"A scene from the Inferno, amigo."
Cadmann didn't turn. "I expected the outer fence to hold longer than that." He took out his comcard. "Com shack. Exec one here. Patch me to the loudspeaker."
A moment later his voice boomed from the speakers on the colony buildings. "HEAR THIS. OPEN FIRE. TRY TO KILL SOME OF THEM OUT IN THE SPACE BETWEEN THE FENCES. OUT."
Carlos nodded, unslung his rifle and knelt beside Cadmann. He squeezed off rounds in slow and deliberate fire. Elsewhere mad volleys sounded. Cadmann winced. "I'm going up in the tower. Hang on here."
"Si, compadre."
Carlos's rhythmic gunfire was comforting. They've got to keep their heads. "SLOW FIRE. THAT AMMO HAS TO LAST." If only there had been time and ammunition for a full combat-rifle course.
Near him someone cursed viciously. Omar Isfahan wrenched at his rifle.
"Jammed, dammit, it's—"
"Slow down," Cadmann said brusquely. He took the rifle from Omar's hand and worked the bolt. "It's not jammed, it's empty. Now just relax and get yourself together, mister."
Omar took two deep breaths. Tension seemed to flow out of him in waves. "I'm... sorry. All right now."
"Sure. And be careful with that ammo." He handed the rifle back.
"We'll win this if we don't panic."
The engineer grimaced. "Sure." He went back to his place at the fence.
At least he's stopped shooting at shadows. Cadmann hurried toward the tower. Break in the fence. They'll pour in. How long have we got? There were sounds everywhere. Gunshots from across the compound. Half a mile away. What could they be shooting at?
He slung his rifle and climbed rapidly.
"H'lo." Greg sounded calm enough. Cadmann nodded and took over the searchlight. He swung it to the fence break—
Nothing. Grendels came over the pile of bodies, but as individuals.
They weren't pouring through as any decent army would.
"Like I thought," Cadmann said.
"Yes?" Greg tried to keep his voice calm.
"Kill enough of them, most will stop to gorge. They don't keep coming. They're not an army."
"No. Thank God."
Rachel would be convinced it's God's doing. Maybe so. "I'm lying, of course."
"Uh?"
"I didn't think it at all. If I'd been commanding the grendels I'd have poured everything I had through that fence break." He clipped his comcard to the collar of his jacket. "Skeeter One. Are you fully charged?"
"Full charge, Cad." Stu sounded sleepy.
I'll wake you up. "Okay. Take up the load of kerosene. Dump between fences and all around the break in the outer fence. I'm going to try to drive them out so we can go repair that break."
"Repair that break. Jesus. Who'd do that? Okay, I'm off."
Dismembered grendels screamed in the minefield. More hissed as they fought and died. As in all battles, there was mostly confusion, but now he could see the entire perimeter. Grendels continued to come in through the break in the outer fence, but not in a wave; they came in ones and twos, and they separated to vanish in the darkness between the fences.
The fields beyond the outer fence were a shambles, torn by knots of struggling monsters, the very earth grooved by their speed-augmented frenzy. They've plowed it for our next planting. Cadmann chuckled grimly.
"Something?" Stu's voice spoke from his collar.
"No. Forgot the mike was on. Random thought."
More explosions in the mine fields. We'll be running low on mines. I should have had someone counting, so we'd know how many are left. Doesn't matter. Nothing to trigger mines but grendels, and there are plenty of them!
Too many grendels. "How the fuck can they grow so fast?" Cadmann demanded.
"You want the long answer or the short one?" Greg asked.
"Neither. I've heard both."
"Cadmann! Minerva calling Cadmann!"
Cadmann frowned. "Cadmann here."
"I've got to take off!"
"What?"
"I hear them! They're out there, in the lake—"
Who was that? Marty hadn't been hit by Hibernation Instability, had he? But how could you really tell? "Of course they're out in the lake, Marty. They're samlon—"
"No, no, I mean right here, I hear them pounding on the hull! Cadmann, they'll get in the air intakes! We'll lose the Minerva! I'm going to take off—"
Cadmann took a deep breath. "No. You're not going to take off. If you take off now, we lose all our power. Our fences go. We can't recharge the Skeeters. Everyone here in this camp will die. You stay there until you're told to leave."
