Around them the jungle howled with an echo of hatred. The half–sentient plants writhed and the air was thick with small flying things. Naxa sweated and mumbled as he turned back the animals that crashed towards them. By the time they reached the last screen of foliage before the burned–out area, they had lost four men. One had been stung by an insect, Jason got the medikit to him in time, but he was so sick he had to turn back. The other three were bitten or scratched and treatment came too late. Their swollen, twisted bodies were left behind on the trail.
"Dam' beasts hurt m’head," Naxa muttered. "When we go in?"
"Not yet," Rhes said. "We wait for the signal."
One of the men carried the radio. He sat it down carefully, then threw the aerial over a branch. The set was shielded so no radiation leaked out to give them away. It was turned on, but only a hiss of atmospheric static came from the speaker.
"We could have timed it—" Rhes said.
"No we couldn’t," Jason told him. "Not accurately. We want to hit that wall at the height of the attack, when our chances are best. Even if they hear the message it won’t mean a thing to them inside. And a few minutes later it won’t matter."
The sound from the speaker changed. A voice spoke a short sentence, then cut off.
"Bring me three barrels of flour."
"Let’s go," Rhes urged as he started forward.
"Wait," Jason said, taking him by the arm. "I’m timing the flame–thrower. It’s due in… there!" A blast of fire sprayed the ground, then turned off. "We have four minutes to the next one—we hit the long period!"
* * * * *
They ran, stumbling in the soft ashes, tripping over charred bones and rusted metal. Two men grabbed Jason under the arm and half–carried him across the ground. It hadn’t been planned that way, but it saved precious seconds. They dropped him against the wall and he fumbled out the bombs he had made. The charges from Krannon’s gun, taken when he was killed, had been hooked together with a firing circuit. All the moves had been rehearsed carefully and they went smoothly now.
Jason had picked the metal wall as being the best spot to break in. It offered the most resistance to the native life, so the chances were it wouldn’t be reinforced with sandbags or fill, the way other parts of the wall were. If he was wrong, they were all dead.
The first men had slapped their wads of sticky congealed sap against the wall. Jason pressed the charges into them and they stuck, a roughly rectangular pattern as high as a man. While he did this the detonating wire was run out to its length and the raiders pressed back against the base of the wall. Jason stumbled through the ashes to the detonator, fell on it and pressed the switch at the same time.
Behind him a thundering bang shook the wall and red flame burst out. Rhes was the first one there, pulling at the twisted and smoking metal with his gloved hands. Others grabbed on and bent the jagged pieces aside. The hole was filled with smoke and nothing was visible through it. Jason dived into the opening, rolled on a heap of rubble and smacked into something solid. When he blinked the smoke from his eyes he looked around him.
He was inside the city.
The others poured through now, picking him up as they charged in so he wouldn’t be trampled underfoot. Someone spotted the spaceship and they ran that way.
A man ran around the corner of a building towards them. His Pyrran reflexes sent him springing into the safety of a doorway the same moment he saw the invaders. But they were Pyrrans, too. The man slumped slowly back onto the street, three metal bolts sticking out of his body. They ran on without stopping, running between the low storehouses. The ship stood ahead.
Someone had reached it ahead of them, they could see the outer hatch slowly grinding shut. A hail of bolts from the bows crashed into it with no effect.
"Keep going!" Jason shouted. "Get next to the hull before he reaches the guns."
This time three men didn’t make it. The rest of them were under the belly of the ship when every gun let go at once. Most of them were aimed away from the ship, still the scream of shells and electric discharges was ear–shattering. The three men still in the open dissolved under the fire. Whoever was inside the ship had hit all the gun trips at once, both to knock out the attackers and summon aid. He would be on the screen now, calling for help. Their time was running out.
