The sound of the jets cut off, and Amalfi understood for the first time what an “aching void” might be. The machine fell into a steep glide, the air howling dismally outside it. Another rocket, under the guidance of one of Hazleton’s assistants, dived down before it, scything a narrow runway in the jungle with a mesotron rifle—for the bandit towns kept no supersonic no-plant’s-land between themselves and the rank vegetation.
The moment the rocket stopped moving, Amalfi and a handpicked squad of Okies and Hevians were out of it and slogging through the muck. From inside the bandit city drifted a myr
iad of screams—human screams now, screams of agony and terror, from men who thought themselves blinded for life. Amalfi had no doubt that many of them were. Certainly anyone who had had the misfortune to be looking at the sky when the pile had converted itself into photons would never see again.
But the law of chance would have protected most of the renegades, so speed was vital. The mud built up heavy pads under his shoes, and the jungle did not thin out until they hit the town’s wall itself.
The gates had been rusted open years ago, and were choked with greenery. The Hevians hacked their way through it with practiced knives and cunning.
Inside, the going was still almost as thick. The city proper presented a depressing face of proliferating despair. Most of the buildings were completely enshrouded in vines, and many were halfway toward ruins. Iron-hard tendrils had thrust their way between stones, into windows, under cornices, up drains and chimney funnels. Poison-green, succulent leaves plastered themselves greedily upon every surface, and in shadowed places there were huge blood-colored fungi which smelled like a man six days dead; the sweetish taint hung heavily in the air. Even the paving blocks had sprouted— inevitably, since, whether by ignorance or laziness, most of them had been cut from green wood.