Looters Of Tharn

Chapter 7

Lights flashed on. For a moment the sudden white glare after the darkness dazzled Blade. He closed his eyes, then opened them slowly as they adjusted to the light. He did not try to rise or even move so much as a finger or a toe. The relief at being safe for the time being from those coiling tentacles was too great. His skin dripped a cold sweat from head to foot.

His plan had worked. He was where he had to be to learn to operate the machine and then drive it away from the city. But awareness of that stayed in the back of his mind for a couple of minutes, while he savored the sheer delight and relief at being alive.

After those minutes Blade gathered his legs under him and rose to his feet. His head promptly banged into the roof of the cabin, hard enough to make him wince and swear. He hunched his shoulders, rubbed the sore spot on his skull, and looked about the cabin.

The machine had obviously been built by and for humans, or at least beings about that size and shape. That was good news. Blade had been too busy to consider the problems of operating a machine designed for a crew with seven stalked eyes, four arms, three legs, and a prehensile tail. But they would have been nasty problems. He was perfectly happy not to have to face them.

The layout of the controls was a model of simple design. Six screens on the forward wall of the cabin. No doubt they showed views in four directions plus up and down when they were turned on. A control panel with various dials and large switches. A black-enameled wheel on a central shaft in front of a leather-upholstered seat. Three more control levers sprouting from the shaft.

Blade sat down in the chair and fastened the seat belt snugly around his waist. His first few efforts to control the machine would probably be a bit erratic. He didn't want to be splattered all over the cabin if the thing turned over or started doing loops. Then he examined the switches and levers more closely.

One was most likely the main power control. The dial above it glowed silvery blue for about a quarter of the way across its face. Blade left that one strictly alone for the moment.

Of the three levers on the control column, the bottom one had a purple button on top. Blade left that one alone too. The color suggested it might be the firing button for the machine's ray-weapon.

Of the other two, one had a silvery zig zag on its black handle. Blade had to study it for a while before he realized that the silvery zigzag looked like a stylized metal leg. It would be the control for starting and stopping the machine's four metal legs. The computer probably took care of controlling their movements on a continuous basis.

Probably. Blade wished he didn't have to use that word so often. But what else to do? It would be silly to press the wrong button and blow himself and the machine all over the plain. But it would be a damned sight sillier to sit here doing nothing, after going to so much trouble to get into the machine in the first place!

Blade grasped the leg-control lever and wiggled it gently. it would not go forward or sideways. Even more gently he pulled it back. A shudder ran through the machine and the grating of badly lubricated metal echoed in the control cabin. The machine shuddered again, then lurched upward with clanking and clashing noises as the legs extended themselves. The machine settled down again as the legs bent. Then it rose and fell in a steady, slightly wobbling rhythm as the legs settled down to «walking» across the plain.

Blade took his hand off the lever. It made no difference to the steady gait of the metal legs. He leaned forward, found the switches to activate the screens, and turned them on. The screen overlooking the view of the city showed the smoke billowing still thicker and still higher, and the other two war machines still standing motionless. So far no one seemed to have noticed that the third war machine was walking off on its own. Blade suspected that he had better be ready to leave in a hurry when somebody did notice it.

Blade pulled the lever farther back. The speed of the legs increased, and so did the shuddering of the machine. It began to corkscrew around both axes at once. Blade pushed the lever forward. Obviously the machine couldn't walk too fast without risk of something vital shaking loose.

The legs slowed. Blade looked at the screens again. It seemed that the whole city must be aflame now, although Blade found it hard to believe there could be that much left to burn in the long-deserted buildings. The noise must be terrific, but none of it got through the hull of the war machine. It was like watching a particularly eerie silent movie.

Then Blade saw something gleaming and metallic flash near the base of one of the nearer towers. He watched more closely, not sure that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him.

They weren't. Something large and metallic was moving slowly out of the city toward the open plain. Blade kept his eyes on the screen. What was emerging looked like an enormous slab-sided box with a large square turret on top. Blade could see no other signs of weapons, tentacles, or legs. But to loom so large at this distance, the new arrival must be three or four times the size of the war machine.

One thing was certain. It was time for Blade to try operating the antigravity and find out just how high and fast this war machine would go. He didn't want to have to learn with somebody shooting at him.

He bent forward, and one long arm reached out to the lever under the large dial to the right of the control column. It was at the bottom of its slot. Blade took a firm grip on it and pushed it upward.

Instantly a new humming and vibration filled the cabin. Then a light over the large dial on the left side, the power dial, lit up. The machine seemed to heave itself upward, then sag down again onto its legs. Somewhere a warning signal sounded with a fast, angry beep-beep-beep-beeeeeee that swiftly rose to an ear-torturing screech.

Blade pulled the lever back down. Instantly the signal died away and the light over the main power dial went dark. Blade flicked his eyes across the control panel, then relaxed. What he had done wrong was almost childishly simple. He hadn't realized that lifting the machine on its antigravity might take more power than walking it on its legs.

He reached for the main power control and slowly opened it until about two-thirds of the dial above glowed blue. Then he grasped the lift control a second time and pushed it upward.

