"Tom Dorr will be tried for murder," Harriet promised grimly.
With different men taking turns carrying Harriet for short distances they began to make progress rapidly. The Slider the men had been firing at was dead and no more were sighted before they came to the settlement.
Dorr was waiting for them. He fired from the tower, his machine-gun burst of rockets cutting through one man in mid-leap. Asa's party hugged the mud and fired back. Plastic showered from the tower window, and dust spurted from the concrete around it.
"Keep me covered," Asa shouted. He took the gun from Harriet and leaped madly forward until he was under the shelter of the side of the dome. He waited for one more salvo from his party and jumped to the tower itself.
Dorr had vanished, driven out of the tower by the rockets. Asa waved to the others to come forward and hopped into the main quarters of the dome.
He had never been in this part of the settlement. Dorr could be lying in ambush for him. Asa moved cautiously, but he was confident that his own adjustment to the gravity of the planet would give him the advantage in any sudden meeting.
He looked around the corner and down some stairs just in time to see the discredited manager, holding a sack in one hands, struggle to open a door. Asa fired and missed. The next moment Dorr was outside. Asa leaped to the floor below.
One of the normal humans who lived in the settlement came out of another room, saw Asa and dodged back out of sight.
Outside, Asa could see Dorr laboring to run along the paved road that led to the spaceship a quarter of a mile away. The fugitive turned once and fired wildly as Asa leaped after him. The mist was turning into heavy rain, and it was getting harder to see.