The Fire People Read online

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  THE SIEGE OF THE LONE CITY.

  Our losses totaled nearly a hundred and fifty girls. We brought back withus on the platforms but six wounded. I shall never forget that hour wespent searching among the wreckage--those blackened, twisted forms of whathad once been men and women. I shall not describe it.

  Of all the boats which Tao had dispatched on this ill-fated expedition,only one escaped to return with news of the disaster. I was glad now thatone, at least, had survived, for the report it would give would, I feltsure, dissuade Tao from making any other similar attempt at invasion.

  Our broken little army made its way slowly back to the Great City. Wewent, not in triumph, but indeed with all the aspect of defeat. The peoplereceived us in a frenzy of joy and gratitude to the girls for what theyhad done.

  This first battle took place, as I have said, just after we four hadreturned from our tour of the Light Country, and before the recruiting ofthe young men was fairly under way. To this recruiting it proved anextraordinary stimulus. The girls, having been in successful action,stirred the young men of the nation as probably nothing else could, andall over the country they came forward faster than they could be enrolled.

  It was two or three days after the battle that Miela came to me onemorning with the wounded girl she and I had rescued in the air.

  "We have a plan--Sela and I--my husband," she said.

  The girl seemed hardly more than a sweet little child--fifteen or sixteen,perhaps. It gave me a shock now to realize that we had allowed her to gointo such a combat. One of her blue-feathered wings was bound in a cloth.Its lower portion, I could tell, had been burned away.

  "Never will she fly again, my husband," said Miela, "for she is one ofthose who has sacrificed her wings that we might all be safe from theinvader."

  She then went on to explain that now, while this feeling of gratitude tothe girls ran so high among the people, the time seemed propitious forchanging the long-hated law regarding their wings. I had not thought ofthat, but agreed with her wholly.

  I called the people into the castle gardens that same night. Never had Iseen such a gathering. We allowed fully ten thousand to come in; the restwe were forced to send away.

  Miela made a speech, telling them that in recognition of the girls'services in this war, I had decided to allow them henceforth to keep theirwings unmutilated after marriage. We exhibited this little girl, Sela, asone who had given her power of flight, not as a sacrifice on the altar ofman's selfishness, but in the service of her country. Then Sela herselfmade a speech, in her earnest little child voice, pleading for hersisters.

  When she ended there may have been some unmarried men in our audience whowere still against the measure--doubtless there were--but they were afraidor ashamed to let their feeling be known. When the meeting broke up I hadample evidence of the people's wishes upon which to proceed.

  Within a week my congress met, and the law was repealed. We informed theother cities of this action, and everywhere it was met with enthusiasm.

  Enlistment and war preparations went steadily on, but despite it all therewere more marriages that next month--three times over--than in any before.I had now been in power some three months, and the time was approachingwhen we were ready to make our invasion of the Twilight Country. We hadbeen maintaining a rigid aerial patrol of the Narrow Sea, but no furtheractivities of the enemy had been threatened.

  The expedition, when it was ready, numbered about a thousand young men,each armed with one of the hand light-ray cylinders; fifty officers, andabout fifty older men in charge of the projectors and rockets, who, forwant of a better term, I might call our artillery corps. There was alsothe organization of girls, and a miscellaneous corps of men to handle theboats, mechanics to set up the projectors, and a commissariat.

  The thousand young men represented those we had selected from the severalthousand enlisted in the Great City. All the rest, and the many thousandsin the other cities, we were holding in reserve.

  We took with us, on this invading expedition, only small-wheeled trucks,on which to convey the larger projectors, and storage tanks and otherheavy apparatus, for the Lone City river ran directly to the point wherewe planned to conduct our siege.

  Some forty large boats were required to carry the men, ammunition andsupplies. Mercer and I, with Anina and Miela, traveled as before throughthe air on the two platforms with the girls. We crossed the Narrow Seawithout incident and entered the river.

  Several hours up, the river narrowed and entered a rocky gorge, four orfive hundred feet wide and a thousand feet deep, with almost perpendicularsides. Along one of these ran the Lone City trail. We passed through thisgorge. The river here flowed with a current that amounted almost torapids. Our boats made slow progress. Finally we emerged into an evenwilder country, almost devoid of trees. Here we made our first night'sencampment.

