The neatly–dressed sergeant sitting at the radio desk with his headphones on looked up then shook his head at Major Hampson when the latter entered the room. The radio log contained only a few routine messages, nothing at all from the Depot at Martuba.
'Nothing doing, sir,' apologised the sergeant. 'I've tried every twenty minutes for the past three hours.'
'Still no joy, eh?' commented Hampson. 'It's not looking very rosy.'
Outside a train whistle tooted mournfully, becoming fainter as the locomotive pulled away from the railhead at Mersa Matruh.
Hampson felt worried, without showing it in front of the sergeant.
'Could it be atmospherics?' he asked. Reception in the desert could be the very devil. Once they had picked up the guttural exchanges of German units on manouevres in the Balkans, and occasionally picked up snatches from naval convoys in the Med.
'Doubt it, sir. I've been in touch with Benghazi and Tobruk, reception's a bit crackly but no problem otherwise.'
Damn it! What the hell was going on down there? mused Major Hampson.
First came a report from Middle East HQ, Brigadier Dorman-Smith no less, saying that his own private band of desert pirates, Jolyon Force, had fought a battle with infernal devices of Italian design. Fought it in the middle of the supply depot at Martuba, mind you. Lots of casualties, including dozens of Italian prisoners.
Then last night a damaged Wellington bomber passing over the deep desert detected an explosion beyond the depot – around where some bloody daft fools from England were poking around in some Roman ruins.
And now, no radio communication.
He sighed and made a telephone call to the RASC section at Thirteen Corps HQ. Could they send an aircraft to overfly the depot, see what the problem was? He got an affirmative – their Army Air Liaison section would send down a Lysander to nosey around the depot, and maybe cast a look over the archaeological dig, too. The Wellington crew were rumoured to have seen more than a simple single explosion but were not willing to talk about it for fear of censure.
Hopefully the lack of radio contact would be explained away by a faulty radio or flat batteries or broken valves.
Dawn in the wadi broke not long after the sounds of firing from Mersa Martuba died down. The sun jumped above the horizon, glaring down on the Bedford and it's miserable occupants.
Corporal Mickleborough cocked his head to one side, the better to listen.
'I can hear a vehicle engine.'
Shared alarm was the common response. They had no weapons between them, having been disarmed when taken prisoner.
'It must be Italian – those horrid black glass things don't make a noise,' said Sarah. 'And they'll be coming down the riverbed from the north – there's a way to get into it from there.'
Ten minutes later the British survivors encountered the sole Sahariana to survive battle with the aliens, and the four Italian soldiers manning the vehicle. Lieutenant Llewllyn, brandishing a grimy handkerchief tied to a stick, stood in front of the Bedford, Sarah at his side.
'I hope this works!' he muttered from the side of his mouth, trying to look indifferent to danger, or at the very least sternly resolute.
'It will!' declared Sarah. 'Because I will make it work!'
In lieu of the Doctor she put herself in his shoes. What would he do? Prevent the humans from fighting amongst each other, firstly.
Tenente Dominione jumped down from the passenger's seat and strode across the dry wadi floor, looking drawn and tired and incongruously young. He was covered by the driver, pointing a sub-machine gun at the Bedford.
'Miss Smith. Lieutenant Lewlin,' he said, sounding every bit as tired as he looked. 'You can consider yourselves my prisoners.'
Sarah translated for the lieutenant, before snapping back a reply.
'Don't be ridiculous, Tenente! "Prisoners"? We need each other's help to fight back against these alien monsters, not to turn on each other.'
The officer blinked in surprise, not expecting such a spirited counter-attack.
'Where are the rest of your men?' asked Roger, craning to peer around or over his opposite number.
'Dead. Or rendered unconscious,' replied the Italian, shortly, his stoney expression rendering translation un-necessary. His hand hovered over the holster on his belt without actually drawing the weapon held there. Sarah caught the sudden indecision and pounced verbally again.
