‘They shoot back,’ said Major Commaigne.
‘Yes, I know, but maybe we could use the same tactics. Automatic weapons. Let them fight it out - our robot guns against the trucks. Then -’
‘Mr. Cossett,’ said the major wearily, ‘I’m glad to see you’re thinking. But believe me, we’ve all had those thoughts.’ He gestured at the approaches to the ramp. ‘Look at those roads. You think there hasn’t been plenty of fighting there?’
Cossett looked at the approaches and felt foolish. There was no doubt of it - every road for a mile around was tank-trenched, Cadmus-toothed, booby-trapped. Those were the first - and most obvious - measures the population had taken, in its early mob panic. But the trailer-trucks had been too smart for anything so simple. They had bridged the trenches, climbed the rows of dragon’s teeth, and exploded the land mines harmlessly against the drum-chains that ceaselessly pounded the roads ahead of them.
‘We had to stop,’ the major brooded, ‘because it just wasn’t safe to live around here. The factories fight back, of course. The tougher we make it for them, the more ingenious their counterattacks and - Stations!’ he blazed, thumbing down the microphone switch. ‘Here they come!’
The scarred outer gate whined open. A monster peered hesitantly out.
No brain - no organic brain, at least, only a maze of copper, tungsten, glass - was in it, but the truck was eerily human as it tested the air, searched its surroundings, peered radar-eyed for possible enemies. The trucks learned. They knew. There was no circuit in their electronic intellects for wondering why, but their job was to get the merchandise delivered, and one of the sub-tasks in the job assignment was to clear the way of obstacles.
The obstacle named Major Commaigne yelled: ‘Hold your fire!’
Silently, their weapons hunted the vulnerable spots of axles and steering linkages on the trucks as they came out, but in each armoured car, the gunners held down the interrupt buttons that kept the guns from going off. The trucks came lumbering out, flailing the roads, turrets wheeling to scan the terrain around. There were eight of them. Then:
‘Fire!’ bawled Major Commaigne, and the battle was on.
Bonfils, down the road, darted out of concealment and blasted the first trucks. There was no confusion, no hesitation, as the trucks regrouped and returned fire; but Bonfils had wasted no time either, and he was out of range in a matter of seconds.
Korowicz added his fire as the first defensive missiles roared up. Gershenow caught two of the trucks trying to execute a flanking movement. It was a fine little fire fight.
But it wasn’t the main show.
‘Demolition teams in!’ roared Commaigne, and Goodpaster’s half track bobbed up out of concealment and landed its mining experts at the lip of the ramp itself. The controlling machines had many circuits for directing simultaneous activities, but the number was not infinite. They had good reason to hope that with the active battle out on the road, the principal guardians of the factory might not be able to repel an attack on the entrance.
Commaigne snapped down his gas helmet and said thickly, through the gagging canvas and plastic: ‘We’re next.’
Bill Cossett nodded, licked his lips and put his own helmet on as their car circled the battle and headed for the ramp. Before they got there, the demolition team had blown off the first of the sets of gates. Then grey-brown smoke still curled out, and already the demolition men were setting their charges for the second gate, twenty yards farther down.
‘Now,’ said Major Commaigne, halting the halftrack and opening the hatch. ‘Be careful!’ he warned, leading the detachment out, but it was hardly necessary. If they were all like himself, Bill Cossett thought, they were going to be careful indeed.
They marched on the heels of the demolition team down into the automated factory.
It was noisy, and it was hot. It was dark, or nearly, except for the lights of the demolition team and what they carried themselves. The blasted gates were clicking and buzzing petulantly, attempting to close themselves, aware that someone was coming through, and resenting it.
Somebody yelled: Watch it!’ and, shwissh-poo, a tongue of liquid butane licked out across the ramp and puffed into flame. Everybody dropped - just in time. A smell of burning wool and a yowl from Major Commaigne showed how barely in time it had been.
One of the enlisted men cried: ‘It’s onto us! Take cover!’
But everybody had already, of course - as much as they could, not knowing just what constituted ‘cover’ in a place that the machine-brain that ran the factory had had a solid decade to study and chart. One of the machine’s built in 37 millimetre auto-aimed guns sniffed the infra-red spectrum for body heat, found it, aimed and fired.
‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ yammered the shells - Vengo, vengo, vengo - but there were blind spots around the shattered gates, and the invading party crouched in shelter.
Major Commaigne, hardly daring to raise his head, cried: ‘Everybody all right?’
There wasn’t any answer which meant either that everybody was indeed all right ... or dead, and thus exempted from the necessity of answering at all.
Deafened, sweltering, choking inside his anti-gas helmet, Bill Cossett swallowed hard and wished he’d kept his big mouth shut, back in Rantoul. What a committee to volunteer for!
Major Commaigne’s combat boots kicked a pit in his kidneys as a .30 calibre machine-gun opened up, firing by pattern -twenty rounds at forty yards elevation and 270 degrees azimuth, traverse two degrees and fire another burst, traverse again, fire again, endlessly. It was area fire.
And it had one good feature.
‘They’ve lost us!’ Major Commaigne gloated.
The winking electronic brain inside the factory had lost sight of them - perhaps even thought they were disposed of - and was merely putting the finishing sterilizing touches on its disinfecting operation, in its meticulous machine fashion.
But Bill Cossett wasn’t able to read that encouraging message out of the machine-gun fire. He didn’t have the faintest idea what Major Commaigne was talking about; all he was able to tell was that the ramp was suddenly lit with a flickering light of tracer rounds, and the smell of the ammunition stifled him, and the noise of the guns and the heterodyne squee of the ricochets was enough to deafen. Not to mention the fact that, with all that stuff flying around, a person could get hurt.
But Major Commaigne was ready for his sneak punch. He propped himself on an elbow, very cautiously, and peered down the tunnel to where the demolition crews were rigging a larger-than-normal charge.
‘Ready?’ he shouted.
One of the figures waved a hand.
‘Then fire!’ he bawled, and the demolition men thrust down a plunger.
Warroom. A corner of the wall at the remains of the shattered gate flew out and collapsed.
Bill Cossett stared. Down from the surface was clanking a machine - an enemy? But Major Commaigne was waving it on. One of theirs then, but he had never seen it before; never seen anything like it, in fact.
And that was not surprising.
Out of heaven knows what incalulable resources, the Pentagon had produced a Winnie’s Pet. The story was that back in the old days Winston Churchill - yes, that long ago! - was fighting a war against Hitler, and Churchill decided that what he needed was a trench digger of heroic proportions. A big one, he dreamed, big enough so that in Flanders or at Soissons it could have turned the tide of battle.
And so his design staff produced the Winnie’s Pet, a tunnel digger, huge in size. Well, maybe it would have turned the tide in 1917. But what war was ever fought in trenches again after that?