"The devil!" Andy ejaculated. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I have. Duck, Boss...." Oscar flattened himself out of sight.
Andy needed no further urging. He squeezed his lithe six-feet down behind a boulder just as a heat beam hissed over his head. It hit the bluff behind him and he watched the dust boil out as the pulsing radio-frequency beam turned to heat. The gun worked that way. A thin radio-frequency special beam was projected and it continued on its way until it struck something, when it turned to heat. It didn't work worth a darn on Jupiter. The planet's soupy atmosphere turned the ray to heat within a dozen feet of the muzzle, but in space, or in the extremely thin atmosphere of Jupiter's moon, it was bad business.
Andy cautiously stuck his head around the boulder.
"Hey," he yelled, "cut out the shooting. What are you trying to do? This ain't the Fourth of July."
"Get out of here," a shrill voice came floating down to him.
"This is a free country and I'll stay here as long as I damn well please."
In answer a heat ray singed the top of the rock he was hiding behind.
"Blast 'im, Boss. He almost got you," he heard Oscar whisper.