It all went okay just up to that point. But now a Psychlo in a little guardhouse they had not spotted, only ten feet from that bus bar, stepped out and stared at Dunneldeen.
“The Tolneps!" screamed the guard.
Before Dunneldeen could get the assault rifle into position the guard had closed the door and hit a siren. A bullhorn opened up enough to blast one's eardrums in. "Tolnep attack! All posts! Tolneps! Gun positions!”
Regardless of what Tolneps might be, Dunneldeen spun the bus bar wheel so fast it screamed. He realized then why it was so close to the landing stage. They darkened the place for attack precautions. And had a guardhouse right handy to do it.
Dunneldeen raced back to the plane. He dove in. Dwight's assault rifle opened up as guards boiled out of a stairwell. They dissolved into luminous green flashes.
The battle plane soared. Dunneldeen threw on the wave neutralizer and infrared screens.
They reverted to plan.
With guns set to “No Flame, Maximum Concussion” they roared across the compound.
The domes squashed like punctured balloons.
They raced across the lines of warehouses and knocked their roofs flat.
For good measure they made another pass, this time dropping nonradiation,
antipersonnel bombs.
One gun opened up at them and the plane took a jolt. They flashed down and squashed the gun with a single blast.
And that was the end of the base. The Psychlo Intergalactic Mining Company did not believe in lavishing money on safety equipment in any department, apparently. And hadn't Jonnie said something about Terl calling in all the armaments from these bases?
From what they could gather, standing by way up in the air, the creatures in the compound had been unable to get the masks on before the domes were smashed, for there certainly wasn't any mob coming out.
They hung around for a while, occasionally knocking out an isolated vehicle and a stray guard.
It really was quiet down there after that.
Then they saw something on their radar screen. It was an incoming transport. Abruptly they recalled transport plane engines leaving after the incoming firing. This thing had been slow-poking its way home and they had passed it. Good!
Dunneldeen, much to Dwight's dismay, landed beside the bus bar and turned it on.
They just sat there. The landing lights were now on. Any Psychlo employee left alive was not concentrating on coming out.
The transport plane landed. The Psychlos got out, fooled around with baggage. Then the pilot got out. The Psychlos walked in a mob toward the compound. Then they began to feel something was wrong and stopped.
The Psychlo pilot reached for his belt gun.
Dunneldeen and Dwight cut them down with assault rifles.
Dunneldeen flew Dwight over to the fuel dump. They knew what fuel cartridge the transport took, for it was a duplicate of the plane that had brought Jonnie to Scotland. Dwight got the fuel cartridges. Dunneldeen brought him back to the transport plane. Dwight took the old cartridges out and put new ones in. Dunneldeen shot a guard car that had survived and came racing toward them. It blew up.
Dunneldeen got into the air. Dwight flew the transport up. Dunneldeen shot the master power pole to bits in a fanfare of sparks and flashes.
Seeing that Dwight was well clear, Dunneldeen flew to a point about ten feet above the breathe-gas dump. He dropped a low-yield, lead-shielded, time-fused radioactive mine on it.
He soared up and the dump roared in a lovely green-blue flash.
He again checked to see where Dwight had gotten to, saw he was safe. Dunneldeen soared to ten thousand feet, nosed the plane over, sighted, and fired at the explosives dump. It went up like a miniature volcano.
Absolutely beautiful.
He dropped back and verified that the compound had not exploded. This was part of their orders. The machinery and stored planes were apparently intact.
With no atmosphere to breathe and no fuel to fly, with ninety percent of its personnel probably dead, the minesite in Cornwall was a write-off. That paid for a lot of crimes.
Dunneldeen fell in beside the transport. “What's a Tolnep?" asked Dunneldeen. Dwight didn't know either, but Dunneldeen supposed he did look strange in a Chinko air mask and U.S. Air Force stratosphere flying gear.
They had already agreed on a new and wonderful plan Dunneldeen had thought up. They had almost six hours of radio silence left. Orders complete and time on their hands.
Dunneldeen was related to the Chief of Clanfearghus, and besides there was a lass he had not seen for nearly a year.
They hoped the other fourteen minesite attack planes had done as well. Of course, perhaps not with the same style
They headed for Scotland.
Chapter 4
Zzt had sunk into deep apathy.
The gas drone roared on, deafening, cold, and dark.
That silly dimwit Nup!
Zzt had thought at first that the engine sounds he heard were just some rattles in this old relic, but after a while his trained ear could pick the sound out separately from the din in here. He listened in different parts of the cheerless drone and then at the flapping door. It was the Mark 32! The
Mark 32, “Hit 'Em Low, Kill 'Em,” heavy armored, ground strafer. Nup was flying escort to the drone?
Zzt had puzzled and puzzled on it and in fact had done little else. At first Zzt was all hope. He thought Nup had followed him out of the hangar intending to lower a ladder to the open door and snatch him out of here. But Nup seemed to be utterly unaware of the fact that there was an open door and was flying on the opposite side of the drone from it.
True, Zzt had not briefed him at all. The busted lamp bulb had mostly been talking about Bolbods and rumors in Psychlo that they were the next target. What nonsense! Zzt went over it carefully. No, in the rush of trying to get out and at those attacking Tolneps with a ground strafer, he had simply raced around asking whether anyone had been checked out on a Mark 32 and had slammed Nup into the copilot seat and then had had to go attend to that drone.
He dimly remembered his last words to Nup. They were, “Come on!” And he had been surprised when Nup hadn't run after him to the drone.
Instead of mopping up the Tolneps, Nup was out there flying escort in a ground strafer. He might have been checked out but he certainly didn't know what it was for. Why, with that Mark 32 he could batter down a whole city! And nothing could penetrate its hide. It was a support plane, a support plane for ground troops. No ground fire could touch it. No interceptor ships could even scratch its hide. And what was Nup doing with it? Riding escort to a drone that needed none.
Zzt got bitter. Damn Terl and damn
Nup!
Then as the huge drone with its deafening engines rolled along to the devils-knew-what destination, Zzt began to realize that Nup didn't know he was aboard!
A bit later, when he looked at his watch, Zzt realized that that Mark 32 was going to run out of fuel. Wherever they were in this dark night, that
Mark 32 was a write-off. He hadn't put fuel in it for such a trip because he didn't have cartridges, and a Mark 32 had no great range anyway, being intended for local use.
Well, Zzt had plenty of breathe-gas. He had a gun, he had a wrench.
For a while he monkeyed around with the preset box armor, thinking he might be able to open it and change it. But without keys or the means to make them, not even a piece of blast artillery could open it. When they said “armored” they sure meant these damned old gas drones.