  Noon of the next day found us approaching the Lone City. We did not needto surmise now that Tao would be warned, for far away on the horizon aheadwe saw the beams from his great projectors mounting up into the blacknessof the sky. Some four miles from the Lone City the river we were ascendingswept off to the right. This was its closest point to the city, and herewe disembarked. There were several docks and a few houses, but we foundthem all deserted.

  The Lone City was particularly well suited to defense, even though the layof the country was such that we were enabled to approach here within fourmiles, and establish our base in comparative safety. The country was wildand rocky, with few trees. The river bed lay in a canyon. From where welanded, a valley so deep and narrow, it might almost be termed a canyon,also led up to the city.

  This valley was some two miles wide, with a level floor, and precipitous,rocky sides towering in many places over a thousand feet. Above itstretched a broken plateau country. The valley had many sharp bends andturns, as though in some distant past it had been the bed of a great riverthat had eroded its tortuous course through the rock.

  The Lone City lay shut in at the bottom of this valley between two of itsbends. It was a settlement of perhaps ten thousand people, the only cityin the Twilight Country, with one exception, on this hemisphere ofMercury.

  We established our field base here at the river, and I devoted the nextfew days to informing myself of the exact lay of the country, and themethods of defense of the city Tao had provided.

  I found this defense the height of simplicity, and for its purpose aseffective as it well could be. A vertical barrage of light surrounded thecity, extending upward into the air with the most powerful projectors someten or fifteen miles, and, with those of the spreading rays, forming asolid wall of light at the lower altitudes. There were no projectors pastthe first turn in the valley toward the river--where they could have beendirected horizontally--and none of them on the cliff tops above the city.Thus, although we could not get over this light-barrage, we could approachit closely in many places.

  Tao's tactics became immediately evident. He had thrown an almostimpregnable barrier close about him and, trusting to its protection, wasmaking no effort to combat us for the moment with any moves of offense.

  My first endeavor was to find a position on top of the cliffs from whichthe city could be reached with a projector. It was practically the onlything to do. The city could not be approached in front from the valleyfloor; its entire surface beyond the turn was swept by the light-rays.Approach from below in the rear was likewise barred.

  Had the barrage been not so high our girls might have flown over it anddropped bombs, or we might have sent rockets over it and dropped them intothe city. Neither of these projects was practical. The girls could not flyover that barrage. It was too cold in the higher altitudes. Nor could wesend rockets over, for rockets sent through the light were exploded beforethey could reach their mark.

  The projectors along the sides of the city were located for the most parta hundred feet or more back from the base of the surrounding cliffs. Thisallowed them to cut the cliff face at the t
op. It will be understood thenthat we could approach the brink of the cliff in many places, but neversufficiently near to be able to direct our rays downward into the city.

  These cliffs were exceedingly jagged and broken. They overhung in manyplaces. Great rifts split them; ravines wound their way down, many ofthese with small, stunted trees growing in them. A descent from the summitto the floor of the valley, had we been unimpeded by the light, would inmany places not have been difficult.

  During the next week, we succeeded--working in the prevailing gloom--inestablishing a projector at the mouth of a ravine which emerged at thecliff face hardly a hundred feet from the valley bottom. This point wasbelow the spreading light-rays which swept the cliff top above. We mountedthe projector without discovery, and, flashing it on suddenly, swept thevalley with its rays. An opposing ray from below picked it out almostimmediately, and destroyed it, killing two of our men.

  The irregularities of the cliffs made several other similar attemptspossible. We took advantage of them, and in each case were able to rakethe valley with our fire for a moment before our projector was located anddestroyed. One, which we were at great pains to protect, was maintainedfor a somewhat longer period.

  I believed we had done an immense amount of damage by these momentarilyactive projectors, although our enemy gave no sign.

  We then tried dropping rockets at the base of the lights in the valley.There were few points at which they could be reached without striking therays first. But we persisted, sending up a hundred or more. Most wereineffective; a few found their mark, as we could tell by a sudden "hole"in the barrage, which, however, was invariably repaired before we couldmake it larger.

