The leading cars, at just over a kilometre range, began to explode, though the bravery of the Zap drivers was never in doubt. Nothing could stop them, except the far-off percussion of those deadly guns. Richard, glancing aside, as if he couldn’t bear to see it, noted that Benjamin’s usually florid face had turned pale and slack. The great charge of the Zaps had become a ride of death and destruction.
Richard was fixed by it, his limbs tightening at such an exciting game. It was too good to miss, no matter whose side he was on, and he couldn’t help but regard poor Benjamin, the architect of this rare spectacle, as the greatest Nihilist of them all. History should give him that title, if no other. At the same time a more ordinary thought struck Richard, telling him that they ought to get out of the country as soon as possible.
The plain was littered with smashed and burning cars from Regiment Number One, the flower of Nihilon’s motor industries, the pride of its export trade. Survivors from the cars were lying on the stony ground, firing at the elusive Tungsten gunners. The one car of the first regiment to reach the wall hit it at nearly two hundred kilometres an hour. It lashed itself into flames, enveloping an embrasure, which at least stopped one of the cannons.
The terrible precision guns of Tungsten turned their attention to the second regiment. Brigadier Kalamata had the sense to increase speed, hoping to escape the shelling, and the line broke into individual groups, in order to get through the burning and splintered wreckage of the first wave. Due to this zigzag manoeuvre, many of the cars collided, though few seriously enough to be stopped. Some, going too fast now instead of too slow, crashed into blazing wreckage but, due to skilful swerving, as well as the trained and rapid fire from the survivors of the first wave (some of whom, unhappily, were hit by cars of the second), and also because of the fires and palls of smoke, the aim of the Tungsten artillery was not half as deadly as it had been.
Even so, it was difficult to imagine many of the cars getting through to the wall. The fact that more did get there than was expected seemed due solely to Benjamin’s wisdom in separating the first regiment from the second by half a kilometre. If they had been sent together, both would have been annihilated. Forty Zaps of the second wave, therefore, arrived in some condition at the wall. Out of eight hundred carborne men who had set out, nearly two hundred survived to reach it. Unfortunately, ladders were now scarce.
Mella, recovering from a fainting fit, took Benjamin’s hand. This time he was glad of its warmth. ‘Come,’ she said, pulling him along. ‘Let us go to your magnificent Thundercloud car. We’re going into the battle.’
It seemed the only possible action, suicidal though it was, and causing him an unpleasant moment of panic when he left Richard in charge of the staff platform and followed her. He expected her to get into his car, but she pointed to her platform and said she would travel in that. But she wanted him to stay close in his Thundercloud so that they could, as it were, fight valiantly together.
Forty soldiers pulled at the ropes, and because all luggage had been taken down, and Edgar was sensibly hiding somewhere among the trees, they were able to set off at a good pace. Mella sat imperious, and brave indeed on her throne, as they drew her towards the cannons’ roar, other soldiers of her bodyguard spreading around in order to protect her. Benjamin preferred to keep well away from this interesting but conspicuous spectacle that presented such a wonderful target for the gunners of Tungsten — of which there were still far too many.
After the defeat of the Zaps, the defending guns attempted to beat back the three large infantry battalions which, as they passed through the wrecked sports cars, removed those ladders that were still intact. They then carried them forward as if they were invaluable and much-loved battle-standards.
Benjamin had no intention of driving his Thundercloud more than halfway across the field of war. He stopped before reaching the zone of the Zap graveyard, and stood on the roof to watch any further destruction that might take place before, as seemed inevitable, the remnants of his army surged back into retreat. He was determined not to let it catch up with him, but to make with all speed for Aspron, and from there pursue his way with the impetus of self-preservation to the frontier.
Mella’s great wagon, now far ahead, was close to the wall itself, and he expected to see it blown to pieces at any moment. Shells were exploding all around it, sending up great gouts of stony soil till it was lost in the smoke. Groups of wounded were crawling back, helped by those with perfect limbs who simply wanted to get out of danger, passing him with such openness that he changed his mind when he thought to kick them back into the shellfire.
He saw a few of his soldiers climbing the wall. Mella was in front of it, waving her arms. The artillery had stopped firing, and the number of his men this side of the wall was melting away as they climbed on to and over it.
He needed a few hundred more men to back them up, but he had used every one in the greatest gamble of his career. In the sweet mouth of success there was always one rotten tooth to foul its breath, he reflected, feeling himself suspended in time while events rolled on without any help from him at all. Then he saw that Mella’s bodyguard, in their ferocity and devotion, and as if now answering his plea, were paving a way for the dynamiters, who began to expend their precious cargo on blowing up whole sections of the wall. He could hardly believe it. Mella’s great throne-wagon was pulled inside.
He drove rapidly back to the trees, the noise of gunfire dying away. ‘Did you see that?’ Richard shouted from the platform. ‘They’re in. They got in.’
‘I know,’ he said, curbing his jubilance, ‘but how many?’
Richard shook his hand to congratulate him, as he stepped down from the ladder. ‘A report just came from the north wall to say they’d got some men in there as well.’ A deep roar spread through the earth, shaking the platform, the trees, their legs, and feet. ‘The rocket!’ Richard cried, turning to look at it.
Even that, Benjamin said to himself with joyful relief. They got that too. I’ve won on every point with my well-trained, dedicated army. Through field-glasses he saw the underpart of the rocket surrounded by smoke and fire. The rage of everyone is quenched at last, he surmised, as the great rolling roar went on and on, thinking to realize his fondest dream that the blackest Nihilists on earth were being smashed forever.
But when the immense head of the rocket was temporarily cleared of smoke and vapour, it began slowly to ascend, lifting its sharp red nose with infinite grace and vigour, up and up above the base, and driving straight into the sky.
Chapter 37
Honesty had won, they claimed, in control of the computers at last. Nihilism had conquered, they thought, watching the television screens and the vast wall of dials that recorded the rocket’s progress as it circled the earth in space. No one could gainsay either proposition. No one wanted to. The forces of honesty were happy that the war was over. The defeated Nihilists were glad they were no longer locked in a race against time, and imprisoned at Tungsten because of it. The scientist-in-chief had already agreed to work for the new government.
Seats of honour for the leaders of the conquering army enabled them to observe the screens and computers as if at a theatre. Luncheon trays were clipped to their chairs, and on the television screens, via complex lenses that beamed and zoomed from outside the space-ship, a door was seen to open, and one of the astronauts floated out, a man whose legs swayed and parted and swam, side by side by side with the space-ship, his face now and again visible through the perspex visor, features anxious as if he had been unwillingly sent to a race through the bleak universe.