And when they did so, it was too late, for the mob, white-hot with flaring rage, broke its bounds. Someone shrieked, “Kill the lizards!” and the cry was taken up in one roaring ululation that swelled to the sky.
Like a many-headed monster, the stream of Humanity surged forward, weaponless. Hundreds withered under the belated fury of the defending guns, and tens of thousands scrambled over the corpses, charging to the very muzzles.
The Lhasinu never wavered. Their ranks thinned steadily under the deadly sharp-shooting of the Tymballists, and those that remained were caught by the Human flood that surged over them and tore them to horrible death.
The Memorial sector gleamed in the crimson of the bloody Flame and echoed to the agony of the dying, and the shrieking fury of the triumphant.
It was the first battle of the Great Rebellion, but it was not really a battle, or even madness. It was concentrated anarchy.
Throughout the city, from the tip of Long Island to the mid-Jersey flatlands, rebels sprang from nowhere and Lhasinu went to their death. And as quickly as Tymball’s orders spread to raise the snipers, so did the news of the changing of the Flame speed from mouth to mouth and grow in the telling. All New York heaved, and poured its separate lives into the single giant crucible of the “mob.”
It was uncontrollable, unanswerable, irresistible. The Tymballists followed helplessly where it led, all efforts at direction hopeless from the start.
Like a mighty river, it lashed its way through the metropolis, and where it passed no living Lhasinu remained.
The sun of that fateful morning arose to find the masters of Earth occupying a shrinking circle in upper Manhattan. With the cool courage of born soldiers, they linked arms and withstood the charging, shrieking millions. Slowly, they backed away; each building a skirmish; each block a desperate battle. They split into isolated groups; defending first a building, and then its upper stories, and finally its roof.
With the noonday sun boiling down, only the Palace itself remained. Its last desperate stand held the Humans at bay. The withering circle of fire about it paved the grounds with blackened bodies. The Viceroy himself from his throneroom directed the defense; his own hand upon the butt of a semiportable.
And then, when the mob had finally come to a pause, Tymball seized his opportunity and took the lead. Heavy guns clanked to the front Atomos and delta-rays, from the rebel stock and from the stores captured the previous night, pointed their death-laden muzzles at the Palace.
Gun answered gun, and the first organized battle of machines flared into desperate fury. Tymball was an omnipresent figure, shouting, directing, leaping from gun-emplacement to gun-emplacement, firing his own band Tonite defiantly at the Palace.
Under a barrage of the heaviest fire, the Humans charged once more and pierced to the walls as the defenders fell back. An Atomo projectile smashed its way into the central tower and there was a sudden inferno of fire.
That blaze was the funeral pyre of the last of the Lhasinu in New York. The blackening walls of the palace crumbled in, in one vast crash; but to the very last, room blazing about him, face horribly cut, the Viceroy stood his ground, aiming into the thick of the besieging force. And when his semi-portable expended the last dregs of its power and expired, he heaved it out the window in a last futile gesture of defiance, and plunged into the burning Hell at his back.
Above the Palace grounds at sunset, with a yet-roaring furnace as the background, there floated the green flag of independent Earth.
New York was once more Human.
Russell Tymball was a sorry figure when he entered the Memorial once more that night. Clothes in tatters, and bloody from head to foot from the undressed cut on his cheek, he surveyed the carnage about him with sated eyes.
Volunteer squads, occupied in removing the dead and tending to the wounded had not yet succeeded in making more than a dent in the deadly work of the rebellion.
The Memorial was an improvised hospital. There were few wounded, for energy weapons deal death; and of these few, almost none slightly. It was a scene of indescribable confusion, and the moans of the hurt and dying mingled horribly with the distant yells of celebrating war-drunk survivors.
Loara Paul Kane pushed through the crowding attendants to Tymball.
“Tell me; is it over?” His face was haggard.
“The beginning is. The Terrestrial Flag flies over the ruins of the Palace.”
“It was horrible! The day has-has-” He shuddered and closed his eyes, “If I had known in advance, I would rather have seen Earth dehumanized and Loarism destroyed.”
“Yes, it was bad. But the results might have been much more dearly bought, and yet have remained cheap at the price. Where’s Sanat?”
“In the courtyard-helping with the wounded. We all are. It-it-” Again his voice failed him.
There was impatience in Tymball’s eyes, and he shrugged weary shoulders, “I’m not a callous monster, but it had to be done, and as yet it is only the beginning. Today’s events mean little. The uprising has taken place over most of Earth, but without the fanatic enthusiasm of the rebellion in New York. The Lhasinu aren’t defeated, or anywhere near defeated; make no mistake about that Even now the Solar Guard is flashing to Earth, and the forces on the outer planets are being called back. In no time at all, the entire Lhasinuic Empire will converge upon Earth and the reckoning will be a terrible and bloody one. We must have help!”
He grasped Kane by the shoulders and shook him roughly. “Do you understand? We must have help! Even here in New York the first flush of victory will fade by tomorrow. We must have help!”
“I know,” said Kane tonelessly. “I’ll get Sanat and he can leave today.” He sighed, “If today’s action was any criterion of his power as a catalyst, we may expect great events.”
Sanat climbed into the little two-man cruiser half an hour later and took his seat beside Petri at the controls.
He extended his hand to Kane a last time, “When I come back it will be with a navy behind me.”
Kane grasped the young man’s hand tightly, “We depend upon you, Filip.” He paused and said slowly, “Good luck, Loara Filip Sanat!”
Sanat flushed with pleasure at the title as he resumed his seat once more. Petri waved and Tymball called out, “Watch out for the Solar Guard!”
The airlock clanged shut, and then, with a coughing roar, the pigmy cruiser was off into the heavens.
Tymball followed it to where it dwindled into a speck and less and then turned to Kane. “All is now in the hands of Fate. And, Kane, just how was that Changing of the Flame worked? Don’t tell me the Flame turned red of itself.”
Kane shook his head slowly, “No! That carmine blaze was the result of opening a hidden pocket of strontium salts, originally placed there to impress the Lhasinu in case of need. The rest was chemistry.”
Tymball laughed grimly, “You mean the rest was mob psychology! And the Lhasinu, I think, were impressed-and how! ”
Space itself gave no warning, but the mass-detector buzzed. It buzzed peremptorily and insistently. Petri stiffened in his seat and said, “We’re in none of the meteor zones.”
Filip Sanat held his breath as the other turned the knob that rotated the peri-rotor. The star-field in the ‘visor shifted with slow dignity, and then they saw it.
It glinted in the sun like half a tiny, orange football, and Petri growled, “If they’ve spotted us, we’re sunk.”
“Lhasinuic ship?”
“Ship? That’s no ship! That’s a fifty-thousand ton battle cruiser! What in the Galaxy it’s doing here, I don’t know. Tymball said the Patrol bad made for Earth.”
Sanat’s voice was calm, “That one hasn’t. Can we outrage it?”
“Fat chance!” Petri’s fist clenched white on the G-stick. “They’re coming closer.”
The words might have been a signal. The audiomitter jiggled and the harsh Lhasinuic voice started from a whisper and rose to stridence as the radio beam sharpened, “Fire reverse motors and prepare for boarding!”