The Angry Planet (16 page)

Malu and the warriors rushed
headlong down the slope, their tendrils flailing, their slender yellow bodies
upright. About half-way down, twenty or so of the little army stopped suddenly
and arranged themselves as a rearguard, as it were—spacing themselves out at
intervals, just above the main conflict. Malu and the rest went on, and met the
Terrible Ones just at the foot of the slope.

The creature who had been
wounded—he seemed to be the leader—was a little in front of the big advancing
semi-circle of the enemy. Malu and Nuna both seemed to poise themselves for a
moment, and then, with a curious sideways flick of their powerful feet-tendrils,
they leaped high into the air straight at him. Nuna came down sideways, close
by his flank, and Malu landed barely a foot from his vast red jaws. And as they
landed they swung down their crystal swords with terrible force.

Even at the top of the ridge we
heard the beastly squelch the weapons made as they sheared through the flesh of
the thing. Malu’s blow cut an immense gash right across the face—the whole side
of the creature’s head seemed to fall away; one of the huge jaws and one eye.
Nuna took a great slice out of the side—but still there was no blood, only, as
the creature heeled over, with his long suckers writhing in agony, a slow
oozing white moisture, seeping out over the sand from the two deep wounds. And
all the time, growing thinner and more distant in our heads, were the monster’s
dying screams.

Meantime the other Beautiful
People had joined battle with the Terrible Ones, and now it was that the air
seemed to be filled with screaming—a jumble and confusion of anger and pain.
The attack of the Beautiful People was always the same—a quick upward leap and
a deep slash with the sword in falling. Some of the Terrible Ones slithered
sideways out of the way of the flashing weapons, and then it was their turn to
attack, their long writhing side-tentacles would shoot out and whip round and
round the slender trunk of one of Malu’s warriors. The warrior would struggle
in the deadly grasp, but once he was caught in this way there seemed little
hope for him. Slowly and inexorably his body would be bent back, till suddenly
it would snap in two! Then, in an instant, the attacking monster would release
his grasp and leave the two halves on the sand, oozing the same sort of milky
fluid as the dying leader of the enemy had done, and with the little face
tendrils twitching and quivering spasmodically.

All the time, the rearguard of
the Beautiful People stood half-way down the slope. Now and again, as an
opportunity presented itself, one of them would leap forward with the quick
sideways lash of the tendrils I have mentioned, and deal a mighty blow at one
of the enemy momentarily off guard. But for the most part they stayed
motionless, their long swords outstretched, waiting for one of the enemy to try
to climb the ridge. Then they struck, shearing into the pulpy flesh, so that
either another monster heeled over in the sand, or staggered back into the
melee below, horribly gashed—minus an entire jaw perhaps. There was one
startling incident when one of the Terrible Ones rushed precipitately up the
slope and impaled himself on a spear before the warrior holding it had time to
raise it for a blow. A good two feet of the weapon slid into the monster’s soft
flesh. For a moment the two antagonists faced each other, motionless, the
warrior still clinging to the handle end of the sword with his tendrils. Then
the Terrible One made a sudden jerking movement with his whole body. The
warrior rose from the ground, hurled into the air in a long arc; and as he
fell, further down the slope, the great beastly thing, with the sword still
sticking out of his shell, leaped on top of him with a sickening thud
.
 . . .

The battle lasted some ten to
fifteen minutes. All the time, we humans stared down, fascinated, longing to
help but not knowing how to. Our guns were all we had, and our guns, after the
Doctor’s experience, seemed useless. Jacky, after the first few minutes, moved
back from the ridge, her face pale and drawn. Paul and Mike crouched beside the
Doctor and me, Mike, as the fight went on, letting out an occasional yell of
encouragement to Malu and the warriors.

Eventually it became obvious
that the Terrible Ones were losing ground. Slowly they were being pushed across
the floor of the hollow, under the nose of the
Albatross
, the rearguard
warriors now joining the Malu group in routing them. As the contestants
retreated, the screaming in our heads grew fainter and thinner. Looking down
into the part of the hollow immediately beneath us, we saw that eight of the
monsters were lying dead under the great gashes that had been dealt them. Five
of Malu’s warriors had been broken in two, and one of them—the one who had been
tossed in the air—had been crushed to death: he was a mere pulpy mass pressed
into the sand.

We descended the ridge, Jacky
following us timidly. With the cool detachment of the man of science, Mac went
down on his hands and knees to examine the remains of one of the great yellow-and-red
spotted monsters. He was turning over in his hands one of its huge flabby jaws,
when suddenly there was a yell from Mike, and immediately on top of that; the
disaster happened.

The way it came about was this:
While we were descending the ridge, the battle was still going on on the other
side of the hollow. The monsters, realizing they were defeated, were trying to
form themselves in some sort of order for a retreat. They were slowly climbing
the ridge, hard pressed by Malu and the warriors. One particularly large
creature was lingering a little behind, laying about him with his huge suckers
to give his companions a chance to get over the top. Malu and Nuna both
gathered themselves for one of their deadly leaps—Nuna jumping sideways, Malu
towards the jaws. They moved like lightning, but in this instance the monster
was too quick for them. He slewed sideways, and in doing so overthrew Nuna. The
little Martian’s sword bit into the creature’s flank, but Nuna himself toppled
over and went rolling a little way down the slope. He was able to arrest his
progress by digging his tendrils into the sand, but he was plainly a little
dazed and could not, for the moment, rise upright. We saw that the huge
repulsive creature was gathering himself to throw his vast bulk on top of Nuna
to crush him. Malu’s sword had carried away part of his jaw, and now the
gallant leader of the Beautiful People, realizing, as we did, the plight that
Nuna was in, was desperately trying to maneuver himself for the death leap
before the monster could act. But some of the creature’s side tentacles shot
out and coiled round his waist, keeping him from moving.

