Spartan Planet - A. Bertram Chandler [51]
"There's the birth-machine room," suggested somebody. "I've heard said that it could withstand a hydrogen-bomb blast."
"Impossible!" snapped Heraklion. "Nobody here is sterile, and to take the time to scrub up and break out robes at this time . . ."
"The birth machine won't be much use with nobody around to operate it," said Brasidus.
Heraklion pondered this statement, and while he was doing so a heavy desk crashed from the top of the pile of furniture barricading the door. Halfheartedly, three of the nurses struggled to replace it, and dislodged a table and a couple of chairs. "All right," he said suddenly. "The B-M room it is. Terry, run along and round up the other women and get them there at once. Doctor Hermes, get along there yourself with all these people."
"And what about the children?" Achron, in his agitation, was clutching Heraklion's sleeve. "What about the children?"
"H'm. Yes. I suppose that somebody had better remain on duty in each ward."
"No, Doctor," said Brasidus. "It won't do at all. Those wild animals out there hate the nurses as much as they hate you. To the hoplites, they're helots who live better than soldiers do. To the helots, they're overprivileged members of their own caste. Those nurses with the villa outside and the crèche have all been killed. I saw it happen."
"But the children . . ." Achron's voice was a wail.
"They'll be safe enough. They might miss a meal or a diaper change, but it won't kill 'em."
"And if there's no other way out of it," put in Peggy Lazenby, "we'll make them our personal charge." She winced as an uproar from the nearer ward almost drowned out the heavy thudding of the battering ram. "I sincerely hope that it never comes to that!"
One of the nurses screamed. The pile of furniture was tottering. The men below it tried to shore it with their bodies, but not for long. A spear probed through the widening gap between the two valves, somehow found its mark in soft human flesh. There was another scream, of pain, this time, not terror. There were other spearheads thrusting hopefully and not altogether blindly. There was a scurrying retreat from the crumbling barricade. Suddenly it collapsed, burying the wounded man, and the great valves edged slowly and jerkily inwards, all the pressure of the mob behind them, pushing aside and clearing a way through the wreckage. And through the widening aperture gusted the triumphant howling and shouting, and a great billow of acrid smoke.
The mob leaders were through, scrambling over the broken furniture, their dulled weapons at the ready. There were a half dozen common soldiers, armed with swords. There was a fat sergeant, some kind of pistol in his right hand. He fired, the report sharp in spite of the general uproar. He fired again.
Beside Brasidus, Peggy Lazenby gasped, caught hold of him with her left hand as she staggered. Then her own pistol was out, and the filament of incandescence took the sergeant full in the chest. But he came on, still he came on, still firing, the hoplites falling back to allow him passage, while the Arcadian fumbled with her gun, trying to transfer it from her right hand to her left. He came on, and Brasidus ducked uselessly as two bullets whined past his head in quick succession.
Then he fell to his knees as Achron shoved him violently to one side. The nurse's frail body jerked and shuddered as the projectiles thudded into him, but he, like the sergeant, refused to die. He lifted the table leg with which he had armed himself, brought it smashing down with all his strength onto the other's head. The wood splintered, but enough remained for a second blow, and a third. No more were necessary. The sergeant sagged to the floor, and Achron, with a tired sigh, collapsed on top of the gross body.
"He's dead," muttered Brasidus, kneeling beside his friend. "He's dead."
But mourning would have to wait. Hastily he shifted Achron's body to one side so that he