"Don't move!" Norman whispered, feeling Dorothy's soft hair against his cheek. His fingers tightened on the guns under his body. His pulse was loud in his ears. If they suspected something? But it was too late for worry now. He heard footsteps on the gravel as the sound of the rockets sputtered and died away.
The next second was a lifetime. Then suddenly he was on his feet. He whirled, ducked out through the hole in the glass. The guns in his hands were spitting their red streams, before his eyes found the men before him, and he played the guns like two garden hoses, spraying death. The two patrolmen fell, charred and black. But the two groups had ruined his ambush. Swart sprang aside, behind the glass wall as the flame streaked past him. Norman saw Sade standing in the door of the ship, staring at the wild scene. The door was slammed shut as Norman's guns splattered the hull with fire. Then the fight was between him and Swart alone.
On the opposite sides of the ring of glass, Dorothy standing there horrified between them, it was one of the strangest situations in Norman's experience. The glass was impervious to jet fire. Dorothy was perfectly safe. But as Norman moved around the wall to get a shot at Swart, the dark little man also moved, keeping the arc of glass between them. It couldn't continue. A sudden sheet of flame rushed past one side of the glass, Sade firing from the ship. Swart was not slow to take advantage of the opportunity. Quickly he slid around the wall to corner Norman against Sade's fire.
Norman stood waiting, rifles poised to blast Swart's gun barrel as it nosed past the curve of glass. But Swart was no fool. He was playing for time. Norman heard the throbbing as Sade started his rockets. Sade was moving the ship to trap him between their guns.
Norman started to jump back through the hole in the glass. But that would be suicide; while Swart guarded the door, Sade could pick them off from above in the ship. Then an idea whispered in Norman's mind. If he could lure Swart from the protection of the glass into Keren's sights in the the tower—if he could trust Keren—but there was nothing else to do. He ducked into the enclosure beside Dorothy.
Swart laughed. Norman could hear it inside the glass. Quickly, Swart stepped to the edge of the hole, his pistol covering their exit, smiling at them through the wall. "You ain't very bright, Norman." It was the last breath that ever passed his lips, for a long, thin line of flame suddenly stretched from the tower to the small of his back. Swart dropped without a sound, surprise on his dead face.
But Sade's ship was already in the air.
"He'll come and strafe us!" Norman shouted to Dorothy above the roar of the rockets. He took her hand, dragged her out of the cage past Swart's body. They had to get to the cruiser; their only hope was a fight with Sade in the air. But the sound of Sade's rockets stopped Norman in his tracks as he started to dash for the cruiser. Sade's ship was skimming the field, twenty feet off the ground, his rockets sputtering like a gasoline engine with a broken piston.
The ship was headed directly toward the house, apparently unable to rise. Then Norman saw what had happened. Keren's rifle had hit the rise rocket tube. The heavily repaired solder work had burned through. Unable to gain altitude, the ship hurtled into the house like a freight plane gone wild. The plastic walls ripped like tinfoil as the ship's heavy nose plowed into the building just below the tower.