Briefly, Ulysses wondered if this plan had originated in the brain of the Dhulhulikh commander or if it had come from the vegetable brain housed in the trunk. And he wondered why the ships on the branches had not been attacked when they were in their most vulnerable position and crewed with so few.
Later on, he realised that even if they could have flown above theBlue Spirit, they could not have dropped bombs on it. They had no bombs left. Even in the beginning, not more than one bat-man in fifty had had a bomb. There had not been enough time to make and transport a great number from the north. Many had been expended in the first attacks, and the others had been lost, with their carriers, when the smoke clouds were dropped and the hawks released. The Dhulhulikh commander, or The Tree, realising this, had hidden the winged men in the immense trunk top while the smoke cloud was thick enough. The commander had bet that the ships too high to be reached would come down to protect the three on the branches, and he had won that bet.
The difficulty in defending the dirigibles rising up from the branches was the lack of personnel. Most of the crew and the soldiers had been killed inside The Tree. And so, though the three men in the cockpits and in the side domes and the archers behind the openings fought well, they were overwhelmed. Within a few minutes, the three ships were covered with little winged forms, like bugs newly crawled out of a vast egg.
To get the ship up faster, Ulysses had tilted the motor gondolas so that the propellers pointed upward. The ship rose swiftly toward the height at which the winged men could no longer fly. But that would do no good if they ripped open the big gas cells inside the fuselage. The ship would just fall to a height where they could fly again.
The four ships above them, fully crewed and armed with a good many bombs, rockets and arrows yet, had resisted more successfully. The explosives had shattered the first few ranks and, at the same time, the three craft were expelling the last of their smoke clouds. The bat-men kept on coming, but the airships were now going at thirty-five mph and when the attackers did reach the ships, they either bounced off the skin or hit it so hard they went through. Those who penetrated the skin tore off their wings or broke their fragile bones. Within a few minutes, the Dhulhulikh were lost in another cloud. They had also lost their chance to get the four upper ships.
The three lower ones, however, were heavy with the winged men. These, after killing the bomb and rocket crews and archers, swarmed through the openings into the interior. Here, for a time, they did not know what to do or where to go, since the captains of the ships had turned off all the interior lights as soon as they realised their situation. And, though weighted down, the ships slowly continued to rise, aided by the upward-tilted motors.
The Dhulhulikh, after blundering around on the catwalks and girders, and sometimes falling, finally located the main walkway and then the hatch to the control deck. This had been locked, but while some bat-men used tools they had picked up to batter at the hatch, others knocked out more holes in the skin. They let themselves out and dropped down, flapping, and then tried for the gondola. Those who had come out behind the gondola did not make it, because the ship was going too fast. Those who let themselves out of a hole in the nose were able to attach themselves to the gondola. They beat in vain at the plastic transparent ports with their stone knives. Then Ulysses ordered the ports raised, and the winged men were stabbed and fell off into the night.
The hatch to the gondola gave way with a screech. Yelling, the little bat-men poured down the ladder and were skewered, sometimes two in a row, by crossbolts. Graushpaz then ordered the bowmen to step aside, and he and another Neshgai advanced up the ladder, their great stone axes swinging. The pygmies were crushed beneath the heavy stones. Graushpaz, the light shinning from the top of his helmet, went ponderously up the ladder and onto the main walkway. The other Neshgai followed him.
Ulysses, even on the lower deck of the gondola, could hear the screams of the bat-men and the trumpetings of the Neshgai. And then, on his right, the darkness became an eye-searing flame as a dirigible exploded. Fire wrapped it around within two seconds, and the airship began to fall at once. A few figures leaped from it, mostly humans and one large Neshgai figure from the control gondola. The majority of the winged men aboard had been caught inside the fuselage. Nobody would ever know what had happened. Perhaps the Dhulhulikh had set off a rocket or lit a match too close to a hydrogen leak.
Or, more likely, the captain, realising his ship was doomed, had set fire to it, incinerating several hundred Dhulhulikh along with himself and his crew.
Ulysses had groaned when he saw the ship burst into flames. Now he yelled, because the other ship was headed toward the falling craft. If it did not quickly turn, it would ram broadside into the other or be caught on its nose by the burning craft.
"Turn, you fool!" he yelled. "Turn!"
But the airship proceeded in a stately manner toward a fiery collision.
A moment later, hundreds of bodies left it. They poured out of the cockpits, the domes and the holes that had been torn in the skin by bat-men who had struck it. They fell with wings half-folded and then, out of harm's way, spread their wings out.
As the Dhulhulikh left, and the weight passed, the ship lifted and quickly was above the flaming wreck. Ulysses smiled, realising that the captain had deliberately set his ship on a collision course. He and his crew would all be killed anyway by the Dhulhulikh, so he had tried to ram the other ship. But he had not really wished to do so. He must have been hoping for just what did happen. The terrified bat-men had deserted the ship and so allowed him to escape.
TheBlue Spirit, however, was in grave danger. It was so burdened down that it could rise no higher. And the Neshgai, though they might be waging a Homeric battle, would inevitably be overcome by sheer numbers. They had been able to keep fighting so far only because the pygmies were not carrying bows and poisoned arrows. Within a few minutes, the survivors would be charging down the ladder again.
Ulysses said to the helmsman, "Tie the wheel down. But keep the motors turned vertically. And then fall in with the others."
The helmsman did not ask why he should leave his post. But he was aware that every man was needed.
Ulysses, standing on the upper deck, his feet soaked in the blood of Dhulhulikh, counted his "men." He had three Wufea, two Wagarondit and one Alkunquib. One of the Wufea was Awina, but she would be a deadly fighter against the tiny bat-men. These were all that were left of the two hundred who had set out with him to enter The Tree on its northern side. And he had six Vroomaw "humans."
"We have one chance," he said. "Kill or drive out every Dhulhulikh. Follow me!"
He went up the steps with a flint-tipped club in one hand and the other on the guide rail of the ladder to keep from slipping in the blood. He wore his full armour still, and the light on top of his helmet was on. But this was for emergency only, because he had turned the lights back on when the Neshgai charged into the fuselage.
No one opposed him at first. The Dhulhulikh were too concentrated on the Neshgai even to see him. They swarmed about the sole Neshgai on his feet, hopping on the main walkway before and in back of him and fluttering down from girders to lash out at the giant as they went by. The way was strewn with mangled corpses, and on both sides torn and crushed bodies lay on the skin.
Ulysses ran as swiftly as he dared, stepping over the bodies, until he got to the fight. He smashed in three skulls and broke the bones of two pairs of wings before the little men even knew that help had come for Graushpaz. The Neshgai, trumpeting, summoned new strength to smash out anew. His quilted armour and plastic faceplate were splashed with blood, some of which was his own. His trunk had been deeply gashed near the tip, and two-thirds of a short spear stuck out of his back. Some bat-man had dived down from a catwalk near the top of the ship and driven the spear through the armour and halfway into his body.