Ril, quick to perceive their advantage in the turmoil of the two inflexible orders, steered to one side and jostled into the stream of outgoing vehicles. The whole procession moved at a steady, uniform speed, and they were swept along with it. The attackers, unable to alter the instinctive march, were left with no course but to follow in their wake at such points as they could contrive to wedge themselves into the moving queue. Roy looked round over the moving ranks and realised that they were safe, barring accidents, until the open should be reached.
Within the metal shell, Julian was doing his best to restore Jessica to consciousness, and looking with anger at the great weals imprinted on her arms and legs. When her abductor was caught, it had evidently closed its grip the more firmly in a determination not to lose its prey, and she had fainted from the constriction. At last her eyes opened, and she looked up at him.
'What's happened?' she asked, attempting to move her stiffened limbs. He explained.
'And Roy?'
At the sound of her voice, Roy withdrew from his observation post and walked forward, in the crouched attitude that the cramped quarters demanded. He took one of her hands in both of his, and gazed down into her smiling face.
'Thank God you're safe, Jessica. Until that thing snatched you away, I didn't realise―'
Jessica's eyes were starry. 'You didn't realise what, Roy?'
'I didn't realise how much I―'
'Heat-rays ready!' interrupted Ril. 'We're nearly out.'
'Oh, damn!' muttered Roy. as he sprang back to his station.
Chapter Nine
THE ESCAPE TO THE PAST
In the open, Ril gave the machine full power and sent it tearing away from the main body. Presently, the pursuers also drew clear and came scudding in swift chase. Roy picked off the leaders with sharp blasts of heat, but every second more and more of the machines pouring out of the mountain entrance were joining the hunting pack. It became no longer a straggling pursuit, but a solid block of shining mechanisms bearing down. Had the way ahead been clear, possibly they could have held their own in the matter of speed, but once in the forest, the superior control and familiarity of the insects with their own machines began to tell. Roy, with a ray tube in each hand, thanked Providence that no ballistic weapons were known to the ants; he had his work cut out to pick off the advancing units.
'Ahead!' cried Ril, and Roy whipped round, to see a line of machines drawn across their path. A quick switch of the ray served to clear the way, but it also sent a patch of trees bursting into flame. Ril held on, and plunged them through the gauntlet of fire.
Something fell across Roy's shoulders and half wrenched him from his perch. He turned to find an insect-machine racing alongside; it had pursued a parallel course behind masking trees, and seized his momentary diversion of attention to cut in on him. He crooked one arm beneath the metal casing-edge, in an effort to resist the pull, but slowly he felt his muscles giving in beneath the relentless tugging. Desperately he wriggled the other arm, in an attempt to bring the ray to bear. He was thankful that it had not occurred to the insects to snatch at the fast-moving legs of the stolen machine. . ..
The pull of the tentacle grew stronger, and he called loudly to the others. He felt a pair of arms clutch his legs. He ached painfully, as the machine tightened its grip. Fingers grasped the ray tube from the arm he had crooked below, and Jessica thrust herself up beside him with the tube in her hand. Quick as thought, the whole bunch of tentacles were shorn from their roots. Then, turning it downward, she fused the front legs. The fore end dropped suddenly, and the attacker pitched back over front in a final, shattering somersault.
Roy disentangled himself from the wrapping feeler and, side by side with Jessica, went to work at clearing away the nearest of the pursuers. The rays flashed in a furious semi-circle, but the encroaching machines were constantly supplemented; it seemed that they must shortly be overcome by sheer, clogging weight of numbers.
'Hold tight, there! We've got to risk this,' called Ril from below. Roy glanced ahead, and saw that they had again reached the river—unfortunately, not at the same shallow spot as they had crossed before. This time, a steep bank must be descended and deeper water negotiated. It would be chancing too much to turn along the bank, for they had no means of telling how far their pursuers were spread out to either side.
The machine slithered down the bank and waded out. The water rose above the leg-sockets, but it did not flow through the universal joints. It rose further—to within inches of the observation holes; then, thankfully, they felt the floor lift up as the stream-bed rose. On the farther bank, Roy called Ril to halt. The machines had not followed them. They had collected in a line, hesitant and unwilling to risk a wetting. It seemed that the fugitives were safe. Then, just as Roy drew a breath of relief, one machine, more intrepid than the rest, came sliding down. Instantly he rayed it; and a burst of steam arose from the water around.
But the necessary lead had been given. A second later, half a dozen or more were slithering into the water. With no compunction, he played his ray upon them. He hoped by example to stop them from making a mass attack, for it would be impossible to check all the hundreds which now lined the bank. But as he vaporised the last of the waders, an interruption occurred. Something came swinging above their heads and landed with a crash on the opposite bank.
'The red stalkers!' cried Jessica. 'They're attacking them. Quickly, Ril, get into the trees! They haven't seen us yet.'
They scuttered from the danger zone. Under cover of the branches, they stopped and looked back. Indescribable confusion was raging among the machines, and at first it was difficult to see the reason. But as they watched, a net of glittering red metal came sailing through the air and fell upon the white machines. Evidently the red stalkers used rocks only against isolated enemies; when they really went into action, they had other weapons. One net followed another, and with every move they made, the white machines became more hopelessly entangled. From being a collection of perfectly controlled units, they soon changed into no more than a writhing mass of a myriad glittering parts, surging frantically this way and that, enmeshing themselves the more as they struggled to escape.
Roy caught a glimpse of the first red biped striding forward, metal nets swinging from its jointed arms.
'Time for us to go,' he said.
Ril threw in the switch, and they scurried away into the green obscurity of the forest.
An unexpected sight greeted them at the cliffs. Del's time-traveller, constructed for safety within the cave, had been brought out and lowered to the ground. The other five members of the party were clustered round it, apparently in conference over some knotty point. One of the Numen let out a cry, as they broke from the trees. Jim Hollis swung round with ready weapon. Roy hailed him loudly, and the other's face broke into a grin. A moment later, the machine came to a halt in the middle of a congratulatory group. The greetings over, Roy asked:
'Why have you brought the traveller down here? Either an ant-machine or a red stalker may come along any minute. One stone landing on that would ruin all your work.'
Del explained. It was necessary that the traveller be somehow conveyed to the cliff-top. A break, less than a mile away, offered ample possibility for men to climb, but the problem of raising the machine appeared hard to solve.
'But why lift it at all? Why not work it here?'
'Look at the cliffs,' said Del.
'Well, what about them?'
'They've been caused by some earth-fault, and are very recent. If we were to work the machine here, we would probably finish in the part of the cliff now fallen away—the result of that, I leave to your imagination.'