“Get back from me! Back, I tell you.”
I heard Jane’s agonized warning from the floor. “Bob!”
Tolla’s light missed my shoulder. Tako had cast Don off and stood alone as he turned toward us. Then Tolla’s light-beam swung on him. I heard her eery maddened laugh as it struck him.
A wraith of Tako was there, stricken as though numbed by surprise…. Then nothingness….
Shots from the distant warships were screaming around us. One struck the base of the building.
I clung to my scattering senses. I gripped Tolla.
“That projector—what was it you almost told Jane?”
SHE stood stupidly babbling. “Told Jane? That projector—”
She laughed wildly, and like a tigress, cast me off. “Fools of men! Tako—the fool!”
She swung into a frenzy of her own language. And then back into English. “I will show you—Tako, the fool! All those fools out there under the ground and in the sky. I will show them!”