Authors: The Double Invaders
"Lively group, the
Scartanni!"
They heard Captain Slatt, cool and terse,
instructing the ship's squad. "Topside beamers ready. One-third power,
focus twenty degrees intensity. Pick your own targets. Scorch them as they go
by."
"Shock, eh?" Karsh growled across
at Swann. "You got any more easy answers? By the screen they have
twenty-five units in this first wave, and there are so many far-out blips I
can't count 'em, coming in from all angles. Shock, hey? The damned sky is full
of 'em! Hold onto your teeth; here they come now!"
The
many-engined mumble grew suddenly into a snarling roar and one long array of
gauges danced and shivered in agitation as the screens repelled whatever it was
that impinged on them.
Bragan,
squinting as he stared at the fireworks on the detector screen, raised his
voice over the racket: "What the hell are they throwing at us?"
"Dropping!" Swann laughed, one
sharp hard bark of humorless sound. "Not throwing. And, by the registers,
I'd say it was rocks. No—take that back—
that
was
metal!"
The ear-aching shrill whine of disrupting
metal atoms was clearly to be heard over the other uproar.
"I
want a picture!" Bragan shouted. "Something that makes sense to me. I
can't read your damned electronics. A picture!"
Karsh moved a long arm, adjusted controls and
produced
a
full-color view of the night sky up there. It
was quite
a
display, with bursts and spurts of
short-lived flare against the distant glitter of the stars. The thunder of
engines faded away, the fire-flares dwindled into fireflies and were gone.
Captain Slatt spoke to the beamer-gunners.
"Tighten focus to ten degrees. They're high!"
"Amateurs!" Swarm grunted.
"Quick on the way they may be. And they can fly. But it takes experience
to know the strategic value of hedge-hopping, and lots of practice to be able
to do it. These boys are wide open, flying high like that. Whup! Here comes the
second wave!"
This time the engin&-roar was louder, and
Bragan stared in fascination as great swaths of star-images were blanked out by
the
dark flying craft in wave after wave. The
Scar-tanni were piling it on. The fireworks were something spectacular this
time, great spouts and fountains of searing fire and flash, with massive
Shockwaves
filtering through the screens enough to shake
the ship gently. Karsh hunched over his instruments, calling the score.
"Those great blooping yellow ones are
oil-bombs. That one—and that—those are nitroglycerine or something very like
it. And that eye-blinder is incendiary. No mistaking that one. Magnesium and
iron-oxide. Thermit, to you. And ferrous shrapnel; look at those sparks! They
are really throwing the book at us!"
It
must
have
been even more spectacular from outside, Bragan thought. The assorted debris
that slid down around the screens began to accumulate on the ground. It blazed,
banged, smoldered or flared according to disposition, as wave
after
wave of vengeful aircraft came roaring out of the dark with no more than
a second or two between each assault. As an example of cooperative effort it
was splendid. For results, it was pathetic. And not all the action was one way.
Red glows and trailing smoke in the night sky showed that the beamer-gunners
were taking their toll. And obeying orders, too. Bragan could appreciate the
thinking. Skilled and valiant pilots were valuable. So were aircraft. But prestige
counted for something too. There had to be a limit to these passive,
cat-and-mouse tactics. After an hour of the infemo, of the senseless and
hopeless bombardment, he made a finger-signal to Swann and took hold of the
Scartanni microphone again.
Swann
relayed the warning, "Stand by to get rough, Captain. We're going to call
'em."
Bragan
cleared his throat, brought the microphone close to shut out the clamor from
outside. "This is Zorgan. This is Denzil Bragan, Supreme Executive of the
Zorgan Fleet. Your airborne attack on this ship, Unit One, has been allowed to
continue long enough to convince you that it is futile. It is a nuisance, but
nothing more. I order you to cease. You have one-tenth of a time-unit to
withdraw your attack. Any aircraft attempting to injure the ship after that
time will be destroyed!" He shoved the microphone away and sighed,
"Now we will see just how smart they really are!"
The
three men sat and watched the screens as the brief period of grace ticked away.
There was no visible letup in the holocaust out there. The black sky was full
of snarling craft, storming in from all angles and hell-bent on hitting the
ship with anything and everything that came to hand. At last Swann glanced at
the clock, saw the sweep-hand click into zero.
"And that's it!" he muttered. They
heard Slatt's terse command.
"Full power.
Needle-beam. Hit 'em!"
The
beamer crews knew exactly what to do, and did it As the triad watched, five
oncoming aircraft burst into flame and flew apart. Then five more. And again
five. Bragan set his jaw and counted mentally, until the total had reached two
score. And then, abruptly, there were no more aircraft. The night sky grew
quiet again. Bragan nodded to himself as he analyzed the result. The Scartanni
could learn, and fast! No matter how they ignored his words they had a keen
respect for facts. And that was all to the good, was valuable. But the underside
of the problem was a different kind of picture. The Zorgan technique for
conquest was infinitely flexible and all-embracing, but it depended in the
basic sense on a thorough understanding of the people to be conquered. And
Bragan felt he did not understand this people at all. There were too many
contradictions, too many pieces that didn't fit.
He worried at it from all angles all through
his watch from midnight until four, and slept on it until Karsh called him to a
scratch breakfast at eight, but neither method got him any happy solutions.
in
D
etailed
reports
had
been trickling in all night. Karsh relayed him some of the more choice ones.
