboard only had date, hour and fire on it. It had no stop or correction tab.
“It’s irreversible,” said Terl. “Once punched and activated, the board is worthless. This morning before the semiannual, I used it up.”
Terl glanced at his watch. “In about ten minutes now, you’ll all collect your pay whether you messed up Psychlo or not!” He went into a gale of laughter. “You were after the wrong remote!”
The laughter made him sputter in his face mask. “And here you are,” he finally managed, “twenty miles away and you can’t do a thing about it. And couldn’t anyway!”
He pounded his paws in the dirt, he was laughing so hard.
7
At that exact moment Zzt in the underground hangars was almost out of his wits.
Ever since that wild recoil had occurred at the end of the semiannual, things had been in chaos.
The rumor had been flying about that it was humans out there. Men! Zzt knew better. Those silly slugs could do nothing. It was undoubtedly Tolneps, landing in here from their system. Zzt, although his thinking was interrupted every few seconds by curses at Terl, had it all worked out. The Tolneps had buggered up the teleportation bands to paralyze counter-attack and were in here after the still not inconsiderable mineral content of this planet. There had been trouble with the Tolneps before and the last war with them was inconclusive. They were short, about half the size of a Psychlo, and they could breathe almost anything. And were immune to Psychlo gas barrages, worse luck. Therefore he was rigging a Mark 32 low-flying ground strafer, the most heavily gunned plane in the hundreds of planes in these hangars.
And damn and blast that Terl. He was supposed to be in charge of defense! And where were the standby, alert battle planes? Out in the weather. And where were the tanks? Snug and rusting in the underground tank park! And where were the reserves at other minesites? Pulled in here!
Damn Terl! There was no fuel cartridge or ammunition supply inside the compound. Zzt was illogical in blaming Terl for this, since it was against company rules to store them inside a compound. They were nearly a half-mile from here, and two parties of Psychlos that had tried to get to the dump had been slaughtered. And that was another thing that proved it was Tolneps. The Psychlos who had been hit simply exploded into a pale green flash. Only Tolneps could invent weapons like that!
So he had to scavenge in the old planes and ground cars for half-used cartridges and ammunition charges. Oh, there was quite a bit to be found, but it couldn’t be depended on.
He had come to physical blows with the two Chamco brothers, blast them. They were readying up a heavy armored tank. Two tanks that had gotten out that violent afternoon had been blown to cinders. So the Chamcos were rigging one of the old brutes of the Basher class: “Bash Our Way to Glory.” Nothing could penetrate its hide and its guns wrecked things for miles. The Chamcos were salvaging fuel and ammunition cartridges for it, and they had the nerve, the twisted metal nerve, to maintain that the attackers were Hockners from Duraleb, a system Psychlo had completely whipped two hundred years ago.
The battle had been over who got the cartridges, and that pompous midget, Ker, had come down and given them both half. Another Terl mess!
The cartridges didn’t fit the Mark 32. Zzt had spent valuable time machining a false case around them to get them into the tubes. Damn Terl!
He had told his men to MOVE THAT DAMNED DRONE! two hours ago. Damn Terl!
Now here he was. He had found a copilot: one of the executives in the draft that had just arrived, rated combat on a Mark 32, named Nup; a dimwit—but that’s what you got on an out-of-the-way planet like this—who thought it was a typical Bolbod attack, based on a rumor he had heard in the kerbango shops lately in the Imperial City that a conquest of the Bolbods was intended.
Zzt had collected a combat breathe-mask, gotten a shoulder bag of extra vials, gotten his sidearms, put spare rations in his pocket, and last but not least, put his favorite wrench into the side of his boot, a wrench that sometimes came in handy in any kind of fight or situation.
The Mark 32 motors turned over easily. It purred. In no time at all he would be out there and that would be the very positive end of this attack! Damn Terl!
Zzt let off the skid grips and taxied the Mark 32, “Hit ’Em Low, Kill ’Em,” toward the firing door. Mechanics leaped to get out of his way. The place was in a turmoil of Psychlos trying to get planes ready with nothing. And that damned drone was still standing there.
Ordinarily you could fire three planes at once through that door. It was high enough even to add a fourth. But that ancient relic of a gas drone was so wide and so tall it was blocking the whole door. Just what he’d told Terl. Damn Terl! There was no way he could get the Mark 32 past it.
Zzt leaned out the door and screamed for the shift foreman. He came rushing up. Zzt almost bit him. “Move that damned drone! Two hours ago I—”
“It won’t dolly,” panted the foreman. He pointed. Four dolly trucks
had been trying to push it away. “It won’t move!”
