Demon

Orders had been coming through. They would involve re-fueling at bases under the command of other Luftmorders. The thought was distasteful to him, but Orders were Orders.

He knew there was an army, now marching through Cronus.

He knew that, at some point, Orders would come telling him to attack that army.

He knew there were enemies in the sky. This did not frighten him.

It all made him feel warm and contented.

About the only nuisance in his life were all the angels that had been coming around lately.

They flew quite close, cluttering curiously. Green ones and red ones. He was contemptuous of them. Their jelly-bodies would make amusing targets for his red-eyes and sidewinders... but there were no Orders. He was contemptuous of the angels. They had so little power. They were so inefficient as flying machines.

They had begun building nests that hung, as he did, from the cable. There were three of them below him, great bulging structures that seemed to be made of mud and wattle. He considered them eyesores.

There had been four. He had loosed a red-eye at one, to test its strength. It had come apart like rice paper. The red and green feathers that drifted out of it and the alarmed squawks of the survivors had amused him.

But he had tried no more shots.

He awaited his mission.

SEVEN

Conal had wanted to lead an attack on the base in Cronus. He had argued his point long and well, until all Cirocco could do was let him in on her top secret plan, the one that might or might not work. There was just no other way Conal was going to sit still while Robin-and the rest of his friends, of course-marched helplessly under those bloodthirsty monsters perched on that loathsome cable.

When he heard the plan he agreed, reluctantly. It still put Robin in danger, but there was no way to get completely around that.

"It has to be this way, Conal," Cirocco said. "I suspect an attack on the Cronus base will bring in reinforcements from all around the wheel, before we've had a chance to pull our surprise. If enough of them show up, you and your people could be wiped out. Then we'll be vulnerable to air attack all the way to Hyperion."

So Conal sat at his base now, well-concealed in the northern highlands of Iapetus, and brooded. It seemed an eternity. He didn't sleep well. He never went more than two hundred meters from his plane, which was always fueled and ready.

The other pilots played cards, told jokes, and generally tried to pass the time. These were mostly men and women who had flown military aircraft back on Earth. Conal didn't have much in common with them. College kids, most of them. They looked down on him, resented the fact Cirocco had placed him in command ... but admired his skills in aviation. He was a natural, they said. That was true, but the biggest factor that made them listen to him was that he had more air time in Gaea than all the rest of them put together. He knew the special conditions of Gaea, knew what the tough little planes could endure in the high pressure and low gravity, understood the coriolis storms that so confused many of the other pilots.

They tolerated him, and learned from him.

He sat by the radio every waking hour.

The base itself maintained radio silence. It was their hope that Gaea did not know its location, and their suspicion that the buzz bombs could hear radio communications. So they listened to the forward observers in Metis, and to the terse communications from the advancing army.

At last the alert came.

"Bandits at eight o'clock," said the voice on the radio. "... six, seven ... there's the eighth, nine ... and Big Daddy makes ten."

The crews scrambled. Conal was already in the air when the rest of the message came.

"They're dropping down to the deck. Can't see them anymore. Station one signing off. Come in station two, station three."

Station one was in the southern highlands of Metis. The people there had the biggest telescope in Gaea-requisitioned, as so many other high-tech things had been, from Chris's improbable basements-and it was constantly trained on the Metis central cable.

Two and three were to the east and west of the cable. No matter which direction the Eighth went, Conal would know soon. He expected them to turn east, toward Bellinzona and the army; still, it was always possible this was a diversion or a trick.

But he was pretty sure of one thing. The Fifth Wing was dropping down toward Cronus, and they didn't have far to go.

"Station three reporting. We have all ten bandits in sight. Heading ... due east, within the limits of our radar."

Three squadrons of five planes had scrambled at the initial alarm. Conal didn't like to think of how few planes were in reserve.

"This is the Big Canuck," Conal said. "Squad Leader Three, turn east and execute plan three."

"Roger, Canuck."

"And good luck to you."

"Roger," came the laconic reply. They would need it, Conal knew. The Eighth would head due east for as long as possible before disclosing their final destination by either turning sharp left for Bellinzona, or continuing toward Cronus and the army. Either way, the Third Squadron would take them on, outnumbered two to one.

Conal watched the five planes peel off, neat and sweet as an air show. He wished that was all it was.

They had been heading due south. Now he gave the order to turn to the east. Squads one and two would angle away from each other and then converge over the army from the north and south.

Just as they were completing the turn his radio gave him the message he had been dreading.

"This is Rocky Road. We are under attack from the air. No ground troops reported. Attackers are believed to be the Cronus Fifth, but unable to confirm at this time." There was the sound of an explosion. "Hurry up, you guys! We're getting chewed to pieces out here!"

At the first word from station one, the army executed their defense plan, meager as it was.

They had pushed on into Cronus from Ophion, over gently rolling land that left them hideously exposed from the air. They were moving into a narrowing neck of grassland that would eventually be squeezed out by the jungle to the south, and the sea of Hestia to the north.

There was no offensive action open to them. Nothing in the arsenal had any hope of hitting a buzz bomb. Attempts had been made to convert the Air Force's weaponry to ground-launched control, and they had been dismal failures. Cirocco had given it up, knowing she had already wasted too much of the Air Force's dwindling supplies in her self-indulgent display over Pandemonium. She would pay for it now, and so would everyone around her.

Bellinzona had recently begun the manufacture of gunpowder and nitroglycerine. The army had gunpowder, in the form of big rockets, but almost all the nitroglycerine-in the form of dynamite-had been diverted to a destination Cirocco would not disclose, which infuriated the Generals. But even if they had access to dynamite it would not have made much difference in fighting off an aerial attack. The rockets and their warheads were useful only as diversions. It was hoped the red-eyes and sidewinders would be attracted to their heat.

The bonfires had been constructed with the same principle in mind. Several dozen wagons were filled with dry wood and kerosene. As the attack was a

The main body of the army extinguished all lights, spread out, and set to work with their Perso