They did not break into a run immediately, but waited until they had moved cautiously around to the back of the dwelling and were facing away from it, with an open space that could be quickly crossed stretching out in front of them. The forest wall was less than eighty feet away and could be reached in a matter of seconds. Teleman's hand had darted to his pocket and he was firmly clasping the stock of the hand-gun.
They exchanged no words, but started across the clearing at once, running swiftly with only a few feet separating them. They were out of breath when they reached the trees, but paused only for the barest instant, their eyes darting toward a patch of weaving darkness where the foliage was dense enough to provide instant shelter but not too close to keep them from tearing a few of the branches apart with their hands and clearing a wide enough space to move about in until they could find a natural path in the underbrush or beat their way through it toward a more open stretch of forest.
They were several feet inside the foliage screen, breathing harshly and keeping their heads lowered to avoid the stinging backlash of whipped-apart branches, when the para-guard came crashing toward them. There was blood on his face and he was cursing savagely and in an instant briefer than a dropped heartbeat there flashed into Teleman's mind an image of the man waiting for them, crouching in the underbrush and prevented by the dense growth from leaping instantly out at them.
The image blurred and vanished and Teleman saw only the man himself, the looming, dangerous bulk of him. The hand-gun was recoiling in his clasp, its roar deafening, in what seemed no more than another split second of time, so quickly that Teleman had no clear recollection of whipping it from his pocket, only of leveling it and firing it at almost pointblank range.
The para-guard screamed and went staggering backwards, his hands clutching at his chest. Light from the expiring energy charge bathed his head and shoulders for an instant in a ghastly, pale green radiance, making him look almost ghostly as he sank to his knees, and fell forward on his face. His arms jerked convulsively for a moment, and then the trembling and twitching ceased and he lay completely still, a crimson gleaming appearing in both sides of his body and spreading outward over the dry leaves of the forest until they resembled leaves but recently fallen, all of their autumn brightness restored.
Alicia swayed and turned deathly pale. Teleman went to her, drew her into his arms and held her tightly, stilling her trembling with a few, calmly spoken words.
"If I hadn't killed him, if I had just wounded him, he might still have had the strength to go on fighting. He might have seized you and used you as a shield, or grabbed me by the legs and dragged me down. He was too near, coming right at us. It was his life or ours."
"Yes, I know," she breathed, her arms tightening about his shoulders with an understanding that went deeper than words. "He was only obeying orders, but they were brutal orders and it would have been madness to take risks with a man so enraged. If we had resisted, he would have killed us without hesitation. He might even have tried to ravish me. Did you see his face?"
"I saw it," Teleman said. "We've got to get through the forest and try to reach one of the travel strips on the other side before another face like that has a chance to wear the kind of smile that means he's won and we're either dead or bound hand and foot. That hand-gun blast may bring a dozen guards down on us before we can get far. But we're not giving up, or stopping to let the possibility weaken what we've got—a strength that comes only to lovers. It's a very special kind of strength and we've got to believe in it. Is that clear?"
"Yes, darling, very clear."