"What will it do?" asked Price.
"It'll hang there, right where it is, to guide the fliers from the Citadel. They can see us here where we stand, right now, in the Citadel." Burr's face was getting whiter by the second, like a man who has been stung by some venomous thing and realizes that in this present moment, between strides as it were, he must die. "They'll be starting. It's forbidden to come into the Belt. They'd kill us for that alone. But with the plane—God knows what they'll do."
"We can try and dodge them in the woods," said Twist, without hope. "Come on."
He started away, but Price said, "Can't we outfly it?"
"The flying-eye? It'll follow us like a hungry hound."
Some kind of television-scanner, Price thought, with a metal-detection unit and a signal relay to alert the main control in the Citadel. And what was the Citadel, and who or what within it was now watching him as he stood, and preparing for his death?
He said, catching the sudden terror from the others, "Shoot it down."
"Shoot it?"
"Smash the lens. Then it can't see us. Here, give me the rifle."
Burr said, "You crazy? No gun will carry that far."