The surface-effect truck looked like a conventional aircraft with wings and a pair of turbine engines at the roots of the vertical tail. The wings were too stubby to support the fat fuselage in normal flight. Their steep camber trapped a cushion of air between them and the surface of the ground or sea so long as the vehicle flew forward.
The truck could sail ten feet in the air at 220 miles an hour with a modest expenditure of energy, perfect for carrying heavy loads over water or flat ground. It couldn't hover, though, and crags or a wall would rip the vehicle apart.
If the engines failed you'd better like the immediate terrain, because you were either going to land there or crash.
Mark tensed as the shoreline approached beyond a frill of seafoam. He hadn't paid any attention to the coast on his previous trips to Minor, and he doubted Yerby had either. If the margin rose too abruptly, rocks were going to take the truck's bottom off as sure as a grater scrapes cheese.
"Amy," he said. "Lift your feet."
"Why-" said Berkeley Finch.
The truck dipped, then lifted as if the shelving beach were a trampoline. Vegetation whickered beneath their keel like the brushes of an automatic car wash. Occasionally something more solid would thump the vehicle, but for the most part even the tree trunks were soft and sappy. Nothing came ripping through the bottom plates, at any rate.
"This is a much bigger vehicle than the ones you used to scout the fort earlier," Finch muttered. "It may well be above a detection threshold that the cars escaped."
"Naw, nothing much works down there," Yerby said unconcernedly. "You ain't seen the place, Finchie."
"Don't call me that," Finch said, but he spoke in an undertone that carried no conviction. Yerby chuckled and tousled Finch's hair.
"There's a signal!" Mark said. "There's a light flashing ahead of us!"
"That's the warning light on the fort's antenna tower, lad," Yerby said. "It flashes in the daytime too, when we was there before, but I guess you didn't pick it out."
He throttled back the turbines and rotated the big horizontal steering wheel hand over hand. You couldn't bank the truck without spilling the supporting cushion of air, so the rudder had to supply all the turning force. The vehicle wallowed and sideslipped as it curved around the nighted bulk of the fort.
They coasted down on a three-hundred-foot strip on the north side of the fort, where the walls' shade stunted the vegetation. The ground sloped but not badly. The double-bogie wheels on the truck's hull jounced brutally, but the vehicle tracked straight enough that the small wing outriggers could handle the sideways jolts.
The turbines roaringly reversed thrust, and the wings pivoted further down into airbrakes instead of lifting devices. The truck stopped with a final whiplash.
"Next time we do this, Bannock," said Axel Kockler as he picked himself from the tangle of other raiders who'd lost their hold on the bulkhead straps, "we bring blimps, you hear me? This is no way for human beings to travel!"
"Who decided you was human, Kockler?" a neighbor called. Sliding hatches in the cargo compartment rumbled open.
Yerby opened the door on his side of the cab. "Well, anyhow," he said across the general laughter, "it's fast."
"If I wanted fast," Kockler muttered, checking the flashgun he'd dropped when he fell, "I wouldn't drink whiskey. I'd just club myself on the head and get straight to the hangover."
Vines curtained the outer wall of the fortress. The stems were leafless until they reached the top and exploded in a profusion of foliage. Some of the more active raiders were already climbing, carrying rope ladders for the others to follow by.
"All right, Colonel," Yerby said to Finch. "I want you and your people to be special careful when you pick up the families. Chances are, most folks won't want trouble because they got their kids around; but there'll be a few who get panicky for the same reason. I'll tell you right now, anybody who hurts a kid because of an itchy trigger finger had better shoot me too before I hear about it. Right?"
"Nobody's going to get hurt, Yerby," Zeb Randifer said. "It's going to be like Blind Cove, no trouble at all."
"I'd like to accompany the body that captures the Command Center, Bannock," Finch said formally-for at least the fourth time since Yerby decided in the caravansary who'd go where on the raid.
"I'd like you to get on with the job I give you, Finch," Yerby said. There was enough granite for a landslide in his tone. "Or if you like, you can guard the truck here in place of Rinaldi."
"As you please," Finch said with pinched nostrils. He turned to the nearest ladder and climbed, the repeller on his back swinging with the violence of his motions. Mark braced the rope with one hand till Finch reached the top, then followed him.
Yerby backed a few steps and took a run at the wall. His boot got enough purchase on the vines that the frontiersman was able to catch the lip and swing himself onto the broad battlement. Amy shook her head at her brother's showing off, but she was recording him nonetheless.
Dittersdorf had no moon. The raiders' only light came from the warning flasher on the antenna. Somebody missed his footing on the inner ladder. He fell with a clatter of equipment and curses, his own and those of the people he bounced into. Mark expected an alarm, but the only answering sound was that of the nightbirds. Papashvili's engineers were all the way across the starport, and there was probably nobody else in the garrison above ground.
One of the raiders started to wander off toward the stairwell that led directly down to quarters for the soldiers living in family groups. The underground corridor between those rooms and the barracks-style arrangements for the remaining troops was open, but none of the ceiling lights worked.
Married quarters were Finch's responsibility. "Hey you!" he called to the man. "Where do you think you're going?"
The frontiersman turned. "I'm going down the stairs, like I'm supposed to," he said. "But if you want, pretty boy, I'll clean your clock before I do that."
"Now, you just hold where you are, Casey Tafell," Yerby said in a mild but carrying tone. "Nobody goes anywhere till we're all ready."
Tafell grimaced. "Who died and made you God?" he asked, but he spoke in a lowered voice which Yerby was willing to ignore.
"The little prick sure gets up a fellow's nose," Yerby said to Mark in a generally audible aside. "But we can't have folks haring off on their own."
Finch was welcome to think Yerby was talking about Casey Tafell if he liked. Anyway, all the raiders stayed at the base of the wall until the last person-Dagmar, making sure that nobody was still screwing around in the truck-was over the wall.
"That's it," she said. "My lot, come on, we'll collect them engineers before somebody gets up to take a leak and sees us."
She headed across the vast paved courtyard, cradling a repeller captured in one or the other of the Zenith invasions. Ten frontiersmen followed her. They weren't moving fast, but neither does the surf as it sweeps up the shore; and like the surf, they'd keep going until they were darned good and ready to stop.
"Finch, good luck to you," Yerby said. "And remember, watch out for kids."
Yerby sauntered to the entrance by which he'd entered the fort the first time. He didn't give orders to the raiders who were supposed to go with him. Mark wasn't sure if Yerby knew everybody would follow or if he just didn't care.
Mark didn't look over his shoulder either. He couldn't imagine that the people who'd come this far wouldn't go the rest of the way. Besides, Amy was a half step behind her brother; Mark was going in even if it was nobody but the three of them.
Boots shuffling on the slotted metal stair treads set up echoes in the shaft. By the time Mark was three-quarters of the way down to the first level, it sounded as though an army or an extremely large centipede was coming down the stairs behind him.