My hopes soared, even as the submachine guns began to talk in staccato bursts of ear-piercing sound.
CHAPTER VIII
The workers were inadequately armed. A few revolvers and little ammo. Lead pipes and with things that looked like weapons but were actually odds and ends of tools they'd snatched up when they'd heard the battle start. They were armed with guts, but it wasn't enough.
They swept across the field, dropping and struggling up, bulling ahead to come to grips with an enemy they didn't understand, couldn't fathom. Perhaps a score of them survived the tommyguns, got in amongst the Neanderthals. I saw one big fellow grab two ape-necks and smash the brutish skulls together, and even thirty feet off I could hear the bone splinter. When that man went down writhing I was as shocked as though he'd been my brother.
Where was Howard, anyway?
No one was watching me. I stepped swiftly backward, turned and ran for the satellite. There was no hiding place there worth a damn. I stood against its gleaming silver side towering high above my head. I saw the end of the fight; even had my chance to take a small crack at the devils myself. A workman was brawling with a carbine as Old One came up behind him lifting him over his head and bringing his body down across an uplifted knee. There was a hoarse scream and then a loud crack as the man's back snapped. I lifted my automatic and shot the creature through the heart.
I looked for Skagarach then, and for my cousin, but they weren't in sight. I shoulder holstered my gun. The last worker now had been dropped and the Old Companions came toward the great wheel and me.
There were—I counted, automatically and hopefully—there were some fifty or more on their feet. Bill Cuff strode ahead of the horde, untouched and grinning wolfishly. And there was the ugly figure of Skagarach beside him.
I tackled Cuff immediately. "Skagarach says I can't have a gun, but I sure could have used one just now," I said, hoping he hadn't seen me firing the gun now, safely out of sight under my shirt.