"Bossal, tell bossmac we not able fight cen'pedes," he begged sibilantly. "They come—" The thin, scaled hands waved excitedly, "like biggest army you ever see, make war on mine. You kill and kill, more come. Please, we go to man city!"
MacAloon jerked his lizard's reins around in the direction of the mine. Al's mount came alongside. The fishman groaned, then began trotting before them on swift webbed feet. They splashed over the eternal mud, through the ever-present white fog.
Should they give up the fight against the shrewd, heartbreakingly persistent vermin? If they did, they would have to abandon the mine which had become their lifework. They would have to blow up the place before retreating.
For all life on Venus was amphibious, but centaurpedes were deliberately trying to quit the water, knowing their semi-civilization could reach its mechanistic goal only on land.
Unable to prop the porous native rock with the brittle, primitive plastics they used instead of metals, they were striving to take over an iron mine that had already been started by human engineers. Then, with the metal they could produce, they would make tools and raise cities ... and manufacture weapons with which to push men clear off the planet.
Their forays had forced a number of mines out of existence. Two years ago, before Al Birchall became the fourth partner here, an undersea colony of 'pedes swarmed down on this place. Surrounded on all sides, the men had put up a long, bitter fight. If Adonis City, half around the globe, hadn't finally sent a rocket ship, they would have been lost.
In the rocket, Mac had tried flame-strafing with the bow jets, swooping back and forth across the black mass of besiegers. But the wily animals merely dug deep in the mud and waited till he passed overhead, then continued the attack. Since he couldn't be everywhere at once, part of the army was always surging forward. At best, the strafing only slowed down the assault.
But then Limpy Austin, up in the lookout tower, sighted foraging parties in the rear, dragging up food supplies in the form of gigantic dead meat-eaters. Mac had rocketed over the rear of the army, burning the food into useless charred fragments. Starving, the attackers were at last forced to retreat to their ocean city, but only until they could figure out a new strategy.
Mac said, "We'll stick."
Otherwise, he knew, he'd have to go back to ferrying fruit boats between South America and Antarctica. Birchall would revert to his old confidence games all over the System. Swede Steffansen would have to manipulate a freight crane on Mercury again. And Limpy Austin—well, there wasn't much a semi-cripple could do, outside of being lookout and radio operator for his friends.