'Then you ought to understand what I said – we need to band together. You have weapons, while we don't. We have food and water and petrol. We fought the killing machines those aliens sent out before, we know how to destroy them and what to avoid.'
Dominione threw up his hands in despair.
'Very well! Very well, we can have a truce.' He looked at Roger. 'Friends,' he managed in heavily-accented English. 'We need your word if we give you parole,' he said to Sarah. 'No attempts to escape, no attacks on my men.'
Roger agreed to these terms. His choice was limited, after all. The most deadly weapon his collection of refugees could muster was a pen-knife.
'Let's see what we're dealing with,' he muttered. All three of them walked to the edge of the wadi and Dominione scrambled upwards, narrowly avoiding falling on the friable stones. Roger caught the officer's elbow and kept him upright.
'Grazie,' he murmured, bracing both elbows on level ground and scanning the now-distant depot.
Four dark masses, with a background of supply crates and pallets, stood still on the baking gravel. Further back, beyond them, more black blobs were moving slowly. This early in the morning heat haze wasn't a confusing factor for vision.
'They are not moving forwards. I count four Carro Armato Negre, the black tanks, and more moving in the depot. Ah. Ah, yes, now I see. They were moving the damaged vehicle.'
Remaining still under the hammer of sunlight for long minutes, long dispirited minutes wondering what his men were suffering, the Tenente realised the alien vehicles were not advancing. He waved over his driver and stationed him at the wadi edge, with instructions to alert them if the black vehicles began to move again.
'Come on,' said Sarah, adopting a sure and certain manner that she didn't really feel. Leading the way, she introduced the Tenente to her fellow Britons in the Bedford.
'A truce is in place,' she announced. 'We don't try to get one over on the Italians, and they don't take us prisoner.'
'Good!' said Albert, with emphasis. 'Since all we have to fight with are fists.'
'What happened to those wretched Italians?' asked Templeman, fanning himself with a sweaty, dirty hand.
Sarah asked Dominione, who stumbled over the explanation.
'He doesn't know. What he did see was the aliens killing their own wounded.'
"Sucked dry into dust" had been the literal words. The aliens injured by gunfire or Molotov cocktail were killed by their healthy companions, shrivelled into nothingness.
'Then his men are, in all probability, dead,' stated Templeman gloomily.
Tam and Davey looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
'Bloody useless Eyeties. Couldn't knock the skin off a rice-pudding!' complained the Scot, loudly. Tam nodded in exasperated non-surprise. They were both veterans of the long advance by Thirteen Corps against the Italian Tenth Army from December last year, and felt a certain lofty contempt for the enemy.
The Italian officer might not have spoken much English, but he detected the sneering tone immediately and bristled with annoyance.
'That's quite enough of that!' snapped Sarah before Roger could intervene. 'We are supposed to be working together - '
'Alright, Miss Smith,' interrupted Roger. 'You two, keep your opinions to yourselves!'
Privately he quite agreed with the other rank's opinions; he'd seen the acres of dispirited Italian POW's from Operation Compass and felt that Italians were more a comic-opera opponent than a serious military foe. Given that the local Italians were armed to the teeth whereas his own men – all two of them – were unarmed, diplomacy was the discreet option.
'How come you happen to have no weapons?' asked Sarah sweetly, with the open expression of a maiden aunt. 'Oh – could it be because the Italians managed to defeat you?'
She might very well have poked a lit taper into a dental cavity to judge how both British soldiers responded.
'I don't care!' she snapped at them. 'We have to deal with the here and now. With horrible alien monsters, who kill as soon as look at you. The Italians are humans and you had better understand that. Humans!'
If an officer had shouted at them, if a sergeant had bullied them, if a politician had tried to cajole them, the men in the back of that Chevrolet would not have been remotely impressed. Confronted with a slight female journalist speaking from the heart, they were motivated by a combination of guilt and hope.
'I can hear an engine,' said Corporal Mickleborough, with genuine surprise, an emotion that cut across worries about current terrestrial comrades. 'And it's not a truck.'
