Four of the ships were with the flagship, and these had loosed a quarter of their hawks. The other five ships had continued descending, and such was the havoc caused by the explosives and the hawks, no Dhulhulikh bothered them.
Their motors going full speed, the five dirigibles passed the trunks in a circling movement and sped more rockets into the holes. Their heaviest concentration was on the huge hole, and a rocket must have struck a supply of bombs to judge from the series of explosions. The edges of the hole were ripped apart, and when the smoke had cleared, a gaping wound was revealed in the side of the trunk.
Ulysses grinned at this and then lost his grin. The last one in line of the five ships had burst into flames!
Suddenly, the ship was falling, its skeleton revealed through the burned away skin, and little bodies were dropping from the gondola and the hatches as the men jumped rather than burn to death.
White with the heat of burning hydrogen, the wreck crashed across a branch three hundred feet below the hole and there burned fiercely. The trees and vegetation growing on the branch caught on fire, and the fire spread along the branch. Through the smoke poured hundreds of females and children, forced out of a previously unseen hole. Many fell into the abyss, perhaps because they were overcome by the smoke.
Graushpaz had turned blue under his grey skin on seeing the holocaust. But it was he who first saw the hole above a branch. All the others had been below it, and this had frustrated Ulysses' intentions of landing troops. He needed a place where he could bring the dirigible down just before a hole and grapple the craft to the branch to discharge troops.
However, the air had to be cleared first.
He radioed orders, and the four survivors lifted and then began to swing around. The other five turned, and presently the two halves were moving toward each other. Ulysses spent a few minutes making sure that they were on courses which would not end in collision, and then he bent his efforts to the defence. His flight was still at a level with the upper echelons of the bat-men. These had restored enough order in their ranks to make formations which now attacked en masse. The hawks had either been killed or chased away, though at the cost of heavy casualties.
Now the second fourth of the birds was released. The hawks caused chaos and broke up the front ranks, but enough bat-men got through to the dirigibles. These were met by arrow fire, since the bombs could not be exploded too close to the ships. The bat-men were not inhibited by this, however, and they lit the fuses of their little bombs and lobbed them at the skin of the ships or the gun domes. Some actually struck the skin of the flagship and blew big holes in it. But none reached the big gas cells inside, and the leakage of hydrogen was so little that there was none in the effective range of the bombs.
The ships of each segment were close enough to each other to provide some crossfire of arrows and bolts. Warriors fell into the depths with arrows sticking from them, and many of these had not yet thrown their bombs. Ulysses saw a bomb explode while in the hands of a Dhulhulikh just hit by a crossbow bolt. The bomb blew him apart and sent two others spinning.
He gave the order to lift and increase speed. The winged men fell below and behind.
"Nesh!" Graushpaz said, and trumpeted. Ulysses turned to see a flaming ship in the other segment. Some bat-man had gotten in with a bomb, and it had set fire to leaking hydrogen or blown a gas cell open.
Slowly, majestically, the vessel fell, breaking in half even as it descended toward The Tree. White and red flames roared from it, and a great plume of black smoke followed it. Men were leaping from it, some of them afire. And many many blackened corpses of winged men fell past it. The ship had been the object of an especially heavy concentration of Dhulhulikh. It was this concentration that had enabled the bat-men to get their bombs to it. But there were so many around it, they died by the hundreds, caught in the blast of heat, skins cooked or their lungs seared.
Those some distance below it were diving away frantically to keep from being caught by the falling wreck. Most would make it, but the air space was so crowded that some could not get past their more fortunate fellows. The former disappeared into the flames and went on down with the vessel, though they may have been ashes before the fire-ravaged skeleton landed crosswise on a branch.
The vegetation growing on the branch burned fiercely. But The Tree itself, though its surface could be damaged by fire, would not burn.
Ulysses reassembled the fleet and put it into a formation that took it down toward the big hole just above a branch. The Dhulhulikh were in disorder, swirling around like gnats over a corpse. They did not seem to be so numerous now. They could have lost a fourth of their strength. That still left about forty-eight hundred, an appalling number against which to pit eight dirigibles.
Again, the ship came over the Dhulhulikh just above their flying range. They shot, not arrows, bombs or rockets, but clouds of smoke which enveloped the winged men. The ships threw a few more bombs from the stern hatches, hoping that the explosions in the midst of the blinding smoke would panic the Dhulhulikh.
