Throughout the barrage, orders came for tactical maneuvering as the Raid Commander led his fleet deftly downward. Below a certain level they would be safe from the hydrogen warheads. As Ben moved his own controls to conform to the changing attack pattern, he saw a mighty flare up ahead—one of the lead Spacer ships was struck. The Earth missile hurled its tons of explosive violence into the very spearhead of the Spacer approach pattern, closely followed by a second. “All right, men,” the commander’s voice said. “They’ve spotted our pattern. Now take battle formation. Drop down and rejoin over the strike point.”
Ben threw his control levers forward, veering his ship out of the vortex of destruction up ahead, and nosing it down deeper into the thickening atmospheric blanket of the planet. The little ship’s skin temperature began to rise, and he navigated on his own, trying to gauge his speed by the approach to critical skin temp. Speed and agility were essential now, but unwary ships had literally burned themselves to cinders by trying to move down too swiftly. This was the danger area, the missile belt where every Spacer ship had to rely on its own protective devices. In order to make as poor targets as possible, it was routine for raiding fleets to spread themselves over millions of square miles, each pilot taking a course with but one goal in mind: to drop down to the surface, decelerate as swiftly as atmospheric friction would allow, and somehow stay alive in the process.
For all the great distances to be covered, the Spacer ships were coming in fast. The dark planet’s surface gave way to a twilight zone, and then full daylight as they moved around into the sun. Ben could see the fleecy white cloud layers clinging to the planet’s skin like a great fur coat. There was a rift in the clouds, and the shattering glare of water reflecting the sun struck his eyes. He was over ocean now.
Moments later he was skimming into thicker atmosphere, one hand on radio control as he sent out feelers to locate the other ships in his squad.
One responded; then another. Presently he could see the other ships, moving in with him to gather for their landing pattern, and the squad leader was calling signals. Now they were back across twilight to the dark side of Earth; the clouds opened up and they could see below them the pattern of surface lights outlining first the coastal cities of the western hemisphere northern continent, and then the vast blanket of light from the interior metropolis they were seeking, extending north and south for three hundred miles and east and west for two hundred: the city of Chicago with its seventy million people and the food storage warehouses designed to keep them fed.
Ben smiled in satisfaction. They had moved in so fast that blackout had not even yet been accomplished. A slower operation and they would have had to search their way with flares and follow directional signals from their contact men below. Now Ben was following the signals of his squad leader almost automatically, obeying landing instructions as the anti-aircraft flack burst on all sides of him. One of his companion ships was struck and burst apart in air, but Ben did not falter at the controls. He worked his null-gravity controls now, leading the ship down in a descending spiral. Somewhere below bright red ground flares appeared in a pattern of a five-pointed star; moments later, with his null-grav engines whining Ben set his little ship slowly down in the center of the area marked by the flares, felt the ship jar as it gently settled to a stop.
He was on target zero.
Whatever Ben Trefon had expected to see when he landed his S-80 at the strike point designated for him, he was unprepared for the nightmarish scene that greeted him as he checked the tangle-gun at his belt and threw open the lock to step down on the surface of the planet Earth for the first time.
Their approach had been so swift, and the landing flares set off so shortly before their ships touched down that blackout in the target area had been incomplete and, on the concourse outside, the raiding ships were faced by a panic-stricken and hysterical mob. Ben’s ship had settled down on a broad steel
.thoroughfare lined with shops and gardens, with a great brightly lighted hall just across the strip from his ship. A dozen other S-80’s had landed in the vicinity, all but encircling the hall, and as Ben stepped down on the metal surface of the concourse, the frantic scurrying of people, obviously interrupted without warning in the midst of their evening business on the concourse, reminded him of a pack of space mice scurrying for cover in a cargo ship’s hold when the lights suddenly went on. Sirens were screaming in his ears as he jumped down, signalling his companions from the other ships, and somewhere in the distance he heard a rattle of gunfire and a series of explosions that seemed to shake the metal roadway.
They had landed on a promenade, located at the surface level of the great steel Earth city, a metal strip that seemed to extend for miles in either direction, with open air shops, restaurants, recreation halls and solariums. Ben knew something of the ways of city life on this crowded planet; he knew that these surface promenades in the open air were largely the domain of the wealthy and influential on Earth, for there simply was not enough surface room on the planet to allow all members of society to have free access to the top levels of the city areas. Even so, the promenades were usually crowded with pleasure seekers in the evenings, and it was only the arrival of unexpected company that had created the pandemonium that greeted his eyes now.
People were fighting and screaming to gain entrance to the buildings, to get under cover somehow from the attackers. Lights along the promenade were going out in rapid succession, and surface cars were scurrying up and down the thoroughfare and ducking off into secondary alleys like frightened beetles scurrying under rocks. Inside the recreation hall near-est to Ben’s ship there were shrieks and shouts as someone bellowed at the top of his lungs for order. Crowds of young people, who had been enjoying the freedom of the open air just a few moments before, were now rushing for the escalators and elevators leading down into the heart of the city, and people were trampling and fighting their way toward light switches in an effort to black out the hall and surrounding area.
Ben snapped on the powerful searchlights on his S-80, flooding the entrance to the recreation hall with light. Two other raider craft had landed close to him: now searchlight beams appeared on the far side of the hall, and Ben knew that Spacer ships had encircled the place in landing. The pilot of the nearest ship waved at Ben, tangle-gun in hand, and ran across to meet him, panting.
“Let’s get in there and stop those elevators,” he cried. “They’re going down the escalators like rats down a chute!”
“Where are the others?” Ben said.
“Coming in from the other side. But we’d better move. The place will be empty in a few minutes.” Ben nodded, and they moved toward the recreation hall entrance as two other raiders joined them.
Ben held his tangle-gun at ready, fingering the grenades at his belt with the other hand. Two young men with terror-filled faces were blocking the entrance, unarmed, and Ben and his cohorts bore down on them. Ben caught the first man a full body block, shoving him aside with sheer momentum; the Spacers behind him followed close as he crashed through the entranceway. Once inside the raiders scattered to take up preplanned stations about the room.
The escalators were their first concern. Already they were carrying loads of people down, a tangle of struggling arms and legs, but moving down inexorably. As they saw the Spacers crowd through the entranceway, some dove headfirst down the escalator chutes. Ben threatened the crowd at the escalator entrance with his tangle-gun, motioning them back until the moving staircase had carried its load down and stood empty. Then he tossed a grenade down the chute, and the escalator gears ground to a halt.