He swung the telescope slowly, scanning every direction.
“We’re surrounded by them,” he reported. “They’re closing in on us. Coming in for the kill.”
II
GEORGE SHOUTED “I’ll get the bazooka.”
“No use,” mumbled Sparks, indistinctly. “It got a direct hit. It’s in fifty pieces.”
“There’s another in the ship,” said George, starting up,
“Stay where you are,” said Freiburg. “Or you’ll be in fifty pieces if that barrage comes down again. It’s not worth a try. I’ve counted twenty-five tanks out there, and there’s a real monster of a fighting machine in back of them. Take a look.”
George squinted through the telescope. The wheel, continually passing across the line of vision like the shutter of a movie projector, made everything look flickery. But he could see the circle of tanks, less than a kilo off. They were low built, with wide caterpillar treads and squat turrets, and gave the impression they were hugging the ground. They were slowly converging and every one of their gun muzzles was aiming straight at the ship.
Behind them a sort of huge torpedo on wheels was skirmishing around. It was quite fifty metres long. The nose of its cylindrical body was sharply pointed. The thing was made of some dull metal, had back-projecting fins, and the wheels on which it moved so swiftly were sheathed.
A thin and short streamer of white hot gas kept shooting from its tail.
“Rocket-propelled,” George observed. “At a guess I’d say it’s a highly mobile armored H.Q., directing operations well forward on the battle-field. Why, the darn thing looks almost as big as our ship!”
“Think you’re right, George,” said Freiburg. “We’re up against a whole mechanized army. We haven’t got a chance. We’d better raise the flag of truce and try for a parley, I’d like to know what they’ve got against us before they wipe us out, anyhow… Hey, they’ve all stopped advancing. What’s the idea?”
They waited, tensed up. The wheel’s note, which had been falling, died away to nothing. Even the secondary swishing sound, made by the wheel’s keen edge slicing the air, fell to a mere sighing. The wheel was bowling ever more slowly around. It began to wobble as it ran. They could see the hole in it distinctly now.
Then it keeled over and fell on its side, all momentum gone. It lay still.
“It’s served its purpose,” said the Captain, taking off his jacket. “And that was to keep us pinned down in the target area until all the guns could be brought to bear on us at close range. Did you notice the air flutes on the hub? We blew them off on the near side, but the ones on the other side stayed intact. That’s where the howl came from—to petrify and demoralize us: the old Japanese war-cry—
“I don’t think I’m gonna like these Venusians,” said Sparks, slowly and with care—his lip had stopped bleeding and he didn’t want to start it off again.
“Nor me,” said Freiburg. “All the same, we have to be reasonable. Like it or not, we’ve got to try to be friendly. Getting tough isn’t going to help us get any place.”
George was skeptical. “That’s a purely terrestrial gesture. It can’t mean a thing here.”
Bank! Bang! Bang! Three tanks shells, on a flat trajectory, arrived before the sound of their passage. They burst near the base of the ship. The skipper snatched his shirt back. “It means something. Obviously, the wrong thing.”
Sparks made an inarticulate noise, and gasped: “The ship!”
They swung around. The shells had burst near the battered fins of the ship and loosened them from the earth. The ship groaned and began to cant. It was like the Tower of Pisa pulling away from its foundations.
“Timber!” exclaimed George. But they were lucky. In relation to them it was falling sideways. It came down with an almighty crash, bounced once and rolled a couple of metres. The dust billowed up around it in a wide, brown cloud, then slowly settled. After that, nothing moved. The fallen ship lay as still as the fallen wheel.
The skipper used his shirt more effectively to mop his brow.
“The finishing touch,” he said. “You might as well write off your set now, Sparks.”
The radio-op nodded. His lower lip was bleeding again; he’d bitten it in the same place.
Then they all jerked their heads the other way, because a roaring sound had started way out on the plain.
