Val Kenton paused only long enough to slip newly charged loads into his guns, then swung through the port after the fleet patrolman. He dropped from the port onto the spongy ground, crouched there, his eyes searching the edge of the water for signs of the charging crab-beasts.
He straightened slowly, seeing no signs of danger, stared at Johnson and Andrews nearby.
"Sorry, to startle you like that," Johnson said, "one of those crabs stuck a pincer out of the water, and I took a snapshot at him."
Val Kenton laughed, relaxed with a sigh of pent-up air. "Glad it wasn't any worse than that," he said relievedly, "I'm not much in a mood for a fight."
Tony Andrews' gun snapped to his shoulder, and the concussion of the shot sounded strangely flat and deadly. In the water's edge, a furry crab floundered and threshed in savage death throes.
And then the water seemed to come alive with the Venusian crabs. They scuttled onto the bank from the silver water, their bodies glowing with eerie phosphorescent sheen, their cries ear-piercing.
Val Kenton laughed aloud, swung his twin hand guns into line, flicked their power onto full force. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Johnson and Andrews, and the combined fire of their guns cut a swathe of death in the charging ranks that broke the attack almost at its onset.
"Remember Mars, when we cleaned out the Truds?" Tony Andrews yelled over the blasting of the guns.
Val Kenton grinned, said nothing, but he felt a sharp nostalgia for those days so long gone in which he and Tony had fought side by side on far-off planets.
And then another gun added its fire from the port of the ship; and the crabs scuttled back toward the water.