The nights, Odin learned, were about sixteen hours long on this dying planet. It was toward midnight when they started out from the ship toward the violet dome. The strange half-light still hovered over the ground. In the sky, splinters of mauve tore at curtains of purplish flame. Something like northern lights, they glinted and gleamed, wrestled and writhed. There was no peace up there in that abandoned sky. But there was enough of that unearthly light glimmering below for him to watch his footsteps.
They had brought every kind of weapon that they could lug with them. Atomic machine-guns. Needle-nosed things that spat blobs of flame. Anti-gravitational bombs. Bombs that swirled slowly toward the enemy and cut him down with scythe-blades.
Gunnar had laughed at that. “Hang on to your sword and knife, Nors-King. We will need them yet.”
With the umbrella frames held over them, as though protecting them from a flood, they went through the barrier. Beyond it, thousands of men rose up from the scarred plain to join them. Val had a much larger following than Odin had ever guessed. These men were swathed in long coats and capes. Similar items of apparel were hastily furnished the crew of The Nebula—for when they were through the barrier the temperature dropped to about thirty. Once they passed through a thin swirl of snow.
Then something screamed at them out there in the night and came at them like a juggernaut. It must have stood nearly fifty feet high, and came rushing at them on a score of legs, with dozens of eyes flashing green as it hurtled forward.
The men of Loren were not greatly worried. They began to fire at it with the pistol-shaped weapons. There was only a popping noise, but Odin could hear the bullets smashing into the onrushing thing. Others used the tulip-flared guns, which made no noise at all, but bolts of lightning sank into the sides of the behemoth.
After it was dead its furious drive sent it nearly a score of yards forward. It slid into a clump of twisted trees and tore them to splinters before it stopped quivering. Finally the way was clear.
They waited there for a time to see if they had attracted any attention from the city of the violet dome. Nothing happened, so they advanced again. At least five thousand men now made up this little army. Val guessed that there were a hundred thousand fighters left in the city, not counting the experienced ruffians that Grim Hagen had brought with him.
They had advanced not over half a mile before the pale glow of the night turned to utter darkness. Something that looked like a vast sea-nettle was slowly sinking down toward them from the sky. Its tentacles glowed faintly as it fell—and it must have been a hundred yards across at the top. Once more bullets, lightning bolts and sheets of flame were hurled at the descending thing. It fell apart and came writhing down. Men rushed to get away from the reach of those flailing arms. They laid low and watched while the thing died.