'It's an aircraft,' said Albert with assurance.
Indeed it was. All eyes turned to the skies, and the outline of a high-winged aeroplane that droned across the desert, failing to make a deviation or diversion. The metal insect went from east to west, then back again, droning away like a dragonfly.
Roger recognised the behaviour of a spotter aircraft, a type of plane that visited the battlefield to detect the opposition and direct artillery fire upon them. Or, perhaps, a photo-reconnaisance plane, out to take pictures of the depot.
'A Lysander,' announced Albert. He glanced at the others. 'The RAF and Army use them for reconaissance. Very low stalling speed.'
'That's it! Thirteen Corps have decided to investigate us!' declared Roger, with a touch of glee. 'There'll be a column here any time soon.'
Dominione looked less impressed.
'We will not be able to communicate with them, nor they with their headquarters.'
Sarah passed this on to Roger, and anticipated his question first.
'Why not? Because our radio is being deliberately interfered with. I suspect the – the monsters are responsible. We tried to contact our headquarters at Tenth Army and were unable to do so.'
That was the unpleasant conclusion. Nobody outside their little circle knew what was really happening down here, and nobody would find out.
Excellency Lord Sur felt both apprehensive and angry.
His anger was understandable. The last two surviving prisoners, a heretic and that alien Thedoctor, managed to escape from their holding cell. From the very middle of his citadel! Questions were already being asked, he could tell. Oh, he hadn't told anyone official about the shocking oversight, no, not at all. There would be spies in his household staff willing to pass on the information to other Lords and Excellencies, which led to the apprehension.
What would the other aristocrats of the coast think about one of their number who allowed a heretic to escape? And an alien? It was many generations since an aristocrat had been placed under detention and trialled. Long enough for Sur to worry about being made an example, as a novel form of entertainment.
The escape wasn't the worst part, either. Two fugitives loose in the desert wouldn't be a problem for long, as thirst or hunger would kill them quickly. These two had made their way along the coastline to the trans-mat platform and been sent to Target World Seventeen. Not only that, they had contrived to drop two tons of metal sled on the control console and render the whole equipment useless. Useless! Until it could be repaired and tested.
Sur picked up a kinked and gnarled metal bar from the table at his side, and took out his anger on the ancient metal, twisting and scrolling the metal by brute force.
The trans-mat, useless again. At this end. Just when Homeworld needed to send Warrior detachments to the target and exploit it, the ability to do so had deserted them. Already he had quintupled the guard, and was now petitioning for more sleepers to be woken from hibernation as extra guards. The permission would be granted, he felt sure, since there were so many sources of energy on the target world to be exploited.
But how he had underestimated that alien, Thedoctor! Cunning and clever simultaneously, that one. Sur strongly suspected that there'd been an error in translation, that Thedoctor was simply named Doctor, or maybe even Doc. His level of intellect presupposed a bisyllabic name, perhaps even a monosyllabic one.
A most worrying foe. Just to try and fool his fellow aristocrats, Sur ordered the announcement to be made that both heretic Sorbusa and alien Thedoctor were dead, killed by valiant and watchful Warriors at the trans-mat.
Farmer Imgelissa nodded to his assistant, Nurbonissa. The younger bio-vore used his rake to prod forward another youngster.
'Is it true?' squeaked the newcomer. 'Aliens walk amongst us? That the time of the Warrior is coming to an end?'
Imgelissa paused for a moment, remembering the strange, huge bio-vore encountered in the shallows. A throwback, what the aristos called a "heretic". Then there was the small alien creature, obviously intelligent and self-aware, who foretold that the Warrior culture was doomed to die.
No alien life-forms had ever walked on the barren lands of Homeworld, not in ten thousand years of recorded history. Yet the first to do so spoke of what every Farmer dreamed about: freedom.
'Is it true? Most assuredly it is! Did I not see it with my own eyes! Did I not hear it with my own ears! Our time is coming, Farmer. Only remember that, our time is coming.'
