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While thus occupied with my thoughts, we were steadily descending into the ground under Venia dropping out of sight while above us, perhaps by now, the eager warcraft of Earth were overwhelming the city. Tarrano had not spoken; but when at last our little car bumped gently at the bottom, he said smilingly: "We are here, Lady Elza." We left the car, and passed into a dim-lighted cavern.
But with all, and, as Fabius put it, that the immortal gods should not be overburdened with the petty affairs of mortals, every care that human prudence and warcraft could suggest was taken. Walls and towers were strengthened, and bridges were broken down; the inhabitants of open towns were driven into places of security, and their houses and crops destroyed.
Fifty-nine of the Traiti warcraft were in positions that englobed a point in space a quarter-million n'liu from a blue-and-white oxygen planet over forty diameters out, nearly in the orbit of the planet's moon. The Hermnaen was still at the center of the twenty-n'liu-diameter sphere of ships, its Ship-Captain and crew waiting for Arjen's orders.
Not a man on board lived to tell how the explosion came. It was one of a mysterious chain that had shaken even British nerves in the early days of the war when a half dozen warcraft were blown up in home ports. The explosions were, in every instance, extremely violent, literally blowing the vessels to bits.
"If they are aboard a battle cruiser," Valla objected, "how can we destroy them? You know how powerful and well-armed those ships are." Thark nodded. "True. But our ships are no smaller than Traiti warcraft, and they destroyed several such cruisers without the advantage of Talent to tell them the humans' intentions. It will not be easy, but it can be done." "It will cost us many lives."
But the early stages of the fight found the British battling against odds. Germany's mightiest warcraft were in the shadows of the mist, behind the cruiser scouts; destroyers swarmed around them, submarines appeared from the depths, and Zeppelins hovered overhead.
Warcraft learnt in a breath, Knowledge unto occasion at the first far view of Death?" I suddenly found myself dumped down at Duffer's Drift with the same orders as already detailed, and an equal detachment composed of entirely different men. As before, and on every subsequent occasion, I had ample stores, ammunition, and tools.
The intervening hours, almost the minutes, might be counted. Then Germany changed her mind. She gave notice that after March 1, 1916, a new submarine campaign would be launched. Certain concessions were granted to the demands of the United States, but it was proposed to consider many vessels as warcraft that other nations regarded as merchant ships.
These were the hexan defences, heretofore invulnerable and invincible. Against them any ordinary warcraft, equipped with ordinary weapons of offense, would have been as pitifully impotent as a naked baby attacking a battleship.
The British steamship Brussels, carrying freight and a number of passengers, most of whom were Belgian refugees bound from Rotterdam to Tillbury, a London suburb, was captured in the channel by German destroyers and taken to Zeebrugge, Belgium on the night of June 23, 1916. The incident proved that German warcraft were again far afield.
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