Zzt gave his equipment bag a hoist onto his shoulder and sprang down. “You imbecile crunch! The only inside control that thing has is its mag-grapnels. Why haven’t you let it off? Those big skis are magnetically locked to this platform! Why don’t you learn—”
“It’s a very old drone,” chattered the foreman, his wits starting to crumble under Zzt’s glare.
Zzt rushed to the door of the drone. It was a huge door, big enough to load a dozen gas canisters at a time. Somebody had put a rolling ladder there and Zzt ran up it, his equipment clattering, and pried at the door. It was locked! An armored door itself the size of a plane.
“Where’s the key?” screamed Zzt.
“Terl had it!” the foreman shouted up at him. “We’ve looked everywhere for Terl. We can’t find him!”
Damn Terl! “Have you searched his rooms?” Zzt yelled down from the rolling ladder.
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried the foreman. “We—”
At that moment a higher-pitched voice bit into the row of the hangar. “Yoohoo!” It was Chirk. Zzt stared in daggers of hostility. The cheap twit!
But she was holding a single huge key. “I found this in his desk,” she caroled.
“Where are the other keys to this thing?” shouted Zzt. “The preset box keys.”
“That’s the only one there was in the desk,” lilted Chirk.
It gave Zzt an instant’s pause. He didn’t want this damned old relic firing itself off in the hangar with no way to get out. But he had to move it. This was the door key they were passing up to him.
He glared at the key. Three toggles. Pitted. The shaft almost in two. Terl could at least have made a new key! But oh, no, it was paws off.
He shoved the key, all twenty pounds of it, at the lock hole. He twisted it with a curse. Damn Terl!
The rusty, magnetic clenchers gave. The key fell apart.
Zzt flung it to the platform below, narrowly missing Chirk. At least the door was open.
He struggled to swing it back. Even the hinges were decayed and stiff. It opened to reveal the enormous interior.
Zzt got a torch. There were no lights in this thing. It was never meant to have a pilot in it. It was just tons and tons and tons of gas canisters, engines and armor.
He thought belatedly he might have robbed some fuel from it. Too late now.
He lumbered forward to the control compartment. He had better throw them off. But no! They were armor-locked solid. They couldn’t be unset without a key. And this metal wouldn’t surrender to anything. It was armored! Damn Terl!
He darted his light around. There was the magnetic grip release, the only interior control, put there so hangar and firing people could lock and unlock it when moving it about with tractors.
Zzt reached for the release brake.
Before he could touch it, it moved!
He froze, looking at it in horror. Yes, there was a click in the preset box. He dove for the door.
The forward jerk of the motors threw him off his feet. He scrambled for the exit.
Too late!
The hangar door was fleeing by. It was already yards down to the ground. He didn’t dare jump.
The drone took off, its rusty side door flapping in the wind.
Zzt let out a shuddering groan. Damn Terl!
Well, at least they could get the battle planes out and end the Tolnep attack.
And all this on half-pay and no bonuses.
Probably that was Terl’s doing, too.
8
Jonnie, twenty miles away, saw the drone launch. It was a huge thing. The gas drone? He went ice cold.
The flash of an explosion bloomed on the side of it. He knew it would be a bazooka firing. There was a team there to prevent the launching of planes. A second flash against the hull as the boom of the first one drifted faintly to them. Neither had the slightest effect upon the drone. It rose in stately massiveness to two thousand feet as it turned. Still climbing, it headed northwest.
It went by them to the east, looming in the sky, so big it looked close even though two miles away. It was ragged and patched and dented, evidences of former combat on its discolored hide. A tense Jonnie clocked it at about three hundred miles an hour. A battle plane had fired just behind it. Bazooka missiles hit the plane, exploded in two flares of light. It continued sedately on its way, following the drone. As it passed over them he saw it was a different type of battle plane. The Psychlo numbers “32” were on its side and then the smoke logos of the Psychlos. An escort?
The heavy roars beat at the earth.
When they had gone, Terl said, “Why not admit it, animal? You’re licked. When the Psychlos counterattack from home planet, you’ll already be gone. So why not toss that gun over here and we can make a deal?”
Jonnie ignored him. He was carefully tracking the compass course of the drone relating it to the afternoon sun. He watched it as long as he could as it droned away to the northeast. It was not turning further. Be calm, he told himself. Don’t panic.
“Where’s it going first?” he said to Terl. A battle plane could do two thousand miles an hour. You can catch it. Be calm.
“Throw the gun over and I’ll tell you all about it,” said Terl.
