In the Heart of Darkness

A line of monsters surged onto the field. Gigantic things, tearing the soil with strange continuous belts—metal slats running over wheels. Forward, from cupolas, immense snouts protruded. The snouts belched flame and smoke. Emblazoned on their flanks were crosses—some, square with double lines; others, bent.

"Iron elephants," whispered Belisarius. "Like the ones the Malwa will build—but so much better!"

Tanks. They will be called tanks. These are the type which will be called PzKw V "Panthers." They will weigh 45 tons and travel up to 34 miles per hour. They fire a cannon whose size will be called 75 millimeter.

From the opposite side of the field, a new line of monsters—tanks—charged forward. They began exchanging cannon fire with the other tanks. Belisarius could sense that these new tanks were of a slightly different design, but the only feature which registered clearly on his uneducated eye was that, instead of crosses, their flanks were marked by red stars.

This was the best tank of that era. It will be called the T-34.

The battle was horrible and dazzling at the same time.

Horrible, in its destruction. Belisarius saw a tank cupola—

Turret.

—turret blown off. Tons of metal sent sailing, like a man decapitated. The body of the tank belched flame, and he knew the men inside were being incinerated. Saw men clambering from another burning tank, shrieking, their uniforms afire. Saw them die, suddenly, swept down by an invisible scythe.

Machine-gun fire.

Dazzling, in the speed of the tanks, and the accuracy of their fire. Like a vision of St. George battling the dragon, except the saint was a dragon himself. And his lance a magic wand belching flame and fury.

"How?"

Images of complex—machines?

Internal combustion engines.

Images of perfect metal tubes—cannon barrels, Belisarius realized. He watched as an object was fit into one of the tubes. A perfect fit. He wondered what it was until he saw the cannon fire. Cannonball, he realized—except it was not a ball. It was a cylinder capped by its own cupola.

"How can metal be shaped so precisely?"

He was inside a huge building. A manufactory, he realized. Everywhere he could see rolls and slabs of steel being shaped and cut with incredible speed and precision. He recognized one of the machines as a lathe, like the lathes used by expert carpenters to shape wooden legs for chairs and tables. But this lathe was much bigger and vastly more powerful. The lathes he knew were operated by foot pedal. No such lathes could rip through metal the way this one was, not even bronze. He watched a stream of steel chips flying from the cutting tool like a waterfall.

The other machines he did not recognize at all.

Horizontal boring mill. Vertical turret lathe. Radial drill press.

"Impossible," stated the general firmly. "To make such machines would require making machines to make machines to make machines which could make those machines. We do not have time."

The facets shivered momentarily, confused. The crystalline intelligence which called itself Aide viewed reality in an utterly different manner than humans. The logic behind Belisarius' conclusion was foreign to it. Where the man saw complex sequences, causes and effects, Aide saw the glorious kaleidoscope of eternity.

Malwa will have tanks.