They stood together, and their guns made singing sounds that were like those from a harp of death. And before those notes men sank and died, one by one, and two by two, until only living stood beside the door, and there was no other life.
"Come, man," Schutler boomed, "before others hear the fight and stick their noses in!" He fingered the stubble of his beard.
"Are you all right, Jim?" the Falcon asked Crandal, and the man grinned with a white-faced smile.
Jericho caught up the wounded man, ignoring a ray burn that raced like a livid purple snake across the blackness of his shoulders. He jerked his head at the door.
"We come in by a secret passage," he explained in a rush of words. "We didn't find you in the cells, so we come hunting."
The Falcon choked back the lump in his throat, and his eyes were misty as he looked at the men to whom loyalty was neither a word nor a gesture, only a thing that was in them when the need arose.
"How—?" he began.
"I did it, Curt," Jean's voice said.
Jean was crying then, crying like a child whose first dreams are gone, crying like one whose new dreams are but the faintest of sounds in her consciousness. Through the vizi-screen she had seen all that had happened, and the sickness in her eyes would be long leaving.
"Jean," the Falcon said. "Please, Jean—"