The shocker-flashes flickered like heat-lightning in the night. They moved back toward the ship—probably the fifteen men, or what was left of them, were retreating from the Orville men whom Kirk had stationed in the house and yard.
He said desperately, "Stop them, damn it, can't you stop them?" The sono-beam projector was sliding out of his hands, walking itself with its own vibration across the smooth-worn metal. He had to turn to hold it.
Inside the ship there was bedlam going on, a sound of things breaking and men's voices raised in inarticulate cries. A tall gray-haired man with a captain's stars on his shoulder-tabs came at a staggering run into the passage and dropped, and lay still. His hands quivered with the jarring of the floor.
Kirk shut off the projector and threw it away. He went up the ladder, and at the top he paused a second to look at what was happening in the meadow. The Orville men who had gone in behind the invaders had risen out of the brush. Their shockers flared in a line of ragged light amid the brambles and the white flowers. Then there was darkness and a sudden peace.
"Come on!" Kirk shouted, his voice carrying far across the meadow. Then he ran down the passage, with Vinson and the other eight pounding at his heels. The gray-haired captain did not move as they went by.
And it was almost easy. Seven, eight, nine, of the crew lay sprawled in the main passage or in doorways opening from it, unconscious. The communications man was still making vague pawing motions at his dials, but the motions were only reflex and the equipment was jarred to fragments of splintered glass and plastic. In the small, compact bridge, best protected by intervening bulkheads, the two junior officers and three crewmen were still conscious but too dazed to offer resistance.
"Well," said Vinson, breathing hard, his eyes shining. "We did all right."
"We did fine," said Kirk, grinning. The other eight grinned, too, nodding their heads at each other and at him. They had fought together and won together, and now they were all comrades, men of Orville, men of Earth. It was a good feeling, Kirk discovered. A very good feeling.
Some of the men came in from the meadow. The fifteen from the scout were all taken. The Orville men had suffered some casualties in the way of burns and shock, but no fatalities.