But It would certainly destroy her. This attack would have no other meaning.
But she would cheat It. The One could not move faster than her knife!
There was not much time now, and certainly no hope. The battle raging before her was mounting to its inevitable bloody climax.
Her people could not hold out much longer. Their courage and faith and loyalty might not survive so terrible an ordeal. Were not some of the birds already winging away to distant refuge?
It was too bad. She would have liked to see the tall hunter once more before she.... His eyes had been so piercing! She had forgotten what a man could be like. If only she had not been so balky yesterday!
But it was not to be. He had come, in one of those two jet cruisers, thundering across the killer-infested meadow, and he had gone. He had seen and not understood. Battles between alien beasts were of no concern to him. He might even return, to make cam-rec footage from aloft of this amazing battle.
Hope flashed. She could signal him! What could she use?
How could she catch a roving eye in a ten-mile-a-minute jet?
She tossed up her head, eyes suddenly narrowed.
Something came screaming around the mountain above her, followed by a second screaming something.