Read Online The Chaos Weapon by Colin Kapp - Free Book Online Page B

Roamer?”
    “Many kilometers away.”
    “Then I’m going to have to take this one the hard way. If we get cross, how will they follow us? On foot?”
    “On animals, I think.”
    “When we start for the bridge, keep running. Don’t stop for anything until we reach the other side.”
    Wildheit began to load the projectors carried in his belt as they ran. As soon as the head of the bridge was within his range he began to open fire. The first projectiles hit their targets and lay silently for a few seconds then each started to emit a piercing scream which jarred, throbbed and interacted with the others to produce a painful cacophony of sound that easily drowned the loudest bells and drove the watchmen from the gatehouses in panic and alarm. As they congregated in the approach road, Wildheit laid a pattern of gas pellets among them, and they sagged slowly to their knees and pitched forward in ludicrous postures of sleep.
    With a pellet of high explosive, Wildheit shatteredthe iron gate across the path well before they reached it. Soon they were on the bridge itself. However, many watchmen were closing into the area behind them and operating some form of projected beam that disturbed the light-path in the air as it probed disturbingly close. Continuing to run, the marshal began to distribute small canisters behind him. Some of these produced eye-baffling flares and other, great clouds of smoke which the flares made luminous and thus impenetrable to the eye. Then as they reached the farther bank of the river, a great series of explosions ripped the bridge apart.
    Panting painfully for breath, they stopped for a moment to look back at the damage. When the smoke had cleared there was nothing left of the bridge but a few broken piers protruding above the surface of the dark and muddied waters.
    “That should hold them for a bit,” said Wildheit as he lent the panting girl his arm to lean on. From a pocket he produced a small box and began to manipulate the studs inset on its front.
    “What—what are you doing?” Roamer was still fighting to regain her breath.
    “If they have fast animals I doubt if we’ve time to reach the ship on foot. But I have a vehicle near my spacecraft, and I’m calling it by radio. There now, it’s coming toward us. We’ll walk on ahead until we meet it.”
    Shortly the engines of the crawler sounded over the desert sands and when the vehicle appeared, Wildheit expertly halted it close by and they climbed into the cabin. The experience of riding in a mechanical vehicle was new to Roamer. She closed her eyes and clung on tightly as they moved rapidly out to where the
Gegenschein
waited. As they neared the patrol-ship, however, she opened her eyes and cried out in sudden alarm.
    “Please stop! We can’t go on. Something’s terribly wrong.”
    “In what way?”
    “I see agreat and sudden leap in entropy. An explosion …”
    Wildheit slowed the crawler to a halt, prepared to argue that what she was reading was probably the imminent future firing of the take-off engines. To allay her fears he patiently began explaining this theory when the
Gegenschein
abruptly burst into a flaming incandescence which lit the desert as bright as day and threw out such heat that the crawler’s occupants would have been burned alive had the vehicle not been built for radiation safety. Though the conflagration died as suddenly as it had blossomed, Wildheit knew he no longer had a ship. Another realization came also. From far out in the surrounding darkness came the sound of sticks on sticks …
    Clickety … Clickety …
    … overlaying the subnotes of a deep and reverberant horn …
    …
Clickety …
    Great gouts of violet-scented perfume washed around them, and Wildheit found his senses start to swim. His immediate reaction was to cut off the external ventilation fans and switch the crawler over to its own internal atmosphere. The idea worked, and the suffocating scent of violets was swiftly removed by the