Mike had yelled at the moment
when Nuna had lost his balance. Now, as the enemy poised himself, he was
half-way across the floor of the hollow, moving in gigantic jumps and shouting
at the top of his voice. The rest of us gazed for a moment, too astonished by
Mike’s sudden action to be able to do anything. Then the Doctor shouted:

“Michael—Michael—for heaven’s
sake come back, boy!”

The flying figure did not
pause. All we heard, coming back to us as he took the last few gigantic steps,
was:

“It isn’t Michael—it’s Mike!
Whoopee! Hold on, Nuna—I’m coming, I’m coming!”

The action was so quick that we
hardly realized what was going on. We ourselves, I should say, were half-way
across the hollow by this time, rushing to keep Mike out of danger. We saw him
stand for a moment facing the monster, then he jumped high into the air and
brought down his glass sword—the one he had snatched from the tent back in the
city—across the tentacles that held Malu. In doing so he lost his balance for a
second or two, and immediately the creature’s remaining tentacles were round
his waist, and he was swung up into the air, kicking and shouting furiously.
Simultaneously the creature shuffled sideways, flailing at the ground with his
feet-tendrils, and in a moment was over the top of the ridge and had
disappeared from view, with Mike still a prisoner in the monstrous suckers.

Mike was
swung up into the air, kicking and shouting furiously

We rushed forward, overtaking
Malu and Nuna, who had recovered themselves, and, with the other warriors, were
slithering over the top of the ridge. Already the remnant of the enemy force
was some hundreds of yards away, Mike’s struggling figure held high in the air
above them. Shouting insanely we ran after them, the Doctor and I to the fore,
Paul and Jacky a little behind. We exerted ourselves to the utmost, taking
huge, twelve-feet strides. But the Terrible Ones moved at an extraordinary
speed, their tendrils flailing, raising a red cloud as they threaded among the
huge clumps of cactus-plants.

The Doctor suddenly stopped. He
raised his rifle to his shoulder. But I flung myself sideways and knocked it up
in the nick of time, so that he fired harmlessly into the air.

“Don’t shoot, Mac!” I cried, “don’t
shoot! You’ll hit Mike. And even if you don’t, you know that bullets make no
difference to those things.”

He lowered the gun and looked
at me, his eyes wild.

“Steve,” he cried, “what can we
do? We can’t leave the boy to the mercy of these monsters—we simply can’t.”

“We’ll do whatever we can,” I
said, trying to sound optimistic, though my heart was full of despair. “We’ll
have to consult with Malu—these things are too devilishly fast for us.”

He nodded. Paul and Jacky had
made up on us by this time. Jacky was crying, Paul was white, with quivering
lips. Presently Malu and Nuna joined us, the rest of the warriors with them.

“Malu,” cried the Doctor, “is
there anything we can do? What are these monstrous things—where are they going?”

“They go to the big caves in
the mountains,” said Malu. “They move fast—too fast for the Beautiful People.”

“But they’ve got Mike,” cried
Jacky, “Malu—Nuna—they’ve got Mike! We
must
do something to rescue him!—please,
please!
”

“There is nothing we can do
now,” said Malu, “nothing. We must go back to consult The Center and the Wiser
Ones. And if they permit it, The Voice will call together our people from the
other cities among the hills, so that we can build an army to march against the
Terrible Ones.”

“Surely they will permit it,”
said Mac impatiently. “Mike is our friend—he is one of us. We must help him.
They
must
permit it!”

“I think they will,” said Malu
slowly. “Not only because of Mike, but because it is bad that the Terrible Ones
have been seen near our city. We have known for a long time that they have been
assembling in the hill-caves to destroy us—now that they have begun to send out
foraging parties they must be almost ready. We must strike before they
strike—they are full of evil.”

Mac and I looked at each other,
then turned to stare across the plain. The receding enemy was almost out of
sight, making for the hills far to the south of the glass city. All we could
see, at that distance, even through binoculars, was a small red cloud
.
 . . .

“Yes,” said the Doctor, quiet
again after his outburst of wild excitement. “We must go back—we must go back
to prepare. We must get the
Albatross
to the city—we can’t leave it
unprotected in the plain here. And we must make arrangements to attack these
hideous things somehow—we
must
help Mike. Oh my heavens, the poor boy to
be with those unutterable creatures!—and the whole thing my fault, too!”

“Nonsense, Mac,” I said. “It
was one of those things—it wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

“I brought him from earth,”
said the Doctor grimly.

“You
what!
Mac, you know
perfectly well that he and the others stowed away! And by the same token, if
anybody can do anything to help Mike in this mess, it is Mike himself!”

He smiled wryly.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But we’re
the adults, Steve—we’re the responsible ones. Come—we’re wasting time. Let’s go
.
 . . .
”