"You don't understand!" Barlow cried desperately. "They came to get—"
The other hunters fell on him, pummeling him into silence. The violence sickened Lanny, yet what alternative did they have? Lanny raised his club. At the same time the missionary came closer to the mob, and his club touched her forced-field capsule. Normally the energy would have paralyzed him with pain. But his mind refused to accept the normal, and Lanny felt the same sort of integrated unity with the energy field that he had with his hunting club. Command over the matter structure of the field. The energy flowed into his body and was absorbed, stored in an explosive concentration of power.
For a moment the opaque capsule dimmed. Tak Laleen clenched her hand over her mouth and fled into her sphere. The car soared up above the canyon.
Lanny swung his club again. Since Barlow must die, let him die quickly, without pain. Murder!—the accusation was a pang of agony in Lanny's mind. This violated everything Juan had taught him. He was aware that he wanted Barlow's death not because the old man had tried to betray the hunters, but because Lanny could not answer Barlow's poisonous despair in any other way. Lanny was ashamed. But who would know his real motive if he killed Barlow now? Who—but himself?
Lanny's club touched Barlow's chest. He felt a drain of energy, a disintegration of structure. The energy Lanny had absorbed from the missionary's force-field exploded in a fierce, white heat. Barlow crumbled into dust.
Lanny's awareness of what he had done survived for a fraction of a second. He stood facing the exploding light and waves of concussion lashed at his body. A dark chaos, whipped into fury by a floodtide of guilt, rocked his mind. He willed himself into unconsciousness, a bleak forgetfulness that sponged the guilt—and the truth—from his mind.
And now he remembered nothing but the explosion and the queasy shadow of self-accusation.
"The settlement," Juan Pendillo said to his sons, "is required to surrender the hunters at dawn. That gives us forty-five minutes. We're all heading for different treaty areas. We are to go to the San Francisco colony."