The dirigibles turned again and came in lower, again laying down a thick level of smoke. The men in the cockpits on top and the domes on the side reported that a large number of bat-men had flown in out of the smoke and rammed against the ship. A few had struck so hard they had gone through the skin, but these were knocked unconscious or crippled, and the crew seized them, cut their throats, and threw them out through the hatches.
When the ships had left the second and lowest level behind them, they turned again. This time four stayed on the same level to lay another cloud, but the flagship and three others went down under the slowly drifting cloud. The sun was finally setting; in sixty seconds it would be below the horizon.
TheBlue Spirit plunged into an immense alley of trunks and branches about a thousand feet below the city and several miles south of it. It was so dark there that Ulysses had to turn on the searchlights of the ships. He did not think that the bat-men would see them until too late because they were occupied with the smoke clouds and the other ships. What with the night and the smoke, they would be blind. A few might glimpse the lights, but by the time they realised what they were, they would be too late to take action — he hoped.
He stood behind the helmsman and peered into the white tunnel created by the searchlights. On both sides and above and below were the thousand-feet-wide branches and the mile-wide trunks. The dirigible bored on ahead without the constant rise and fall it had when in motion in air containing areas of different temperatures. It was headed for a vertical shaft, one free of any extension of The Tree. It was so broad that the dirigible could manoeuvre in any direction toward its goal, the cavernous entrance just above the branch.
As the ship tilted upward and the branches that had been above fell to both sides, the lights illuminated a swarm of winged people flying into the hole. They seemed to be mostly females and children who had fled when the rockets burst in the holes. Or they could be those who lived in the vine complexes but had decided that it was too dangerous to stay there tonight. Under the cover of darkness, they were going into the hole and thence into the chambers in the trunk and the various branches.
As the lights struck them, some winged on into the hole but the majority wheeled away and into the night.
Ulysses paid no attention to them, though he had ordered that the guncrews and the archers keep a strict watch for warriors with bombs. His attention was concentrated on getting the dirigible to manoeuvre delicately and directly to a position just before the hole above the branch.
This was a daring move, or, perhaps, as some of the Neshgai had said, "stupid and suicidal."
Slowly, theBlue Spirit eased forward. And then, while the nose was still approaching the trunk just above the hole, a rocket streaked from the station on the nose. Its sharp plastic cone-nose drove into the trunk, and then the line attached to it stretched as the dirigible began to back away. Other rockets were fired from bottom hatches, and the lines attached to them were drawn tight. Ulysses had tested the ropes several times under conditions simulated to resemble these, but he still was not sure that the ropes would hold.
Grappling hooks were thrown down and snagged in the wrinkles and the convolutions of the grey bark. Lines were let down, and men and the felines slid down the lines and secured their ends with sharp wooden stakes driven into the bark.
More men and a number of Neshgai followed these down the lines. The loss of their weight caused the ship to rise and put an additional strain on the ropes. But they held. And then the crew had set up winches staked to the bark and were drawing the dirigible down.
Ulysses stepped out of the gondola onto the bark. The others crowded out after him.
At the same time, the men still inside the ship released the hawks. Some flew upward into the smoke, which was thinning out. Though they could not see too well now, they could smell out the enemy they had been trained to attack with claw and beak. Others flew into the hole, evidently having sniffed out the winged people there.
The three dirigibles had gone on by. They would loose their hawks in a minute and then they would anchor on branches nearby. Their task was more difficult than that, of theBlue Spirit personnel. They would have to climb down the trunk and under the branch to enter the holes there. This would take time and leave them exposed to attack while they were clinging to the side of the trunk. But Ulysses was counting on the darkness, the hawks and the other dirigibles to keep the winged warriors still in the air busy. Moreover, the four ships would be ejecting another smoke cloud.
The entrance was empty except for a few bodies of females and children.
Ulysses put on his wood-and-leather helmet, in the front of which was a light. It did not furnish much illumination, because its biological battery was weak, but it was better than nothing. Moreover, the combined light of the crew would furnish adequate visibility.
Ulysses placed himself at the head of the column, but Graushpaz touched him on the shoulder. He turned, and the Neshgai said, "I demand my right to redeem myself."
