"We have lulls like this occasionally," said Harkas Don. "It is as though both sides became simultaneously tired of war, but one never can tell when it will break out again in all its fury."
He scarcely had ceased speaking when there came a single, high-pitched shrieking note from the loudspeakers that are installed the length and breadth of the underground city. Harkas Don rose. "There it is now," he said. "The general alarm. You will see war now, Tangor, my friend. Come."
We hurried to the car, and the girls came with us to bring the car back after they had delivered us to our stations.
Hundreds of ramps lead to the surface from the underground airdromes of Orvis, and from their camouflaged openings at the surface planes zoom out and up at the rate of twenty a minute, one every three seconds, like winged termites emerging from a wooden beam.
I was flying a ship in a squadron of pursuit planes. It was armed with four guns. One I fired through the propeller shaft, there were two in an after cockpit, which could be swung in any direction, and a fourth which fired down through the bottom of the fuselage.
As I zoomed out into the open the sky was already black with our ships. The squadrons were forming quickly and streaking away toward the southwest, to meet the Kapars who would be coming in from that direction. And presently I saw them, like a black mass of gnats miles away.
Chapter Six
OF COURSE, at the time that I had been killed in our little war down on Earth, there had not been a great deal of aerial activity; I mean, no great mass flights. I know there was talk that either side might send over hundreds of ships in a single flight, and hundreds of ships seemed a lot of ships; but this day, as I followed my squadron commander into battle, there were more than ten thou-sand ships visible in the sky; and this was only the first wave. We were climbing steadily at terrific speed in an effort to get above the Kapars, and they were doing the same. We made contact about twelve miles above the ground, and the battle soon after developed into a multitude of individual dog-fights, though both sides tried to keep some semblance of formation.
The atmosphere of Poloda rises about one hundred miles above the planet, and one can fly up to an altitude of about fifteen miles without needing an oxygen tank.
In a few minutes I became separated from my squadron and found myself engaged with three light Kapar combat planes. Ships were falling all around us, like dead leaves in an autumn storm; and so crowded was the sky with fighting ships that much of my attention had to be concentrated upon avoiding collisions; but I succeeded in manoeuvring into a commanding position and had the satisfaction of seeing one of the Kapars roll over and plummet toward the ground. The other two were now at a disadvantage, as I was still above them and they turned tail and started for home. My ship was very much faster than one of theirs, and I soon overhauled the laggard and shot him down, too.
I could not but recall my last engagement, when I shot down two of three Messerschmitts before being shot down myself; and I wondered if this were to be a repetition of that adventure-was I to die a second time?
I chased the remaining Kapar out over the enormous bay that indents the west coast of Unis. It is called the Bay of Hagar . It is really a gulf for it is fully twelve hundred miles long. An enormous island at its mouth has been built up with the earth excavated from the underground workings of Unis, pumped there through a pipe that you could drive an automobile through. It was between the coast and this island that I got on the tail of this last Kapar. One gunner was hanging dead over the edge of the cockpit, but the other was working his gun. Above the barking of my own gun I could hear his bullets screaming past me; and why I wasn't hit I shall never know, unless it was that that Kapar was Poloda's worst marksman.
Evidently I wasn't much better, but finally I saw him slump down into the cockpit; and then beyond his ship I saw another wave of Kapar flyers coming, and I felt that it was a good time to get away from there. The Kapar pilot that I had been pursuing must have seen the new wave at the same time that I did, for he turned immediately after I had turned and pursued me. And now my engine began to give trouble; it must have been hit by the last spurt from the dead gunner's piece. The Kapar was overhauling me, and he was getting in range, but there was no answering fire from the gunners in my after cockpit. I glanced back to find that they were both dead.
Now I was in a fix, absolutely defenceless against the ship pulling up behind me. I figured I might pull a fast one on him; so I banked steeply and dived beneath him; then I banked again and came up under his tail with my gun bearing on his belly. I was firing bullets into him when he dived to escape me, but he never came out of that dive.
To the west the sky was black with Kapar ships. In a minute they would be upon me; it was at that moment that my engine gave up the ghost. Ten or eleven miles below me was the coast of Unis. A thousand miles to the northeast was Orvis. I might have glided 175 or 180 miles toward the city, but the Kapars would long since have been over me and some of their ships would have been detached to come down and put an end to me. As they might already have sighted me, I put the ship into a spin in the hope of misleading them into thinking I had been shot down. I spun down for a short distance and then went into a straight dive, and I can tell you that spinning and diving for ten or eleven miles is an experience.
I brought the ship down between the coast and a range of mountains, and no Kapar followed me. As I climbed out of the pilot's cockpit, Bantor Han, the third gunner, emerged from the ship.
"Nice work," he said, "we got all three of them."
"We had a bit of luck," I said, "and now we've got a long walk to Orvis."
"We'll never see Orvis again," said the gunner.
"What do you mean?" I demanded.
"This coast has been right in the path of Kapar flights for a hundred years. Where we are standing was once one of the largest cities of Unis, a great seaport. Can you find a stick or stone of it now? And for two or three hundred miles inland it is the same; nothing but bomb craters."
"But are there no cities in this part of Unis?" I asked.
"There are some farther south. The nearest is about a thousand miles from here, and on the other side of this range of mountains. There are cities far to the north, and cities east of Orvis; but it has never been practical to build even underground cities directly in the path of the Kapar flights, while there are other sections less affected."
"Well," I said, "I am not going to give up so easily. I will at least try to get to Orvis or some other city. Suppose we try for the one on the other side of these mountains. At least we won't be in the path of the Kapars every time they come over."
Bantor Han shook his head again. "Those mountains are full of wild beasts," he said. "There was a very large collection of wild animals in the city of Hagar when the war broke out over a hundred years ago. Many of them were killed in the first bombing of the city; but all their barriers were broken down, and the survivors escaped. For a hundred years they have ranged these mountains and they have multiplied. The inhabitants of Polan, this city you wish to try to reach, scarcely dare stick their heads above-ground because of them. No," he continued, "we have no complaint-to make. You and I will die here, and that will mean that we have lost four men and one pursuit plane to their three light combat ships and, possibly, twenty men. It is a mighty good day's work, Tangor, and you should be proud."
"That is what I call patriotism and loyalty," I said; "but I can be just as patriotic and loyal alive as dead, and I don't intend even to think of giving up yet. If we are going to die anyway, I can see no advantage in sitting here and starving to death."