“Faraday!” he half-shouted. “Faraday’s Cage!”
Petra narrowed her eyes at him. “Faraday’s Cage?”
“Yes, yes! You remember it from elementary physics, don’t you?”
“I always found physics a bore, but wasn’t it something about screening out radio waves with…um…wire mesh?”
“That’s exactly it!” Jan sheathed his sword and was unslinging his bow as he spoke. “You can shut out energy waves with a sheet of metal, but Faraday discovered that you don’t need a solid sheet. Wire mesh will do the trick just as well.”
“I remember that much,” Petra replied. “But we haven’t got any mesh.”
“No, but we’ve got the makings—there’s wire lying all over the place. The guidance wires from all those missiles that were fired! If we could…”
“Tie wires to the arrows and use them to wrap the wires all around the tower!” Petra was unslinging her own bow as she spoke. “We could starve the monster…choke it to death…”
“You’ve got it,” Jan said. “Come on, Petra, let’s go to war!”
The tanks were moving quite slowly now, as though their alien overlord felt secure in the knowledge that its victims could not escape and was prolonging its moment of triumph. Jan and Petra walked towards them, both drawing red-fletched arrows from the quivers on their backs.
When the nearest of the tanks were only a few metres away, and they could clearly see skeletal figures lolling in the turrets, Petra and he suddenly darted forward with all the speed they could muster. They passed between two tanks before the lumbering vehicles could converge to crush them.
Now they were barely a hundred paces from the tower and very close to the inner circle of machines which still cruised around it.
As they had been counting on, the ground here was crisscrossed with the fine wires which had once linked the tanks to their guided weapons, and which the blindly lumbering vehicles trailed like spider webs everywhere they went.
Petra knelt, picked up a free end of wire and quickly tied it to the end of an arrow. “You were right,” she called out. “I think we’ve got a chance with this stuff.”
“Yes, but keep an eye on those tanks—they’re coming back!” Working with feverish haste, Jan tied a wire to one of his arrows and quickly drew the bow. He took aim, not at the black tower but at a point directly above it, and fired the arrow. It soared away through the gloom, and he saw the sun-bright needle of flame appear at its tail as the miniature motor ignited.
Driven by the powerful micro-rocket, the arrow passed over the tower, dragging a tangled skein of fine wires behind it. As the burdened arrow sagged in its flight and arced downwards the trailing network of wires settled over the tower. A moment later Petra’s first arrow achieved the same result. They both leaped aside, narrowly escaping the tank which had thundered at them from behind. The machine slewed around to come after them again—but it seemed to Jan and Petra that its movements were already less forceful, less certain than before.
“Did you see that?” Petra shouted, giving a slightly unnatural laugh. “We’re hurting the monster!”
“I think you’re right.”
Scarcely daring to hope that their scheme was taking effect so soon, Jan and Petra ran a short distance while drawing fresh arrows from their quivers. Jan found another guidance wire and fired it off as before, with Petra doing the same thing in unison. This time, when the double skeins of wire settled over the tower, the effect on the surrounding army of vehicles was clearly noticeable.
The squeal of tracks and rusted components abruptly sank to a lower level. The machines were rapidly losing power, making Jan and Petra’s task easier.
Encouraged by their success, they ran here and there among the now crawling juggernauts. Each time Jan found a sizeable tangle of wire he used one of his arrows to hurl it over the black tower. Other arrows, deliberately fired low by Petra, lapped their lines around the structure, tightening the net.
More expert than Jan with the bow, Petra was able to shoot faster and quickly expended all of her arrows, binding the tower with more and more layers of wire. Each time a new arrow was loosed off, the cage—the Faraday’s Cage—which was being woven around the tower became more complete, forming a radiation-proof screen between the unseen alien and its mechanical slaves, depriving it of control.
Finally, the last circling tank and clanking bulldozer ground to a halt.
An eerie stillness, broken by only an occasional rumble of thunder, descended over the plaza.
Jan took a deep, quavering breath and stood facing the tower, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “We did it!” he said, exulting. “We caged the monster!”
“Yes.” Petra sounded equally relieved. “And, to tell the truth, I wasn’t at all sure it would work.”
“To tell the truth, I wasn’t all that sure, either.” Jan did an exaggerated mime of wiping sweat from his brow.
“There’s nothing to stop us going back to the Seeker and getting away from this miserable dump for ever,” Petra said, then she looked closely into Jan’s face. “Except that you don’t want to do that, do you?”
“Oh, I want to do it,” Jan assured her, “but I’ve just had an unpleasant thought. As far as we know, the monster is telepathic. If it has been reading our thoughts, it knows that our plan is to get the military to drop a nuclear bomb on this spot. What would you do if you were in the monster’s place?”
“Get as far away from here as possible.”
“Exactly! It’s bound to be at least a day before the Council can react and get a military ship to Verdia, and by that time the monster will be far away from here. And as soon as it quits the tower, and gets outside the wires, all its powers will come back to it. We’ll have achieved nothing.”
Petra studied the enigmatic black tower and gave a slight shudder. “In fact, if the monster thinks logically it should already be on the way out.” She dropped her bow and empty quiver to the ground, and drew her sword.
“Perhaps it doesn’t want to face our swords, or…” A new note of grimness appeared in Jan’s voice. “Perhaps it’s waiting for us in the tower.”
“In that case,” Petra replied, managing to sound almost casual, “we go into the tower.”
Jan felt an immediate surge of admiration and respect for her courage, but his reaction was to give an emphatic shake of his head. “No, Petra—I am going into the tower. Alone.”
“We’ve already been through all this stuff,” Petra said heatedly. “If you think…”
“I have been thinking,” Jan cut in. “Just give me a few seconds to tell you what, and then you can decide what would be the best thing to do. All right?”
“I…I suppose so.”
Jan spoke quickly. “Our one objective is to see to it that the monster gets destroyed—and that means that we now have to split up.”
“Split up! But we agreed not to do that.”
“Things are different now. One of us has to go into the tower, and I’m the logical choice, Petra. You’re much better than I’ll ever be with the bow, but I’ve been training with the sword for two years. I’m bound to have the better chance.”
“Two of us would have an even better chance,” Petra said, refusing to be put off so easily.
“Yes, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that we wouldn’t both be killed in there—and then the monster would be safe again. Isn’t that right?” Jan was speaking with the persuasiveness of utter conviction. “That’s why you’ve got to wait out here. And if I don’t come out of the tower within ten minutes you’ve got to run—and I mean run—back to the Seeker.