king-places, and as they advanced to the assault the firing commenced
in earnest, became a staccato thunder that blanketed but failed to drown
out the beginning alarm-wail of a huge mechanical voice from the
fortress of the drones.

The enemy was not slow to react. Almost as the first rain of projectiles
smashed down among them, jet engines began howling into life, and some
of the fighter craft rocked into motion, wheeling out onto the runways.

The encircling attackers well knew the peril of letting any of those
pilotless killers get into the air. Shellfire was being concentrated on
the airstrips, striving to block them, plow them up with craters.

* * * * *

A fighter drone came roaring out one of the runaways gathering speed and
beginning to lift. Dworn followed it with his eyes, feeling sweat spring
out on his forehead, repeating under his breath without conscious
awareness of what he was saying: "Stop him, _stop_ him--"

Then the enemy craft spun round in the air, belching smoke, came apart
and spilled along the runway for a hundred yards. A second, coming close
behind it, plowed into the wreckage of its comrade, rolled over and over
and became a furiously burning pyre. That strip was blocked.

All round the central hive smoke and flame were rising in innumerable
places, from the paved ways and from the open desert. On another
launching strip, just visible through the mounting inferno, one of the
big queen-craft had sought to take to the air, and had been knocked out
by heavy shellfire. Now its upended and blazing hulk tilted slowly over
and collapsed burying beneath it several of the little wingless workers.
In all the confusion these still scurried hither and yon, oblivious to
the bombardment, laboring frantically but futilely to clear away the
debris. Their efforts were useless, while the rain of explosives from
the tightening ring of assault forces continued adding to the ruin and
disorder within the hive....

Dworn sprang to his feet for a better view. He hugged Qanya to him till
she gasped for breath, shouted in her ear over the thunder of the
barrage, "_We've got them!_"

Close to the ridge where they stood a line of many-wheeled monsters
rolled past--scorpions, moving along the battle front and, whenever the
thickening smoke up ahead revealed a target, halting to wheel round and
discharge their heavy-caliber tail guns.

Dworn had never liked scorpions, but he watched