Terl’s motions alarmed Pattie. “Don’t believe anything he says,” she pleaded. “He promised us food and didn’t bring it. He even made out to us two or three times that you were dead!”
“You’ll tell me about it,” said Jonnie, “or I’ll start shooting off your feet.” He aimed his gun.
“Do it!” said Pattie. “He’s a nasty old brute! A devil!”
Jonnie was glancing in the direction Chrissie had gone. She was taking an awful long time coming back. He couldn’t leave the girls out here alone and certainly not with Terl alive. Be calm, he told himself. You can catch up with it.
“All right,” said Terl as though resigned. “I’ll give you the places it’s going.
“In proper order,” said Jonnie, raising the gun suggestively.
“You’d get a kick out of shooting me up, wouldn’t you?” said Terl.
“I don’t get any enjoyment out of hurting things the way—”
“That’s because you’re a rat brain,” laughed Terl.
All this Psychlo talk between Jonnie and Terl was making Pattie very nervous. “Don’t listen to him, Jonnie, just shoot him,” she demanded, grabbing Jonnie’s gun arm.
“All right,” said Terl. “It’s first target is the bottom of Africa. The next is China. The next is Russia. Then it is preset to fly to Italy and then right here.”
Good, thought Jonnie. He didn’t mention Scotland. It’s heading over the Arctic on that course. Scotland. That’s its first target. And it would be because the Psychlos couldn’t get up there, or thought they couldn’t. Thank you, Terl.
“Good,” he said aloud. “For information received, you live a while longer.” It would take it seventeen hours to get to Scotland. Look calm. You can catch it.
Chrissie was coming down. They had been hidden by a dip in the plains. The horse was at a walk. And he saw why as she came near.
It was Thor. She was holding him upright in front of her on the horse. She had removed her buckskin jacket and used it for bandages. Thor’s antiradiation suit was stained with blood around the left shoulder. She had torn it away there and used buckskin and grass to staunch the blood flow. Thor’s left arm was broken, bound in rough sticks for splints. It was he who had been shot out of the sky when he was using the jet pack.
With Chrissie’s help Thor slid off the horse. He was gray from blood loss and stood unsteadily. He looked at Jonnie ruefully. “I’m sorry, Jonnie.”
“It was my fault, not yours,” said Jonnie. “Ease him down on that rock, Chrissie.”
Thor looked at Terl. He had seen the monster close up only a couple of times. Thor was wearing a .457 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver from the old base arsenal loaded with radiation bullets. He suddenl
y recognized Terl and grabbed for his gun to shoot him.
“No, no,” said Jonnie. “Keep the gun drawn and train it on him and shoot him the moment he looks like he’s going to move, particularly his hands. Can you sit there okay?”
Thor was about fifty feet from Terl. He eased down further and got the gun trained on Terl.
“Now, Terl,” said Jonnie, “that gun he is holding can put a hole in you a horse could dive through. It has special explosive bullets, worse than your own blast gun. Got it?” Be calm in front of these people. You can catch up with it.
He turned to Pattie. He gave her the huge blast pistol to hold. He showed her where the trigger was and she determinedly walked back of a rock so she could support the gun with it.
“I point it like this?”
“And keep it on him.” You have time, he told himself. Do a good job here.
“Why not kill him?” said Thor.
“He leaks information,” said Jonnie.
Terl couldn’t understand what they were saying but he got their drift.
Jonnie took out a knife and, keeping out of the line of possible fire, made Terl swivel around. He inserted the knife at Terl’s collar and cut the cloth down the back. He went around front, watching Terl’s eyes for a telltale clench signaling action and pulled the coat sleeves off. He ripped the cloth down the side of each of Terl’s legs. He darted a shallow stab at Terl when he sought to spring. Terl subsided. Jonnie got Terl’s boots and pants off. He took his watch. He took his cap. The only thing Terl had left was his breathe-mask and Jonnie even took the emergency vials off that. Terl glared.
There he sat, his fur matted with sweat, his claws twitching to rake Jonnie.
Jonnie took the belt and made Terl put his paws behind him and cinched the belt as tight as he could around the wrists. Then he took Old Pork’s bridle and tied the wrists and belt and then passed the rope under the mask tube. He cinched it up. If Terl tried to wrestle his wrists loose he would choke himself. Do a good job, Jonnie told himself. Don’t panic. In a battle plane you can catch the drone.
He had been working very fast. He now stepped away from Terl and quickly went through the clothes. Sure enough, Terl had two more weapons secreted. A knife and a second assassin gun.