Having expected this, and secretly glad, Ulysses stepped aside. Graushpaz then spoke to the twenty Neshgai officers. It was a short and simple speech.
"I have disgraced myself and so cast disgrace upon you, my fellow officers and my subordinates. You know that. Yet you are not required to redeem yourselves. No one will reproach you if you do not follow me into the nest of the Dhulhulikh. It is likely that we will all die, since we are in the van and will be fighting in narrow caves which the bat-people know well. But the people of our race will hear of what we do today. And Nesh will know of it, and if we acquit ourselves as we should, we shall find homes after death on his tusks."
The officers trumpeted and then arranged themselves behind Graushpaz. They held spears, clubs and stone axes and wore stone knives in their belts. On the left arm of each was a wood-and-leather shield thick enough to withstand any battering from the weapons of the tiny Dhulhulikh.
"Stand back a minute," Ulysses said. "We'll send in a dozen rockets. Then you can go in."
The humans came up then, and the tubemen knelt while their comrades touched off the fuses of the rockets. These sped with a spurt of flame and whoosh of smoke into the great hole. Some must have curved off turning walls, because their explosions were muffled. Ulysses hoped that they caught Dhulhulikh hiding in ambush around the corners. Judging from some of the screams, they had.
The towering Neshgai leader raised his ponderous stone axe, trumpeted shrilly and roared. "For Nesh and our ruler and Shegnif!"
He ran swiftly forward with the twenty giants behind him. Ulysses counted to ten and gave the order for his men to follow him. Behind was Awina and then the Wufea, Wagarondit and Alkunquib. After them came the Vroomaw soldiers. The only ones who did not go into the hole were the bombmen and rocketeers in the cockpits and the side domes. All his party wore quilted armour and faceplates. The Dhulhulikh were forty-pound pygmies, but their tiny arrows carried a deadly poison. One prick, and a six-hundred-pound Neshgai would be dead in ten seconds, a hundred-fifty-pound man in two.
"Follow me!" Ulysses shouted, and walked swiftly into the cavern. It was dark at first, but after the second turn in a tunnel wide enough for two men abreast, he came to the first of the internal chambers. This was lit with hundreds of clusters of some vegetable growths that gave a cold light. The light shone on the bloody and dismembered pieces of females, children and old men. There were also a few bodies the heads of which had been smashed by the stone axes or clubs of the Neshgai.
After this chamber, they entered a large one consisting of a twenty-foot-wide street with four levels of open chambers on each side. Apparently, the chambers were occupied by families. Light was provided by the same vegetable growth, which had spread out vine fashion everywhere. There were more dead and mangled females and children on the street, and some frightened faces peering out of the open doorways of the chambers above.
So far, the evidence indicated that the entire adult male population had swarmedout to attack the invaders.
Ulysses made a quick decision. He split his forces into half and left one party at the first turn in the wall. They would hold this if the males tried to re-enter while a messenger came after the other half. All the rockets except three were left with the holding party.
If it had not been for the directions of the Dhulhulikh prisoners, they would have been lost. Corridor after corridor, many of them as wide and high as the one they were on, branched out. Looking down these, Ulysses could see other corridors. The trunk — and the branches radiating from it — was honeycombed. There was room for far more than the thirty-five thousand the prisoners had estimated as the population.
They passed chambers where animals were penned up, and others where strange plants grew in the cold light of the vegetable lamps. They saw many more tiny faces of women and children looking from the open doorways. Infrequently, Ulysses halted the party and sent a scout up to inspect the rooms above them. He did not want to be ambushed. Each time, the scout reported that the majority of the rooms were empty.
The party pushed on, and then they came to the section which Ulysses had hoped they would find. There were about forty mangled corpses of Dhulhulikh males here. They had fought bravely but futilely against the giants. Two of these lay dead, their once-grey skins purple. The little archers had sent their arrows under the faceplates into the skin; they must have stood at the feet of the elephantine men and fired upward just before the axes smashed their heads in.
They had been defending a huge chamber which had to be the main centre of communication for the Dhulhulikh. Around the walls, on three levels, were at least a hundred huge diaphragms. And there were about fifty more corpses and three more dead Neshgai. The chamber floor was inches deep in blood.