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.Their bow-strings were too wet.They snatched out bayonets and charged.Jonnie threw a kill-club and one Brigante was catapulted backward.The other came on.Jonnie took his last kill-club from his belt.He parried the bayonet and struck the Brigante alongside the head.The kill-club flew out of his hand.He got Sir Robert a bit closer to the console.He was trying to pick Sir Robert up and carry him.For a moment Jonnie’s back was turned.General Snith snatched a poison arrow out of his crossbelt and rushed.The heavy impact of the body hit Jonnie’s pouch.General Snith raised the poisoned arrow and drove it into Jonnie’s upper left arm, drove it in through the radiation suit, and deep into the flesh.Jonnie went down.He rolled, pulling a dirk.He came up and drove the knife into Snith’s heart.The pain of the wound was savage.Jonnie grasped the arrow shaft and pulled it straight out.But he knew the damage was done.The ferocious fire in the wound was almost more than he could bear.He gritted his teeth and rallied his strength.They had said it was a slow poison.He still might have time to save Sir Robert and the console.He grabbed the hilt of the knife and tried to yank it out of Snith’s heart.It was stuck.He looked at Terl.The Psychlo, still raving, was clawing at the access plate.Tearing his claw points he was actually cutting into the hard metal to make a circle and remove the core.It was quieter outside.Dwight’s voice came out of the mine radio at his belt, “Ten seconds to withdraw!”Jonnie knew he was late.The wires were still humming.Jonnie made himself concentrate.He still had a job to do.He could feel his heart revving up.He got a hand under Sir Robert’s armpit and dragged him through the slush.He got to the console.He knew it had a bomb in it he would have to disarm fast.But he tucked Sir Robert in close to the console so the dome coming down would not amputate his arms or legs.He glanced at the console.The switch was in the up position.It would have to be in the down position when next this was fired.He wished he had time to tell somebody.He fumbled for his remote control box.There was broken glass in his pouch.His arm felt like it was on fire.That broken glass was the serum ampule! He had no serum.The remote shook.No, it was his hand shaking.He threw the switch and swung the crane.No.He had to turn off the armor curtain first.He was getting flashes of blackness.His heart was beating faster and faster.The armor curtain! He crawled to the bus bar and got it off.Back at the console he looked up at the dome.He operated the remote, positioning the dome exactly above them so it would come down correctly.He threw the switch to lower it.It was coming down too slowly.The cables must be stiff.He could not help that.He got a hatchet out of his belt for the cables.He would have to be ready to hack them off the instant the humming stopped.Jonnie lost track of time.He could still hear the humming of the wires.He looked toward Terl over on the platform.The monster seemed to have succeeded in opening the access plate.He was handling the bomb with great care, extracting the heavy metal core.Suddenly Jonnie knew what Terl was going to do.He would throw that core at him.It would travel like a bullet! It could go straight through him.Abruptly Jonnie saw something else.Brown Limper!He was rushing forward with a Thompson submachine gun in his hands.He had gone through where the armor curtain had been at the far end of the platform.He was trying to get so close to Jonnie he couldn’t miss.The dome was not yet down.Terl had the core in his paw now.He was going to throw it at Jonnie.It was quieter.There was only smoke and falling snow and the creak of the cables lowering the dome.Jonnie pointed at Brown Limper.“Terl! He’s going to shoot!” he shouted.Terl spun around and saw Brown Limper.He saw him raising the Thompson to aim it.One shot at this moment would shatter the firing.Terl threw.He threw with all his strength.The core hit Brown Limper in the side.It ripped through and hit his spine.The Thompson clattered to the ground.Brown Limper fell in a jerking tangle of arms and legs, screaming: “Damn you, Tyler! Damn you!” He lay still.The wires were still humming.Terl yelled at Jonnie, “I still win, rat brain!” He knew better than to move now.Jonnie’s head was pounding.His heart was going too fast.But he could shout back.And he felt he had to pin Terl there, distract him.“Those coffins are full of sawdust! They were changed in your bedroom this morning!” shouted Jonnie.Terl whirled to look at them.“And the gold never went to Psychlo! We changed those too!” yelled Jonnie.Terl opened his mouth to shout.The platform cargo shimmered.The coffins full of sawdust shimmered.The Brigante corpses on the platform shimmered.Terl shimmered.And it was all gone.The platform was empty, clean even of slush.The humming stopped.Jonnie took his hatchet and slammed the blade down across the cables.It wasn’t a full severance.He struck twice more.All the cables parted.Things were going blacker.No, it was the dome.The reworked plane skids on the bottom of it hit the metal.Jonnie reached out to the dome interior and pulled closed the locking lever which annealed them to the metal the console sat on.It was very dark.He felt his time sense must have gone out and then a fleeting thought that maybe Terl had extended the time for his own firing.Jonnie had had a small mine lamp in his pouch.He made an effort to reach it.His whole body was beginning to shake as if everything was drawn too taut.A voice was talking to him.It was Sir Robert.“Hurry.Cut my hands loose.”Jonnie had the hatchet.He made himself feel about for Sir Robert’s hands.The blade was dull, the cord was resistant.Then he remembered with a surge of panic there must be a time bomb under that console.It would blow Sir Robert to bits.He dropped the hatchet and put his hand to the console side.It was terribly heavy.He only had one working arm but he put his agonizing shoulder against the metal.He got the bottom of the console lifted.He fished along the lower edges.Then a little higher.He felt it.It was taped on.Working with one hand he got it loose and pulled it out.He let the console tip back in place.In the dark he extracted the fuse from it.Jonnie felt he was going unconscious.His heart was revving up.Faster and faster.He had one more thing to do.The switch.The position of the switch.Jonnie felt like he was being torn to pieces by his nerves pulling tight.“Sir Robert! Tell them the switch.the switch has to be in a down position.a down position for the next.”The outside of the dome was struck a blow so hard the whole platform rocked!It was as though a dozen earthquakes had hit at once.As though the planet had been torn apart.Jonnie stiffened out into blackness.He no longer heard the chaos going on outside.5About an hour before the firing, the orbiting group of ships had just come over the horizon that put them into position to view the American compound.A small Hawvin spycraft in the orbit ahead of them had already reported some activity there earlier in the day.The report had only said that in the middle of the night a group had been seen on infrascreens entering the compound area and that the group had vanished, leaving only the usual sprawled about and apparently asleep night guards.The scanners of the orbiting combined force were now picking up something unusual down there on the approaching horizon.There seemed to be a more than normal number of people at the site [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]