The Year When Stardust Fell Part 26

His father remained a motionless silhouette against the distant firelight. "As much right, perhaps," he said, "but more and different responsibilities. Hilliard is right. If we were knocked down out there who would take over the work in the laboratory? Johnson? Adams?

"In Berkeley there are thousands fighting each other, but with French and his group gone, no one is fighting the comet. I don't think it is selfish to say we are of infinitely more value in the laboratory than we could ever be out there with guns in our hands."

He turned and smiled in the half-darkness. "That's in spite of the fact that you have the merit badge for marksmans.h.i.+p and won the hunting club trophy last year."

After an hour the attack ceased, apparently because the defenders refused to waste their fire on the impossible targets. Sheriff Johnson sent word around for his men to resume rotation of watch and get all the sleep possible before the day that was ahead of them.

The fires burned themselves out shortly before dawn. Their light was followed soon by the glow of the comet rising in the southeast. Ken watched it and thought of Granny Wicks. It wouldn't be hard, he thought, to understand how a belief in omens could arise. It wouldn't be hard at all.

The sky had cleared so that the light of the comet bathed the entire countryside in its full, bitter glory. At sunrise the faint trickles of smoke rose from hundreds of wood fires, started with the difficult green fuel, and stringent breakfasts were prepared. A thought went through Ken's mind and he wondered if anybody was taking note of the supply of matches in town. When they ran low, coals of one fire would have to be kept to light another.

It was 9 o'clock, on a day when ordinarily school bells would have been sounding throughout the valley. The first war shouts of the attacking nomads were heard on the plain to the south. About thirty men on horseback raced single file along the highway that bore the hard, frozen tracks of horses and sleds that had moved to and from the farms down there.

Patrolman Sykes watched them through his gla.s.ses. His command rang out to his company. "Hold fire." He knew the nomads would not hope to break through the barbed wire on such a rush. It looked as if they planned an Indian-style attack as the line began breaking in a slow curve something less than 100 yards away.

"Fire!" Sykes commanded. Volleys of shots rang out on both sides almost simultaneously. The lead rider of the nomads went down, his horse galloping in riderless panic at the head of the line. The hard-riding column paralleled the barrier for 200 yards, drawing the fire of adjacent guard posts before they broke and turned south again. It was, evidently, a test of the strength of the defenses.

"Every shot counts!" Sykes cried out to his men. As the attackers rode out of effective range he sighted four riderless horses. Beside him, in the barricade, one of his own men was. .h.i.t and bleeding badly. A tourniquet was prepared until two men of the medical detail arrived with an improvised stretcher.

Sykes sat down and rested his head on his arms for a moment. The air was well below freezing, but his face was bathed with sweat. How long? he asked himself silently. How long can it go on? First the comet, then this. He roused at a sudden cry beside him.

"They're coming back," a man shouted. Sykes stood up and raised his fieldgla.s.ses to his eyes. From around the point a fresh group of riders was pouring toward the town. At least three times as many as before.

In a flash, he understood their intent. "They're going to come through!"

he cried. "They're going to come right through the barrier, no matter what it costs them!"

Chapter 15. _Battle_

The hard-riding nomad cavalry bore down on the defense line. They did not break into a circling column as before, I but began forming an advancing line. When they were 75 yards away, Sykes ordered his men to begin firing.

The nomads were already shooting, and what their emissary had said was true: these men were expert shots, even from horseback. Sykes heard the bullets careening off the sloping face of the barricade. Two of his men were down already.

He leveled his police pistol and fired steadily into the oncoming ranks.

He thought they were going to try to jump the fence this time, and he braced for the shock. To his dismay, he now saw that a perfectly clear s.p.a.ce for their landing had been left between his own position and the adjacent barricade.

Suddenly the line of attackers swerved to the left just a few feet from the wire. The defending fire was furious, and for a moment Sykes thought they were going to turn the line back. Then several of the nomads raised their arms and hurled dark, small objects toward the barrier. Sykes recognized them even while they were in the air. Grenades.

He shouted to his men and they flattened behind the barricade. Six explosions thundered almost simultaneously. Mud and rocks sprayed into the air and fell back in a furious rain upon the defenders.

Cautiously, Sykes lifted himself from the ground and got a glimpse of the scene once more. A hundred feet of barbed-wire fence had disappeared in a tangle of shattered posts and hanging coils. Through the opening, the nomads poured over the barricades in the midst of Sykes' men.

Smas.h.i.+ng hoofs landed almost upon him but for his frantic rolling and twisting out of their path. Gunfire was a continuous blasting wave.

Sykes thought he heard above it the sound of Johnson's voice roaring commands to the retreating men.

