[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
"There's nobody to hear you, Buck."
"Who asked you? You just stay there and keep your burner on the
playboys, while I rescue some equipment."
Pardoe scrambled back into the machine, and Joe sighed. "Can't do a
thing until he moves out. You say I'm bothered about the Tree itself and
that's right. Look, it's a mistake to credit it with too much, as it now is.
Sensitive to mental fields. Possessed of certain mimetic powers. That's about
it. But alien. I mean, it can't hear. It can detect sounds, sure, but a blown
balloon can do that. It can sense light and shade, but not to see. The point is,
all the development of those senses is human, and we use our senses
because we've been taught how. The Tree hasn't been taught anything. It
knows only what it has met and experienced."
"Yes. I can see that."
"And we are the only two humans it has ever met, the only ones it
knows. It's had a considerable effect on me, and on you but we have also
had an effect on it. You understand that?"
"Yes, I do." She recalled the sensation of goodness going out, and caught
her breath. "Good God! I see what you mean. You're saying the Tree is
innocent, nave."
"That's right. Just like an overgrown child. Now you try and imagine
what effect it is going to have when it gets a taste of Buck Pardoe and
Scorpia Martine!"
Selena started to ponder the prospect, but before she could get beyond a
chill despair Pardoe came boiling out of the craft again.
"You must be out of your mind!" Miss Martine expostulated. "Why
thrash about in the dark, damn it."
"Because I say so. I told you six or eight times already, we have no time
to give away. All the time Miss High-and-Mighty Ash is missing there will
be somebody a whole lot of somebodies looking for her. Maybe it will
take them years to find this planet, and then again, maybe it won't. Half the
Space Navy is looking for this place right now, and has been looking for a
long while; you know what I mean. And maybe somebody has already
found it, too, to go by those blades. We don't have any time to sit around
and get fat."
"Get fat!" she screeched furiously. "Eaten alive by crazy plants, all my
best duds rotted and ruined, two damned invalids to feed and nurse, and
now your damned flying egg-box folds up on us you call that getting fat?
And now you expect to march out and find a tree, one tree, in the dark?
with God only knows what skulking in the bushes. You must be out of your
mind; you've seen what the crazy things can do!"
"I've seen. You don't have to tell me. It will be just too bad for any plant
that tries to get gay with me from here on." Pardoe sounded mean enough
to spit acid right back at the surrounding undergrowth. She perceived how
the unlikely caravan began to move and felt the first hurt of the plants as
Pardoe blasted them to ashes in his path and marched forward.
"That hurts," Selena gasped, and Joe grunted in sympathy.
"Just one more reason for stopping him. Those plants are all my friends.
Makes me ashamed to be human. They're almost clear of the craft now. Can
you get a bead on it?"
"Just leave it to me." Selena aimed and poured a steady disruptive beam
into the machine until it crackled and collapsed.
"That takes care of that," she declared with considerable satisfaction.
"Have they noticed anything?"
"Not them. Pardoe is making too much clatter for anybody to notice
anything. The way they're headed they should pass close by us. We might
as well keep still."
She directed her attention to the oncoming travelers, wincing as Pardoe
kept letting go with a heavy-duty blaster to clear a way for himself. Much
more of that, she thought, and it won't be so difficult to shoot you down, cold
blood or not.
"Follow my track!" Pardoe commanded, "and if those two drag on their
feet just toast 'em up a bit."
"How the hell can you tell which way you're going?"
"You mean to tell me you can't feel it? I always said you were so stuck on
yourself you don't know anybody else is alive. Just keep on going, that's all
you have to do. I'll take you to it."
SIXTEEN
^
"W low, let 'em go by, then I clobber her from the back and we maybe
e lie
can grab your friends, right? Think you can shoot that beamer out of her
hand?" Joe whispered.
"I think so. Ill try to time it for your strike. Careful!"
"I will. You stay right here."
He went away with no more noise than a shadow, but she was able to
follow his progress easily.
Behind Pardoe came the captives Delmar and Lacoste, shambling and
reeling in acute distress. Each man had his wrists lashed together at his back,
and a stout black plastic cable linked them, from the slip-noose about one
neck to its counterpart about the other, so that neither man dared stumble
and fall for fear of strangulation. There was no sign of any care of nursing, as
Miss Martine had claimed, and Selena itched in sympathy as she saw their
scars and scratches. Following, looking thoroughly bored and disgusted,
came Miss Martine herself, visibly out of humor with the whole situation,
but maintaining an alert grip on her beamer.
Joe was behind Miss Martine and ready to strike. Selena took careful aim
and held her breath. Some instinct seemed to warn Miss Martine, perhaps
some tiny sound or smell. She stiffened. The spear came down in the same
second that she ducked and whirled, and caught her on the arm. She yelled
in fright. Selena wriggled frantically, trying to get a clean shot. Miss Martine
hoisted her beamer, and down came Joe's spear again, cracking solidly
against the weapon. It went spinning away, and in the next second Joe and
the woman were grappled and thrashing about in the undergrowth in a
confusion of arms and legs.
Up ahead, Pardoe roared in anger, spun around, came galloping heavily
back, elbowing the helpless captives out of the way. Miss Martine let out a
shrill scream from the tangle and her partner homed in on it. Selena saw his
unoccupied hand reach for a fragmentation pistol.
"Get clear!" he roared. "Damn it, Scorpia, get out of the way, let me get a
shot at it!"
Selena acted without pause to consider implications. She sent a
needle-beam slicing through the cable that linked the captives, then swung
and aimed delicately at the heavy-charge beamer which jutted from
Pardoe's right hand, now in perfect profile. The lethal metal erupted in a
spray of incandescent sparks, and he flung it away from himself frantically,
then spun heavily around, snarling, to peer into the gloom. Up came the
frag-pistol in his hand, and the night flew apart in thunder as it spat
one two three and stopped. His aim was good. Selena heard the slugs
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]