I had a long flight ahead of me, and speculating on inter-planetary travel helped to pass the time away. Kapara lies on the continent of Epris, and Ergos, the capital of Kapara, is some eleven thousand miles from Orvis; and as our slowest planes have a speed of five hundred miles an hour, we were due over Ergos a couple of hours before dawn of the following day. As all three of my gunners are relief pilots, we relieved each other every four hours. Bantor Han was not with me on this flight, and I had three men with whom I had not previously flown. However, like all of the men of the fighting forces of Unis, they were efficient and dependable.
After crossing the coastline of Unis we flew three thousand and five hundred miles over the great Karagan Ocean, which extends for eighty– five hundred miles from the northern continent of Karis to the southernmost tip of Unis, where the continents of Epris and Unis almost meet.
At an altitude of twelve miles there is not much to see but atmosphere. Occasional cloud banks floated beneath us, and between them we could see the blue ocean, scintillating in the sunlight, looking almost as smooth as a millpond; but the scintillation told us that high seas were running.
About noon we sighted the shore of Epris ; and shortly after, a wave of Kapar planes came to meet us. There were not more than a thousand of them in this wave; and we drove them back, destroying about half of them, before a second and much larger wave attacked us. The fighting was furious, but most of our bombers got through. Our squadron was escorting one of the heavy bombers, and we were constantly engaged in fighting off enemy attack planes. My plane was engaged in three dog– fights within half an hour, and I was fortunate to come through with the loss of only one man, one of the gunners in the after cockpit. After each fight I had to open her up wide and overtake the bomber and her convoy.
The cruising speed of these pursuit ships is around five hundred miles an hour, but they have a top speed of almost six hundred miles. The bombers cruise at about five hundred, with a top speed around five hundred and fifty.
Of the two thousand light and heavy bombers that started out with the fleet on this raid, about eighteen hundred got through to Ergos; and there, believe me, the real fighting commenced. Thousands upon thousands of Kapar planes soared into the air, and our fleet was augmented by the arrival of the survivors of the dogfights.
As the bombers unloaded their heavy bombs we could first see the flames of the explosions and then, after what seemed a long while, the sound of the detonation would come to us from twelve miles below. Ships were falling all about us, ours and the Kapars. Bullets screamed about us, and it was during this phase of the engagement that I lost my remaining after cockpit gunner.
Suddenly the Kapar fleet disappeared, and then the anti-aircraft guns opened up on us. Like the antiaircraft guns of Unis, they fire a thousand-pound shell twelve or fifteen reties up into the air, and the burst scatters fragments of steel for five hundred yards in all directions. Other shells contain wire nets and small parachutes, which support the nets in the air to entangle and foul propellers.
After unloading our bombs, some seven or eight thousand tons of them, upon an area of two hundred square miles over and around Ergos, we started for home, circling to the east and then to the north, which would bring us in over the southernmost tip of Unis. I had two dead men in the after cockpit; and I hadn't been able to raise the gunner in the belly of the ship for some time.
As we circled over the eastern tip of Epris, my motor failed entirely, and there was nothing for me to do but come down. Another hour and I would have been within gliding distance of the tip of Unis, or one of the three islands which are an extension of this tip, at the southern end of the Karagan Ocean .
The crews of many ships saw me gliding down for a landing, but no ship followed to succour me. It is one of the rules of the service that other ships and men must not be jeopardized to assist a pilot who is forced down in enemy country. The poor devil is just written off as a loss. I knew from my study of Polodan geography that I was beyond the southeastern boundary of Kapara, and over the country formerly known as Punos, one of the first to be subjugated by the Kapars over a hundred years before.
What the country was like I could only guess from rumours that are current in Unis, and which suggest that its people have been reduced to the status of wild beasts by years of persecution and starvation.
As I approached the ground I saw a mountainous country beneath me and two rivers which joined to form a very large river that emptied into a bay on the southern shoreline; but I found no people, no cities, and no indication of cultivated fields. Except along the river courses, where vegetation was discernible, the land appeared to be a vast wilderness. The whole terrain below me appeared pitted with ancient shell-craters, attesting the terrific bombardment to which it had been subjected in a bygone day.
I had about given up all hope of finding a level place on which to make a landing, when I discovered one in the mouth of a broad caсon, at the southern foot of a range of mountains.
As I was about to set the ship down I saw figures moving a short distance up the caсon. At first I could not make out what they were, for they dodged behind trees in an evident effort to conceal themselves from me; but when the ship came to rest they came out, a dozen men armed with spears and bows and arrows. They wore loincloths made of the skin of some animal, and they carried long knives in their belts. Their hair was matted and their bodies were filthy and terribly emaciated.
They crept toward me, taking advantage of whatever cover the terrain afforded; and as they came they fitted arrows to their bows.
Chapter Nine
THE ATTITUDE OF THE reception committee was not encouraging. It seemed to indicate that I was not a welcome guest. I knew that if I let them get within bow range, a flight of arrows was almost certain to get me; so the thing to do was keep them out of bow range. I stood up in the cockpit and levelled my pistol at them, and they immediately disappeared behind rocks and trees.
I wished very much to examine my engine and determine if it were possible for me to repair it, but I realized that as long as these men of Punos were around that would be impossible. I might go after them; but they had the advantage of cover and of knowing the terrain; and while I might get some of them, I could not get them all; and those that I did not get would come back, and they could certainly hang around until after dark and then rush me.
It looked as though I were in a pretty bad way, but I finally decided to get down and go after them and have it out. Just then one of them stuck his head up above a rock and called to me. He spoke in one of the five languages of Unis that I had learned.
"Are you a Unisan?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied.
"Then do not shoot," he said. "We will not harm you."
"If that is true," I said, "go away."
"We want to talk to you," he said. "We want to know how the war is going and when it will end."
"One of you may come down," I said, "but not more."
"I will come," he said, "but you need not fear us."
He came down toward me then, an old man with wrinkled skin and a huge abdomen, which his skinny legs seemed scarcely able to support. His grey hair was matted with twigs and dirt, and he had the few grey hairs about his chin which can note old age on Poloda.
"I knew you were from Unis when I saw your blue uniform," he said. "In olden times the people of Unis and the people of Punos were good friends. That has been handed down from father to son for many generations. When the Kapars first attacked us, the men of Unis gave us aid; but they, too, were unprepared; and before they had the strength to help us we were entirely subjugated, and all of Punos was overrun with Kapars. They flew their ships from our coastlines, and they set up great guns there; but after a while the men of Unis built great fleets and drove them out. Then, however, it was too late for our people."