Again the war machine heaved itself upward. But this time it went on rising slowly. On the screens Blade saw the ground slowly dropping away and the dark smashed-down trail the machine left in the grass behind it.

Blade let the machine rise until it was about thirty feet above the ground. Then he inched the lift control back down until the machine stopped rising and hovered as steadily as a rock.

Blade turned back to the screens. The big square machine was now well out from the city. It seemed to be moving slowly and steadily toward the center of the triangle that had been formed by the three war machines. A second large machine was emerging from the city. The turret on top of the first one was now clearly visible. It bristled with antennae and lenses. In the center of one side was a large black tube.

Blade decided it was time to test out his machine somewhat more. He didn't like the purposeful way the two big machines were moving out from the city. If they were armed in proportion to their size, he didn't want to play sitting duck for their weapons.

The bottommost of the three levers on the control column could only move horizontally. That made it the most likely candidate for sending the machine forward and backward. Once again Blade's hand gently closed on a lever and moved it. For a moment there was no sign or sensation of anything happening. Then, in the rearward-looking screen, Blade saw that the grass below was slowly drifting away behind him. He was on the move.

He fed in more power and shoved the speed control up farther. Now the plain rolled toward him at an increasing clip. He guessed he must be hitting close to thirty miles an hour. The machine's massive weight still kept it as steady in the air as if it were running on rails.

Blade took the control wheel firmly in both hands and twisted it to the right. The plain slid across the screens and the floor of the cabin tilted as the machine swung around in the same direction. Blade turned the wheel left. The machine swung back on course, then over to the left. Blade looked at the speed control, tempted to open it wider. He resisted the temptation. He didn't yet know enough about controlling this machine or its power.

A faint whistle sounded high overhead, from outside the machine. It rose in seconds to an ear-splitting shriek. Something trailing grayish white smoke plunged out of the sky and struck the plain a mile ahead. No explosion, only an enormous mass of red smoke rolling and boiling up. Moments later Blade's machine wobbled slightly in midair, then started to slow down of its own accord. The dance of the lights on the control board began again.

Blade noticed that the speed lever was sliding backward and that the machine seemed to be sinking toward the ground. He reached for the lift control and shoved it back to its previous position. Then he pushed the speed control forward again. By the time the machine passed through the cloud of red smoke, it was moving as fast as before.

The temptation to make a run for it was growing in Blade. It was obvious that the red smoke rocket had been some sort of signal to the machine to stop and land. The computer had been doing just that when he overrode it. That override would be a signal to the other machines that something was wrong in this one. Blade wanted to find out what they would do next, and for that he knew he would have to stay around for a while. On the other hand, he had to get away if he wanted to study this machine at leisure and in detail. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. He was also a man who hated to turn his back on an opponent, even for the best of reasons.

So he did not speed up. But he did lift the machine until it was some fifty feet up. Then he started zigzagging, making sharp turns at irregular intervals. He was not going to be an easy target, if he had to be one.

A minute passed, a second, then a third. Blade's teeth were locked tight together with the strain of waiting. When were they going to shoot, if they were? Or maybe they weren't? Maybe he had succeeded in overloading whatever tracking computer the other machines might have? Maybe-?

The howl of an incoming rocket sounded from above. This time the burst came off to the right, less than a hundred yards away. Masses of earth and grass flew into the air on top of a vast cloud of gray brown smoke. This time the blast wave in the air snatched at Blade's machine like a terrier grabbing a rat in its jaws.

The machine lurched wildly, tilting far over to the left. If Blade hadn't been strapped in, he would have sailed out of the chair and smashed into the wall hard enough to break every bone in his body. He clutched the control wheel, his knuckles standing out white. Now he knew what weapons the big machines carried. Now it was time to-

Another rocket hit, this time a hundred yards almost directly behind him. The blast practically stood Blade's machine on its nose. By sheer reflex he pulled the control wheel backward. The machine straightened out of its dive just above the grass.

Blade threw a quick glance behind him. For the moment the machines firing at him were invisible behind the smoke from the second burst. Was he invisible to them?

Probably not. Very likely they carried radar or something like it to track him. But neither radar nor the human eye could see over the horizon. If he stayed low as he ran- Before he had completed the thought, his hand was shoving the speed control all the way forward in one smooth motion.

A giant rubbery fist shoved him back hard into the control chair. On the screens the plain suddenly turned flat, featureless, seemingly as bare as a tabletop. The smoke cloud from the second burst shrank as if by magic. The towers of the abandoned city dwindled to toys, sank down toward the horizon, and vanished. In the dim distance behind him, Blade saw a third rocket burst in a third tree of smoke. But he neither heard nor felt anything. Then the last smoke vanished and he was alone in the machine as it raced away over the plain.

How fast was he moving? There was no speed indicator he could read. But from the blur below him, he knew he must be going not much less than four hundred miles an hour.

Four hundred miles an hour, in a machine with the strength and some of the weapons of a tank. The builders of this machine had built something worth studying, no matter how badly they seemed to have maintained it.

And after he had studied the machine, perhaps he should try studying its makers? Blade grinned. That might be a good idea, if he could ever find them. For all he had seen, he might be the only human being alive in this dimension. But it was going to be interesting nonetheless.