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As the tank was lying upside down, that meant the snout of its main blastca
BLOHW-OW-OW-OW-OW!
He was still alive. It hadn't flashed back. The whole tank on recoil bucked into the air! Hastily, hard put to keep his hands on the controls, Lombar started the tank engines. He began to guide the tank off, flying it upside down. BLOHW-OW-OW-OW-OW! roared the blastca
Ahead lay the yellow mist that was Palace City. Jettero Heller, clad again in the red general's uniform just in case he got shot down, flew the tug at twenty-five hundred feet above the desert floor. He was flying backwards. Between him and Palace City was what he was pushing. The sun was on his right and he did not think that they could see him. Their beams would also be very cluttered by what he had in grip. The traction motors were singing. Their throttles were barely cracked open. If he put too much clamp on his "tow"-a tow, even though he was backing up with it-he would choke the things to death. The only view he had was on his screens. They were shimmering and glittering but he could see the images. He marvelled now at how the Apparatus had built up the defense perimeter outside that yellow mist. Burrowed into the sand were shellproof bunkers, three rows deep, three rings. He magnified his image and examined them. Artillery and more artillery, infantry galore, he recognized the posts that meant electronic barricades that killed if you sought to go through them. If those three rings surrounded even an ordinary fortress one would play the devil with trying to take it. The yellow mist was something else. Even without the outer defenses, no assault could penetrate it. The time factor was its safeguard. A shell fired at it in present time would explode in time that was already past and do nothing. Furthermore, except at the gates, the whole thing was covered now with an electronic net, powered by the black hole in the mountain. This net shrouded warped space and any shell or tank or ship that tried to dive through it would be devoured both by time and energy. It had only one point of weakness-where the vortex of the captive black hole curved inward at the back of the mountain in which the black hole was embedded. Only an engineer would know of that, but it could hardly be called a closely guarded secret: you couldn't shell the city through it because the mountain was in the way. If an enemy tried to slide a ship through it, the ship would have to be so small the assaulting force would be a nothing. It would also have to clamber over such gigantic rocks and boulders that only a suicide squad could get in. He had used it once before when he brought the Emperor out. As very few people knew of it, he doubted it had been safeguarded. He was watching his screens. Yes! he was getting an audience. Despite the shimmering nature of his picture, he was getting a much enlarged view of some Apparatus defense-perimeter officers. They were standing on a bunker rim, looking toward him with glasses. And well they might, for what Heller was pushing, at the range of ten miles still, might very well be mistaken for the dust of a rebel force approaching. But it wasn't rebels: they were probably still embarking at Camp Endurance and when they came, it would be from the sky. Only Heller was engaged on this attack. On his screen he could see the glasses of the Apparatus commanders flashing. They were wavirig signals to get men into trenches and on the ledges of artillery. Slowly, Heller, still flying backwards, pushed his strange load. Then, when the range was less than five miles, he saw the officers begin to wave down and cancel their orders. For now they recognized what was creeping up on them. Wind devils! Heller was hard put to keep them twirling. They seldom if ever got this close to Palace City. They were the spi