He hitched himself up a little to peer through the gaps in the leaves, and found that his right hand was clutching the metal cylinder he had felt in his pocket earlier. He must have snatched it out at some stage in his flight—perhaps an automatic response of his alien muscles.
He examined the thing, wondering if it were a weapon. He noted two controlling levers, but their function was unclear. As a last resort, he could try pointing the thing and pushing them.
A rustle of leaves snapped his attention to one of the leafy gaps. A figure had emerged on the opposite bank of the dried watercourse. It was turned away, but from the first there was something breathlessly familiar about the self-assured posture, the cock of the close-cropped, red-haired head.
The theatric glare struck an ebon shimmer from the uniform it was wearing, and outlined on one shoulder, of a somberer blackness than the uniform, a black star.
Thorn leaned forward, parting with his hand the brambly wall of his retreat.
The figure turned and the face became visible.
In a strangled voice—his first words since he had found himself on the roof-edge—Thorn cried out, "Clawly!" and rushed forward.
For a moment there was no change in Clawly's expression. Then, with feline agility, he sprang to one side. Thorn stumbled in the pitted streambed, dropped the metal cylinder. Clawly whipped out something and pointed it. Thorn started up toward him. Then—there was no sound save a faint hissing, no sight, but agonizing pain shot through Thorn's right shoulder.
And stayed. Lesser waves of it rippled through the rest of his body. He was grotesquely frozen in the act of scrambling upward. It was as if an invisible red-hot needle in Clawly's hand transfixed his shoulder and held him helpless.
Staring up in shocked, tortured dismay, the first glimmerings of the truth came to Thorn.