Battlefield Earth

Did Terl send you?”

Zzt! The times Terl had muttered and rumbled on about Zzt! Jo

He couldn't resist it. “I came to bust up the machinery,” said Jo

Another Psychlo might have laughed. Not Zzt. “That goes without doubt, animal! Answer me or I’ll-'

“You'll what?” said Jo

Zzt had gone silent.

Jo

"How'd you get yourself trapped aboard here?” said Jo

"Terl!" It was practically a scream. “The ," and there followed a string of Psychlo profanity that went on for minutes.

Jo

There followed a new string of Psychlo obscenities, so violent that Jo

A pause, almost hopefully then, “Did Terl give you the keys to the preset?”

“No. Can't it be blasted open?”

Apathy. “No.”

“Can't you tear out the cables?”

“That would just crash this thing, and you can't do that either. They're armored with molecular lamination metal. He didn't give you the keys.” It was a groan. Then savage: “You dimwit! Why didn't you get the keys from him before you came out here?”

“He was a bit tied up,” said Jo

“There aren't any nots either,” said Zzt. He was feeling sick again from the rolling of the drone.

Jo

So Zzt was no help. Jo

Zzt had thrown a wrench. It was still imbedded in the side of the mask. If that had hit him in the head-

A wrench? Wait. What could one do with a wrench?

Jo

The second he started to straighten up from retrieving the wrench, Zzt tried to charge.

The gun was off target. Jo

Jo

Zzt was scrambling around on the floor, trying to find his mirror. It had become wedged in a loose plate. A loose plate?

Zzt used the mirror to check where the animal was. Then he got to work with his talons and a small metal ruler he always carried to pry up the fifty-pound plate. It was hard going, but what a projectile it would make!

The lethal drone roared on toward Scotland.

Chapter 10

Jo

Locked, armored preset box. Yes, but that was just a control box. He had seen nothing else that took a key.

He was finding it hard to think. It was cold! These ancient Air Force flying suits were supposed to be electrically warmed, but they had not been able to rig any batteries and the originals hadn't been made for a shelf life of a thousand years. The blood from his cut forehead kept messing up his faceplate quite in addition to the way it kept misting. What was the temperature where they were flying? A power zoom to get up to freezing, that was for sure.

This wrench...

He caught a flicker of movement up toward the front of the ship and fired a warning shot.

Two problems. No, three. Zzt, Nup and a Mark 32 on top, and how to disable this drone!

Old Staffor used to say he was “too smart.” A lot of village people had thought that. He wasn't feeling very smart now.

He knew he should get rid of Zzt. But firing shots in this armored interior was not just dangerous to Zzt. It was dangerous to himself. All these frames sent every shot madly caroming about, and twice now one had whistled past his own ears and another had hit his plane on rebound.

Suppose Zzt were a puma. How would he go about killing it? Well, one didn't walk up to a puma; one waited for the puma to spring. No, now suppose Zzt were a bear in a cave. That was a more fitting example. Walk into a cave with a bear in it? Suicide.

He thought of setting a time fuse on a limpet and pitching it up there, getting in his plane, and depending on its armor to protect him. But there was a limit to the way magnetic grips held and he might blow up his own plane into an unusable state. He wished he had a grenade, but all the grenades they had found were duds and they hadn't worked out how to use them. He even thought of taking one of the fuel or ammunition cartridges– of which he had plenty for the plane– throwing it up there, and shooting into it. It would explode, that was for sure. But one cartridge might not kill Zzt. Psychlos were very tough, very tough indeed. Zzt had once beaten Terl, he had heard, and Zzt truly hated him– in fact, had almost killed him once. No, he was not going to try any stunt of walking up there even with an assault rifle firing. He did not know how deep that recess was or even what recess Zzt was in, and Zzt might very well be armed still.

Nup he had nullified for the moment. Lord, it was cold.

One thing at a time. His job was not Zzt or Nup. It was to stop this drone.

He had better get awfully smart. Fast!

Because of his misting and blood-stained faceplate, he had not spotted the tiny mechanic's mirror that watched him. He got busy untangling the problem of this drone.

Where Psychlos couldn't use a molecular parting and resealing tool, they used nuts and bolts. And he was sure that this armor wouldn't yield to a “metal knife,” as they called the tool in Psychlo mechanic's slang. He had gathered from Zzt that this was molecular lamination, layer after layer of different but binding metals. Good. So somewhere here they had used nuts.

He caught a flick of motion and fired another shot. The bullet ricocheted three times and went whining out the door.

Maybe one of these floor plates... He laughed suddenly. Squarely in front of the ship, in a shadow the lights left between the skids, was a floor plate held down by nuts!

He reduced the jaw size of the wrench and got down between the skids. Another small adjustment and he had the size. There were eight nuts. They came off very easily– these had been removed recently. He put the nuts on one of the skid tops that had an inset groove. Heavy, they stayed there despite the roll.

One of the plane skids was on the far edge of the plate. He pounded it with the heel of the wrench and it loosened.

He pried the plate up with the lip of the wrench. He intended just to set it aside, but as it came loose the drone rolled and it went sliding out of his numb hands, through the door and into the screaming wind and emptiness. Who cared?