The first two dozen troopers were in the canyon now, half the Axenite force. Colonel Nef had shown the good sense to don an ordinary blue safety-suit; his scarlet command-suit would have made him a splendid target. Another squad entered, their Dardick-rifles held at the ready. This would have to be quick, Hartford thought, or he'd lose his entire corps at their first volley. He raised his hand, a signal visible only to Takeko. She cupped her hands around her mouth and whistled the call of the nightingale, "Ho-o-kekyo ... kekyo!"
Before the echoed notes had died, the darts had found their targets.
The radio was a clutter of undisciplined Damn's, cries of "I've been hit!" One trooper, quicker than the rest, caught sight of a Kansan. He raised his rifle and purred out a stream of Dardick-pellets. Yoritomo, apprentice to the paper-maker, tumbled over the lip of the ledge, his blowpipe falling with him like a jack-straw. There was a babble on the radio. Nef overrode all other circuits to command: "At ease! Rake the ledges with sustained fire."
The canyon was blasted with a confetti of metal and spalled rock as the troopers hosed the shelves with bullets.
The angle made aiming impossible. But by luck and the intensity of the barrage another man, the carpenter's son, had toppled to his death.
"Sky-Eye! Get your butt down here!" Nef bellowed. "Decontamination Team! Bring the vehicle to the mouth of the canyon. We've got men septic." He tongued-on his bitcher and bellowed at the troopers. "On the double, through the ditch."
"Yuke!" Hartford shouted to the men far up the wall, in the niche that held the Daibutsu. "Go!"
The sappers at the back of the giant bronze statue bent to their levers. The tons of metal scooted slowly forward, hit the fat-smeared edge of the shelf. As quietly as a man rocking forward in prayer, the Daibutsu dropped head-down into the ravine. It struck the bottom with the sound of a great gong, and rocked, unshattered, plugging the throat of the canyon, standing as a dam. The hands of the Enlightened One were held in the positions of Protection and of Giving; His face bore still a quiet smile. About the head of the image a fountain of water burst, squeezed up from the stream below. "Namu Amida Butsu!" Takeko said, cuddled against Hartford, staring down.
"Keep down," he said. He lifted his suit-radio and flicked on the transmission-switch. "This is Lee Hartford, late of the First Regiment," he announced. "The safety-suits of most of you have been breached. There is not room for more than three of you in the Decontamination Vehicle. You are not septic. I repeat: you have not been contaminated. Kansas is as safe for you as the Barracks, or Titan, or the M'Bwene planets, or in the cells at Luna. You do not need your safety-suits on Kansas."