“I don’t think we’ll see any action today,” said the captain.
“Plainly they are waiting for the other fifteen ships to arrive before attacking us—–Oops, I stand corrected.”
Spiders were crawling down the landing ramps of every ship to begin forming into lines on the dry sand above the water’s edge. All of them were armed with crossbows and, in addition, eight of them carried between them what looked like two heavy battering rams with sharply tapering points. Simultaneously gliders were being launched on the seaward side, two from each ship.
They climbed slowly and heavily into the wind off the sea, and only when they made slow, banking turns towards the beach to take advantage of the thermals rising from the hot sand was it possible to see that the gliders carried passengers as well as pilots and that both were armed with crossbows.
The aircraft continued to gain height slowly and steadily while the ground forces deployed three-deep into a crescent formation, with the battering rams placed front and center, before advancing on the med station and watching patients.
The captain’s voice returned, giving orders rather than a commentary.
“Dodds,” it said briskly, “shoot a couple of flares inland and drag them along the perimeter. The vegetation has dried out since last time so be careful not to start a major fire, just give me a line of burning bushes and smoke. There’s no sign of an attack developing from that quarter but I want to put them off the idea in case they burn themselves.”
“Sir,” said Haslam, “shall I whip up another sandstorm on the beach?”
“Negative,” it replied, “there’s no point in wasting the power. Last time we didn’t want them to hit the meteorite shield, but they found out about it when they were shooting at Murchison and Prilicla. But have your tractors ready just in case. Dr. Prilicla.”
“Yes, friend Fletcher,” he said.
“There is no risk to your patients out there,” it went on, “because there is no way that the spiders can get through our shield, but I don’t know what they might do to themselves while they’re trying. It could be visually unpleasant, so I advise moving them indoors before…”
The captain’s next few words were drowned by a wail of protest and accompanying emotional radiation.
“Thank you for the suggestion, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “but I am receiving strong vocal and emotional objections from my patients and staff, all of whom would prefer to see the action at first hand.”
“Bloodthirsty savages,” said the captain dryly, “and I’m not talking about the spiders.”
There were twelve ships drawn up along the beach, each one carrying two gliders and a crew complement of anything up to two hundred. The bright yellow sand in front of the station was disappearing under the brownish-green bodies of over two thousand advancing spiders and, if it hadn’t been for the knowledge that the meteorite shield made them invulnerable, it would have been a terrifying sight as the spiders halted about fifty meters from the shield and readied their crossbows. Apart from the faint whisper of glider slipstreams as they circled and climbed above the station, there was utter silence. Plainly, all the necessary orders had already been given and they were awaiting only the signal to attack.
“This is stupid,” said Murchison from her position among the medical team grouped around and below him. “They aren’t going to get anywhere with this attack so why don’t they just forget it and go home? After all, we haven’t hurt them in anyway and we’re trying hard not to, but if this foolishness goes on, someone is sure to come to grief.”
“We have hurt them, friend Murchison,” said Prilicla, “but not physically or in any other way we can understand at present. Maybe we are horrible creatures from the sky, the forerunners of more to come, who are invading their land. That is reason enough, but I have the feeling there is another one. A large number of their people are close enough to give me an emotional reading. For some reason they feel hatred, revulsion, and loathing for us. The feeling is intense and it is shared by all of them.”