"We have to have the Minervas! What happens to the people up in Geographic? I've got to get out of here!"
"Stay tight," Cadmann said. Skeeter One rose from the center of the Colony compound. "Look, we've got a situation here. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Stay tight."
The Skeeter reached the area between the fences. Cadmann played the tower light around the outer fence break. Other lights moved in the area between fences. Grendels tried to attack the light.
The Skeeter whirled past in tight circles. Two men and a woman leaned out of the doorway to dump kerosene. The rotor blades scattered the oily liquid. The stench merged with burning flesh and the heavy Avalon mist.
"Three more cans and we're done," Stu reported.
"Right."
The Skeeter was forty feet off the ground. A grendel standing atop the piled corpses at the fence break leaped upward. The tower light caught it in mid flight. Its upward arc stopped just short of the Skeeter. Then a smaller dark object followed it down.
"Jesus!" Cadmann shouted. "Get up higher! I swear, Stu—"
"I know. Ida saw it. She says it damn near got its jaws on the skid! Cad, they're not even grown yet!"
"How's the kerosene?"
"She dropped the can on top of that one. We're done."
"Get upwind." Cadmann flipped switches. His voice boomed from the loudspeaker. "FLARES. CARLOS. ISFAHAN. USE THE FLARES. BE CAREFUL."
"Cadmann! Damn it, they're out there!"
"Marty, for God's sake!" Cadmann snapped. "We've just used up part of
Skeeter One's power. We have to recharge, and we have to have the fences, and I have to think! Shut up and sit tight, damn it!"
"I hear them. They're coming up the tailpipe!"
"There's nothing there to eat. Marty, I don't have time for this.
Out."
Cadmann watched Greg load a makeshift crossbow with a flare tied to an arrow. The bolt left a smoky trail toward the outer fence break.
Flames leaped upward.
"What about the Minerva?" Greg asked. "Isn't he right? The longer you wait, the better the chance a grendel will crawl up the tailpipes. What will that do to the ramjet?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know? Damn all—"
"I know this," Cadmann said carefully. "If all of us here are killed without even a fight, the Bluff goes. Then what?"
Greg stared at him for a moment, then went back to the searchlight.
A thick pall of smoky death smells lay over the Colony. A few small fires still burned in the area between fences, but mostly it was dark there. The tower searchlight played through the area.
Cadmann spoke softly into the comcard clipped to his collar. "Okay, amigo, have the volunteers assemble by Mary Ann's old place." He continued to play the spotlight through the area between fences.
"If there's anything alive in there I can't see it," Greg said.
"Cadmann—is this smart?"
"I think so. We want dead grendels here. Lots of dead grendels. The more we kill here—"
"Yeah." Greg's new wife was pregnant and up in Geographic. "Yeah, I can see that. Too bad I have to stay and run the searchlight—"
"I can do that." Jill's head appeared at the platform level. She climbed carefully, using her right arm. The left was bound in gauze and immobilized.
"You ought to be—"
"I ought to be in the Mayo Clinic," she said. "But that's not here. It hurts too much to sleep, and—and I don't want to be near fires. I can run the spotlight."
"Okay. Greg—"
"I didn't hear myself volunteer." He looked at Jill's arm, then led the way down the ladder.
Jill's voice followed them. "Don't take chances."
It wasn't funny, and she couldn't hear him, but Cadmann laughed.
The house had been Mary Ann's: large, with a garage for a tractor, next to the farm-implement gate in the inner fence. When Cadmann got there Carlos was waiting. Six men and two women stood with him. They bristled with tools and weapons.
"All right. Nobody gets killed," Cadmann said. "Flame throwers. Look to the flanks. And keep looking. Don't get distracted. Greg, you're watching out behind us. Keep looking that way. Unless somebody actually tells you to turn around, watch our backs. I don't expect any trouble; if there are any grendels between the fences, they're laying pretty low. They'll be overheated and hoping to cool off; so if we leave them alone, they should leave us alone."
"If they do not, we will reason with them," Carlos said. He held a spear gun poised and ready.
"Let's go, then." Cadmann spoke into his comcard. "Kill the juice." He waited. "Right. Follow me."
