“No. But we can try to knock out that blasted wheel.”
The fearsome shriek of the wheel hit their ears with full power again as they quitted the ship. The Captain began setting up the tripod a few metres away. George and the radio operator dumped their boxes, opened them, and prepared the fuses of the rocket shells.
It may have been his fancy, but George thought the wheel had slackened speed a trifle. At least, there didn’t seem to be quite so many wheels whirring around the perimeter. But that perimeter was still plainly impassable. However fast you tried to dash across it, before you were over the groove that flashing wheel would have run full circle and sliced you in two. The skipper was having trouble with the tripod, but waved away George’s proffered help impatiently.
Sparks was staring fascinatedly at the wheel. Suddenly, he shouted: “It’s closing in on us!”
George took a good look at the base of the blurred wall. It was true enough. The groove had widened to a shallow trench, and was steadily widening yet towards them. The keen edge of the wheel was paring its way inwards. He remembered Poe’s
The skipper tugged at his ankle, and roared: “The shells, man! Quick-firing drill.”
George quickly laid eight shells in a line, and fed the first into the tube. The bazooka had an automatic firing device.
Freiburg was aiming at the center of the moving, yet seemingly stationary, wall. He wanted to hit the hub.
Whizz! Trailing fire and smoke the first shell darted out of the magic circle. Whizz! Whizz! Whizz! Three more followed it..
All four passed through the wall as if itself were but smoke, and fell to the ground and burst half a kilo beyond it.
Whizz! Whizz! Whizz! Whi-
They glimpsed a mid-air explosion and flung themselves flat as bits of shrapnel moaned and whirred about them and thudded into the earth. The very last shell had scored a hit. Instantly, the howling had lost half its power. They looked up cautiously. The wall of steel was still there, but not quite so solidly. You could glimpse the huge disk spinning with a band of daylight encircling the hub now. They’d blown a hole through the wheel near the hub: the rotary motion made it look like a continuous band.
And the wheel had been blasted back against the far side of the trench it was cutting.
Before anyone could say a word, there was a roar like a rocket-plane taking off. Suddenly, a great cloud of black smoke materialized with a splintering concussion somewhere behind them. Shell fragments ripped fiercely through the air.
It was uncomfortably close.
Freiburg abandoned the bazooka. “Take cover!” He was first into the nearest crater.
Then hell broke loose.
Whole salvoes of shells came shrieking down. The ground vibrated like a beaten bass drum. The three men were shaken in their crater like dice in a box. Thick clouds of pungent yellow gas came swirling into the depression and made them cough helplessly. The smell of burnt powder was everywhere. The shrapnel fell like hail.
It stopped at last, but their ears went on ringing from the battering they’d received. Only slowly they became aware again of the sound of the wheel. It had fallen in pitch to a mere whirring drone.
George wiped tears and sweat from his cheeks.
“Welcome to Venus, Planet of Love,” he said, hoarsely. Sparks said nothing. He’d bitten his lip badly and was dabbing at it with a bloody handkerchief.
Freiburg inched his nose over the lip of the crater, and tried futilely to wave some of the yellow gas away. “Can’t see a damn thing…”
Presently: “It’s clearing a bit now… There’s something moving out there. Got your telescope, George?”
George handed it up to him. There was a distant grinding sound, audible above the wheel’s drone.
“Tanks,” said the skipper, peering. “Well, that beats everything. Old-fashioned tanks, with guns on ’em—? straight from the Dark Ages.”
