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assigned to the colony expansion effort our newest venture. His tired, strained face gave way to a view of a wide, cleared area on a seacoast, with its familiar jungle backdrop. Some huts had already been constructed, and others stood half-completed, the plastic layers only partly sprayed on the custom-shaped balloon foundations. Piles of equipment were neatly lined up. But orderly crowds of men were moving toward the motor-powered barges beached to receive them. The mutineers have not yet been located. Our planes are proceeding with their search The patterns of radar gave place to depthless, infrared jungle, seen from far above. It shifted back to the radar matrix as the plane swept on, probing with all the mar-velously keen sensory equipment technology had given it. Forty-seven hours. You have forty-seven hours. Plymouth Colony, ground your planes. We have atomic power and we will not hesitate to use it " Time . . . You have forty-six hours * * * And fear swept the Keeps. Crowds seethed the Ways, gathering at the cloverleaves where the big visor screens were set up. Zachariah Harker said to Kedre: The body politic is more than a figure of speech. The Ways, you know, are like the circulatory system. When too many people gather, forming well, blood clots then there s danger of an aneurysm. Zachariah Kedre said. He took her hand. I don t know. I don t know, my dear. I m trying to think. We still have forty-five hours. You have forty-four hours. Another attacking plane has been shot down and eased with tractor beams thirty miles from Plymouth Fort. No atomic explosion resulted. This plane was radio-controlled. The robot-guide signals were relayed from constantly shifting areas at sea. * * * Hale looked at the Logician. Things level off, Ben Crowell said packing his pipe. It s all right for you to talk. You know the answers. I don t. Time to look for real trouble is when you don t see any, Crowell pointed out. You might see some harmless-looking plants, little ones, and you wouldn t think there s a Man Underground root twenty feet long hiding way down, waiting for the right time. Bight now He glanced at the Keep announcer on the nearest screen. Well, you don t see me inter- fering, do you? No. And you ought to be more excited, with atomic war threatened. Even the Free Companies outlawed atomics for offense. You have forty-three hours, the screen said. You have twenty-four hours. You have twenty hours. You have sixteen hours. Sam Reed speaking. We ve found the skunks! The screens showed jungle, seen from high above green, luxuriant, writhing with life. No more than that. Then the bombardment began, acid, flame, rays, and the fury of man s own weapons crashed against the fury of Venus. The jungle green blackened. It writhed in torment. It flung up huge ropes of screaming vines. Clouds of flying things poured away from the center of that circle of awful holocaust. The towering, pillarlike neck of the thunder-lizard curved up; the red maw opened. The hissing shriek of the saurian rose high and keening through the dull, incessant roar of the blasting rain from above. Surrender! We ll destroy the Keeps we won t hesitate stop your attack There was only raw, blackened, steaming earth now where there had been jungle. The soil melted and crumbled. It flowed like lava. A white-hot lake began to grow. Pressure-jets blasted down, forcing the molten rock out from its lake in a flashing, incandescent spray. And something seemed to rise from the turgid steaming depths. As the molten level sank, a gray, rounded surface emerged. Sam s face flashed on to the screens. You are seeing the secret headquarters of the mutineers, he said. You will see it destroyed now. A voice shouted: We ll destroy the Keeps! Stop your attack The gray dome stood sullenly in the white-hot lake. The black torpedo shape of a bomb dropped. The gray dome was tough. But then another bomb dropped. And another. The first explosion had not mushroomed before the next missile hit. Then the next. And there was no cessation, no pause in the terrible regu- larity of the pin-point bombing. Hammer-blow after hammer-blow [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |