A giant projector sent dowra spurt of light-fire like a lightning bolt. It split the smoke cloud that hung on the city.
A rift, through which I saw a little group of thatched buildings perched like a cluster of birds' nests between the huge stems of water trees. A tiny segment of the city was made suddenly visible, with a tangle of water plants rising thirty or forty feet above the lake surface. The huts were woven into this junglelaced platforms, with oval mounds of thatch upon them. There were six or eight of them in this cluster, set upon different levels. Leaves like giant palm fronds hung around them, with interlacing vines, woven into ladders.
The heat-ray bolt hurled itself down. I saw the birds' nest houses wither, shrivel and fall to the water in a strewn little heap of wreckage. Human bodies were floating in it.
I saw a woman with broken wings trying to flap upward.
She struggled an instant and then fell back.
The bolt's duration was only a second or two, when the murk closed again. I turned to see Tama staring at Roc.
Her voice rang with horrified accusation: "That projector! You and your father stole the plans for those weapons!" He gripped her. "Yes, I did! I'm sorry, Tama." He ended with a wild laugh. "Lookthey do not know how to use it-" I looked down on the rocky hilltop, where the projector burst into a puff of light. The figures clustered about it were gone. There was only a small blackened patch of empty rock.
We moved on, out over the city. Roc was laughing wild~ "This attack! They should have waited for mel Or you, Dorrek!" He swung toward the giant. "You saw that? They are not readythey do not know how to use their weapons." Dorrek shouted an order to one of his fellows. Our vehicle swung slowly over the city, turning on its axis and making a great circular sweep. The scenes we saw down in the gloom were fragmentary. I recall them now as a kaleidoscope of horror.
Men dying on the precipice top, and men fighting off on the distant terra-ced slopes. An occasional rocket flare rose in a slow arc and burst in the city. Brief vistas of shriveling houses.
Presently the rockets and bombs ceased. Grayness fell upon the scene. Then a wind from the distant mountains sprang up. The murk began rolling aside. The city opened to our sight.
The attack was almost over. On the terraces the clusters of men, and those dark oblong things slithering on the ground, began moving away. In the distance I saw moving dots in the skygirls, who had flown up from the menaced city and escaped. And other patches, dark and leprousholes where the black water showed, strewn with shriveled litter.
As the smoke swept away, we descended. We turned at the entrance to the little canyon where the river wound into the naked hills, and swung back. I saw, in the strewn river surface, blackened, shriveled bodies floating off.
There was a little patch of open water like a city street with tree stems lining it and the houses still intact. Something was still living, swiming down there. An oblong thing. It reared its head, came to a half-fallen tree, began climbing the incline of the trunk. It had a jointed body some ten feet long and myriad short, spindly legs. A round head, with waving arm-like antennae. A "brue" one of the giant' insects! There were some larger than this one. Guy had told us of them, how they were domesticated in the Hill City.
I saw this one leave the water and slither up the treetrunk. It reached a house platform, against which the top of the fallen tree was resting. A woman was lying there on the platform. Her wings were burned away, her body mangled so that she seemed even unable to crawl. But she was still alive, lying against the thatched side wall of her home. At her breast a white-skinned, golden-haired little girl was huddled in the dying mother's arms. The child's paleblue wings were flapping in helpless terror.
The giant insect reached the platform. Our vehicle had dropped so low I could glimpse its face. Half-humanmonstrous. Its tongue licked out; its great slit of mouth seemed grinning.
I heard the woman screama thin, racking shriek. The brue slithered eagerly forward. The woman tried to cast the child off the platform into the water. The insect caught it.
I looked away. Tama and Rowena were shrinking, trembling against me. Roc and Jimmy were staring transfixed. "Mercifully, the ball turned on its axis. The window showed only a section of the city where all the houses were leveled and the blackened bodies were lying inert. I saw other brues: swimmingstopping to seize upon somethingeatingcasting it away.
Then from the distant terraces, where the invaders now were withdrawing, a shrill, mechanical whine sounded. A siren call; it sang over the valley and echoed back from the cliff walls. The call for the brues. We could see a hundred or more of them appearing in the wreckage. Swimming in the demolished streets, slithering over the marsh shores, and up the terraces to join their masters.
Our vehicle had been seen and recognized. Groups of men stood gazing up at us. A flare rose vertically up from them, as a signal.
The ball had turned toward the center of the city. We had risen againan altitude of about a thousand feet over the water. Dorrek and Muta still stood at their window, engrossed in their thoughts.
I whispered to Roc, "Now is our time! Order us back behind the hills, the way we came. Tell Dorrek to land us there." Roc nodded agreement. He advanced across the room toward Dorrek. Jimmy and I stood tense where we were. I whispered, "Watch them, Jimmy! Your flash ready? If Dorrek rebels, we can kill him from here and hold this room against the others." If only we had done that! And yet, Dorrek's men in the other room had control of the vehicle. The door was open beside us, but we were still a thousand feet in the air.
Roc, cylinder in hand, reached the center of the room.
Dorrek turned to face him. Tama and Rowena had moved aside, closer to the open doorway. But closer, also, to Dorrek.
Roc gave his command. Dorrek stared. Again there was that instant of electrical tenseness. Would the giant obey? He stared at Roc impassively for an instantand then he leaped. My beat-cylinder was out but I could not use ltl I held my impulsive finger from the trigger. With my left hand I struck at Jimmy's rising weapon, and shouted in horror to Roc.
For Dorrek had leaped, not at usbut upon Rowena I She had passed within a few feet of him. Like a huge leopard, without warning he whirled and pounced upon her and seized her. There was an instant when he was struggling with her, and with Tama. Rowena was taken too much by surprise to get her knife from the dressing gown pocket.
Dorrek's arms went around her from behind. As she struggled with him, twisting, clutching backward over her shoulder at his face, Tama came at them. Her knife went into Dorrek's arm. He shouted with an infuriated roar of pain. Muta dashed heavily forward. A sweep of Tama's wing knocked the woman back. Dorrek, holding the struggling Rowena before him as a shield, retreated against the wall. Again, like a wrathful, desperate bird, Tama with spreading wings buried herself at them.
Within an instant the little room was a chaos of strife.
Whatever plans we had were discarded now. No time to think, even to realize what we were doing. Against the open door, the giant Dorrek fought with the two girls. Muta had turned aside, crouching, watching. I saw her stoop for Tama's fallen knife.
Jimmy and I were rushing forward. Roc made a leapthen fell. Dorrek's weapon spat a blue bolt. It hissed overhead, struck the metal ceiling with a rain of falling sparks, crackled into the metal and was absorbed. I felt the heat of it; I thought Roc had been hit, but in a moment I saw him up again.
Jimmy and I did not dare fire. As we plunged those few steps forward toward Dorrek, Jimmy screamed a warning, "Jackbehind you!" Half turning, I saw three of Dorrek's men crowding through the doorway. One flung a knife. I turned in time to see it coming; the heavy handle of it struck me in the forehead.