Looters Of Tharn

Chapter 4

The machine was so ugly that Blade couldn't imagine it being used for anything but war. It was swinging back and forth across a narrow arc as it moved cut from the building. The movement reminded Blade of a hunting dog in the field, casting about for a scent. Blade watched it move steadily closer, noting details as he made them out.

The machine must have been a good forty feet long, twenty feet wide, and ten feet from its flat silver belly to the domed turret on top. It looked like two half eggshells, flat side down, a smaller one perched on top of a larger one. At the rear of the main body was a railed platform.

From the front of the turret a long silvery tube stuck out, ending in a glowing purple lens. Seven antennae sprouted in all directions from the top of the turret. On either side of the turret were streamlined but featureless bulges. Four other bulges projected near the front of the hull, two on either side. At the bow itself were four circular ports. As the machine drew closer still, Blade could see four more bulges on the otherwise flat bottom of the hull. The polished metal of the hull and turret shimmered and gleamed in the sun.

The machine closed to within a hundred yards of where Blade crouched in the grass. He stayed totally motionless. But he never took his eyes off the machine. It was obvious that whoever had built it was advanced enough to use antigravity. That meant comparably advanced weapons of some sort. Blade didn't want to find out the hard way just what they were.

At fifty yards the machine came to a stop, then sank until it was only a few feet above the grass. The four bulges on the bottom split open and four articulated metal legs unfolded, reaching for the ground.

The broad metal plates at the end of each leg touched the ground. Instantly the shimmering in the air under the machine faded away. With an audible creaking and clanking the machine settled down. Blade saw that the metal finish was not as polished and flawless as it had appeared. The underside was stained and discolored, and the upper hull and turret showed pitting and scarring. This was an old machine. As old as the city and built by the same people? Possibly. But the machine's age didn't necessarily mean that its weapons would be useless.

Slowly the machine's turret began to turn. The two projecting bulges on either side of the turret also split open. From one rose a blinking yellow white light. From the other rose a round metal disc. Both wobbled upward on jointed metal arms until they, were some twenty feet up.

Blade noticed that two more identical machines had slipped out of the city while he watched the first one. But these were not moving toward him. Instead they were drifting away to either side, riding their shimmering antigravity fields fifty feet above the ground. After a few minutes they came to a stop and landed. They formed a triangle with the nearest machine, a triangle more than a mile on each side.

The patrol has deployed to survey their area of operations, thought Blade. Now-what's the next step in their standard operational procedure?

Gradually Blade became aware of something distinctly unpleasant filling the air around him. It was not an odor, not a sound. It was a something that his senses couldn't register, that his mind couldn't define precisely. But something that was gnawing away at the heart of his self-confidence, filling him with a swelling, nameless fear and dread. The machine began to seem like a fanged monster gathering itself to leap on him like a man-eating tiger. Blade felt a cold sweat breaking out on his skin and heard his teeth begin to chatter. He realized that his hands were shaking so hard that he couldn't have drawn his sword to save his life. He knew that in another moment he was going to lose control of his bowels and stomach. He would be lying there, helpless in his own filth, when the machine came marching over to him, to crush him under those massive metal feet, or-

Then, somewhere in Blade's mind behind the mounting fear, a light dawned. A faint light that flickered at first, like a candle in a rising wind, then swelled and grew until he realized what was paralyzing him with fear.

Subsonics.

A modulated sonic pulse at a frequency below the range the human ear can pick up produces fear reactions. The more intense the subsonic pulses, the more intense the fear reaction.

Blade heaved a sigh of relief. Now that he knew what he faced, he could use all of his training, all of his self-control, to fight his instincts. Part of the fear had been the deadliest, most uncontrollable sort of fear-fear of the unknown. Now that was gone. He could think and fight again.

Blade did not relax, however. He was quite sure that the machine had nowhere near exhausted its bag of tricks yet. He crouched and waited to see what it would try next.

He did not have long to wait. The light on the end of the other arm began blinking in a steady pattern. Flick-flick-flick-flick. It was becoming monotonous, boring, almost hypnotic.

Hypnotic. That was it. The light was set to a pattern designed to have a hypnotic effect on anyone who watched it for long. Such as anybody who was already half-paralyzed with fear induced by the subsonics? Probably.

It was certainly a waste of time to try that trick on Blade. He wasn't half-paralyzed with anything. The subsonics were only making him mildly nervous now, like a man sitting in a dentist's waiting room. He was also nearly impossible to hypnotize. This wasn't a boast, it was a fact, tested by many psychiatrists over many years.

So far so good. The war machine hadn't come up with anything Blade didn't think he could handle. But he was quite sure there was still more to come. Again he settled down to wait for the machine to show its hand-or whatever else it used for finishing off its victims.

The turret kept turning as the subsonics and the blinking light went on. Blade noticed that it turned not only slowly but irregularly, as though, it were badly lubricated or had an unreliable power source.

Blade lay motionless in the grass until he felt one foot beginning to go to sleep. Cautiously he shifted position until the foot was comfortable again. The machine paid no more attention to his movement than if he had been a mosquito whining about the turret.

Blade realized that if he had been carrying that antitank rocket or even a hand grenade, he could have hit the machine easily. It seemed to have nothing except the subsonics and the hypnotic light to keep somebody from lying in wait and attacking it. But this war machine was too big, too powerful, too complex to be so weakly armed. It must have other weapons.

But what the devil were they? Blade realized that at the present rate he and the machine might sit here on the plain outside the city until winter came and covered them with a foot of snow, without his finding out anything. He was going to have to move into action, and find out what the machine's other weapons might be.

He reached down and cautiously pulled off the belts he had tied into an improvised loinguard. Lifting one that was all strips of leather and teksinlike plastic, he gathered his legs under him. Then he exploded upward in a mighty leap, throwing the belt as hard as he could toward the machine. It soared thirty feet into the air and halfway to the machine before dropping into the grass. Before it hit, Blade dropped down flat on his stomach, once again not daring to move and hardly daring to breathe.

The turret swung toward the place where the belt fell, the long tube jutting out like an elephant's trunk feeling the air. The turret swung like the head of a man with a bad case of arthritis in his neck. Blade realized that if things got really tight, he could probably run faster than the turret could turn.

The turret swung until the tube was pointing at the spot where the belt had fallen. The purple lens at the muzzle lit up and blinked three times. Blade waited for something to shoot out of the muzzle-laser beam, death-ray, rocket, shell, whatever. But nothing happened.

For a moment Blade wondered if the weapon in the turret had stopped working. The machine looked old enough. But he wasn't going to make that dangerous assumption on the basis of one test. He would try again.

This time he picked a belt of teksin with a number of iron discs tied onto it. Again he leaped, again his arm whipped out, again the belt soared through the air. Being heavier, this one flew a good deal farther. Blade was back flat on the ground before it even reached the peak of its flight. The machine's turret was turning even as the belt hit. The light blinked again. Then the tube sank down until it was aiming at the belt, and a solid bar of searing, glaring purple light stabbed out of it. Blade buried his head in his arms and listened to the angry sizzling noise as the beam stabbed out, again and again.

He had been right. The war machine had unleashed another weapon, the most powerful yet.