Virginia ground her teeth and dropped the hand from Chip’s waist. He was as sensitive as a brick! On good days . . .
He hit the horn. And it brayed out a challenge.
* * *
The slowshield has a perimeter area in which incoming kinetic energy is absorbed. Inside that is the area where that energy is dissipated as a temporary “hard” shell. The shield is shaped to fit the wearer—in a closest-fit ovoid shape. Low-slung Maggots inevitably included a substantial piece of the ground in their shield. Upright humans didn’t have much of the ground in theirs. The argument against tank warfare was that hitting Maggot shields would be the equivalent of hitting concrete bollards.
In broad theory, especially if the Maggots acted in concert, that was true. Chip proved, at least in the case of these thin upright Maggots, that in practice it was a lot of crap. Accompanied by the bray of the horn, the tractor sent the Maggots sailing like so many tenpins hit by a strike.
Eamon dropped in. “Slow down. If you get there in less than two minutes there won’t be a hole to drive through.”
“Speed up, slow down,” grumbled Chip. “Will you make up your minds?”
He eased the pace.
They came around the corner just when Eamon wanted them to. A hundred yards farther up the valley stood a choke of solid Maggots. They stood stark and sharp-edged in the headlight beam. That lot would be enough to stop a tank.
When they were thirty yards from the Maggot-mass . . . the wall of the mound blew. Through the settling dust a hole full of lumifungus-green light beckoned. This was no time for finesse and careful aiming. Chip didn’t even dare ease back the throttle. At the last minute he closed his eyes.
And he didn’t scream alone.
Fortunately the bats had erred on the side of caution with their shot placement. The hole would have taken a six-lane freeway. Chip barely brushed the edge on the way in, before they started falling . . .
The tunnel floor was a good fourteen inches lower inside than the outside ground level. They bounced. Bounced again. And then, humping and mounting, galumphed their way over bits of fallen Magh’ masonry.
“Deploy a roll of barbed wire!” shouted Bronstein, above the racket of their blundering progress.
Nym and Fal were on the trailer in a bound. Between them and Fluff the first roll of barbed wire was spooled out, with a rock tied onto the end. It was released—and snapped back into anything but a neat coil.
“Molotov,” called O’Niel. “And light for me, Fal. And get more ready!”
Glancing back, Virginia saw the first Maggots, trapped in the tangle of rusty wire, firedancing with limb-tearing frantic effort.
The horn brayed. “Maggots. In front of us!” shouted Chip. “Hold tight!”
They bounced and bounded onwards, belching diesel smoke into the maze. Deeper and deeper into the tunnels of the scorpiary. Chaos trailed along behind them. And in front of them spread panic. For the first time in many years a scorpiary-organism knew fear.
\
Chapter 26: On the outside looking in.
The technician at the slowship’s satellite tracking unit looked sullen and unhappy about this invasion of his domain. Most of the colony’s technical resources were still centered on the huge skeleton of the ship that had brought them here. The technician wasn’t going to complain, however.
Not just yet, at least. For now he was going to be wondrously cooperative. His collar was still wet with his own blood. That had been the rat’s teeth on his throat. Those teeth were that sharp. He was intensely grateful to the major for stopping it from going through with its threat.
He silently showed the pictures from the computer cache for the night. The terrifying looking major had had him focus on sector Delta 355.
“There. To the left.” The tailless rat with the mismatched fur patches and the missing ear pointed imperiously. The Earth-built satellite cameras had been intended for precision surveying. The resolution was excellent. The rat’s eyesight was marvelous too.
“Zoom in on that point,” said the major.