CHAPTER IX
They did get free of the town, but only just in time. The saucers came in very low, over the heads of the scurrying men, and the rays that lanced out of their bellies were phosphorescing yellow-green. They struck first at the theater, from which until that instant Trace could still hear the roaring of the sound track; then they began leveling the place from end to end, and if their weapons had been atomic, explosive, or any other known military projectile short of a javelin, then the fleeing humans would have died in their tracks. As it was, they were knocked off their feet time after time, were flung headlong to pick themselves up bruised and shaken. But close as the rays came, the men suffered neither concussion nor burns.
Sergeant Trace Roscoe admired the things from his viewpoint as a professional soldier. They were the ultimate weapon if you wanted to destroy an objective without any after-effects, or if you had a pin-pointed target you had to smash individually from its surroundings. The rays annihilated anything they touched, dissolving metal, pulverizing stone, boring even into the ground beneath, while leaving everything beyond the vaporized area inviolate. The Graken were some boys at the scientific business.
Some distance from the town they found it easier going, as the vibrations of the earth were less. They scrambled up the slope of the hill and stood together at its crest, watching the town disappear in green smoke and yellow flame. Then Trace heard, faint yet plain, a sharp cough among the greater noises. Rifle shot! He oriented himself fast, and ran in the cold darkness toward the place where he'd left Jane Kelly with four others and a rifle. For the first time the soldier in him was unimportant, the mission of revenge forgotten, while Trace Roscoe worried over a girl.
He needn't have fretted. She stood squarely on her excellent legs, cradling the heavy gun in two fine long hands, an expression of utter determination on her beautiful face; and opposite her in the murky night sat Johnson and Kinkaid and Barbara Skye, moving nothing but their mouths. Jane, oblivious to Trace's approach, was saying, "Wiggle a foot, anybody who wants it blown off...."
Trace quietly laid an arm over her shoulders, and despite her control she jumped; he said, "Good girl. Damn fine girl." It was the only speech of love he'd ever made, and it didn't sound quite as strong as he'd wanted, but she smiled up at him with relief and maybe a bit of affection in those dark eyes. "I lost Hafnagel," she said then. "I'm sorry, Trace."
"It's okay. Did you kill him?" He saw nothing incongruous in that idea. She blinked and said, "No. I shot to stop him but he dodged out of sight."
"The saucers," squealed Johnson. "They're attacking us."
"They don't know you're alive, Mac. They're smashing the Nazi Army." And he was damned if he'd explain that crack, he thought. "Now listen to me," he went on, talking in his sergeant's voice to these reluctant recruits. "We don't have any too much time left. We did something down there that's convinced the Graken—the green ones—that there's a race of giants on the earth. They're blotting out a regiment of the giants, but they are sure to believe there are more. So they're going to want to kidnap this planet as soon as they can, so they can get reinforcements from their base for the big fight." Quickly and untechnically he told them how the Graken annexed worlds for their growing system in some far galaxy. "That may happen in the next ten minutes, or it may take a day or so for them to link up their chain of saucers. I'd say at a wild guess, we have an hour to bollix up their plan. So we're going to attack the saucers—"