“Everybody down the craters!” bawled Freiburg.
The rising scream of the wheel’s approach all but drowned his voice. He waved frantically, and the crew began to run for the holes. When he saw they’d taken shelter, he ran, with George at his side, to the nearest crater. It was pretty shallow, but if the wheel came their way its speed might carry it to the far lip of the crater without touching them. He had no doubt that this frightening thing had cut that track, but he remembered that the track wasn’t very deep. The scream of the wheel made the air quiver now, and the ground seemed to be shaking in sympathy. In one respect, Freiburg was glad of that; it camouflaged his own trembling.
The two lay there, faces in the dirt, waiting for the wheel to pass them by. But the howling went on and on, accompanied by a secondary swishing noise, like that of an electric fan.
And still it went on.
Cautiously, they raised their heads and peeped out of the crater. The wheel was running in a wide circle around them and the whole group of craters. It pursued its circular course so swiftly that there appeared to be dozens of blurred wheels chasing themselves around, forming a hazy, glimmering barrier seven metres high.
Their space-ship stood near enough exactly at the center of the circle. George shouted in the Captain’s ear: “That darn wheel’s gotten itself stuck in a groove!”
Freiburg ignored the humor. “Follow me.” And he started running back to the ship. George was surprised, but jumped out of the crater and ran across the quivering earth after the Captain. Heads popped out of craters here and there and regarded them inquiringly. Freiburg waved them back. Inside the ship it was a little quieter.
“Get hold of Sparks! Bring him down to the armory,” said the Captain, breathlessly.
George nodded. So much for hope, he thought, as he climbed towards the radio room.
There had been some controversy concerning whether the first expedition to Venus should be an armed one or not. Much nonsense had been talked, considering that nobody knew whether Venusians were warlike or peaceful, human or non-human, monsters or insects—or if they existed at all. There was general agreement on one point: no atomic weapons should be taken. Their use could start something nobody could finish. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be fair to the crew to risk putting them in the spot of fighting off, say, carnivorous dinosaurs with their bare fists. A light, portable but potent weapon seemed the golden mean. The old bazooka was finally chosen. It was simple to operate, and every man in the crew soon passed the test in its use.
And everyone hoped it would never be needed.
George found Sparks staring out of his porthole and trying to make sense of what was happening out there. On the way down he did his best to put him in the picture.
The Captain had unpacked the tripod and barrel of a bazooka.
“I’ll take this,” he said. “You two get a box of shells each.”
The boxes had been heavy on Earth and were still quite heavy enough here. As George staggered after Freiburg with his, he called: “Did you spot any Venusians, Skip?”
“No. But we can try to knock out that blasted wheel.”
The fearsome shriek of the wheel hit their ears with full power again as they quitted the ship. The Captain began setting up the tripod a few metres away. George and the radio operator dumped their boxes, opened them, and prepared the fuses of the rocket shells.
It may have been his fancy, but George thought the wheel had slackened speed a trifle. At least, there didn’t seem to be quite so many wheels whirring around the perimeter. But that perimeter was still plainly impassable. However fast you tried to dash across it, before you were over the groove that flashing wheel would have run full circle and sliced you in two. The skipper was having trouble with the tripod, but waved away George’s proffered help impatiently.
Sparks was staring fascinatedly at the wheel. Suddenly, he shouted: “It’s closing in on us!”
George took a good look at the base of the blurred wall. It was true enough. The groove had widened to a shallow trench, and was steadily widening yet towards them. The keen edge of the wheel was paring its way inwards. He remembered Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, and was no happier for the memory.
The skipper tugged at his ankle, and roared: “The shells, man! Quick-firing drill.”
George quickly laid eight shells in a line, and fed the first into the tube. The bazooka had an automatic firing device.
Freiburg was aiming at the center of the moving, yet seemingly stationary, wall. He wanted to hit the hub.
Whizz! Trailing fire and smoke the first shell darted out of the magic circle. Whizz! Whizz! Whizz! Three more followed it..
All four passed through the wall as if itself were but smoke, and fell to the ground and burst half a kilo beyond it.
Whizz! Whizz! Whizz! Whi- Crash!
They glimpsed a mid-air explosion and flung themselves flat as bits of shrapnel moaned and whirred about them and thudded into the earth. The very last shell had scored a hit. Instantly, the howling had lost half its power. They looked up cautiously. The wall of steel was still there, but not quite so solidly. You could glimpse the huge disk spinning with a band of daylight encircling the hub now. They’d blown a hole through the wheel near the hub: the rotary motion made it look like a continuous band.
And the wheel had been blasted back against the far side of the trench it was cutting.
Before anyone could say a word, there was a roar like a rocket-plane taking off. Suddenly, a great cloud of black smoke materialized with a splintering concussion somewhere behind them. Shell fragments ripped fiercely through the air.
It was uncomfortably close.
Freiburg abandoned the bazooka. “Take cover!” He was first into the nearest crater.
Then hell broke loose.
Whole salvoes of shells came shrieking down. The ground vibrated like a beaten bass drum. The three men were shaken in their crater like dice in a box. Thick clouds of pungent yellow gas came swirling into the depression and made them cough helplessly. The smell of burnt powder was everywhere. The shrapnel fell like hail.
It stopped at last, but their ears went on ringing from the battering they’d received. Only slowly they became aware again of the sound of the wheel. It had fallen in pitch to a mere whirring drone.
George wiped tears and sweat from his cheeks.
“Welcome to Venus, Planet of Love,” he said, hoarsely. Sparks said nothing. He’d bitten his lip badly and was dabbing at it with a bloody handkerchief.
Freiburg inched his nose over the lip of the crater, and tried futilely to wave some of the yellow gas away. “Can’t see a damn thing…”
Presently: “It’s clearing a bit now… There’s something moving out there. Got your telescope, George?”
George handed it up to him. There was a distant grinding sound, audible above the wheel’s drone.
“Tanks,” said the skipper, peering. “Well, that beats everything. Old-fashioned tanks, with guns on ’em—? straight from the Dark Ages.”
He swung the telescope slowly, scanning every direction.
“We’re surrounded by them,” he reported. “They’re closing in on us. Coming in for the kill.”
II
GEORGE SHOUTED “I’ll get the bazooka.”
“No use,” mumbled Sparks, indistinctly. “It got a direct hit. It’s in fifty pieces.”
“There’s another in the ship,” said George, starting up,
“Stay where you are,” said Freiburg. “Or you’ll be in fifty pieces if that barrage comes down again. It’s not worth a try. I’ve counted twenty-five tanks out there, and there’s a real monster of a fighting machine in back of them. Take a look.”