The cloud of some five hundred Midges swooped, circled, and then plummeted. For a second or two the startled Curtmann men merely seemed to stare upward. Then the Midges were upon them, fluttering into their faces, jabbing at them. The men's arms wildly failed to fend off the viciously attacking little bodies.
Some of the Midges were caught, bashed into pulp and hurled away with a single flailing blow. Some were caught in huge hands, squeezed to death and flung to the ground. The oaths of the startled men came up, mingled with the cries of the Midges, then the tiny fluttering shapes were rising again. A shot stabbed at them, its crackling bolt stabbing through a group of them. It was like a monstrous blow-torch stabbing into fluttering moths. It left a trail of wisps of light as their bodies were consumed.
The rest of them came up and joined us, panting, flopping.
"Good enough," Jim murmured. "Five minutes more and we'll see what really happened."
But I was cold inside. No more than half the Midges had come back. Two hundred or more of them gone already. And here in the air, some of them, wounded, were bravely struggling not to fall.
The men and the huge cart down in the glade had started forward again. Suddenly it was apparent that the harnessed lines of Midges on the ground were in revolt. They milled in confusion, struggling to cast off the lines that held them. We heard Curtmann roaring threats at them. And then he fired a bolt horizontally through them. It cut a ghastly swath; a burst of trailing little wisps of fire. Beside me, Venta gasped in horror; and Jim murmured,
"Fool! With what's left of those Midges that heavy cart will never move again."
The cart had stopped. Curtmann, doubtless regretting his shot of exasperation, was roaring more orders. The straggling columns of his men came toward the cart, and all of them bunched around it in a solid group, out there in the center of the open glade.
"Got them stalled," Jim said grimly. "Much better for us."
If the poison would work. But would it? At three hundred feet we were still circling in great humming sweeps while again I withheld my signal. Did I dare send the Midges down for a general attack? Every shot cut them so horribly into nothingness. Off to the side, in the direction of the Forest City, other Midges were appearing now. Little groups of them, males and females, humming toward us, joining our circling ranks. Reinforcements. In a minute or two it seemed that a new thousand were here to swell our weird little army.