Dworn halted and listened intently, his amplifier turned all the way up. No sound broke the stillness, and the black moon-shadows within range of his vision did not stir.
He nosed the beetle carefully up to the heap. He had no equipment for moving those tons of soil and rock, but that was no matter. He twisted a knob on the control panel, a shutter in the beetle's forward cowling snapped open and a telescoping drill thrust from its housing, chattered briefly and took hold, while the engine's pulse strengthened to take up the load.
Twice Dworn abandoned fruitless borings and tried a different spot. On the third try, at almost full extension the drill-point screeched suddenly on metal and then as suddenly met no more resistance. Dworn switched on the pump, and quickly turned it off again; he swung the overhead hatch open, and—pausing to listen warily once more—clambered out onto the cowling, in the cold night air, to open the sample tap at the base of the drill and sniff the colorless fluid that trickled from it.
It gave off the potent odor of good fuel, and Dworn nodded to himself, not regretting his caution though in this case it had not been needed. But—clever caterpillars had been known to bury canisters of water in their caches, poison for the unsuspecting.
The pump throbbed again; there was the satisfying gurgle of fuel flowing into almost-empty tanks. Dworn leaned back, seizing the opportunity to relax for a moment in preparation for the strenuous journey still before him.
But he didn't fail to snap alert when just as the gauge trembled near the full mark, he heard pebbles rattling on the hillside above. Immediately thereupon he became aware of the grind of steel on stone and the rumbling of an imperfectly muffled engine.
In one smooth rapid motion Dworn switched off the pump, and spun the drill control. As the mechanism telescoped back into place, he gunned his engine, and the beetle shot backward and spun round to face the oncoming noise.
A squarish black silhouette loomed high on the slope above the overhanging bank, which rose so steeply that a stone loosened by turning treads bounded with a clang off the beetle's armor in the wash below. The caterpillar halted momentarily, engine grumbling to take in the scene.
Dworn didn't linger to learn its reaction at spying a looter. A snap shot from his turret gun exploded directly in front of the other machine, throwing up a cloud of dust and—he hoped—confusing its crew. And the beetle was fleeing around the bend in the stream bed, keeping close to the high bank.