And now there were two. Five of them had made fatal slips, and had been hunted down to hideous deaths.
Ferris was one of the two survivors.
Four people stood paralyzed while the hammering resounded at the gate. This was no human fist demanding attention, but an odd, robot-like clanking, as if a mechanical beast nosed in determined rooting against the metal leaves of the gate.
It was just such a beast. A burring whine rose into notes of shrill frustration. Metallic and electronic frustration, for the tracker was a bloodhound of vacuum tubes and relays and switches and batteries and transformers. Unerring and inexorable, its robot senses sorted a single frequency from all other brain wave patterns, and it clung to the trail with chilling efficiency. Something about its unhuman lusting numbed most quarry before the pursuers in charge of the monster could check its demonic eagerness for prey.
Now, like a metallic carnivore scenting blood, the robot tracker nuzzled the gate and rebounded to nuzzle again.
All four of the humans inside the compound imagined the scene outside. Pencil beams of hand radilumes glinted here and there, the questing soldiers and police squads, the glittering serpentine body of the tracker, with its scurrying treads churning clouds of dust as it whined and rooted at the gate.
Bat Ferris shot a glance of uneasy calculation at his three companions. The girl was an unknown quantity. Angel, momentarily shocked, was predictable enough within limits. Pao Chung was openly an opportunist, willing to turn any situation to personal profit. Unarmed, Ferris could not even deal with them, let alone with the police outside. He frowned angrily.
Teucrete's stare held on him for a moment, as if puzzled. Her eyes moved on, focusing on Angel, then Pao Chung. Presently, they came back to Ferris, amused and faintly mocking.
"What is a gamma-man doing here?" she asked.