Feric found himself isolated with Best in a timeless universe of fiery battle, a world filled with foul Warriors surging forward, firing their machine guns, tearing their bare fingers to pieces against the steel armor plate, bursting into flame, ground to a thick red gruel beneath the treads of the tanks. His nostrils were filled with the aroma of roasted flesh mingled with the heady stench of gunpowder. His ears were deafened by a continuous surf-pounding of machine guns, cannon, engines, shrieks, grunts, groans, and squeaks. His flesh was a direct extenf sion of the machine gun he fired; the bullets seemed to emerge in a fiery stream from the depth of his own being, he could all but feel them ripping into the flesh of the Warriors who went down before his spurting weapon.
Through the tremors of the onrushing tank, he could feel the bodies being crushed beneath the treads.
He chanced to look at Best; the young hero was married to the controls of the tank and to his machine gun.
His face was set in a steel grimace of determination; in his 207
blue eyes was a fierce and iron ecstasy. For an instant their eyes met and they were united in the comradely communion of battle, transfigured together in a red mist beyond time or fatigue. Through the metal of the tank, the common weapon which they shared, their souls seemed to touch and merge for an instant in the greater communion that was the racial will. All this took place in the blink of an eye; their beings were not for an instant distracted from the sacred task.
The individual acts of heroism of thousands upon thousands of Helder soldiers merged into a racial epic of superhuman fanaticism, and transcendent glory. Motorcycle SS in sleek black leather plunged straight into the guns of the enemy, smashing reeking hairy legs and crushing Warriors with their machines, dispatching dozens of the monsters with th^ir truncheons even as bullets tore their flesh asunder. Helder tanks rammed their Zind counter-parts, overturned them, then set them ablaze with flamethrowers. Dive-bombers dropped death on the enemy from above; crippled planes deliberately dove straight into Zind tanks and war-wagons, going out in a bright blaze of glory. The motorized infantry left their trucks and dashed straight into the battle in wave after wave, perish'ns; in great numbers, but taking thousands upon thousands of Warriors with them down to final destruction.
The mystic merger between Peric, his heroic troops, and the racial will of Heldon was total; the Helder army fought as one unified organism with the will of Peric Jaggar at its heart. Not a man paid the slightest heed to his own life or personal safety; fear and fatigue were unknown.
Slowly, foot by foot, the Helder army pushed its way forward against the full weight of the gargantuan Zind horde. The forward ranks of the horde were reduced to an enormous herd of puking, gibbering, spitting, defecating, brainless red-eyed monstrosities running totally amok, hurling their huge naked bulks straight at the steel tanks, dashing directly into the muzzles of the Helder guns, slaying Helder and their own comrades with equal abandon. Flames were everywhere and the air was one great cloud of reeking smoke. Every Helder tank, each individual true human hero, was covered with a thick coating of enemy blood. Feric felt the racial will course into his body, through his muscles, and out the red-hot 208
muzzle of his roaring machine gun. He himself was naught but a weapon fired by something beyond himself. The hundreds of tanks and hundreds of thousands of men ripping the enemy to bloody fragments were extensions of his own being, fingers, arms, pseudopods, as he himself was in turn the highest expression of the racial will of his people. Together, this vast organism was Heldon, the hope of the world, the master race of destiny, chewing its way into the vitals of the foul racial enemy.
Through the night and into the next day, the incredible carnage wore on. Merged as he was into the communal organism that was his army, Feric could viscerally sense that the Helder forces were pushing their way north and east toward Bora. Like sense organs of his own body, the aerial scouts reported that the far east and west flanks of the great Zind horde were flowing around either end of the Helder line like the enveloping pseudopods of a great amoeba.
"It's hard to say whether we're being enveloped or whether we're cutting the horde in half," Feric observed to Best.
"My Commander, I've got Waning on the radio!"
"Let me hear him on the tank circuit."
Waffing's hearty voice filled the tank; in the background, Feric could make out the sounds of battle. "My Commander, we've reached the oil fields and are engaging the enemy. I hope to be able to report the capture of our objective by tonight at the latest."
"Good work. Waning!" Feric said. "I must sign off now: as you can hear, we've got some action of our own here!"