"Bio-morphic Spawning" read Assault Leader Icono in a previously-ignored section of his manual. "Segregation of bio-vores liable to undergo bifurcation is advised in order to avoid cross-contamination of biomorphic inheritance."
This made novel reading to him. To him, and to all bio-vores from the past eight thousand years. For all that time, there had been no new bio-vores created because there simply did not exist the energy resources to sustain any population growth.
'Locate an area of this site that can be easily guarded,' he ordered. 'Then allocate to it all Warriors liable to produce energy-reliant offspring.'
The idea was to corral all the problems in one area and thus deal with them altogether.
In the meantime there was much to cope with. The alien prisoners had provided them with much-needed energy, though that would require topping-up soon. The wounded Warriors also provided energy, part of the harsh Darwinian survivalist approach of Icono and his bio-vore legions. The leader felt somewhat puzzled at the demise of several of his garrison, killed by mysterious missiles that were propelled kinetically. A liquid that operated on an extreme exothermic reaction principle was involved.
All part of an alien evironment. Like the metal vehicles. Not being able to operate them with their alien crews now dead, they had mostly been left where they ceased to function. A pity, since three Transport Cars were now damaged and inoperable. A Mobile Repair Unit was being constructed at the Infiltration Complex, using metals from an alien vehicle towed back there. Icono remembered the astonishment when the technical staff first saw the trophy. So much metal!
There must be a problem with the trans-mat at the other end, too, because no further supplies came through once that heretic appeared and was killed. Fortunately a big shipment of bottled algae came through as well.
Not a great problem; they had enough energy here to keep going. Not only that, the scanner unit would be operational shortly, enabling them to locate other sources of bio-mass.
Albert and the Professor conferred with each other for several minutes, discussing in hushed but urgent tones. Sarah kept an eye on them, wondering what mischief they were cooking up.
The Italians were grateful for what little food there was, cooking the stew and sardines and accepting the water. Their desert car now stood alongside the Chevrolet, with one of the crew keeping sentry at the lip of the wadi. Periodically he would be replaced. When Dominione came back from his stint, Roger sent Tam to keep watch.
'The black tanks do not move,' reported the Tenente to Sarah, who passed the message on.
'That's just it, I don't think they can move around much,' interrupted Albert. Everyone bar Templeman stared at him. He clarified the statement.'When the Professor and the Doctor and I were stuck at the Temple, we saw lots of black – I suppose you could call them bulldozers, really – lots of them excavating the site. They had to go back into the factory building every half-hour to be re-charged.'
'They run on batteries?' asked Roger, half-amused.
'No, no, the Doctor said they used - er – what was it? oh yes! "Geo-thermal energy". Comes from the ground and doesn't run out. That's how the buildings work, they run on this geo-thermal stuff, and the vehicles do too.'
'Oh, I see!' exclaimed Sarah. 'If they move about too much their energy runs out and they have to toddle off to get charged up again?'
Albert nodded. Roger stroked his chin reflectively. A sensible commander would rotate the vehicles on duty at the depot, sending a few back to get re-charged whilst others stood guard. It wouldn't do for his little band of heroes to assume the enemy were stuck in place, unable to pursue.
'Oh for a battery of artillery,' he mused. 'A few salvoes would turn those black beasts into a shower of glass.'
'We haven't got any artillery, and we're not likely to get any!' said Sarah, with a touch of acid to her tone. 'We need to deal with what we've got and can get, not pie-in-the-sky.'
She had to translate that last idiom for the Italians.
Lieutenant Murray looked back at his small column of transport: "Murraycol", short for Murray Column. A lorried infantry company in Ford CMP's, two Daimler armoured cars, and a section of Bren Carriers, all led by him in one of the new American runabouts, a GP, pronounced "Jeep".
'Off to the arse end of nowhere, eh sir?' asked his driver. Murray tried not to grin at the description.