The others came through gingerly. Cadmann grinned to himself. The fence was damned dangerous. It made him nervous too.
Ten meters out was half a grendel. Entrails had been pulled out of it to stretch along for another two meters.
It tried to move. Attached by bloody cords, the tail thrummed. Cadmann's flash showed that it had only half of one hind leg. The other was missing. Blood welled from the socket. Cadmann led the way around it, still giving it plenty of distance.
"Damn. They die hard," Phyllis McAndrews said.
"That they do," Cadmann said. "Watch our flanks."
There was little sound. In the distance, a grendel's scream ran the scale and clipped off. Out beyond the external fence grendels clustered in shadow, feasted. There was a slow, constant motion of grendels dragging meat toward the river.
"Here's the tricky part," Cadmann said. His light played out beyond the outer fence, but it wasn't needed. Fires still burned there and cast flickering yellow light out into the misty darkness. No eyes peered back.
"They do not like fire," Carlos said.
"That they don't. Gives us a chance." Cadmann triggered his comcard again. "Power back on in the inner fence. Power off on the outer fence. Repeat that." He listened. "Good. Okay, here's the drill. Greg, watch our backs. Carlos, you're watching to the front. We'll never clear out those bodies, so we won't try. Wire around them. Splice in on either side. At least it won't short out the rest of the fence. And work fast—"
"Cadmann!" Carlos shouted. He fired his spear gun into the darkness.
It exploded into snarling jaws. Carlos was getting good at that.
"Jesus," someone shouted.
"Skeeter One. We'll need a little fire support," Cadmann said.
"Coming now." The Skeeter flashed overhead. Its lights played out beyond the fence perimeter.
"Cadmann." Stu's voice was urgent. "There must be a thousand of them out there. Not a hundred meters from you. Get out of there."
"Shit. Not until we get that fence fixed. Are they coming toward us?"
"Not yet—"
"Let us know. Hairy, get that damn fence taken care of. Move!"
"Slave driver—"
There were things out there, humping through the darkness.
A flash of movement near the fence. A tongue of flame licked out, caught the grendel in mid-charge. Coated with jellied gasoline, it bolted off into the ravaged fields, chased its tail in diminishing circles. Finally it lay on its side, jaws mindlessly snapping at its own smoldering limbs. Its hungry siblings ringed it, crawled closer, waiting patiently for the fire to die.
Harry fussed with continuity meters. "Weld there," he said. Mits Kokubun's torch flared briefly. "And there."
"You might get on with it," Greg said.
"God damn it, I'm doing all I can—"
"Sorry, Mits, didn't mean you to hear—"
"Shut up." Cadmann tried to see everything at once. Harry with his meters. Mits and his minitorch. Greg watching behind. Carlos and—
"They're moving in," Stu said. "Cadmann—"
"Got it," Hairy whispered. "Done!"
"Then let's get the hell out of here. Move away from the fence.
Everybody clear?" He touched the comcard. "Activate outer fence."
"What about the inner fence?"
"Leave it on. Gimme the speakers. HEAR THIS, BOTH FENCES ARE
ACTIVATED. TOUCH ‘EM AND DIE.
"Okay, now move. Greg, you're point man. Watch to the front. Carlos, you're watching our backs. Stay alert. Avalon needs all the lerts it can get. Mits, don't look at me, look off to the right! Now move."
Cadmann stared at his watch. Midnight? Dawn was hours away. It seemed a week since they'd repaired the fence break, but in fact no more than an hour had passed.
Greg's rifle spat once beside him. "Another one. Got him."
"Her," Cadmann said absently. The outer fence still held. Grendels must learn from other grendels: there hadn't been another mass assault on the fence. They still came by ones and twos over the pile of dead at the original fence break, but almost none got through alive: two lights and half a dozen rifles guarded that break.
It couldn't last. Half an hour. Give me that. Half an hour.
He got twenty minutes.
Cadmann was asleep standing up. A flurry of gunfire brought him awake.
"Thousands of them!" Greg was shouting. The searchlight jittered wildly. Black shapes darted over the bodies piled at the break. The light swung. Twenty meters to the left was another pile of still smoking bodies. Grendels came over that.