wants to feel that she’s doing something important. And I think that it
“EMERGENCY!” the telephone barked. “Gamma LDUs report that a U.S. bomber is twelve minutes away. The crew has orders to accidentally drop an atomic bomb on Life Valley!”
“They start quicker than we thought, Heiny!” Guibedo said, but Copernick was already giving orders.
“Notifiy everyone in the valley that the bomber is out of control and heading this way. Get everybody into the basements.
“I want every bird in the air, except the insect spreaders. I want every TRAC loaded with water for fire fighting, dispersed around the valley and under cover. What’s the bomber’s altitude?”
“Twenty-two thousand feet, my lord.”
“Our birds can’t fly that high. Get every Gamma LDU on that plane’s commander. Try to turn him around, or at least get him to come in at five thousand feet.”
“Yes, my lord. They’re on it. But you know how unsuccessful the experiments with telecontrol have been. There is a good probability that the aircraft commander will resist or not even notice our probe.”
“Any suggestions?”
“None, my lord. Dropped from twenty-two thousand feet, that twenty-three hundred pound bomb will be graveling at supersonic speed. There is no chance of disarming it in flight or of significantly deflecting its course.”
“Then pray, my friend. Pray,” Copernick said, heading for the communications center four floors down.
“Just like a practice run, Colonel,” Captain Johnson had the B-3 in manual.
“That it is, Bill.”
“I thought I’d never get a chance to lay a nuke.”
“Just do it by the numbers.”
“And I never thought I’d be bombing Americans.”
“Look, son. You saw who gave the orders.”
“But still, our own countrymen?”
“But still—”
“Bill, I’ll take the controls now!”
“Colonel?”
“It’s a commander’s job. Anyway, I don’t want you to do anything you’d feel guilty about.”
“But—”
“Enough! Kelly! Put a chute on that egg.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the flight engineer said.
“Colonel, you’re losing altitude,” Captain Johnson said.
“This has to be precisely on target, Bill. Any error and we kill real Americans outside of Death Valley. We’ll do it with a paradrop from five thousand feet,” the colonel said.
They were thirty miles and three minutes from Life Valley when they spotted a thin black cloud ahead.
Then they were in it.
A twenty-pound Canada goose bounced off the windshield. Followed by another. And another. Ahead of them, like contrails in reverse, eight long lines of eagles, owls, and condors were flying into their jet intakes. One by one the engines choked and froze and died. The fourteenth Canada goose took out the windshield, spraying the cabin with broken plastic and blood. The colonel pulled back on the controls, but they were sluggish. The plane was losing altitude fast.
“Kelly!” the colonel shouted. Communications above the roar was barely possible. “Set the bomb to detonate on impact!”
“Are you crazy?” Kelly yelled, disarming the bomb. “We’re too low to bail out!”
“I know! But we’ve got to! They’re in my head!”
“He is crazy,” Kelly muttered, jettisoning the fuse and bracing for a crash. He hit the lever to jettison the fuel, but he knew he was too late.
The huge plane came in near the center of the valley and erupted in a spray of broken wood and torn aluminum. The wings sheared off, engines ripped loose, and nearly full fuel tanks ruptured. Orange flames and black smoke poured through houses and into basements. Huddled people screamed and died.
One wing tank spun into Pinecroft’s side and burst and burned. The entire side of the hundred-foot-tall tree was a blanket of flame. It went through the windows and up and down the elevator shaft.
Mona and Patricia made it to the surface in Mack, a TRAC tanker loaded with water. They set him to spraying those walls that were not yet burning, and got out.
Copernick’s fauns, Colleen and Ohura, ran out of the tree house, each carrying a human baby. Most of Ohura’s black hair was burned off.
“My babies!” Mona screamed.
The fauns handed the unharmed Copernick children to Mona and Patricia, then turned back to the burning tree house.
When Colleen and Ohura ran inside, they found the elevator bouncing rapidly, convulsed with pain. They ran to the staircase, reaching it just as burning jet fuel was starting to dribble down. Without hesitation they ran up the stairs through the flames. Their hoofs provided some protection, but the fur on Ohura’s legs caught fire midway up. She continued upward to the fauns’ room before throwing herself to the floor and rolling on the carpet to put out the flames.
Cradled in soft niches on Pinecroft’s second floor, the four baby fauns each still lay on its back contently sucking the treenipple just above its mouth.
While Ohura flailed at her smoldering fur, Colleen took the babies from their niches. As Ohura finished she picked up one of her own children and one of Colleen’s. Each carrying two fauns, Colleen and Ohura bounded for the corridor.
The fire and smoke in the hallway had grown much worse, and the fauns had to crawl, babies clutched to their breasts, groping then-way to the service stairway, Colleen in the lead. A wall of flames shot up between them and Ohura gasped, involuntarily inhaling the fire, singeing her lungs. She couldn’t breathe or speak, and the world started to become dark gray. As she became unconscious, she tucked the two children under her, trying to protect them from the heat with her own body.
Colleen reached the service staircase before she realized that Ohura wasn’t behind her. She hesitated for a second, then turned back to grope blindly for her sister. As she crawled, a branch that had supported the third floor gave way, smashing the bones of her left knee and pinning her to the floor. The smoke cleared for an instant and she saw Ohura a few feet in front of her.
“Ohura! I’m over here!” But Ohura didn’t move.
The log pinning Colleen down was two feet in diameter and fifteen yards long. Colleen struggled helplessly, rolling over, trying to rip her own leg off. Anything to save herself and her children.
Suddenly an LDU darted through the smoke, his body silvery white to reflect the heat. His lateral tentacles grabbed for Ohura and the two babies were quickly secured to his underside.
The LDU turned its attention to the trapped faun. I’m Dirk, Colleen.” He tried to lift the log from her leg but failed. “Better give me the children. I can’t move this log.”
The flames were rapidly approaching them as Colleen gave up the baby fauns. The pain in her leg was unbearable. Death would be welcome.
“Sorry, Colleen.” Dirk tapped her behind the head, knocking her unconscious, ending the pain. Then he wrapped a tentacle tightly around her left thigh and with one whack of a dagger-claw severed the leg above the knee.