'Orders, Corporal, orders.' Which were to travel to, and re-occupy, the FSD at Mersa Martuba, where the garrison had carelessly allowed the Eyeties to take over. 'Shouldn't be too much trouble. Show up and shout, howzat.'
Eighteen: The Snake on Square Ninety-NineThe Doctor knew that there were hotter places in the known Universe than the Sahara. Many, many hotter places. Why, within the Solar system alone there was Venus, where lead boiled in the daytime, and Mercury, where the sunside experienced –
'Not very persuasive, are we, Doctor?' he chided himself. He had travelled under cover of darkness to the far west of Makin Al-Jinni, before daylight broke in the sky and pinned him to the sands like an insect on a slide. Now, feeling the twin problems of heat and dehydration, he wondered about where else he had visited that might be hotter.
'Vulcania, of course. The Earth of Project Inferno, after project failure. Arrakis. The Arabian deserts.'
Which brought to mind mirages of the latter. There seemed to be an object out there on the gravel and sandstone that might be real. It swam in his vision like a fish in deep water, yet the position remained constant. After several hours the object resolved into a truck, one of a myriad used by humans in the mid-twentieth century. Olive-drab paint scheme, outlines broken by disruptive camouflage, it had to be part of the military effort here in the desert.
The truck remained just where it sat when he first noticed it, immobile and unwanted. A desert orphan.
Static, the Chevrolet provided him with welcome shade, under the tailboard. From that vantage point he looked out across the gravel and sand, seeing the distant depot, with an array of non-human vehicles outside on sentry duty.
Canny in desert survival, he cut the hose leading to the radiator and was rewarded by a sluice of tepid water tasting of rust and rubber. Still, it was liquid, and he gulped it down, gagging a little at the taste.
Now feeling more like an investigator than a coroner and happy about it, the Doctor noseyed around the truck, discovering an ammunition box containing various tins and packets of food. No water, unfortunately.
Peering across the sand from the covered rear of the truck, he noticed several other immobile vehicles, big open cars armed with machine guns. No occupants.
Not a good sign. These derelicts must belong to the Italians who captured the depot, and who were in turn overwhelmed by the bio-vores. The bio-vores who now stood guard over their conquest.
Sarah! Oh I hope that girl had sense enough to get well away!
One of those Italian desert cars would be a sensible and stylish way to travel across the desert, lower in profile than the truck and doubtless faster, too. What would divert the bio-vores once he tried to drive the car away?
Well, how about a truck mysteriously approaching the depot? That should do the job. He carefully pulled the steering column apart, exposing the wiring and started the engine whilst putting the handbrake on. The next part was to slowly release the ratchet on the handbrake until it only just held, then put the truck into first gear, lashing down the accelerator with a length of string.
Hefting his newly-acquired box of food, the Doctor jumped down from the truck and skulked, as he felt it , towards the nearest empty Italian car. The impetus given to the truck by his jumping from the rear must have jarred the handbrake loose, and the truck began to move slowly forward.
It was tricky, trying to keep the car between himself and the guardians of the depot, and rendered trickier by the bulky ammunition box. Their attention may have been on the truck slowly chugging at them instead of the still-stationary Saharianas, or the sound of gunfire that came crackling over the depot.
The interior of the armed Italian car showed a collection of well-stowed tools, weapons, ammunition, canteens and tins marked "AM". Once again, showing a worrying familiarity with illegal methods of vehicle ignition, the Doctor began to turn the engine over and drove off, keeping one eye on his rear view mirror.
I need to find Sarah! he worried. I hope that gunfire was nothing to do with her. How I hope!
Sarah felt a little of the burden the Doctor regularly carried, finding it difficult to reconcile the British and Italians together. A bit of wit, a bit of humour and some old-fashioned female last-resort flirting helped to keep tempers calm. The amused disgust of the British soldiers towards their new allies was muted when they recognised the machine-gun mounted on the Sahariana.
