“No, we couldn’t,” Jason told him. “Not accurately. We want to hit that wall at the height of the attack, when our chances are best. Even if they hear the message it won’t mean a thing to them inside. And a few minutes later it won’t matter.”

The sound from the speaker changed. A voice spoke a short sentence, then cut off.

“Bring me three barrels of flour.”

“Let’s go,” Rhes urged as he started forward.

‘Wait,” Jason said, taking him by the arm. “I’m timing the flamethrower. It’s due in… there!” A blast of fire sprayed the ground, then turned off. “We have four minutes to the next one-we hit the long period!”

They ran, stumbling in the soft ashes, tripping over charred bones and rusted metal. Two men grabbed Jason under the arm and half carried him across the ground. It hadn’t been planned that way, but it saved precious seconds. They dropped him against the wall and he fumbled out the bombs he had made. The charges from Krannon’s gun, taken when he was killed, had been hooked together with a firing circuit. All the moves had been rehearsed carefully and they went smoothly now.

Jason had picked the metal wall as being the best spot to break in. It offered the most resistance to the native life, so the chances were it wouldn’t be reinforced with sandbags or fill, the way other parts of the wall were. If he was wrong, they were all dead.

The first men had slapped their wads of sticky congealed sap against the wall. Jason pressed the charges into them and they stuck, a roughly rectangular pattern as high as a man. While he did this, the detonating wire was run out to its length and the raiders pressed back against the base of the wall. Jason stumbled through the ashes to the detonator, fell on it and pressed the switch at the same time.

Behind him a thundering bang shook the wall and red flame burst out. Rhes was the first one there, pulling at the twisted and smoking metal with his gloved hands. Others grabbed on and bent the jagged pieces aside. The hole was filled with smoke and nothing was visible through it. Jason dived into the opening, rolled on a heap of rubble and smacked into something solid. When he blinked the smoke from his eyes, he looked around him.

He was inside the city.

The others poured through now, picking him up as they charged in so he wouldn’t be trampled underfoot. Someone spotted the spaceship and they ran that way.