We are not defenseless we can stop you we will hurt you go.
Teller's sharp laugh interrupted before Shreve could get an answer out. "Fools! Pompous adolescents! What makes you think your primitive warriors with their bogey masks can harm us? Look!" He stepped toward the alien. The Diamorai backed up. Teller stepped quickly, coming into sharp contact with the alien's body. The Diamorai leaped back, the short hairs on his body standing straight out. He thought something at his brothers. It was incomprehensible to the Earthmen.
"That's a stat-field. And there are a dozen guns pointed at you from the ship. We'll set up the machines and save you whether you like it or not." He turned away with a low chuckle, adding ruefully, "Though why you want to bother with such a bunch of arrogant children is beyond me, Luther." He walked toward the ship.
Casting nervous glances at one another, the aliens leaped to the backs of their mounts, reined in and turned to leave. Shreve stood and watched them as they loped to the jungle's edge.
The ebony giraffe-things drew up short, and the leader's reared up as the alien turned to stare at Shreve.
Go or we will hurt you.
In an instant they were gone, melting into the colored riot of the jungle, the beasts' hoofs beating ever more faintly as they moved away.
Shreve turned back to the ship. He should have felt no temperature changes within his stat-field, yet somehow he had grown chilled in a few seconds.
Night had descended quickly, dropping like a sea of ink over Diamore. The robomechs had set out the floodlamps, almost to the edges of the jungle, and the Wallower was bathed in white light, sharply outlining her plate construction, and the clean transparency of the conning bubbles.