'Hey, Tam, that's a Bren gun!' pointed Davey. 'One of our British guns, Miss,' he explained to Sarah. She translated this, and the Italian gunner nodded with a rueful grin. He gave a long speech in Italian, which Sarah translated for the British audience sitting in the back of the Chevrolet.
'He says – Torrevechio, the machine-gunner – says that they are glad to get their hands on British machine guns like the Bren because their own are always jamming. Italian grenades are useless, their rifles are feeble and only a madman with a death-wish would operate one of their light tanks.'
One good thing was the gradual recovery of Sergente Cappriccio. The paralysing ray's effects slowly wore off, until the burly NCO could gingerly sit and talk without help.
'I felt as if hammers hit me, all down my side,' he explained to Sarah. 'It still stings.'
Lieutenant Llewellyn in the meantime was working on when British forces might put in an appearance. They needed to be warned about the threat in Mersa Martuba, what it constituted and in what strength. The Italian radio didn't pick up anything and wouldn't transmit, so that medium was out of the running.
'We need to try and warn the force en route,' he told Sarah.
'How can you be so sure they're coming?' asked Sarah, quite justifiably. 'All we've seen is a solitary aircraft.'
Roger sighed, an expression of despair at the civilian's lack of understanding.
'Logistics, Sarah, logistics. No army can move in the desert without huge amounts of supplies, which is just what Mersa Martuba was established for. The schedule for advancing on Tripoli might have slipped but that depot contains hundreds of tons of supplies we need.' Casting a quick glance at Dominione, aware that such explanations were slightly undiplomatic, he added:
'Besides, Thirteen Corps won't want the Italians pinching our supplies.'
Sarah shrugged in silent acknowledgement of the other's argument.
'How can we warn anyone about anything?' asked Templeman, taking a sudden interest in the topic when everyone had assumed he was asleep.
'We can't,' admitted the officer. 'Not unless we get north of the depot and intercept them. The problem is that I don't know which direction they might come from.'
El Agheila, Benghazi, Mechili, Tobruk, Bardia, Sollum – half a dozen places covering a full one hundred and eighty degrees.
'And we'd need the Sahariana,' added Roger, looking again at Dominione. 'I don't fancy running into any of those big glass monsters in an unarmed truck.'
Surprisingly enough, Dominione was easily persuaded to lend "his" vehicle, with the proviso that the gunner, Torrevechio, went with it. Roger agreed, and Corporal Mickleborough drove.
Roger had a solar compass, a relic of his days at the dig before the outbreak of war. His plan was to head out of the wadi, then travel north and gradually curve over to the north-east, either intercepting the hopefully approaching convoy or at least picking up it's tracks and following them. Whilst the corporal drove he would scan the radio wavelengths for any traffic. Privately he doubted that he'd pick up anything. The alien's radio-jamming was pretty effective.
Their trek northwards amounted to a long, tiring slog across gravel and sand, bogging down in soft sand several times and needing to resort to sand-channels. The sole canteen of water got passed around sparingly.
After nearly three hours they spotted evidence of the passage of a large number of vehicles – tracks in the sand, including what looked like caterpillar treads. They set off to follow, stopping to check ahead for likely routes the presumed British convoy had taken. Despite losing the trail occasionally on stoney ground, the Sahariana made good time, catching up with the vehicles they were following to the extent that Roger could see them in his binoculars.
With startling speed they caught up with the convoy, Roger realising that the other vehicles had slowed down.
'Find higher ground,' he ordered Tam. 'We'll see what's slowing them down.'
That meant a short detour south-west, leaving them half a mile from the now halted convoy. Roger counted an open staff car, three Bren Carriers, five trucks and two armoured cars – Daimlers, he noted, mounting a two-pounder gun. Thirteen Corps took threats to their depot seriously.
'Sir,' warned Tam, pointing southwards. A scattered arc of black dots were out on the desert sands, but at such a distance that it wasn't possible to know if they were advancing or not. The head of the convoy must have seen their opponents too, and stopped to decide what to do. The convoy started moving again, just as Roger decided to try catching up.
