Looters Of Tharn

Chapter 5

Blade had expected fireworks when the machine unleashed its heavy weapon. Clouds of smoke, wreckage flying high in the air, the belt and an acre of grass around it blasted to fragments or burned to a cinder, a ground shock or concussion violent enough to knock him unconscious.

Almost nothing happened. A slight quiver in the ground, a purple glow and a slight wavering in the air above the grass where the belt lay, a hiss of disturbed air. Then even the after-image of the searing purple glare was fading from Blade's eyes. He stared toward the belt. The grass around where it had fallen looked fresh and undisturbed. No smoke, not a blade out of place. The machine stood motionless, its turret still turning slowly and steadily.

Blade crouched in the grass and began to run his thoughts back over what he had just seen. He was no scholar, but he had a mind superbly skilled in analyzing any practical situation. It was a mind that had worked with computerlike efficiency long before Lord Leighton had gone to work on it. If it hadn't, Blade would never have lived long enough for Lord Leighton to deal with him.

Some sort of warning device tracked targets for the main weapon, the purple ray. Some targets called that ray into operation, some didn't. What was the difference? Blade considered how he had thrown the two belts. He couldn't remember any real difference in the way they had flown through the air or landed in the grass.

No, it was something in the targets-the belts, in this case-themselves. The two were virtually identical in size, shape, and weight. But-they weren't identical in material.

Blade's mind raced. The first belt had been made of leather and the teksinlike plastic. The second had been made of leather with iron discs sewn all over it. Iron, a metal. Or at least something nonorganic-something that had never been living. Now suppose the plastic was really made of something like the mani plant of Tharn? Then it would be organic. Leather was certainly organic.

Blade's mind raced on even faster. The detectors in that machine worked on a principle that Home Dimension scientists hadn't even imagined, let alone studied! The ability to distinguish between even small amounts of living or once-living matter and any and all nonliving matter seemed to be there. It was hard to believe, but it was there.

There was an awesomely advanced science behind that machine, however battered and rundown it might have become. Getting a closer look at it was something worth enormous risks. Getting inside it would be even better. The idea that there was such a detectable difference between organic and nonorganic matter would throw a bombshell into half a dozen branches of Home Dimension science. The idea that machines might be built to detect it was something that might leave even Lord Leighton temporarily speechless. Blade suspected there were a good many people, J included, who would enjoy the spectacle of a speechless Lord Leighton.

One thing was certain-this dimension could hardly be Tharn. The neuters of Tharn had served well at keeping all the complex machinery functioning. They had known more of magnetism and gravity than Home Dimension scientists could have imagined.

But the neuters had not had creative, curious, exploring minds. There was nothing of interest for them beyond what they already knew well. They had not discovered anything for many centuries, nor had they any need or wish to do so.

When Blade was among them, they certainly had not discovered anything that might have gone into making the war machine.

So he had solved one problem. But he still faced another-how to approach that machine which squatted grim and gleaming, so tantalizingly close at hand.

If a target carried metal-or at least some nonorganic material-it presumably was not an animal and might be dangerous to the machine. Then the purple ray was called into play. What it did to what it hit, Blade still didn't know. But he remembered those skeletons bleaching in the grass. Had they been struck down by this same purple ray, to lie there until the flesh was rotted and weathered away from the bones?

Perhaps. Well, the machine would find that Richard Blade was a tougher opponent than those poor helpless savages! Blade mentally shook his fist at the war machine. The effort cleared his head. His mind leaped ahead again, mapping out a strategy.

To get any closer to the machine would risk detection. But what if he was detected as nothing but a moving mass of organic matter, nothing but a large animal for all the machine could tell? The machine seemed to be programmed to fire at anything that might be an intelligent and therefore dangerous being. But it might not fire at all on something that merely registered as an animal. Or it might at least hold its fire until Blade was too close to be hit.

That meant stripping himself of all his equipment. He didn't much like going up against the machine naked and barehanded. But if his reasoning was correct, he had no choice. The first belt he had thrown was the only item of gear that wasn't metal or metal-studded. It was unfortunate that the people of this dimension hadn't learned to work their plastic into effective sword blades as had been done in Tharn.

Blade laughed at himself. It was unfortunate that the people of his dimension hadn't provided him with a good many things that would have made him feel better about tackling the machine, starting with that antitank rocket. But regretting their absence wasn't going to conjure them out of the ground or out of thin air.

Moving slowly and carefully, staying low to the ground, Blade stripped off his equipment. He piled it on the grass beside him, marking the place by pulling out several clumps of grass. It might be handy to be able to find the gear again in a hurry. The war machines weren't necessarily the only enemies roaming in this land.

Still moving slowly and carefully, he crawled away from the gear, occasionally sticking his head up through the long grass. The war machine showed no sign of moving. But something new was happening in the city beyond. Several columns of thick black smoke were coiling greasily up into the air, rising as high as the tops of the tallest towers before the wind broke them up and spread them out. Blade froze for a minute, watching and listening. He thought he could hear occasional hissing and crackling sounds, followed by the crash of heavy weights falling.

Blade would have given a good deal to be able to stand up and get a better look at what was going on in the city. Something new and perhaps deadly was at work there. But he couldn't risk being detected prematurely by the war machine. He went on crawling.

Finally he reached his intended position. He was less than thirty yards from the machine. That was a distance he could cover in a matter of seconds even in the long grass. The ray-tube was pointed a hundred and eighty degrees away from him. It would take time for it to swing back toward him. Hopefully it would take more time than it would take him to reach the platform on the rear of the machine. He could see some kind of hatch there.

If his guess was right, he didn't need to worry about the purple ray. But he might be wrong, and then he might be dead if he made too easy a target of himself.

Blade took a deep breath, sprang to his feet, and ran toward the machine.