“Hold on, Reejaaren; you’re moving in the wrong direction.” The islander stopped on his way out of the bay, liquid dripping from his long body, and doubled his front half back toward the ship to see what the mate meant. He saw clearly enough, but seemed for a moment undecided about the proper course of action.
“If you want to assume I’ll probably miss because I’ve never handled one of these things, go right ahead. I’d like to find out myself. If you don’t start coming this way in an awfully short time, though, it will be just as though you had tried to escape. Move!” The last word was issued in a barking roar that removed much of the interpreter’s indecision. He apparently was not quite sure of the mate’s incompetence; he continued the doubling movement, re-entered the bay, and swam out to the Bree. If he thought of concealing himself by submerging during the process, he evidently lacked the courage to try it. As he well.knew, the methane was only a few inches deep even at the ship’s location, and would hardly protect him from a bolt hurled with force enough to penetrate three inches of wood after a forty-yard trajectory under seven gravities. He did not think of it in those terms, of course, but he knew very well what those projectiles could do. He clambered aboard, shaking with rage and fear together.
“Do you think this will save you?” he asked. “You have simply made things worse for yourselves. The gliders will drop in any event if you try to move, whether I am aboard or not.”
“You will order them not to.”
“They will obey no order I give while I am obviously in your power; you should know that if you have any sort of
fighting force.”
“I’ve never had much to do with soldiers,” Barlennan replied. He had recovered the initiative, as he usually did once things had started in a definite direction. “However, I’ll believe you for the time being. Well just have to hold you here until some understanding is reached concerning this nonsense about our going ashore — unless we can take care of those gliders of yours in the meantime. It’s a pity we
didnt’ bring some more modern armament into this backward area.”
“You can stop that nonsense now,” returned the captive. “You have nothing more than the rest of the savages of the south. I’ll admit you fooled us for a. time, but you betrayed yourself a moment ago.”
“And what did I say that made you think I’d been lying?”
“I see no reason to tell you. The fact that you don’t yet know just proves my point. It would have been better for you if you hadn’t fooled us so completely; then we’d have been more careful with secret information, and you wouldn’t have learned enough to make your disposal necessary.”
“And if you hadn’t made that last remark, you might have talked us into surrendering,” cut in Dondragmer, “though I admit it’s not likely. Captain, I’ll bet that what you slipped up on was what I’ve been telling you all along. It’s too late to do anything about that now, though. The question is how to get rid of these pesky gliders; I don’t see any surface craft to worry about, and the folks on shore have only the crossbows from the gliders that were on the ground. I imagine they’ll leave things to the aircraft for the time being.” He shifted to English. “Do you remember anything we heard from the Flyers that would help us get rid of these pesky machines?” Barlennan mentioned their probable altitude limitations over open sea, but neither could see how that helped at the moment.
“We might use the crossbow on them.” Barlennan made the suggestion in his own language, and Reejaaren sneered openly. Krendoranic, the munitions officer of the Bree, who like the rest of the crew had been listening eagerly, was less contemptuous.
“Let’s do that,” he cut in sharply. “There’s been something I’ve wanted to try ever since we were at that river village.”
“What?”
“I don’t think you’d want me to talk about it with our friend listening. Well show him instead, if you are willing.” Barlennan hesitated a moment, then gave consent.
Barlennan looked a trifle worried as Krendoranic opened one of the flame lockers, but the officer knew what he was doing. He removed a small bundle already wrapped in light-proof material, thus giving evidence of at least some of his occupation during the nights since they had left the village of the river-dwellers.
The bundle was roughly spherical, and evidently designed to be thrown by arm-power; like everyone else, Krendoranic had been greatly impressed by the possibilities of this new art of throwing. Now he was extending his idea even further, however.
He took the bundle and lashed it firmly to one of the crossbow bolts, wrapping a layer of fabric around bundle and shaft and tying it at? either end as securely as possible. Then he placed the bolt in the weapon. He had, as a matter of duty, familiarized himself with the weapon during the brief trip downstream and the reassembly of the Bree, and had no doubt about his ability to hit a sitting target at a reasonable distance; he was somewhat less sure about moving objects, but at least the gliders could only turn rapidly if they banked sharply, and that would give him warning.
At his order, one of the sailors who formed part of his flame-thrower crew moved up beside him with the igniting device, and waited. Then, to the intense annoyance of the watching Earthmen, he crawled to the nearest of the radios and set the leg of the bow on top of it to steady himself and the weapon in an upward position. This effectively prevented the human beings from seeing what went on, since the radios were set to look outward from a central point and neither of the others commanded a view of the first.
As it happened, the gliders were still making relatively low passes, some fifty feet above the bay, and coming directly over the Bree on what could on an instant’s notice become bomb runs; so a much less experienced marksman than the munitions officer could hardly have missed. He barked a command to his assistant as one of the machines approached, and began to lead it carefully. The moment he was sure of his aim, he gave a command of execution and the assistant touched the igniter to the bundle on the slowly rising arrow point. As it caught, Krendoranic’s pincers tightened on the trigger and a line of smoke marked the trail of the missile from the bow.
Krendoranic and his assistant ducked wildly back to deck level and rolled upwind to get away from the smoke released at the start; sailors to leeward of the release point leaped to either side. By the time they felt safe, the air action was almost over.
The bolt had come as close as possible to missing entirely; the marksman had underestimated his target’s speed. It had struck about as far aft on the main fuselage as it could, and the bundle of chlorine powder was blazing furiously. The cloud of flame was spreading to the rear of the glider and leaving a trail of smoke that the following machines made no effort to avoid. The crew of the target ship escaped the effects of the vapor, but in a matter of seconds their tail controls burned away. The glider’s nose dropped and it fluttered down to the beach, pilot and crew leaping free just before it touched. The two aircraft which had flown into the smoke also went out of control as the hydrogen chloride fumes incapacitated their personnel, and both settled into the bay. All in all, it was one of the great anti-aircraft shots of history.
Barlerman did not wait for the last of the victims to crash, but ordered the sails set. The wind was very much against him, but there was depth enough for the centerboards, and he began to tack out of the fiord. For a moment it looked as though the shore personnel were about to turn their own crossbows on the ship, but Krendoranic had loaded another of his frightful missiles and aimed it toward the beach, and the mere threat sent them scampering for safety — upwind; they were sensible beings for the most part.