Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 10.djvu/86

86 unexpected attack of a dozen at once. Many a soldier struck down two apes before him, but fell to a third behind. Many a soldier failed to hear feet softly padding behind him, or fell to a hurled brick or iron club.

In open spaces, standing shoulder to shoulder, men might still be masters, but in narrow streets the apes, with their quicker eyes and much sharper ears, were soon in control.

Don and the Princess made for the docks, Don ahead. Being small, he saw apemen before they saw him, and shot them down before they could attack Wimpolo. For the apes had entirely forgotten their human king, Vans Holors, now, and had only one idea, to kill human beings, Vans as well if they could.

SQUAD of soldiers, marching shoulder to shoulder, came suddenly upon Don and Wimpolo. The soldiers stared at Wimpolo, seeing something strange in her figure. They wondered, too, what the tiny Earthling was doing with her.

"I bear an urgent message," Wimpolo cried. "I must not be stopped. Every moment is precious."

The soldiers began to march past, but an officer confronted her.

"Who is your message for?"

"General Soloroff," answered Wimpolo, relating a name she had heard.

"General Soloroff is in the upper world, leading an expedition," snapped the officer.

"I mean General Bissalak."

"Why doesn't he use the television? My portable set would relay your message, whatever it is, in an instant. And what are you, a woman, doing in the uniform of a soldier?"

He had penetrated her disguise, at least partly. Don's deathray flashed out, focus turned right back, intensity at half strength. The officer fell unconscious at once, and so did the soldiers in front of them.

Most of the marching men had turned the next corner, and before they realized what had happened and turned to attack the two, Don and Wimpolo had run round the next corner and jumped into the window of the first house. The soldiers could not stay to search long: their presence was needed to help their hard-pressed comrades in the thick of the battle.

The house was empty. Through the window they saw apes pass, hunting for men, and they saw men pass, hunting for apes.

An apeman crept toward a soldier. The ape aimed the ray, lever full on. He pressed the button. But the soldier did not fall. Instead, he turned and fired at the ape with a threadray pistol. The ape fell, a hole as neat and round as a penny drilled in his chest. A small cloud of dust, looking like smoke, floated in the air.

A sudden thought made Don try his own deathray. It was out of action. Bommelsmeth had turned on his blanketing ray, which short-circuited deathray boxes. But his own soldiers still had their threadray pistols, which were unaffected. It was Bommelsmeth's trump-card for just such a situation as this.

"Now the apemen will all be killed before long," Don said.

"There is one way we might possibly help them," Wimpolo said.

"What is it?"

"If we could put out the lights of the city," said Wimpolo. "That would create confusion and give the apes an advantage."

"Can we do it?"

"If one is short-circuited it will put them out over a large area," she said. She turned to the zekolo and pointed