Chapter 8

Our usual low and slow approach was what saved us. It gave me time to see the two flying boxes parked beside the target building. Somebody had really screwed up by doing that. We would have walked into the ambush if their transportation had been hidden as it should have been. I practically screamed at Bill to pull in front of Joe and Sam so that we could keep them from being shot down. Of course, Joe was startled when Bill cut him off, but he trusted Bill enough to follow us when I waved at him to do so.

We found a safe place to set down while we discussed the situation. There was no doubt in our minds that there was an alien ambush waiting for us at the target, so we would have to figure out what to do. None of us wanted to fly directly over the building and make ourselves their target for the day, but there was some concern about what we would have to do to to make a successful attack. As it currently stood, we would be fools to try to make our usual bombing run, so we would have to try something else.

We all wanted to continue the attack, and the only thing that we could figure out to do was to attack with the ray guns. We didn't know how much difference there actually was, but our captured ray guns had to be less powerful than the ones mounted on the UFOs. However, we really had no other weapon that would reach the target building from anything like a safe distance, so that was what we had to use.

We worked out a plan whereby we would use our ultralights to get us as close to the target as was safe. Hopefully, we would not be seen, but even if we were, we were all successful hunters who could take every advantage of any concealment that we could find. Our idea was to creep up on the building and fire at the building itself with our ray guns set for the broad beam. We figured that with eight beams striking the target (we all had two ray guns), eventually we could breach the walls.

The building should collapse if enough of the wall were removed. When that happened, the aliens on the roof would be sufficiently injured when they fell so that they would not be able to stop us from destroying the distillery. If the ray guns and the falling building did not do enough damage, we still had the thermite bomb to finish the structure off.

Okay, we had what we thought was a workable plan, so we started our advance on the target. We flew into within about a mile and landed well out of accurate range of the ray guns that were hand-held. I had my cobbled-up rifle to give me an aiming advantage, and the others had the same kind of gun that the aliens were using.

I had noticed that the physical structure of the aliens' bodies would not let them hold the pistol up in line with an eye for accurate aiming. They were forced to do what we would call "off-hand" shooting for that reason. Thus, no matter how much practice they had, they still could not aim as accurately as we humans could.

A further advantage for us was that the ray gun gave off no tell-tale indication of where it was being fired from, so the aliens would have some trouble finding us if we were well concealed. When we got close enough to get a good look at the structure, I saw that I would be better occupied with shooting at any alien who showed itself, rather than wasting shots on the building. I told my friends what I had in mind and dropped a little behind them so that I would not be in their way.

They had decided to begin their assault on the structure about half way up the side of the building. There was a line of windows there, and all they had to do was to shoot at the structure between the windows to weaken the wall enough to get it to fall. Each man had an assigned place to shoot at, and they set their beams to be the small concentrated pencil of energy. We thought that would do the best job of breaking up the ancient bricks that the building was made of. It might take longer to bring down the building that way, but we all thought that it was a more sure technique.

Anyway, the other three found good shooting positions and began to fire at Bill's command. Meanwhile, I had found my own place and was watching for an alien to show itself. The bricks did make some noise as they began to break apart under the attack of the beams of energy, and that attracted the notice of several aliens. Aha! Now I had a plethora of targets.

I picked an alien somewhat arbitrarily as it leaned across the roof coping. I took careful aim and fired at its head. The moment its head disappeared in a cloud of green blood and smoke, I switched to another alien and popped it, too. Unfortunately for me, that was the end of my immediate targets as the other aliens jumped back out of sight. However, I knew that I was going to have more targets show up because of the nature of the alien physiology: they could not aim a ray gun without exposing a significant amount of body. All I needed was patience.

My patience paid off because I had shots at six more aliens while the wall was being attacked. Our strategy of attacking the wall at what we imagined to be its weakest point finally paid off. The wall all along that side of the building collapsed in a mass of rubble and dust. Only moments later, there was a great gush of liquid pouring over the wall, and we identified it by the smell as being alcohol.

The building structure acted as if it had been built of dominoes. The building continued to tumble down, and we saw a huge metal container slide toward us and fall for two stories to the ground where it was covered by more rubble that continued to fall. The last sight we had of the metal container was of it crumbling into uselessness as it struck the ground. We might have done more damage with the thermite bomb if we had been able to use it, but we judged this to be adequate damage to put the distillery permanently out of business.

We looked around after the collapse had stabilized and were not able to find any living aliens. However, we were able to salvage three of the ray guns. We also were able to go through the two flying boxes that had transported the aliens to the site, and we looted the ray gun chargers from them. There was nothing else that we could recognize as useful for us, so we used our ray guns to destroy the two fliers before we left. As far as we could tell, we had scored a resounding victory, and we were anxious to get home to tell the women of our adventures.

On our way home, I ruminated over the reason that the aliens were able to ambush us at the last site. It finally dawned on me that they must have realized that we would come there because it was the closest distillery to the ones we had destroyed earlier that day. Okay, from now on, we were going to have to randomize our attacks so that our actions would be more difficult to predict.

I brought that up when we discussed the raid over supper that night. Everybody agreed with me, and we started looking for ways to disguise our intentions. All we could come up with was a plan to avoid hitting distilleries that were very close together. We might get only one, or two at most, in a day, but that was better than being shot down.

Speaking of being shot down, we also voted to go back to training as pilots with the ultralights as soon as the spring winds backed off. New England in March, April, and May can have days on end of high winds. At least, too high for novice pilots in ultralights. Bill and Joe agreed with that, and they announced that we were far enough along in "class work" that we could stop working with that for now.

They wanted everyone to have his or her own plane, just as we had our own ATV. Each plane had some little idiosyncrasies, and it was best for the pilot to know the quirks of his or her own plane and be used to it. We could understand that, and agreed that marking individual planes was a good idea.

The other thing that we needed to do was to find a set of radios that we could use when flying. We were starting to run low on some cuts of meat, so we needed to go hunting very soon. The decision was made that Sam and I would hunt while Bill and Joe looked for radios. The only requirements that we had were that the radios be FM, held and operated with one hand, and all operate on the same frequency.