What I took to be barracks were lodged just inside the entrance, on either side of the road. They weren’t very big, but I thought I’d better see what they had on the outside of the crater. Telling Tone and Heshan to stay put, I worked my way round. There were guards posted on the outside of the entrance, that was all. I was in time to see a couple of wagons leave the valley, turning to circle it by a road that left to the south.
According to what we had heard the valley was the producing and disseminating centre for a free public service, like protein was supposed to be (but wasn’t) back on Killibol. There was no need, in Rheattic eyes, for it to be heavily guarded; to my more predatory mind it was ludicrously vulnerable, especially in time of war. If I had been the Rheattic commander I would have stationed an army there.
The place wasn’t even very big. I judged the valley to be three miles in diameter. Bec was going to be pleased.
I slithered back to the others. “Let’s be on our way,” I said. “I think I’ve seen enough.”
“Aren’t we going in?” Tone asked pleadingly.
“Don’t be stupid, Tone,” I told him.
“But you know what I want. Bec promised—”
“You’ll have to wait,” I said bluntly. “We have to report to Bec first. You’ll get your dope when we take the valley.”
Tone stared down at the heady blossoms. His face looked like he was going to cry.
“Come on, move it!” I said harshly. “You’ve held out this long, you can hold out a bit longer.” I turned to go.
We had been speaking Klittmann, but the Heshan had been watching our exchange closely. He stood up uncertainly on the loose shale.
“You come in secret and hide. You are not here for your friend. You mean some harm to Blue Space Valley.”
“Pack it in, will ya?” I glared from one to the other, surreptitiously loosening the strap that held my repeater on my back.
The Heshan backed away. “Let us go openly through the gate. I do not have to hide. I will go and tell them you are here.”
I had to give him a score for guts. He set off down the outer slope at a slithering run. I yelled for him to stop, and reached for my repeater.
But Tone had grabbed my elbow. “I’m sorry, Klein, I can’t go away now. Not when it’s so close. Just lemme—”
He broke off and scrambled over the lip of the crater. I made a grab for him but it was too late.
Cursing, I turned back to the Heshan, who was making good time down the slope now. If he made it to the entrance I would be in trouble. I took careful aim. My repeater hammered loudly. The Heshan took a tumble, the slugs knocking him yards further down the slope, and lay still.
I flung myself to the crater brim, thinking I might still be in time to stop Tone. For a moment or two the sun flashed straight into my eye-shades, dazzling me. Then I saw him. He wasn’t running or clambering but rolling down the inside slope, plunging helter-skelter towards those blossoms that he hoped would give him peace of mind.
Already he was a long way off. I threw a long burst from the repeater after him. The sound echoed across the valley. Then Tone was lost to sight beneath the pink and red blooms and I wasn’t sure if I had hit him.
I quickly discarded the idea of going after him. A lot of people down in the crater might already have heard my repeater going off. There were too many of them. The only thing I could do now was get back to Hesha.
Making the journey back alone was kind of lonely, a little frightening. I’d never been left alone in the middle of an Earth landscape before, seven days from my own people. But I made it without any trouble and gave Bec the news.
“So you think this valley is wide open?” he asked after I’d finished.
“Looks like it. Of course, they might have some way of sealing off the entrance that I didn’t see — a metal door or a rock fall. But I reckon we could be through before they have time to use it. The sloop could get over the wall of the crater in any case.”
“Hmm. Do you think Tone will talk if he’s still alive?”
“It’s hard to say. Not willingly, because he knows we’re going to turn up sooner or later and he doesn’t want us to have a score to settle. But if they hold the stuff out on him he’ll do anything.”
Bec nodded. “It’s a chance we’ll have to take. We have to move fast anyway. Things are happening.”
“Oh?” I had noticed that things didn’t seem quite the same in the village. The atmosphere was more subdued, more quiet.
“Somebody came to the village to say that the Meramites are moving this way. The locals are pretty scared. They’re asking us to fight the Meramites for them.” He chuckled.
“So how do we handle it?” I asked.
“The first thing is to move on Blue Space Valley to give us some property to bargain with. I guess I should really send you to do that job, but I want you to stay here with me. Give Grale and the others the low-down and they can sort it out.”
“It’s liable to get pretty hot around here, boss. After all we don’t know an awful lot about what these Moon guys can do.”
“We’ll play it by ear,” he said, unperturbed.
The sloop left the next day. I didn’t feel nearly so self-confident without it. Bec had given Harmen the option of leaving with the sloop or staying. He elected to stay and Bec conceived a plan for him to help us make contact.
“We might need an amount of bluff here,” he explained. “It won’t do for them to meet the boss straight away. We’ll use Harmen for a front man. You know the old ‘Organisation Routine’? You think you’ve met the top man, then suddenly you find out he’s not the top man and you find yourself faced with somebody he’s dirt to. It makes a good impression.”
He grinned sourly. “Besides, it might save us from getting our heads blown off.”
We prepared a bunker at the opposite end of the village to that which the Meramites were approaching. Bec posted lookouts. He told the villagers he would handle things for them, but that was only to secure their co-operation. I guess they were better off with Bec in charge, though. He told them not to resist but to surrender, sending out envoys to say that the village was in the hands of an alien power not of Rheatt.
He had reckoned without the Meramites’ way of doing things, however. Hesha was only a small village to them, an outpost of a nation they had already conquered, and they believed in a policy of punishment-in-advance. From the hillside we watched the approach of the Meramite column, sending up a cloud of dust. The Meramites were riding on wheeled platforms, circular in shape, carrying about twenty men apiece. They stopped not far outside the village and we saw our messengers deliver their news. We saw them slaughter those messengers and then roll forward mercilessly.
“Get to the bunker,” Bec said in clipped tones. “This isn’t going to be so easy.”
A withering fire swept the village, starting fires here and there. The Meramite soldiery carried lance-like poles that fired gouts of hot metal. You could just about see them when they shot from the tip of the lance, streaking out like a line of light. They didn’t seem to be very accurate, but they didn’t have to be in the circumstances.
We made it to the bunker through clouds of smoke. It was a well-set-up position at the end of the main street, backed up by solid brick buildings. Its upper parts, jutting up above the road, had a step-like construction, one block being set more forward than the other, and into these two blocks we had set the Jains. The arrangement gave absolute command of the street ahead of us and good control over the environs, each gun being able to cover the other from attack from any side.