The Golden Amazons of Venus Part 15

Then the next flying car came into sight as it sped out beyond the walls. Its nose came into sight first, then the middle section, finally the whole car. One after another, the rest of the flotilla took off till they were flying in a V-shaped formation like a flock of wild geese.

"What kind of power makes these cars go?" Gerry asked.

"Iso-electronic rays," the pilot replied shortly, not taking his eyes from the indicator board.

"And can they be made invisible like the city?"

"Yes. The dimensional-control lever is here." The pilot pointed at many of the controls, then again lapsed into silence.

It was evident that Gerry was not going to be able to have any extended conversation with the driver of the car. That might be due to instructions the man had received from his superiors, or simply to his own nature. Probably a combination of both! These men of Moorn were a cold and self-centered race. Probably they were an isolated off-shoot of the original Old Ones who had first settled this planet, a group who had managed to retain the scientific knowledge of their ancestors but had lost the vigor and fire that are found in active and vital nations.

Below them lay the greenish yellow expanse of the Great Sea. Though these electronic flying cars of Moorn traveled with a noiseless smoothness that was the last word in flying comfort, their speed was much less than that of the _Viking_ at even minimum rocket power. The pilots were holding the flotilla down to a level of only a few hundred feet. The sight of the vast expanse of rippling waters sliding past so close below them was a strange experience to Gerry Norton, who had spent his life in s.p.a.ce-ships that always traveled at the upper levels where everything below looks like a gigantic patch-work quilt.

Scattered islands shouldered their way upward through the sea ahead, and then sailed past below. So utterly smooth and noiseless was the movement of the electronic flying cars that they seemed to be standing motionless, while a strong wind blew against their gla.s.s shields and the surface of the planet unrolled beneath them. It was well into the afternoon before the familiar mountain ranges bordering Savissa came into view ahead.

Closana was leaning forward on her seat, her eyes eager and youthful in the shadows of the steel helmet with which she had been fitted out from the _Viking's_ stores. Then, as the coast line became clearer with every pa.s.sing mile, she suddenly pointed ahead and down to two black dots on the surface of the sea. The pilot took one glance at them, and then his hand moved to the dimensional control lever.

When they first entered the flying cars, Gerry had noticed that each one bore a very realistic appearing metal bird at the end of a sort of flag-staff that protruded upward at the bow. At the time he had thought it was simply a form of decoration. Now he realized that the metal bird fulfilled a much more useful purpose. It was outside the zone of invisibility, and gave all the pilots something to indicate the locations of the other cars and avoid collisions. When he glanced back, all he could see was a flock of birds following them in a wide V. The flotilla was keeping formation.

As they soared closer to sh.o.r.e, the two black dots gradually took shape as a pair of good-sized surface craft. A black-hulled raider, manned by a crew of the Scaly Ones, was hotly engaged with a wooden Savissan patrol boat. Companies of Amazons crouched behind the high bulwarks of their warship, loosing their arrows in stinging flights. Explosive bullets crackled around them as the Scaly Ones replied with their gas-guns. The boat was equipped with a big charging-tank, for reloading the gas-guns, equipment too heavy to be carried by land raiders but possible here. The tide of battle was definitely setting against the Amazons. The bodies of many of the golden-haired feminine warriors lay sprawled in the scuppers or scattered on the riven decks.

Closana's fists were clenched as she peered down at the battle on the seas below. The decks of the Savissan craft were beginning to smolder, and her arrow fire was weakening. Closana threw Gerry an agonized glance, and he turned to the pilot beside him.

"Is there any way we can strike at that raider below?" he asked. The Moornian pilot smiled faintly, and then handed Gerry a long metal rod that was equipped with gun-sights and had a sort of rubber stock. A wire trailed away from it and was attached to the car's power plant beneath the control boar. It looked like an odd form of rifle, but the metal rod was solid instead of hollow.

"Aim--then press the b.u.t.ton!" the taciturn Moornian said.

Gerry brought the strange-looking weapon to his shoulder and sighted through a line of rings set in the top. He centered the cross-hairs amidships on the black-hulled Reptilian craft, then gently pressed the switch b.u.t.ton set in the stock.

There was a blinding flash of lightning. An instant later came the crashing roar of thunder. Momentarily the flying car rocked under the buffeting of the disturbed air ma.s.ses, then it steadied down again. On the sea below, the battle had come to an abrupt end. That single blow was enough.

The lightning bolt struck the sea raider amidships, with a blinding flash. The metal hull glowed red hot. Water steamed about it. The dark shapes of Scaly warriors went spinning off into the sea. Then the tank of gas amidships exploded, sending a sheet of blue flame high into the air.

The Savissan war-craft rocked violently on the waves created by the lightning bolt and the explosion. The surviving Amazons clung frantically to bullwarks and rigging to avoid being washed overboard by the sheet of foam-flecked water that spread over the decks. Then as their craft steadied down again, they looked up into the sky. All they could see was a flock of small birds speeding rapidly inland. They lifted their weapons to the sky in salute, a tribute to whatever dark G.o.ds had sped the deadly bolt that wrecked the enemy craft.

Gerry gingerly handed the deadly lightning caster back to the pilot.

"That's an effective weapon," he said. "If these flying cars can only stay with us for a few hours after we arrive at the city of Larr, we can probably break up the attack of the Scaly Ones and...."

"We return to Moorn immediately, as soon as we have landed you in Larr,"

the pilot said with cold finality. "Those are the orders of the Council of Elders."

Dusk caught them just as they pa.s.sed over the Savissan coast line. They saw the gleaming lights of various scattered towns and hamlets below them. An hour later the lights of Larr itself came into view. At first they were only a glow along the horizon. Then, as the flotilla of flying cars swept nearer, the lights of the city began to take on definite form and shape. Closana was again leaning eagerly forward.

