Brown whispered: "Hand me those binoculars, Ben. Yes, they're just scouting. Let 'em have it, Gus. Get those across the road, too."
Gillenhaal aimed—and a man became a torch. There were shouts; the monkeys' chatter ceased abruptly. Another man was incinerated, then a third. The rest returned the way they had come, with haste.
"This isn't as kvick as I'd like," complained Gillenhaal."You got to hold it on them a second or so."
Over the rise came three tanks, and behind them a line of men three meters apart. Brown said: "All right, Gus/1 The nearest tank glowed with sparks; then a thin sheet of flame floomped over it. It changed course, firing wildly, and stopped. Its hatch flew open, and the crew boiled out and ran. The other tanks roared at them. One threw a suddenly sputtering track and stopped, and its crew went away. The third whirled about, zig-zagged off, and turned over, its tracks still moving. Brown muttered: "Must have been using a tung-oil paint on those things, and synthetic-rubber tracks. Most of the rubberoids won't burn, but they've got plenty of hydrogen in them."
Officers ran up and down the line of men, threatening and exhorting. Flup! flup! man after man became a yellow flare. Then there was only a line of mushrooms of black smoke, swelling lazily over the bodies of those who had not been able to get away,
IT WAS quiet again; a bird resumed his song. Small grass-fires smouldered; they crackled cheerfully as a breeze sprang up and the grass-stems nodded.
Two jarring explosions came over the rise, followed instantly by a wheet-bam! wheet-bam! as the shells crashed into the trees. Brown said, "Field-howitzers, I think; about four centimeters." The guns cracked again, and they could hear an airplane motor overhead.
Brown through the glasses saw movements in the grass that betokened the crawling of men. A black speck caught his eye; he made out an infra-red detector on a little tripod. He could just see the motion of the hand of the man lying behind it, as he turned the crank that traversed the instrument. Brown thought, with ail those fires he'll get a positive reading every few degrees.
The shells shrieked and exploded. One deafeningly heaved up a truckload of dirt near them; clods spattered through the leaves above.
The crawling men began to rise far enough to clear the muzzles of their static guns, and long blue flashes sought the edge of the wood. The grass intercepted most of the discharges as effectively as would a concrete wall, but some came close enough to make the men jump as the electric surge jerked their muscles.
"Can only see them when they rise up to skoot," said Gillenhaal."Silly thing about those static guns: no good for skooting through grass."
"Can you give a slow traverse?" asked Brown."We'll have to burn them out."
"Try to." The Swede pivoted like a man panoraming with a hand movie-camera. With a low roar a broad band of flame marched down the field. As the first thick cloud of smoke billowed up, the three caught glimpses under it of a few men running back over the rise. The guns did not fire again.
Brown looked at his watch."Six-thirty-five," he announced, "and the airplanes seem to have gone away. Ben, suppose you take the glasses up a tree for a look."
Presently Kumar called, "Can't see anybody. The two howitzers are standing in the field, with a lot of stuff lying around as if it had been dropped in a hurry."
"Guess they've pulled foot," said Brown."Wonder if there's any food in the junk they dropped?"
Thirty minutes later they sat around a little blaze, started with the indispensable projector, and toasted royalist rolls on sticks. Smoke from the grass fire drifted into the wood and made their eyes water.
"I'm sorry for those fellows,". said Brown; "They were brave men, but they just couldn't face an unknown weapon. But one shell, or a whiff of gas, would have finished us. And a good coat of inorganic enamel would protect a tank from your weapon. Of course we needn't tell anybody that, yet." His telephone tinkled.
"Hello," said the voice, "Brown? This is Dubin."
"Hey, Stanley! How come service has been restored?"
"The royalists besieging Asokore City quit, and the people got the auxiliary station going. Where are you, and what in hell's this heat-ray or atom-gun that you said you didn't have?"
"We're near the village of Little Kurnool," Brown told him, "and we just invented the device. I'll tell you about—"
"Wait a minute," said the general. After a pause, he barked, "The royalists up here are surrendering too! I'll call you back."
THEY finished breakfast before the "phone rang again. Dubin sounded more excited than Brown had ever heard him. He even sounded cheerful."When you burnt up the party that was sent out to get you, Avanend was watching the whole performance in his televisor, or what he could see of it, as the telecaster was mounted on a truck over the hill. Then when the detachment came back, scared to death, they spread a rumor among his troops that you had atomic power after all. And the troops decided that fighting was no fun under those circumstances, and either started home or surrendered. Some of the officers tried to make them go on fighting, but they were —ah— liquidated. Then when the insurgents up here got word of what had happened, they did the same thing. They even turned the Rajah over to us.
"You see, Fernando, as nearly as I can make out, atomic power was in back of the whole thing. The Rajah's been scheming for years to get back some of the power his ancestors held; he'd even have called the British back if he could.
"The Rajah was afraid that if the parliamentary government got hold of such a weapon, he wouldn't have a chance. You told him that you weren't working on it, and you also mentioned the great power that would be required. Then Brahispati, the engineer of the lighting system, bought those four new generators for his power-plant. The Rajah heard of their arrival, and inferred that you'd lied to him, and that the generators were really for your atomic power. He's such a liar himself that he never credits anybody else with telling the truth.
"He figured he'd have to act quickly, and he had his puppet Avanend send a gang of his cutthroats to steal the generators. That didn't work, so there seemed to be nothing for him to do but a putsch. He started the main uprising here, and had Avanend hide his private army in the game-reserve, to attack the city when our forces had been drawn away. Then he'd have control of the generators, which are what he was most afraid of."
Brown chuckled."Stanley! I can't explain the apparatus over the 'phone, but I'll tell you that it does use an electric generator—a little one-mouse-power affair the size of a golf-ball!"
"Mp! You damn scientists. Anyway, Fernando, I'll fly down to Asokore City to straighten things there this morning, and meanwhile I'll have a truck sent out from the city to pick you up. So long."
As the three men walked toward the highway, the smoke made them cough. Brown said, "Jeepers, I almost forgot." He dialled."Hello, Little Kurnool City Hall? Director Brown calling the mayor. Hello, Mr. Gopal? Yes, I'm alive... The shooting you heard was some royalists. They're gone now. Say, I'm afraid we started a rather bad grass fire in the course of the fighting. Better send some of your boys over to put it out. Okay, don't mention it. ”