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for something that would be worth suggesting to Henry. But his mind was oddly
tired and dull. No thoughts came.
The river surface was so calm that it would have been easy to believe it was
not moving. But with the slope of its bed from the foothills of the mountains
to Bleys' left, its current must be stiff. Yet only some small turbulence
where it touched shore showed this; plus an occasional branch or tree limb
that made a slight bump in the smooth liquid surface, moving swiftly toward
the bridge.
His thoughts wandered ... like an Old Earth song . ..
Mein Fader var ein Vandringsman, Ich hab' es in das Blut . . .
... Ezekiel MacLean, Henry's brother, who had claimed fatherhood of Bleys, had
had a knack of Old Earth lan-guages and had taught Bleys bits of songs and
stories in a number of them.
But Ezekiel's wandering could hardly have been called happy. Perhaps, Bleys
thought, if he was actually Ezekiel's
son, he, too, would "have it in his blood" and be fated to wander always the
stranger ...
Bleys made himself concentrate once more on the bridge. But his mind failed to
focus, and his eyes saw no pattern in which he could look for a weak point.
"I'm not much help, Henry," he said. "Maybe because I've been up for too long
a time."
Even as he said it, he remembered that Henry and all the rest would have also
been up at least as long.
" Perhaps," Henry was saying, "we can arrange some kind of shelter for you to
rest in while we go about this business of breaking through. A quiet spot in
the woods "
"No!" Bleys said sharply. "I'm fine just no ideas for you. If you move your
power weapons out in the open to use them against those fire-shelters, the men
holding them are going to be sitting ducks for the ones in the shelters. In
fact, I don't see any way to get at those shelters, unless you could get above
them in aircraft, or somehow tunnel underneath them and tunneling wouldn't
work beyond the edge of this cliff; because there's the river; and nothing for
you to fire at because the underside of the reverse traf-ficway would absorb
the power-gun bolts. I'm no help, I'm afraid."
Henry nodded, without expression. "That's all right. What you say backs up my
own thinking. Do you want to wait here with me and see how things develop?
Standing here, the trees around make us hard to pick out. Even if one of those
space soldiers did, it would take a marksman with a needle rifle to be a
threat to us. Actually, I don't think they know we're here yet."
"Henry, what actually are your plans?"
"Stand here. You'll see," Henry said. "I had the attack movements begun as
soon as you showed up with the rest of the Soldiers. We should be seeing the
first effects of it, soon."
He lifted the wrist holding his control pad to his lips.
"Anwar," he said, into it. "Time to start draw-fire."
"Right, Henry," said a small voice from his wrist. "Draw-fire in one minute or
less."
Henry lowered his wrist and looked at Bleys.
They did not have to wait even one minute. Before that time, from various
points downstream in the trees over-looking the river and apparently never
from the same point twice needle-gun fire and a few ineffectual bolts from
power guns began to sound. Bleys frowned before realizing he was doing so. The
fire-shelters were beyond effective range for the power guns in the woods, and
the needle guns would do no good at all unless they happened to be so
amazingly and luckily accurate in their aim that the needles would go through
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the small weapon slits in the fire-shelters.
The fire-shelters had begun an answering fire almost immediately.
"Didn't you say that if we fired on them, we'd give our position away?" Bleys
said to Henry.
"Our general position, yes, but this is just light firing to concentrate their
attention here. Shots by a few Soldiers only, moving about, and nowhere
concentrated enough for them to be targeted by the Newtonians; unless one of
our people moves back to a previous position and my people all know better
than to do that. Meanwhile, we find out what they have in the way of weapons
and sharpshooters in those shelters. It shouldn't take long."
In fact, the firing from the woods was already dying down; and, even as Bleys
noticed this, it stopped. Almost immediately, the return fire from the
fire-shelters stopped; and a silence took its place that had something
unnatural about it as if the whole scene was somehow holding its breath.
Bleys was abruptly conscious of a pulse in his neck and the fact that he had
been unconsciously counting his own heartbeats. To take his mind off them, he
reached for something to say to Henry. If nothing else, he knew the difference
in sound, from his practice in shooting galleries through ear protectors,
between that of a hand-held power
gun and a hand-powered cannon, such as the one that had blasted an opening in
the barricade for their vehicles.
"Well," he said, "at least you know they haven't got any hand cannons in those
fire-shelters."
"I think they have," said Henry. He paused. "You can hold the trigger button
down on a needle gun and spray an area by moving your point of aim across it.
But a power weapon of any size fires one energy burst at a single point and
then another, again at a single point. At the range we are from those
fire-shelters, a bolt from a hand cannon wouldn't be any more effective than
one from a hand-held power gun. That's why they're answering with needle fire.
The few power guns they're firing are simply to warn us to stay back. They'll
hold fire from their heavier weapons until they can hit effectively."
"Yes," Bleys said, mechanically. His voice sounded odd to his own ears.
Henry lifted his control pad to his lips. "Begin primary attack."
The firing began again from the woods, this time sup-plemented by an increase
in the occasional sharp explo-sion-like sound of hand power weapons though as
far as Bleys could see the shelters were still beyond effective range. The
shelters replied. But then, unexpectedly, power guns opened up from the two
cable towers at the near end of the bridge; but against the shelters, not with
them into the woods. At that range, they were effective against the shelters.
Immediately, there was the sound of power weap-ons from Newtonian positions,
but with the occasional deeper boom of hand cannons speaking against the
towers.
"You've got Soldiers in the towers!" Bleys said.
"We were here first," Henry said.
"But those towers can't have a fraction of the protection in their walls that
the fire-shelters have," said Bleys. "It seems to me "
But before he could finish, the firing of power weapons toward the towers [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]