"The lights look strange!" she said, "so many of them are unsteady and flickering!"

Gerry Norton peered ahead through the night. His own eyes were narrowed and thoughtful.

"Those flickering lights you see are ray-guns," he said at last. "The city is already under siege."

Before attempting a landing as they came to the Golden City of Larr, the flotilla of flying cars swept in a wide circle over the city and its surrounding suburbs. Great fires burned in braziers along the walls.

Other fires had been kindled by the besiegers. Dozens of cottages outside the circuit of the city walls were also aflame, blazing furiously. The whole place was suffused with a ruddy and uneven light, and the observers in the flying cars had a clear view of the scene below.

Behind the battlements and bastions atop the city's walls crouched the Golden Amazons of the garrison, loosing their storms of arrows at the swarming besiegers below them. Other tawny-skinned crews worked the alta-ray tubes that belched blasts of blue flame at regular intervals.

Wherever the blue beams struck, the ground was blackened while the twisted and charred shapes of Scaly Ones writhed in brief agony. The myriad brazen trumpets of Larr sounded hasty rallying calls, or else tossed staccato signals from one part of the defences to another.

The hordes of Lansa had invested the city on three sides, the marsh-land on the far border of the city protecting that side from direct a.s.sault.

Groups of Scaly Ones took shelter behind tree trunks and mounds of earth and any other possible cover, firing their gas-guns up at the battlements in an effort to lessen the arrow fire. Others crept forward behind movable metal shields. Heavy-caliber gas-guns inched slowly forward behind wooden mantlets that bristled with arrows, and hurled their larger explosive bullets up at the walls. Wherever they struck there was a puff of yellow dust and a scarred place on the stones.

Reptilian trumpets beat with a staccato thunder as Lansa kept in touch with his various divisions. Not all the advantage was with the besiegers, however. Even as Gerry watched, a blue heat-ray struck full on one of the big gas-guns and blew it up with a shattering crash.

In all but one particular the battle was a large-scale edition of the type of a.s.sault that the Scaly Ones had often tried against various barrier forts in the past. The difference was that they now possessed the supode ray, which Lansa had been able to prepare for his forces.

Long beams of the familiar murky, reddish light were continually playing upon the walls of Larr.

The effect of the supode rays seemed to be less serious than Gerry would have expected. Perhaps Lansa's ray-guns were lacking in power because inefficiently made. Perhaps the yellow stones that formed the walls of Larr contained some radioactive substance that partially neutralized the rays. The walls were crumbling into powder in dozens of small spots as the searching beams of the rays found a weak point or flaw in the stone, but there was none of the wholesale collapse that Lansa had probably hoped to achieve.

The whole scene below was like a macabre nightmare. The fires flashed and crackled, and the explosive bullets of the Scaly Ones twinkled like fire-flies through the drifting smoke. Red light glinted on the points of flying arrows. Savissan trumpets blared defiance to the thunder of reptilian drums. Most dramatic of all, silent but terribly deadly, was the duel of the ray-casters as the red beams of the attackers and the blue rays of the defenders darted back and forth through the night like the rapiers of fencing giants.

The flotilla of flying cars darted down to the plaza in front of the Tower of the Arrow. The pilots kept them invisible until they had landed, lest the nervous crew of a defending ray-machine blast them before their ident.i.ty was known. As soon as the dimensional-control was switched off there were cries of alarm, and a few hasty arrows glanced harmlessly off the Earthmen's armor. Then Closana shouted rea.s.suringly and they were recognized.

A little later Gerry and a few of his officers stood with Rupin-Sang on one of the balconies of the Great Tower. The aged king of Savissa wore full armor though in the shadows of his gilded helmet his face looked old and gray and tired. Beside them, a squad of the Golden Amazons worked a long-range ray-tube that was firing at the rear areas of the Reptilian position. The muscles of the feminine warriors rippled beneath their tawny skins as they swung the heavy controls of the big ray-machine.

"They came against one of our barrier forts from the rear, in great numbers," Rupin-Sang said wearily. "I cannot imagine how they had managed to get so many men in behind our lines...."

"Probably brought them under water in that submarine they used when they took me captive," Gerry said. "Brought them through in relays. I should have sent you warning to block the river channel against that craft, but I never thought Lansa would strike so quickly."

"At least we had enough warning to prepare for the defense of the city after they broke through the frontier," Rupin-Sang said. "We called in all the surrounding troops. We sent the very young and the very old, the ill and the crippled back to comparative safety in the hills by way of secret trails through the swamps. If the walls will stand against the new rays the Scaly Ones are using, we should be able to hold out for a long time."

"The armor of my men is proof against either rays or explosive bullets,"

Gerry told him, "and our ray-guns are superior to those that Lansa has been able to make. We'll use my men as shock troops to beat back any particularly pressing attack. Between us, we can hang on until Lansa gets tired of the siege."

"I hope you're right," Rupin-Sang said gloomily, "but I recall the old prophecy. It is in my mind that the end of the Golden City of Larr is at hand, and that the sands of my nation run very low. However--we will fight to the end."

"No bunch of half-lizards led by a white renegade is going to lick me!"

Gerry rasped.

A week later Gerry Norton was less confident. Haggard and unshaven, he stalked into an inner room and tossed his helmet clattering on the table. His armor was badly dented by the impact of many explosive bullets, and one forearm was burned where a supode ray had momentarily pierced between the c.h.i.n.ks of the armor.

"All right, Steve," Gerry said wearily, "it's your watch. Go up on the walls and take over."