After the seventh rocket there was a long pause. Then the large machine in the center fired another rocket. This one climbed in a straight line until it was directly over the city, then exploded. Blade watched the smoke cloud drift away on the wind. He thought he saw something small and gleaming standing still in the air where the smoke had been. Not a war machine-it was far too small. What was it? There was only one way to find out-the same way as he found out everything else so far.
Once more a move into the open drew a rocket. The Looters obviously felt there was some good reason for not moving in close now. The ninth rocket rose on the beginning of a normal flight-then straightened out and came whizzing straight at them.
Blade dove and ducked behind the nearest building, as usual. But this time on the screens he saw the rocket waver in flight, rise in a sharp climb, then turn and plunge back down at him.
Chara gasped and turned pale; half the others cried out loud. Blade's teeth clamped together as he swung the machine around toward the other side of the building. The rocket plunged straight toward the side they had left, looking as though it would keep right on going and explode against the building.
At the last second it swung clear, vanishing around the opposite side of the building. Blade pulled his machine to a stop in midair. A moment later the rocket appeared on the upper screen, climbing upward again. It wavered, nosed over, and plunged back down at the machine again.
This time Blade was the only one in the cabin who didn't shout out loud. He was too busy with the controls, swinging the machine sharply up and to one side. The rocket howled downward past them. Its smoke trail blanked out the screens for a moment. Blade dove for the street again. A moment later a thunderous explosion from below told him that he didn't need to worry about that rocket any more. Its controller hadn't been able to pull it out of that last dive.
«What-what were they doing with that last one?» gasped Chara.
For a moment Blade was too busy with the controls to answer. The machine leaped upward. As they cleared the towers of Miros, he checked the screens. There were the Looter machines, exactly where they had been. High above the city the same small metal shape glinted against the blue sky. Blade watched it grow on the screens from a point to a dot to a small solid sphere. Good. It was no more than four feet across. Nothing that size could be heavy enough to damage the war machine.
«Hang on!» Blade shouted again. This time it was a needless order. The others were all clinging to something solid as if this was their only hope of life.
Crrrannnnnngggggg! A sound like a ten-ton hammer hitting a stack of tin cans placed on a twenty-ton anvil. Metal belled, boomed, and crushed. The shock threw Blade's hands completely off the controls for a moment. He grabbed the controls again and put the machine into a dive. As the towers below grew rapidly larger, he snatched a glimpse at the screens. Trailing smoke and bits of wire, the metal sphere was falling along with them. But it wasn't a sphere any more. The collision with the war machine had half-flattened it.
When they pulled out of the dive just below and behind the top of a building, Chara was able to find her voice. «Mazda, what-?»
«The Looters sent that sphere up on the rocket to float over the city and watch us. It would send a picture like the one on the screens back to the Looter in one of the big machines. Then the Looter would send signals to the rocket, telling it to follow us wherever we went. I have seen such machines during my travels. I knew we had to destroy the seeing machine, or sooner or later the Looters would hit us with a rocket.»
Chara nodded, but her face was still bleached and drawn. «What happens next?»
«We have destroyed their seeing machine. With luck, they will come in close, where we can fight them as I have planned.»
«What if we are not lucky?»
Blade kept silent, since there was no good answer to that question.
Chapter 19
Blade knew the Looters' weapons. He knew their strength. He was certain that he faced living opponents. He was nearly as certain that they would move in to close quarters and fight him in the streets of Miros.
They would be fighting him with weapons that could rip apart his machine or demolish a building a thousand feet high. They would be fighting his small swift machine with larger, clumsier ones, in a rubble-strewn maze of streets he knew far better than they did. They would probably have no one to fight on foot, while he had six fighters whom he could hurl at the enemy when the time was right. Blade was certain that the Looters faced a memorable battle, and probably defeat. Whether he and his comrades would survive to enjoy their victory was another question.
Blade kept his machine under cover for a few minutes, to give the Looters time to react. When he did dart out to take another look, he was relieved to see the Looter machines creeping in toward the city. They were moving as cautiously as soldiers making their way across a minefield, but they were moving in.
It took the Looters nearly half an hour to get to within two miles of the city. During that time they ignored Blade-launched no rockets, fired no beams or rays, made no sounds, flashed no lights.
Two miles north of the city they stopped and divided. The three small war machines moved out and around to cover the east, west, and south sides of the city. The three large machines stayed where they were. Blade realized he was now nicely boxed in. If he tried to avoid action, the machines on his flanks and rear would beam him down or ram him out of the air.
The smaller machines weren't shooting at anything as they took position, as far as Blade could see. That meant that the rest of the expedition had either got clear or was being ignored. Blade had no doubt any more that he was the Looters' number-one target.
The three large machines remained motionless until the smaller ones were in position. Then they began to move forward again. Blade could now see that the center one differed from the other two. Its front end was rounder and topped by a dome of some glassy-looking material. At the rear was a tripod mast with anntennae and screens sprouting from it in all directions.
Good. Now he knew which one was the command machine, the one probably carrying the living Looters. Now he knew which machine had to be his number-one target.
A mile from the city the Looters unleashed their beam weapons. There was no warning, only a blaze of red light lancing out at Blade's machine. The core of the beam missed and slashed into a building. A section of wall fifty feet wide and three stories high scattered in glowing bits and pieces down into the street below, while smoke boiled up from the hole. But the fringe of the beam caught Blade.
For a moment all the screens went dark. Every dial and light on the control panels whirled and flickered hysterically. Blade heard Chara and the others screaming and bit back a gasp of pain himself. He felt as though a thousand red-hot needles were being jammed into every part of his body. He blinked, swallowed, felt blackness creeping up on him-then the pain was past and the screens were clear. A quick check showed no damage to either machine or people.
Vast clouds of smoke billowed up from the gaping hole in the building behind them. More rose from the rubble in the street below. Screened by the smoke, Blade dove the machine down to street level. Another discharge of the red ray ripped into the damaged building, but missed Blade's machine completely. More smoke boiled up and more debris crashed down, some of it hitting the machine. The metal hull boomed under the impact and Blade clung like a monkey to the controls to keep from being hurled out of his seat. The rest of the attackers tried to hang on as best they could.