He clutched the hand control in the center of the belt at his waist, and the twin jets angling out from his shoulder tank flared thunderously, checking him in midair with a wrench that left him feeling as though his back had been broken. For a moment, before he could catch his breath, he actually began to rise. Then he throttled back to a slow fall and began the struggle to keep himself in vertical position with his feet under him.
He was not so much falling as sliding down at a steep angle into the jungle below. He made an effort to slow the rate of his fall, but the sensitive, tricky reactions of the jump belt sent him immediately into a climb again. Hastily, he returned the throttle to its first, instinctive fall-setting.
He was very near the tops of the taller trees now, and it would be necessary to pick his way between them so as not to be brained by a branch in passing or land in one of the deadly, dagger-like thorn bushes. Careful not to twist the throttle grip in the process, he shifted the control handle slightly this way and that to determine the safe limits of a change of direction. His first attempt very nearly sent his feet swinging into the air, but he checked the swing and after a moment got himself back into a line of upright descent. There was a patch of relatively clear jungle down to his right. Gingerly he inched the control handle over and was relieved as his airy slide altered toward the patch. Then, abruptly, he was among and below the treetops.
The ground was rushing at Mm. The tall, jagged stump of a lightning-blasted tree, which he had not seen earlier because it was partly covered with creepers blending in with the green of the ground cover, seemed to leap upward at him like a spear.
Desperately he jammed the handle over. The jets bucked. He went into a spin, slammed at an angle into the tree stump and smashed against the ground. A wave of blackness took him under.
15
When he came to - and it may have been only seconds later, he was lying twisted on the ground with his bad knee bent under him. His head was ringing, but, otherwise, he did not feel bad. Shakily he sat up and, using both hands, gently began to straighten out his bum leg. Then there was pain, mounting and threatening unconsciousness.
He fought the unconsciousness off. Slowly it receded. He leaned back, panting against the tree trunk, to catch his breath and use his auto-control techniques. Gradually the pain in his knee faded, and his breathing calmed. His heartbeat slowed. He concentrated on relaxing the whole structure of his body and isolating the damaged knee. After a little while, the familiar floating sensation of detachment came to him. He leaned forward and gently straightened the knee, pulled up the pants leg covering it and examined it.
It was beginning to swell, but beyond that his exploring fingers could not tell him what serious damage had been done it this time. He could sense the pain like a distant pressure off behind the wall of his detachment. Taking hold of the tree trunk and resting all his weight on his other foot, he slowly pulled himself to his feet.
Once on his feet he gingerly tried putting a little of his weight on that leg. It supported him, but there was a weakness about it that was ominous.
For a moment he considered using the jump belt to lift himself into the air once more, over the treetops and down to the river. But after a second, he dismissed the idea. He could not risk another hard landing on that knee, and coming down in the river with as much current as there was now was also impractical. He might have to swim, and swimming might put the knee completely beyond use.
He unbuckled the jump belt and let it fall. Relieved of its weight, he hopped on his good foot to a nearby sapling about two inches in diameter. Drawing his sidearm, he shot the sapling's trunk through some six feet above the ground, and again at ground level. Stripping off a few twigs from the length of wood this provided left him with a rough staff on which he could lean. With the help of the staff he began hobbling toward the river's edge. He finally reached the bank of the gray, flowing water. He took the body phone from his belt, set it for transmission limited to a hundred yards and called Wefer on the Navy wavelength.
Wefer answered, and a few minutes later one of the Mark V's poked its massive, bladed snout out of the water ten yards in front of him.
"What now?" asked Wefer, after Cletus had been assisted aboard and down into the control room of the Mark V. Cletus leaned back in the chair they had given him and stretched out his bad leg carefully.
"I'm having a company of men, half on each side of the river, meet us here in about" - he broke off to look at his watch - "thirty minutes or so from now. I want one of your Mark V's to take them, a platoon at a time, underwater up to the downriver end of the town. Can you spare one of your machines? How's the water level coming, by the way?"
"Coming fine," answered Wefer. "Those platoons of yours are going to find it knee-deep in the lower end of town by the time they get there. Give us another hour, and with only two machines I'll have the river as deep as you want it. So there's no problem about detaching one of the Mark V's for ferry purposes."
"Fine," said Cletus.
He rode into the town with the last Mark V load of the ferried Dorsais. As Wefer had predicted, the water was knee-deep in the streets near the downriver end of the town. Eachan Khan met him as he limped into the command room of the Dorsai HQ in Two Rivers.
"Sit down, Colonel," said Eachan, guiding Cletus into a chair facing the large plotting screen. "What's happening to the river? We've had to herd all the civilians into the tallest buildings."
"I've got Wefer Linet and some of those submarine dozers of his working downstream to raise the river level," answered Cletus. "I'll give you the details later. Right now, how are things with you here?"
"Nothing but some long-range sniping from the forward Neulander scouts, so far," said Eachan, coolly. "Those sandbagged strong points of yours were a fine idea. The men will be dry and comfortable inside them while the Neulanders will be slogging through ankle-deep water to get to them."
"We may have to get out in the water and do a little slogging ourselves," said Cletus. "I've brought you nearly two hundred extra men. With these added to what you've got, do you think you could mount an attack?"
Eachan's face had never inclined to any large changes of expression, but the stare he gave Cletus now was as close to visible emotion as Cletus had seen him go.
"Attack?" he echoed. "Two and a half - three companies - at most, against six or eight battalions?"
Cletus shook his head. "I said mount an attack. Not carry one through," he replied. "All I want to do is sting those two Neulander fronts enough so that they'll pause to bring up more men before starting to go forward against us again. Do you think we can do that much?"
"Hmm." Eachan fingered his mustache. "Something like that... yes, quite possible, I'd think."
"Good," said Cletus. "How can you get me through, preferably with picture as well as voice, to Marc Dodds?"
"We're on open channel." Eachan answered. He stepped across the room and returned with a field phone.
"This is Colonel Khan," he said into it. "Colonel Grahame wishes to speak with Colonel Dodds."
He passed the phone to Cletus. As Cletus' hands closed about it, the vision screen in the phone's stem lit up with the image of Marc's face, the plotting screen of the aircraft behind him. "Sir?" Marc gazed at Cletus. "You're in Bakhalla?"
"That's right," Cletus answered. "And so's that company of men I had you send to meet me at the bend of the main river. Give me a view of the board behind you there, will you?"