Something quickened in his mind. He almost remembered now. This was what he had come here about.
His will moved, and the theatre vanished behind him. Now he was on the battlefield itself.
The reality was worse than the image, far worse. Here were not only the roars of the great guns, but the curses and screams of the wounded, the gasps of the dying. Here were not only horrible sights and sounds, but the odors of death—the sharp nitrogenous fragrance of explosives, the heavy sulfurous smoke of burning oil, the sickening smell of sweating or decaying flesh.
A cloud came into being from the explosion of a mortar shell, and two men dropped to the ground. In answer to the mortar, the flaring barrel of a tank gun spoke hoarsely, and half the crew of the mortar fell in turn. But there seemed no end to this deadly dialogue. The next moment there came the burst of a bomb from a low-flying plane, and the tank half turned over on its side, a heap of smoking steel.
He knew at last why he had been sent here. He knew now what he had to do.
He ripped the flaring-mouthed gun from the tank. His hands twisted the thick metal into a shape it had never known before, bent it into a strange curve, fashioned it so that it would emit overtones to chill the souls of those who heard it. His brain charged the instrument with the energy of his own mind, energy that would send its voice to the far corners of this diseased planet, and leave not a single individual deaf to its dreaded tones.
Putting the improvised horn to his lips, Gabriel blew the call for which the planet had so long been waiting.