"Unit Two had it lively," he said,
"when they picked Bafar Down there on the southwest tip of that land mass
there. Seems it's oil country. The locals managed to jury-rig some sort of
high-pressure spray-supply, almost swamped the ship in crude and then set fire
to the whole thing. It took two squads to cut off the oil-jets and three more
to douse the blaze."
"Did anybody else have the aerial
bombardment?"
"Yes.
Three and Four. They handled it the same way we did." Karsh masticated a
mouthful, then added: "They've got guts, these Scartanni."
"They have more than that," Bragan
growled, and Swann rushed unwisely in with a suggestion.
"I've
been thinking," he announced. "This whole puzzle could be simple and
obvious; maybe that's why we're missing it. Look; this planet has millions of
square miles of untouched countryside. Mountains, hills, forests—and it could
be, almost certainly is, crawling with various wild animals. Dangerous.
Predatory. Get my drift? All right, the Scartanni are agrarian, a bunch of
farmers. But they do know about natural enemies. And I would bet you they know
about hunting. So they know about weapons, in that sense. And all you have to
do is multiply that up a power or two, and what's so surprising they can whip
up heavy weapons off the cuff? Isn't it logical?"
"You
talk like a fool!" Bragan had had
a
bad
night and
a
restless
sleep, and he was in no mood to tolerate Swarm
's
ingenuous theories. "Multiplication increases. It does not modify.
Multiply one man and you get a mob. No possible exercise of multiplication will
get you
a
coordinated and skilled force! One doesn't
arrange and stage a large-scale aircraft attack on a single target by simple
multiplication. At one time or another there must have been almost a thousand
aircraft over our heads last night. Just to assemble so many is a major effort
in organization. Furthermore, the technique they used was not, in any sense, a
multiplication of some hunting technique against a predator. Does a huntsman
drop bombs?"
Swann set his jaw and looked sullen against
Bragan's withering scom. Bragan pushed his denunciation further. "Is it a
huntsman's technique to instigate and maintain radio silence?"
"Hey!" Karsh sharpened his ears.
"That's a point. That's true. But they were organized, all the same; no
doubt about that. So how the hell did they do it? What's your theory?"
"I
haven't one. There's no theory that will fit. By all the current signs, this is
a people ready and waiting for attack, and instantly ready to deal with it
within the limits of their abilities. Right? And yet there is nothing in their
social framework, habits, or speech-forms, to indicate that they have ever
known such a thing. A flat contradiction." He chewed on hard rations for a
thoughtful moment then added, "It can only mean there is a hole in our
knowledge, something we have either missed or misinterpreted. Something we
don't understand, can't explain, and therefore is dangerous!"
Swann
bristled at once at the mere hint that the Scar-tanni could present any kind of
menace against Zorgan force, but before he could put his thought into words the
intercom sizzled and Captain Slatt came through, his voice indicating unusual
tension.
"A
highly abnormal situation, sir," he reported. "The sub-headquarters
and all hostages there is still secure, but the remainder of the squads and
scouts, out on early patrol, all report the same thing. Stopa is
deserted!"
"Repeat that last part."
"So
far as we have checked, the entire city is deserted. The scouts can't find
anyone, anywherel"
"Understood," Bragan muttered.
"Swann?"
The
• fieldman took over instandy. "Warn all scouts and squads to keep
grouped. Do not attempt any deep investigation, tracking down; do not get
dispersed. If necessary we can use our own skimmers for anything like that.
This may be a dodge to spread us out. So long as we have the hostages we can
afford to let the rest run." He sat back but his face showed he wasn't at
ease. Nor was Bragan.
"Dodge,
helll" he snarled. "This is no dodge. Somebody spread the word Take
to the hills!' And they went, fast. Somebody must have worked hard to
coordinate that effort."
"But
we've got their head manl" Swann protested, and Karsh nodded.
"All their leading
personalities,
and
staff, safely tied up."
"All
right," Bragan snapped. "Then they must have some kind of
second-string, some underground organization. And good, too. We never heard so
much as a whisper of it. Which means"—he hardened his tone—"that this
is going to be quite a bit tougher than we thought. We'll have to turn the
screw a little." He climbed to his feet. "I'm going to talk to this
senior landholder of theirs. Hallex Mordin. If there is an undercover
organization, he will know about it. And hell talk. There are ways to ensure
that. Pass word to sub-headquarters that I'm on my way. Ill go and get
ready."
The
time it took him to struggle into body-armor and to make sure he had a full kit
of weapons also gave him an interval to think over the situation. He didn't
care for it at all. Why vacate the whole city? Whatever else it might signify,
it seemed to indicate conclusively that the Stopans were far from surrender,
and that they obviously had a lot more tricks to play. He desperately needed to
know just what. But once he was out of the ship, with one trooper along to
drive the skimmer and act as guard, he pushed the big problem from his mind and
used this chance to observe details.
At
first, it was no more than reinforcement for what he had already known. The
buildings were widespread, not closely grouped. Thoroughfares and roads were
wide. The buildings themselves were not large; none of them high. Even the
tallest were no more than four floors, if that. And there was a curiously
pervasive subdued quality. Clean lines, simple angles, nothing fancy about the
facades and fronts. Even the colors, such as there were, ranged in the lesser
pastel hues from gray to green.