Each of the eleven men carried six of these bottles, then, actually lead containers, but apparently plastikoid; the lead stoppers were concealed in joerg-hide bags. If the giant who had been beaten in the spaceship was a criterion, the enemy would not recognize the presence of lead until it actually touched them—and then, thought Pink, with a quick prayer, it would be too late for them.
Beaming the radio to a distance of ten feet, he said, "Hey, Jerry, want to lay a bet on who bags the first brute?"
"Sure. Twenty bucks says I get him. And don't call me Jerry," said the sweet, quiet, and thoroughly startling voice of organicus officer Circe Smith.
CHAPTER XVIII
I didn't have to do it, Pink thought. I could have changed the orders when I saw that no giants were in sight. We could have blasted the one on top of the Elephant's Child and taken off and got out of range of 'em and gone back to Earth. We were free in that instant, when Daley caught the alien and corked it up in the lead bottle with the liquor that drew it. We shouldn't have come out here to the caves. We should have left Oasis to itself.
He knew that he had squelched this idea before it was born, because he had longed for a good fight; he recognized this alien life-form as unclean, and he'd wanted to stamp it out, or make a dent in its numbers anyway. So he'd gone ahead with the project, and now here was Circe, risking her life to be with him, and if anything happened to her he'd kill himself ... well, at least he'd mop up the giants who'd drawn him here, he'd make a pogrom, a massacre to avenge her....
She isn't dead, boy, he told himself. She's just in danger. Don't get distracted.
"Stick close," he told her shortly. "I'll whale the pants off you when we get back for this trick, but for now, stay close and keep your eyes open."
Then he tuned his radio outward. "Report," he said. His men checked in. Nothing had been sighted thus far.