“Get your fool head down, kid!” he snapped. “They’re still trying the ’copter game. You’d think that they’d have learned by nowl”
Dard wormed his way along until he rubbed shoulders with the defender and could look down into the weird battlefield. He tried to piece out from the wreckage there what had been happening in the hours since he and Kimber had returned.
Two burnt-out skeletons of ’copters were crumpled among rocks. From one of them thin wisps of vapor still spiraled. And there were four bodies wearing black and white Pax livery. But as far as Dard could see there was nothing alive down there now.
“Yeah. They’ve all taken t’ cover. Trying to think up some trick that’ll get us away from here. It’ll take time for ’em to get any big guns back in these hills. And they don’t have time. Before they can shake us loose the ship’s going to blast off!”
“The ship’s going to blast off!” So that was it! He was now one of an expendable rear guard, left to hold the fort while the star ship won free. Dard studied the rifle he held, with eyes which did not see either the metal of barrel or wood of stock.
Well, he told himself savagely, wasn’t this just what he knew was going to happen-ever since that moment when Kimber had admitted with his silence that all those in the Cleft would not go out into space?
“Hey!” a hand joggling his elbow snapped his attention back to the job at hand. “See-down there—”
He followed the line set by that dirty finger. Something moved around the wreckage of the ’copter farthest from the barrier-a black tube. Dard frowned as he studied its out- line. The tube was being slued around to face the barrier. That was no rifle-too large. It was no form of gun he had seen before.
“Santee! Hey, Santee!” his companion shouted. “They’re bringing up a burper!”
A man scrambled up and Dard was shoved painfully against a tree branch as the black beard took his place.