It sounded like he was saying, "Close up! Close up!" but Sykes never knew for sure. An enormous explosion seemed to come from nowhere and thunder directly in front of him. The day darkened suddenly and he felt himself losing all control of his own being. He wondered if a cloud had crossed the sun, but almost at the same time he ceased to be concerned about the question at all.

The first of the wounded came in slowly, borne by stretcher bearers on foot who had literally dragged their charges through the lines of invading hors.e.m.e.n. Ken directed their a.s.signment to the hospital-houses.

He had always believed he could take a scene like this in his stride, but now he felt he must keep moving constantly to keep from becoming violently sick.

Overhead, a pall of smoke surged again, blotting out, partly, the comet's light. More houses had been fired by the invaders. The sound of crackling flames mingled with the thunder of hoofs and the roll of rifle fire.

Surely it wouldn't be possible, Ken thought, for such a charge to succeed unless it were backed by strong infantry. He moved into one of the houses and directed the placement of the severely wounded man brought up now by the bearers. As they left, he looked down at the stained and b.l.o.o.d.y face. A nurse was already at work cutting away the matted clothing from the wound.

Ken exclaimed loudly before he realized what he was saying. "Mr. Harris!

Mr. Harris--you shouldn't have been out there!"

The man opened his eyes slowly against the terrible pain. He smiled in recognition. It was Mr. Harris, the princ.i.p.al of Mayfield High School; the one Ken had attended. He was an old man--at least fifty--much too old to have been at the barricade with a rifle.

"You shouldn't have been out there," Ken repeated. Mr. Harris seemed to have difficulty in seeing him.

"Ken," he said slowly. "It's Ken Maddox, isn't it? Everybody has to do something. It seemed like this was the best thing I could do. No school to teach. No school for a long time."

His voice wavered as he began to ramble. "I guess that makes all the students happy. No school all winter long. I always dreamed of Mayfield being a school where they would be glad to come, whose opening in the fall would be welcomed and closing in the spring would be regretted. I never got that far, I guess.

"I didn't do a really bad job, did I, Ken? Mayfield is a pretty good school, isn't it?"

"Mayfield is a swell school, Mr. Harris," said Ken. "It'll be the best day ever when Mayfield opens up again."

"Yes ... when school opens again," Mr. Harris said, and then he was still.

The nurse felt his pulse and regretfully drew the sheet up to cover his face. "I'm sorry," she said to Ken.

Blindly, he turned and went out to the porch. Mr. Harris, he thought, the little bald-headed man they'd laughed at so often with schoolboy cruelty. He had wanted to make Mayfield a good school, so students would be glad to attend.

He'd done that--almost. Mayfield _was_ a good school.

Ken looked at the rolling clouds of black smoke in the sky. The gunfire seemed less steady now. Suddenly he was running furiously and with all his strength. He turned down Main Street and headed south. He ran until he caught sight of the first nomad he had seen since the events in the Mayor's Council chamber.

The enemy had stopped his horse, rearing high, while he hurled some kind of incendiary through the window of a house. It exploded inside and billows of flame and smoke poured out. A heart-tight pain gripped Ken.

He looked wildly about and saw a fragment of brick lying beside a demolished house nearby.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the missile and wound up as if pitching one straight over the corner of the plate. The horseman saw the motion of his arm and tried to whirl, but he was too late. The brickbat caught him at the side of the head and he dropped to the snow without a sound. Ken ran forward and caught up the nomad's rifle and ammunition belt. The horse had fled in panic.

Without a backward glance Ken raced on down the street toward the dwindling sound of battle. The invaders were retreating, streaming from all directions toward the break in the barrier, firing steadily as they came. The defenders were trying to block the escape.

Ken dropped behind a barricade next to an older man he didn't know. He searched for an opening and waited for a rider to cross his sights; then he squeezed the trigger and the man fell. When he looked up again the last of the invaders were gone. Only half of those who had come up to the attack were leaving it.

The men around Ken slowly relaxed their terrible tension. From some lying p.r.o.ne there were cries of pain. Those who could stand did so and revealed their drawn faces to one another.

Teams of the medical group began moving again. A horse-drawn wagon was brought up that had been fitted with boards across the sides so that two layers of wounded men could be carried at once.

Ken heard sudden hoofbeats behind and turned. Sheriff Johnson rode up and surveyed the scene. His eye caught Ken's figure standing in the midst of it, rifle in hand, the captured ammunition belt draped over his shoulder.

"You!" White anger was on Johnson's face. "You were ordered to stay out of the frontline!" he thundered. "Any other man would be court-martialed for such disobedience. Get back where you belong and don't show your face in this area again. I'll jail you for the rest of the fighting if you disobey again!"