Wennda turned. In a moment she heard it. A faint drone, the distant burr of some giant insect on the wing. It came from back toward the northern fissure entrance. Yone paid Wennda no attention as he stepped up beside her. She saw a slowly dawning wonder on his face.
Now Arshall and Sten came up beside them. The four of them stood with their backs to the Redoubt and faced whatever was headed toward them. In half a minute they saw it knifing through the canyon air a mile away, winged and alight and roaring five hundred feet above the ground.
“The Typhon,” said Wennda. She stood transfixed. All stood numb and pale and facing the perceived incarnation of their childhood nightmares.
“No,” said Yone. He shook his head without looking away.
“What else could it be?”
“A machine,” he said. “Look. It’s a flying machine.”
And it was. The winged object nearing them in the halflight of the canyon shadow was rigid, made of plastic or metal, with windows and canopies and a cockpit, and the growing drone they heard was a whining engine. Below its body were two wheels on metal stalks. A third slowly swung down.
“There’s the Typhon,” Sten said wonderingly. He pointed down the canyon corridor where something flew behind and slightly above the descending aircraft. No one in the recon team had ever seen it, but once seen there was no doubting what it was. The thing was larger than the descending air machine, but thin and dark with flat sail-like wings and a raked sharp head with dead white patches for eyes. The metal aircraft forced its way through the air; but the Typhon seemed part of it. Both objects beautiful and savage and signaling destruction in every line, yet utterly alien from each other.
Wennda unfolded her binoculars and pressed “record” and watched the Typhon rake back its wings and angle down toward the aircraft like a striking falcon. A brilliant streak shot from underneath the streamlined head and sped over the aircraft like a meteor. The canyon lit orange and the cross of the aircraft’s shadow flowed across the canyon floor. A soft thunder swept the fissure.
Thin streaks shot back from rods emerging from a clear bubble on top of the aircraft. They raced toward the diving Typhon and tracked right with its plummet. A rapid riveting echoed through the canyon.
Yone stared as bullets stitched across the Typhon’s lower body. The Typhon cupped its wings and slowed its dive and arced up and rolled right. The sharp wings curled and the creature righted itself and rose and continued until it dove backward and away from the intruder that had unexpectedly damaged it.
“Is it coming back?” Sten asked.
“I think it is flying away,” said Yone.
They watched amazed as the metal aircraft continued toward them. They saw now that it moved using four large propellers, and that three of them were not spinning. The hull was damaged all over, and one side of the tail section waggled as the aircraft descended. The machine’s wheels met the valley floor and the aircraft sped roughly along the shattered stone, heading toward the rockfall sloping from the bottom of the cliff ahead. It slowed and began to turn but suddenly stopped. The engine coughed and died.
“Well,” said Sten, “I guess we’ve got something to take back now.”
Wennda nodded slowly. “They have a new weapon,” she said. “They’re trying to destroy the Typhon and get into the well.”
“Maybe it’s from the well,” said Arshall. “The Typhon was chasing it out of there.”
“Not from the well,” said Yone. “From the column.” He pointed back toward the distant fissure entrance, back toward the crater’s center where they knew the vast column still shimmered above the enormous well.
Arshall snorted. “You think monsters live in there?”
Yone shrugged. “We came here because the column has been acting strangely. And now this.” He nodded at the parked aircraft near the rockfall up ahead.
“The column has been acting strangely,” Wennda argued, “because they’ve been doing something to it. Maybe that’s the result.”
“Oh, please,” said Arshall. “They sent an expedition down the well, and they found that thing and brought it back.”
“You saw those weapons,” said Sten. “Wherever it’s from, if that thing finds the Dome, it’s over.”
Wennda stared at the aircraft silhouetted against the faint green light of the Redoubt wall. Alien and dangerous and upsetting a long and precarious balance. She thought she saw motion and she raised her binoculars again and took a long look. “There are men getting out of it,” she said. “I count six. They’re wearing uniforms. I think they have weapons.”
“So much for stealing it and flying it back,” said Arshall.
Wennda lowered the binoculars and stared at him.
“Or blowing it up,” added Sten.
“I think those options are no longer available to us in any case,” said Yone. He pointed at the city wall, where a massive door had slid aside and two angular silhouettes were gliding out toward the parked aircraft.
Wennda raised the binoculars again. “Troop carriers,” she said.
“Well, this just got even more interesting,” said Sten.
“Let’s see what happens,” said Arshall.
Wennda lowered the binoculars. “I want to get closer,” she said.
Sten and Arshall traded a glance. “Of course you do,” said Sten.
NINE
In the alien quiet Farley and Broben stared at the wall of greenish glass that spanned the canyon ahead of them, its upper third gleaming, the rest in shadow. Through the glass they saw what seemed to be a city.
Broben looked at Farley. “What the hell?” he said. “What the hell, Joe?”
Farley only shook his head and unbuckled. “Come on,” he said.
He started to climb down into the pit, then stopped. Shorty and Wen were already there, and they moved aside to let Plavitz and Boney crawl out from the nose into the cramped space. Every man had shed his flight suit and put on uniform and general-issue boots. Farley made sure everybody had a sidearm. His own was in its shoulder holster.
Plavitz pointed to the front of the bomber. “Did you see—”
“Stow it,” Farley interrupted. “Everybody out.”
Wen opened the forward hatch and swung out of the bomber. Farley waited while the others followed Wen, then he climbed down from the cockpit. At the hatchway he glanced back up at Broben. “Coming, Jer?”
Broben nodded. “It ain’t a landing till you walk away from it,” he said. He unbuckled and stood. Farley noticed that Jerry’s hand shook when he lit a Lucky, but Farley only nodded at him and swung down from the hatch. His boots touched grit and he patted the aluminum hull. Thanks, girl.
The men were already lighting up, looking around, stunned and questioning. Eight men standing outside a battered bomber parked at the bottom of a steep and narrowing canyon before a massive structure like nothing ever built on earth.
Wen immediately went to the tail section, did a full walkaround, and came back shaking his head. “Can’t believe this thing stayed up,” he said.
Broben dropped out of the hatch. Farley saw that he had jammed the flare pistol into his waistband.
“All right, first things first,” said Farley. “Plavitz, any idea where we are?”
Plavitz shook his head. “I didn’t have any kind of readings at all, even before we went through that—whatever it was. Nothing in the sky to get bearings on, either.” He pointed at the enormous city wall. “That’s north. After that, your guess is as good as mine.”