  These activities lasted a week or more. It began, to look as though we hadentered upon a lengthy siege. I wondered how long the city's food supplywould last if we settled down to starve it out. The thought came to methen that Tao might be almost ready for his second expedition to theearth. Was he indeed merely standing us off in this way so that some dayhe might depart in his vehicle before our very eyes?

  Tao began to adopt our tactics. Without warning one day a projector from atowering eminence near the city flashed down at the river encampment. Thatwe were not entirely destroyed was due to the extreme watchfulness of ourguards, who located it immediately with their rays. As it was, we lostnearly a hundred men in the single moment it was in operation.

  We then withdrew our camp farther away down the river, to a point wherethe conformation of the country made a repetition of this attackimpossible. A sort of guerrilla warfare now began in the mountains. Ourscouting parties frequently met Tao's men, and many encounters, swiftlyfatal to one side or the other, took place. But all the time we were able,at intervals, to rake the valley with our fire for brief periods.

  Mercer constantly was evolving plans of the utmost daring, most of themindeed amounting practically to suicide for those undertaking them. But Iheld him back. Our present tactics were dangerous enough, although afterthe first few fatalities we succeeded in protecting our men, even thoughour projectors were invariably destroyed.

  One of Mercer's plans we tried with some success. There were some placesin the light-barrage that were much less high than others. We devised asmaller rocket that could be fired from the platforms. Mercer took it upsome twenty thousand feet, and sent several rockets over the light, whichwe hoped dropped into the city.

  A month went by in this way. We were in constant communication by waterwith the Great City, receiving supplies and reenforcements of men andarmament. And then gradually the situation changed. Over a period ofseveral days our hand-to-hand encounters with the enemy grew lessfrequent. Finally two or three days went by without one of them takingplace.

  We became bolder and prepared to establish several projectors at differentpoints for simultaneous fire at a given signal. The light-barrage in thevalley remained unchanged, although now its beams held steady instead ofsometimes swinging to and fro. We dislodged one of its projectors with arocket, making a hole in the barrage, which this time was not repaired.And then, to our amazement, the lights one by one began to die away. Weceased operations, waiting. Within half a day they had all vanished, likelights which had flickered and burned out.

  Mercer, unthinking, was all for an instant attack. We could indeed haveswept the valley now without difficulty; but there were thousands ofpeople in the city--non-combatants, women and children--and to murder themto no purpose was not the sort of warfare we cared to make.

  It seemed probable that Tao had evacuated his position. The valley beyondthe city led up into the mountains toward the Dark City, almost on theborderland of the frozen wastes of the Dark Country. Tao had protectedthis valley from behind so that we had been unable to penetrate it withoutmaking a detour of over twenty miles. This I had not done, although hadthe siege lasted longer I think with our next reenforcement we should haveattempted it.

  With the extinguishing of the lights our long-range activities ceased. Weanticipated some trick, and for several days remained quiet. Our girlscould have flown over the city; but this I would not allow, fearing that aray would bring them suddenly down.

  Miela and myself, occupying one of the stone houses down by the river,held a consultation there with Mercer and Anina.

  Mercer, as usual, was for instant action.

  "We might as well march right in," he declared. "They're out of business,or they've gone--one or the other."

  "To the Dark City they have gone, I think," Anina said.

  "I think so, too," Mercer agreed.

  "_I'll_ go in alone on foot," I said, "and find out what has happened."

  But Miela shook her head.

  "One who can fly will go more safely. I shall go."

  "Not you, my sister," Anina said quietly. "Warfare is not for you--now.That you can understand, can you not? _I_ shall go."

  Mercer insisted on accompanying her; and he did, part of the way, waitingwhile she flew close over the city. It was several hours before theyreturned, reporting that the place was almost in ruins, and that Tao andhis men had fled some time before, leaving the light-barrage to burnitself out. The next day, with our men in the black cloth suits of armormarching up the valley, and the girls with their black shields flyingoverhead, we took possession of all that remained of the Lone City.