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.But it was soon evident that they were not getting the job done.Still, they had an evident deterrent effect.The giant attacker withdrew a few tens of thousands of kilometers, and seemed to be making some new adjustment on its defensive shields, for observers on the flagship could see the shape and the tint of their almost invisible covering changing slightly.Then it returned to the attack.Hanging over the world it was determined to kill, while the planet’s normal rotation slowly brought every part of its surface into the reach of relatively short-range weapons.More power was now made available to pour into a new assortment of killing devices, and these were methodically unleashed.A few missiles were still sent down into the steaming atmosphere, but the attacker used that type of weapon very selectively, as if it might be husbanding a limited supply.The chief tools that it now employed were thermal beams and grappling forcefields.These leveled the hills that were the best Prairie could show in the way of mountains, and boiled the oceans.Somehow a robot message courier, or a tight-beam transmission, got up through the blinding, deadly clouds that had once been an atmosphere, and crossed the intervening gulf of space to reach Radigast’s flagship.This messenger carried a desperate plea for help, telling how the last of the deep, womb-like shelters that had once seemed to promise absolute safety, were presently filling up with molten rock, or drowning in sea water, as the portion of the oceans that was still liquid ran in at scalding temperature through great cracks freshly opened.Page 54ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlBecause of their relative distances from the action, people on Timber necessarily saw and heard every aspect of the battle at least several minutes later than did those aboard Admiral Radigast’s flagship.Given the essential time lag of signals moving at merely light speed, he found it hard to hold any intelligent ship-to-ground discussion with the people on that planet.Distances were in the awkward range, too short to speed things up much by using couriers, too great to hold any serious talk without long cumbersome pauses.The only failures in accomplishment seemed to be on the human side; the attacker was an evasive moving target from the moment when it came within range of the ground defenses, and it convincingly created multiple images of itself, as part of its campaign to confuse them.So much of the enormous firepower that was originally available to the defense was wasted, blanketing the sky in an effort to hit an opponent that could not be precisely located.The admiral was on intercom, respectfully asking the plenipotentiary if he would come back to the bridge.Yet another message had just arrived from the president, this one addressed to the admiral.Like the previous communication, it was marked personal and private.“If you would, sir.”“Of course.”“I know what’s happened,” Radigast was muttering.“The son of a bitch has packed up and gone home, leaving his robot counselor plugged in and turned on.And the Oracle is going to give me some kind of crazy order, I know it is.Gregor, I want you as a witness.My cabin, this time.”This message module was technically similar to the previous one.Again the watchers were confronted by the unsettling, almost comic figure of the president.Now Belgola was intent on declaring a cease-fire, apparently assuming the anonymous attacker was certain to go along with it.He was preparing his most trusted counselor, composed, he said, of certain computer modules that formed an up-to-the-minute replica of part of Logosto carry the message to the alien, and open a discussion on terms.He wanted the admiral to provide a special ship for this special envoy, and guarantee it safe passage.The president could still put on the tones and facial expressions of a statesman.“We must end this conflict as soon as possible.There are matters of great import to be discussed between us and our attacker.More important than the survival of a handful of planets.“Meanwhile, it is vital that we keep these pending negotiations secret.Have you any questions?”Evidently Belgola had forgotten his earlier announcement of resignation, or the computer was now just faking his image to pass along its own orders.Gregor couldn’t decide which would be worse.“No sir, no questions.”“He’s a motherless madman,” was the admiral’s comment, through clenched teeth, as soon as the unit had been shut off again.To Gregor he said: “Only you and I have seen this yet.Only you and I are going to see it.”“Are you going to forward this package of hardware to our visitor, as requested?”“As ordered, you mean.But it’s a funny thing, how the recorder malfunctioned this time, andI couldn’t see or hear any orders that might have been on it.How about you, sir?”Gregor heaved a sigh.“No.I tried my best, but I couldn’t see or hear anything either.”As matters turned out, the president’s competence or lack thereof would probably have made no difference in the immediate situation.The nameless enemy’s attitude seemed to be that it had come here to wage war, or, more Page 55ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlexactly, to accomplish extermination, and it was proceeding along those lines, with the single-mindedness of a pure machine.Whether those it had attacked fought back or not made no essential difference.Again and again, the invader’s weapons struck with irresistible fury.Its missile warheads somehow foiled the quenching fields that should have damped out even nuclear explosions as they struggled to be born.Its beams, heterodyning strangely, found a mode of operation that ate through most of the defensive fields of ground defense as if they were not there.It was not that resistance suddenly collapsed completely; the planet had too many reserves of strength to call upon.But systematically, as one hour after another of intense combat passed, the attacking monster somehow discovered their weak points, probed at them and wore them down.Admiral Radigast’s flagship, already battered and only marginally functional, was no more than a couple of light minutes from Prairie, and still trying to move in that direction, helpless to do anything to deflect the full fury of the attack upon the planet.The Morholt’s drive was paralyzed, with humans and machines struggling furiously to get it working.In time of peace, the admiral would probably have given the order to abandon such a severely damaged ship hours ago.But war was a different matter; he could not yield the weapons he still had while there remained the faintest chance of using them.Up from the planet came frantic appeals for help, cries of desperation sent to the remnants of the fleet in space, signals somehow crackling their way through the fury of weaponry, telling of unbelievable catastrophe, of slaughter on an unimaginable scale, the murder of humans, animals, plants, of everything that lived.Fragments of a screaming plea for help came through, all the more terrifying because the bulk of the messages were lost in bursts of static.The engineers were able to get the flagship’s normal-space drive functioning again, though not at full power.At least the Morholt was not condemned to helpless drifting.It was of course not enough to get one ship moving again.“When we attack again, we have to have the whole motherless fleet moving, or all the parts that can still move.”Something had surely energized the president.He now sent yet another hasty message toRadigast, in another interactive module.“First he won’t utter a word, then he resigns, now he won’t shut up
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