But Grenfell finally sent the two largest platforms to an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Each carried a giant projector. The rays spat down, and crossed the barrage curtain with a hissing turmoil of sparks.
Coming back, one of the platforms abruptly disobeyed orders. Four men manned its long-range ray; thirty girls flew it. Instead of returning to Grenf ell's camp on the cliff,,it droppped low into the valley and hurled itself at one of the base projectors of the barrage. The projector bent its ray down, but missed. The platform went like a speeding projectile, its beam darting before it. Then Dorrek's ray caught it and clung. From the deck of the Cube the shuddering Grenfell saw the bodies of the thirty girls wither and fall.
For an instant the insulated platform held together. It was, barely a hundred feet from the barrage base. Its ray spluttered and vanished. The platform tilted, and crashed to the rocks, the black figures of its men little falling dots against the barrage light.
A group of girls made a similar attack. From the darkness of the valley floor they hurled themselves at an opening between the barrage projectors.
Flying in a group, they skimmed the surface. They safely passed the barrage line, rose inside over the enemy camp.
For a minute perhaps they dropped their bombs. The flares were visible to Grenfell through the curtain. How many of Dorrek's men and insects were killed was never known.
The beams from the hand weapons of the girls were flashing down. They flew holding their shields to protect their bodies and wings as well as they could. Mounting, they crossed perhaps a third of the camp, leaving a trail of destruction beneath them. But one by one the enemy rays caught them and brought them down.
That was enough for Grenfell. Three hundred of the girls were still in the cliff camp near the Cube. He ordered them to keep out of the air, and sent two of the emergency platforms to fly to the lower camp and order the four hundred girls, the projectors and flying platforms there to come up here and join him. Dorrek's activities were at this upper end, and if he tried to escape through the lower canyon he would encounter Arton's army.
Grenfell sought Tama, but she was missing. He could not locate Jimmy Turk, Guy, Toh, or Roc.
The storm was increasing in fury. Grenfell moved the Cube forward and began firing directly down. But the shots were always intercepted. The Cube was unwieldy when flying for short distances close to the ground. But twice Grenfell manipulated it around the valley; and once it fired down from four miles overhead.
He wanted to hit the base projectors, but he could not.
One or two of the shots entered the camp. This he did not altogether want. It was a horrible handicap, tor Grenfell did not want a shot of his to strike the Mercurian ball in which Rowena and I had been imprisoned.
Rain was presently falling. The crazy wind had steadied.
The red lightning flares and thunder cracks were almost continuous. Dorrek's mounting bombs fell upon the cliff. The wind brought the gas fumes. Grenfell closed up the Cube, firing down into the turmoil through its -deck port.
He ordered the girls farther back and a hundred of them into the air to dissipate the fumes with neutralizing bombs.
It was then, with Tama and Guy missing, that events got beyond Grenfell's control. Dorrek's barrage advanced again until it reached the base of the cliff. Grenfell thought Dorrek's move was to command the canyonto enable his men to escape back toward the Cold Country. He planned to let them go; the deep, narrow gorge was twenty miles long in this direction; the escaping men and brues could easily be assailed later. Grenfell was watching the silver ball where.
it still lay in the center of the valley. He was convinced that Dorrek and his leaders were aboard it; if he should ascend to get away, the Cube was ready for the chase.
But the enemy did not escape. Brues began crawling up the perpendicular cliff in the segment which the barrage now commanded. A hundred of the giant insects were on top of the cliff before Grenfell was aware of it. And to each of them three or four men had clung. They spread out over the upper plateau.
Lurking men among the rocks, dark, slithering insectsspreading out, advancing upon Grenf ell's camp. The fume bombs and rockets stopped coming. But the insects with their human burden mounted the cliff wall steadily.
Grenfell ordered his girls and platforms into the air. They flew low, seeking out the crawling enemy. The upper plateau in all that vicinity was dotted with the tiny lights of the girls, flashing down upon the gruesome insects. Brief combatsalways with the brue left writhing in death agony.
Dorrek's men were harder to find. Once upon the clifftop, they had ordered the insects forward, left them, and vanished.
Presently no more came up. The move puzzled Grenfell.
Then abruptly they attacked the Cubel Grenfell was standing with his men on D-Face deck. The lower door was open. There was a flurry of girls flying nearby. Grenfell saw, in a red lightning puff, fifty or more furred figures of men running forward among the crags near at hand.
With short hand rays darting before them, they rushed at the Cube's doorway.
The infuriated, reckless girls buried themselves down like frenzied birds. Doubtless none of the men would have lived to reach the doorway. But it startled Grenfell, as Dorrek probably intended. The Cube hastily rose; and as it lifted, a projector, of longer range than any of Dorrek's others, shot at it from the barrage line.
The beam caught the mounting Cube. There was a horrible moment when Grenfell thought that the hull plates would melt. The interior heated, stifling; choking fumes of fusing metal; a rain of smoke and fire and snapping, sizzling sparks outside.
Then it was over. The Cube's hull, protected to resist the cold of interplanetary space and the friction heat of atmospheric passage, withstood the brief, intense blast. The Cube rose beyond range, and came again into the lurid, storm-filled night.
Grenfell had flung on all power. He checked it now. Baker. Gibbons and the othersand the Hill City officials who were heregathered in a startled, frightened group on the deck. The Cube seemed not greatly banned, but it had been a close call.
From a height of some twenty thousand feet Grenfell gazed down and saw that all the girls had flung themselves into the conflict! Darting at the barrage in a score of places, they dropped down into it like plummets.
Two platforms with men and bombs came from the plateau in a long dive toward a triangular opening between the projectors. Both got through, into the camp, raking it for an instant before they fell in little bursts of flame. Those horrible little bursts of flame I They were everywhere. Tiny puffs. Each of them a human life gone. And the barrage line . held.
To Grenfell, cold with horror, it seemed an eternity; yet he had no more than time to order Ranee to lower the Cube. Another minuteor five at the mostthose reckless frenzied girls would all have sacrificed themselves.
Grenfell stood breathless. And suddenly he saw a distant segment of the barrage go down. A single projector went dark, leaving a great hole above it. But why? The girls had not done it; there had been no attack there.
Abruptly the dark projector flashed on again. Grenfell gasped at an incredible sight.
. When she could find no trace of Jimmy, Rowena was alarmed.
"He's gone. Jack! Jimmy Turk has gonel"
"But he was with us a moment ago. Rowena, he" I leaped to my feet, standing in the bottom of the little hollow within the enemy camp, with the battle raging around us. Then I saw him; he was crawling on the ground a hundred feet away, his broken leg dragging after him. In three or four leaps I was with him.
"What are you doing?" I flung myself down with him.
"What in-"
"Let me alone! Lie near the ground. You'll be safe in that hollow." He tried to pull away from me; but when I held him he told me his plan. Possible, at least.