Without warning, a sudden enormous ripple of heat swam upwards from the sands, temporarily obscuring the convoy in a vast bubble of hot air. When visibility cleared again, none of the vehicles were moving.
'Slow down!' hissed Roger, not understanding what was happening and not liking it one bit.
For Murraycol, the end was swift and frightening. Lieutenant Murray, riding in his Jeep, began to lead the column forward until a sudden enormous jolt hit them, accompanied by an incredibly intense blast of heat.
Briefly the Lieutenant wondered if he'd been hit by a shell, until he realised his arms and legs were still attached and intact. An appaling stink struck his nostrils, a compound of acrid chemicals, burnt metal and burning rubber. The Jeep engine raced wildly, then stalled.
Murray stepped out of the Jeep, realising that the whole car had dropped into the – and then he hopped back into the Jeep, cradling the smoking heel of his boot, and the tender sole of his foot.
'We're sitting in a load of glass, sir!' exclaimed the amazed driver. Lieutenant Murray examined the still-hot crust on the bottom of his boot sole and looked out across the smooth, hot surface. Leaning over the side of the Jeep caused him to break out in a sweat caused by the heat radiating off the surface.
His car had sunk up to the middle of the axles into the glass. The tyres were smoking and stinking, and the paint bubbled and flaked from the bodywork. Looking behind, his heart sank at the sight of every other vehicle in the column mired in the vast saucer of glass.
Aghast, the three occupants of the Sahariana watched from the safety of a hollow in the sands. The whole column stood immobile, as the deadly black tanks grew larger and larger.
'Why don't they debus?' asked Tam. Torrevechio guessed the question's meaning and gestured a man touching a hot object.
'The sand got turned to – well, it must be glass, mustn't it? Molten glass is ferociously hot. Must be waiting for it to cool down, but they have to get moving before those things get here.'
Hurry up! Hurry up! Roger shouted to himself. He groaned in despair as the visible occupants of the vehicles began to slump over, victims of the paralysing rays from the now nearby black tanks. Tam began to swear furiously under his breath.
The turret of one armoured car slowly turned to face an approaching black tank, and the gun fired. The two-pounder gun was similar to that used by the Doctor to destroy the unmanned Sentinel and it shattered the black tank apart in a cloud of black glass fragments, followed by streaks of flashing light as tracer bullets smashed into the remainders. Nothing moved in the acre of brittle shards left behind.
'Nice one!' exulted Tam. 'That's the stuff to give 'em.'
Showing discretion and sense, the remaining black tanks, three of them, began to reverse. Not before the second armoured car fired three shots, one hitting a victim squarely in the middle, splitting it in two like a lightbulb. Bodies, living and dead, tumbled from the shattered halves. Tracer rounds from the Daimler's BESA machine-gun began to fall amongst the scattered survivors, bowling over several.
'Excellente!' muttered Torrevechio. Roger felt a brief lifting of his spirits – maybe the column could hold off the aliens!
Unfortunately not. Once again a great ripple of hot air went up from the column, merely from the rear this time, and the watchers saw both armoured cars completely submerge in a pool of liquid glass that focussed only on them. The other vehicles of the convoy, with their limp occupants, remained where they were.
Tam broke into an unbroken stream of curses, whilst Torrevechio looked pale. The gunner looked into Roger's eyes and the young officer felt the other man's pity.
'Sorry,' said the Italian, in English, shaking his head.
'Hsst! Those bloody monsters are coming on again!' hissed Tam.
The two remaining bio-vore transports disgorged dozens of infantry, who moved forward in widely-dispersed lines. By the time they reached the lake of glass it had cooled sufficiently for them to cross it. The unconscious bodies of the helpless British soldiers were unceremoniously dragged away, to be stowed aboard the transports.
'Can't we do something, sir?' asked Tam. Roger shook his head, hating that they must stay away and isolated.
'We're in the middle of miles of sand, Corporal. The instant we open fire, they'll drop us into a pit of liquid glass.'
