XIV
With a series of grinding shocks, like an enormous earthquake-fault relieving a strain, the Pyramids began to fight back.
"Tropile!" the Alla-Narova mind called urgently.
Tropile flashed to the trouble spot. Through eyes that were not his own, Tropile scanned the honeycombed world of the Pyramids. There was an area where huge and ancient vehicles lay covered with the slow dust of centuries, and the vehicles were beginning to move.
Caterpillar-treaded hauling machines were loading themselves with what Tropile judged were quickly synthesized explosives. Almost forgotten wheeled vehicles were creeping mindlessly out of nearly abandoned storage sections and lumbering painfully along the tunnels of the planet.
"Coming toward us," Tropile diagnosed dispassionately.
Alla Narova queried: "They mean to fight?"
"Of course. You see if you can penetrate the circuit that controls them. I—" already he was flashing away—"I'll get to the boys through Joey."
It was queer, looking through the eyes of the alien they called Joey; colors were all wrong, perspective was flat. But he could see, though cloudily. He saw Haendl joyously fitting a bayonet—a bayonet!—to a rifle; he saw Citizen Germyn, naked but square-shouldered, puffing valiantly along in the rear.
Tropile said through the strange vocal cords that belonged to the alien: "You'll have to hurry." (Strange to speak in words again!) "The Pyramids are heading toward the chambers where the Components are kept. I think they mean to kill us."