I looked down the street toward the landing field. I felt tired, suddenly. Gone in the knees and weak, and sick to vomiting with fear.
"Here comes Gow," I said. "He's got seven or eight guys with guns. Just keep the critters off us until we get through with the cansins, and try not to kill any more than you can help."
Good old Jig, thinking about money even then. Gow came up. We talked a minute, just the things that had to be said, and then I asked,
"Anybody have an idea where Quern might be?"
"Yeah," said Gow slowly. "He was in the ginmill next to the one we was in. Drunk. I heard him singin' when I went by. I think the big apes wrecked it."
We started off up the muddy street, more as though we'd been wound up to go somewhere and couldn't stop than like men with a purpose. The cansins were close. Awful close. You could hear them sucking and slopping in the muck. The rain fell straight down, almost solid, and the air was thick and hot.
We did a lot of shouting. Some men came out of the shacks to join us, but nobody had seen Quern since the trouble started. We had trouble with the animals in the streets. The vapor snakes got one man, and an Ionian hru poisoned one guy so bad he died the next day. We had to kill a couple of big babies that wouldn't scare off.
And we found the ginmill. Gow was right. It was wrecked, and there were things scattered around amongst the splinters. I was glad it was dark.
"Well," I said, "that's that. We'll just have to do what we can with the blasters." It wouldn't be much. We didn't carry any heavy artillery, and a cansin is awfully hard to stop.