Tam chewed his nails and grimaced at the now departing aliens.
'Okay. Let's get down there and see if anyone escaped or survived,' ordered Roger. There was no confidence in his voice.
The lack of expectation was justified. No survivors remained. Roger spent a full ten seconds staring at the two Daimlers, trapped like flies in amber, the top of their turrets a good three feet below the surface of their solid tomb, hatches ajar, tyres crushed and melted to sad dark remnants.
God, what it must be like, crushed and roasted alive by molten glass!
'Sir, there's rifles and tommy guns and grenades in the trucks. Should we get a few?'
'Aqua,' said Torrevechio, holding up a dozen canteens by their straps.
'Yes. What food you can find, too.'
They didn't spend long salvaging from the vehicles; the heat radiated and reflected by and from the sand was intense, and they felt like looters. Roger made sure to unseat a Bren gun from one of the carriers, and a wooden crate full of loaded magazines for the weapon.
Shadows were lengthening and the sun sinking by the time the Sahariana reached the rendezvous in the wadi. Tam drove without lights, deeming the jarring and bumping they suffered due to lack of illumination more than compensated by the stealth provided.
Approaching at a crawl, all three were surprised to see another Sahariana parked alongside the Chevrolet.
'Welcome back!' greeted Sarah, waving and smiling brightly, an expression which dimmed the instant she saw how dejected the three men were.
'How did that get here?' asked Roger, pointing at the newly-arrived desert car.
'Simple. I drove it,' said the Doctor, jumping down from the rear of the Bedford. 'What news of your relief column?'
The young officer's brows darkened.
'Wiped out. Either rendered unconscious and taken away or – or drowned in molten glass.'
Sarah shuddered.
'How horrid!'
The Doctor narrowed his eyes at Roger's news.
' "Molten glass"? Let me guess, the sands were suddenly rendered liquid? Hmm. Yes. An inducted geo-thermal pulse, I shouldn't wonder.'
Nobody within earshot understood what this meant, so the Time Lord clarified a little. Not too much, he didn't want these humans thinking he was equally a threat.
'Geo-thermal energy, used by the bio-vores to power buildings and vehicles. A limitless source of energy. One of the buildings at the Infiltration Complex is obviously able to manipulate geo-thermal energy at a distance, thereby turning the sand into glass. They created a barrier, maybe having tracked your fellows by their life-signs, both to trap their potential attackers and defend their new conquest.'
Roger and Torrevechio unloaded the arms, tinned food and canteens of water they had removed from the doomed convoy.
'Sustenance enough. We won't perish from lack of food or water,' observed the Doctor.
'The other Sahariana had some food and water in it,' explained Sarah. 'And the Doctor brought more from that truck Albert and the Professor came in.'
Roger looked for Dominione, who was over at the wadi rim, keeping an eye on the depot.
'Miss Sm – Sarah. I want to apologise to the Tenente. Can you take a message to him?'
'I speak fluent Italian: Northern and Southern dialects, Sicilian, Neapolitan, Milanese, heroic couplets and ribald verse to order,' grinned the Doctor. 'Your message is?'
Tenente Dominione twitched with visible annoyance at first when the Doctor passed on Roger's terms of apology. Sarah could see the body language from the other side of the wadi, the officer being outlined against the sands by dusk. His start of horror meant that the Doctor told him about the molten glass ambush.
Later, when relieved by Torrevechio, the Italian officer sought out Roger, beckoning Sarah over for translation.
'He says that he is sorry your men perished in such a fashion,' she conveyed. 'And that for the forseeable future he will fight alongside you as a brother in arms.'
'Brothers,' nodded Dominione, in bad English. He held out a hand.
'Frateri,' ventured Roger, shaking the offered hand.
Over in the truck, slightly raised voices could be heard.
'You effing well pay attention Private Menzies! If we get the chance to kill those horrid mucking monsters, we take it – I don't want to hear about how we were unlucky and the Eyeties were incompetent.'