chose to sit with the driver, to direct him to the store on Portland St.
THE ride was uneventful, and I gathered whatever lightning Nueces planned to hurl at us was waiting for our entry into the caverns behind the cellar of the store-room.
I was right. The truck backed up to the doorway at the side of the store that opened to a wide flight of steps down into the storerooms of the cellar. The three men—myself and the two massive explosive gentlemen—succeeded in getting the weird creation of Tanil's unharmed down the stairs in one piece. Down upon us—from that nowhere that all rays in use seem to come from—came blue and deadly lightning, crackling about us fearfully, swiftly stealing away our strength and leaving us leaning against the walls gasping for breath. Desperately Tanil worked with the controls of her creation, and gradually the blue leaping electric waves became less evident, lost their life-stealing power. She had tuned the mech to damp the waves. I knew she would have to do that for every change Nueces made in the rays he used—and wondered if she was taking the desperate gamble it seemed she was taking. The two grim gentlemen looked at Tanil's nervously twitching face, and I could see a vast doubt of her in their eyes. I murmured:
"Don't worry, she knows her onions. This guy behind the blue stuff is a nobody. . . ."
Tanil shot me a grateful glance.
We entered the chamber of the dragon drape to find the furnishings overturned, the great glittering drape torn and stained.
Beside one of the low divans lay the body of a man. I recognized him as one of the better minds of the group who served Tanit as priests, and Tanil as their leader. One of those I knew who must have tried to protect Tanil's rights in her absence. A knife wound in his belly reaching upward to the short ribs had let out his life. I had no doubt it had been Nueces' work.
About us still lashed the blue lightning, robbed of its destructiveness by the purring mech Tanil had built. We had mounted it on a wheeled baggage truck and trundled the thing along.
Down the corridors leading toward the great machine shops of the ancients, toward the chambers where the doll-control mech was installed, we moved, impossible to be quiet or to expect that surprise was with us. The trundling mech on the truck our only defense. I handled the truck, the two heavy gentlemen had their machine guns in their hands, the bags abandoned back in the cellar.
Behind the three of us moved the two women, and their bearing made me very proud of them, a feeling as though they were my own, my sisters or my wives. . . .
We came out into the huge chamber of the dolls, and behind the great mech-control we saw Nueces, his deep eyes shot with madness, his hair on end, and fear written across his face in great deep lines.
Beside him moved half-a-dozen of the other white-robed unnecessaries that Tanil had kept on. Tanit's priests are "sacred." Well, she had her reward. . . .
As we entered, Nueces played the card he had been holding till now . . . played it desperately.
The dolls, waiting in ranks before him, were ready—and as we entered, stormed us under Nueces' frantic mental control. He had armed them with lancets, several of them carried small women's revolvers he had found somewhere, with scalpels, knives—there were some two hundreds of them suddenly swarming toward us.
The two guns of the torpedoes began to hammer and Tanil screamed:
"Don't shoot the dolls, it won't do any good. Shoot the priest. Kill Nueces; he controls them!"
The two heavy men with the guns did not understand. One of them cursed: "What the hell, we didn't bargain on fighting witchcraft. This wasn't in the bargain!" But he kept spraying the oncoming horde of tiny people with lead and the heavy slugs knocked them down in wind-rows; but they got up again and kept coming. Holes showing light clean through their bodies.
It was unnerving, uncanny, frightening to see the little man-things hopping on one leg or with an arm hanging by a tough shred or by a wire of the inner part still intact, coming on and on, little knives glittering; deathless; implacable; each of them reflecting on their faces the face of Nueces. Under Nueces' mental command, their faces grimaced oddly all alike, each of them the same expression, fierce with a cornered rat's desperation.
Then they were on us; the little knives rose and fell; the tiny revolvers spoke. Kyra
