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There was a blast nearby that nearly burst Odin's eardrums. A crash of flame that half-blinded him. A gun-crew screamed and died as one of the needle-nosed machines melted into puddles of steel. One by one these guns exploded, taking their crews with them. But even as they died, they littered the streets with the bodies of those who were pouring up from the depths of the city.
The decision, he was certain, was already made. It was just a matter of going through the formal motions. Dal felt the motors change in pitch, and the needle-nosed shuttle plane began to dip once more toward the horizon.
His voice was shaking just a bit when he called into the speaker: "Battle stations, everyone!" Gunnar took off for the needle-nosed instrument which he had grown to hate. Odin stood by to help with the screens. "Watch forward now!" Ato warned. "Sight at thirty degrees above the equator of The Nebula. Adjust for Doppler X over Y. We have him on the screens now.
Far across the field, a slender, needle-nosed ship stood poised on her stabilizer fins ready for flight. She was black except for a red band painted on the hull across the forward section and around the few viewports. It gave her the appearance of a huge laughing insect. Quent eyed the vessel with a practiced eye. "I'll have to soup her up," he commented. "She wouldn't win a foot race now."
Churning along the graveled road, Tom and Arv passed the launching area. Huge, needle-nosed cargo rockets and the mighty spaceship Titan loomed against the sky. Tom's moon-voyaging Challenger and his more recent space craft the Cosmic Sailer were also based there. "Going to alert the Navy for a search?" Arv inquired as they reached the communications building.
Ato's needle-nosed machines began to whine and the metal in the guards' cubicles grew red-hot and melted. Charred bodies came tumbling down. Men came pouring out of the subway entrances. There was a crashing and grinding as hidden elevators brought weapons of death to the surface. The fires in the cressets danced higher. They fought now in mid-day light.
But there was enough of that unearthly light glimmering below for him to watch his footsteps. They had brought every kind of weapon that they could lug with them. Atomic machine-guns. Needle-nosed things that spat blobs of flame. Anti-gravitational bombs. Bombs that swirled slowly toward the enemy and cut him down with scythe-blades. Gunnar had laughed at that.
Each man took his turn at practice. But Gunnar, although he was put in charge of one of the needle-nosed guns, took the service lightly. In his spare time he busied himself with his and Odin's swords. "Grim Hagen has all of these. We have defenses for such weapons. So has Grim Hagen. The total of all such endeavor will be zero.
Trigger was still mulling that over as she stepped ahead of Pilch into the smaller of two needle-nosed craft parked side by side. Pilch followed her in and closed the lock behind them. "The other one's a combat job," she remarked. "Our escort. Commissioner Tate made very sure we had one, too!"
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