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The only weapon the Mercutians had displayed so far was the light-ray in its several forms. This seemed effective for ten miles at most. That the Mercutians could be attacked by our artillery and destroyed seemed certain. By the 20th General Price had mobilized some ten thousand men. They encamped on the prairie near Billings.
They stalked heavily about, shouldering their Earth slaves rudely out of the way, sending them sprawling with sudden quick shoves. It would take only an untoward word, a false movement, to start a massacre. The Mercutians were deliberately trying to egg them on. But the Earthmen took the abuse, the physical violence, quietly.
But we did not consider that then. There was, indeed, nothing else we could have done advantageously. This road we were on was the only one within twenty or thirty miles. To have struck west from our wrecked plane away from the Mercutians would have brought us to face a hundred miles or more of desert over to the Yellowstone.
He did not look at me, but kept facing the front. We were now somewhat to the west of Garland, with it between us and the Mercutians. The few lights of the town could be seen plainly. The country beneath us seemed fairly level. To the west, half a mile away, perhaps, I could make out a sheer, perpendicular wall of rock. We seemed to be flying parallel with it and about level with its top.
"See how that big ox orders me around," he proclaimed, but he picked up the wire and in a trice had the guard helpless and glaring. Hilary had recovered his speech. "Thanks, boys," he told them simply. "I knew you'd come if it was humanly possible. But how did you manage to get through the Mercutians? The building is honeycombed with them." Morgan grinned. "We came in the Vagabond," he said.
"You fear his example. He has shown what a brave man can do; the Earth people will follow him. The Mercutians are not invulnerable." "Yes," the Viceroy said heavily. He was talking more to himself. Then he realized his mistake. "No, of course not," he growled hurriedly. "Enough of this. You tell me what I want to know or I call Urga in." Joan's face went white, but she faced him unflinchingly.
Overhead, the paling sky was already dotted with the fliers of the Mercutians; faint sounds came to them of the clumsy thrashing of enemy patrols as they beat the woods for the fugitives. The Mercutians were putting forth all their resources to seek out and destroy these irritant foci of revolt. At length Hilary called a halt. They were in a little valley, not far from Bear Mountain.
But we could only bring disaster upon ourselves and the cause of Earth's freedom by premature action. What have we? A handful of men, poorly armed. A few pistols; only, three of which can use the dynol pellets; a little ammunition. The rest of you have knives, axes, pitchforks. Poor enough weapons against the terrible rays of the Mercutians. We must wait." Someone grumbled. "For what?
Hilary heard the shouted orders of the Mercutians Cors, the crashing forward of a mighty host, and then the front of the attack burst out of the trees in an engulfing flood of gigantic unwieldy bodies and gray warty faces. A quick view of the stout ungainly Viceroy, Artok, another of the coldly saturnine visage of Urga in the front rank, and with a roar of gutturals, the attack was on.
But Hilary picked himself up, meekly brushed himself off, and melted unostentatiously into the moving crowd. He desired no undue attention. Strangely enough, there were no Mercutians in sight. Only the surging, growling Earthmen. Hilary felt their mysterious disappearance to be ominous as though they had been warned by some secret signal. Something terrible was about to happen.
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