Gogarty, beside me, was sobbing with fear; that little tank carried self-loading rockets. It blasted a tiny shrine into rubble, spun and came directly toward us.
We ran. I didn't even see the second expediter aircraft come whirling in and put the cobra tank out of action with its heavy weapons. I heard the firing, but it was swallowed up in a louder screaming roar.
Gogarty stared at me from the drainage trench we had flung ourselves into. We both leaped up and ran back toward the open field.
There was an explosion as we got there—the fake "olive-oil" truck, now twenty yards from the bomb, had gone up in a violent blast. But we hardly noticed. For at the base of the bomb itself red-purple fire was billowing out. It screamed and howled and changed color to a blinding blue as the ugly squat shape danced and jiggled. The roar screamed up from a bull-bass to a shrieking coloratura and beyond as the bomb lifted and gained speed and, in the blink of an eye, was gone.
I hardly noticed that the sound of gunfire died raggedly away. We were not the only ones staring unbelievingly at the sky where that deadly shape had disappeared. Of the scores of men on both sides in that area, not a single eye was anywhere else.
The bomb had been fueled; we were too late. Its servitors, perhaps at the cost of their own lives, had torched it off. It was on its way.
The cobalt bomb—the single weapon that could poison the world and wipe out the human race—was on its way.
XIII
What can you do after the end? What becomes of any plot or plan, when an indigo-gleaming missile sprays murder into the sky and puts a period to planning?