Suddenly shouts broke out again from the walls, and were caught up and echoed back from the Council Hall. Southward, high in the sky, pin-points of light appeared, like vagrant stars, which became larger, wheeled, extended.
The Guard cheered frantically. I heard the cry “America!”
If this was the Mormon fleet, come to aid Lembken, there was no doubt with which side it would join. Perhaps the Guard knew already that Sanson had outwitted Lembken and outbid him for its support.
The airfleet shot upward, drew together, and a single light, detaching itself, flew like a rocket upward, moving in the direction of the oncoming battleplanes, which seemed to hang poised above, like a new group of Pleiades. The rocket’s apparent speed dwindled, until it seemed to move as slowly as any star. I saw a second light shoot downward, detaching itself from those clustered orbs, to meet it. I held my breath, as all must have done, for not a Ray was fired, nor was there any sound as the fate of the world hung upon those nearing points. They circled about each other, a binary star; they moved together; and suddenly they plunged downward, the whole oncoming fleet following them, and the roar of a thousand throats rang from the Council Hall:
“The Russians! The Russians! The Tsar! The Tsar!”
The lights grew larger and resolved themselves into the glow parallelograms again, and the great fleet of battleplanes descended toward the wall. Again the pattern of light interplayed with the answering fire from the Ray artillery of the Guard.
The new squadron was armed with Rays almost as strong, taken in Stockholm, and worked by Swedish gunners. Searchlights and glow rays blended in heliotrope and pink and blue, playing about the walls, carrying the most murderous death that man had ever devised. And it appeared incredible that death lay hidden within that warp and woof of color that intercrossed through space, blending and twisting, and forming a thousand patterns upon the night. Once a battleplane, caught as she wheeled, came crashing down; but the next moment the persistent Ray found an unprotected place in the walls at last, and hammered at it, dislodging mortar and stones, till, with a mighty roar, a tower fell toppling into the court, leaving a great breach in the Guard’s fortress.
Instantly two battleplanes lit like great birds, and behind their shields a score of men swarmed out, carrying swords and Ray shields, interlocked. The line swept onward, to encounter the Ray rods of the defense. I saw it crumple and twist. But other battleplanes had alighted along the breach, and everywhere small groups were forming between the Ray guns, which could not be aimed before they were attacked, the gunners sabered, and the great conical machines made useless. The valor which had overthrown the Federation’s troops before Tula was not helpless here.
But from each wing a blast of fire caught the downward swooping battleplanes and crumpled them. No attack could live before that devastating crossfire. I saw the groups of swordsmen wither, fall back, until the bodies heaped before them, on which they planted their glow shields, formed an impregnable rampart. But the artillery was retaken, the battleplanes, surprised and broken in the ebb-tide of defeat, were piled in indistinguishable heaps within the courts. The Guard turned the artillery upon the stubborn line that mounted the breach. Once more the fortune of the day was turning.
