When he was done, Ryan said, “So, it sounds like the cuffs won’t cut off our hands and feet as long as we stay on the road.”
“That’s how I read it, too,” J.B. agreed.
“And the road runs all the way back to the camp, where they keep the comp that controls the cuffs.” Ryan scratched the dense black stubble on his cheek. “If that’s the case, then all that’s keeping us here are the guys in the battlesuits.”
“Pretty big ‘all,’ if you ask me,” Mildred said. “It’s the same ‘all’ that’s going to laser us into chunks even if we make the camp and break up the computer.”
“We’ve got to take this one small step at a time,” Ryan told her.
Then he turned to J.B. and said, “Gabhart said nothing about a way to defeat the battlesuits?”
“Never got to ask him the question. He conked out on me, first.”
“It’s possible that there’s no way to defeat the battlesuits,” Mildred said. “At least not with what little we’ve got here at hand. I mean, all we have for weapons are pickaxes. If a centerfire slug can’t get close to one of those suits, how the hell is an ax going to do any damage?”
After a long silence, Ryan said, “We need to sleep on it. Mebbe something will come to us by morning.”
“Mebbe the colonel will wake up and give us what we need before he croaks,” J.B. said.
The companions crawled into the shallow, circular dimples in the glass’s surface, downwind of the heater, and out of the direct glare of the encircling klieg lights.
Krysty and Ryan curled up together in the same dimple and quickly fell asleep.
AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN, Ryan awakened to Krysty’s warm, soft lips brushing his.
“Mmm,” she said. Her fingers tangled in his hair, and she pulled his mouth onto hers.
“You did real good yesterday,” she said as she drew back. “You deserve a proper reward.”
From the way her hand lingered on the back of his neck, Ryan knew she wanted to give him more than just another kiss.
“This hellhole is the wrong place for love,” he said.
“There’s no such thing. Let me show you.”
Ryan winced slightly as her fingers found and fondled him through his clothes. His grimace didn’t deter her one bit. And despite his misgivings, her stroking produced the desired effect almost immediately.
“See what I mean?” she said, smiling up at him.
Ryan didn’t say anything.
Krysty snuggled closer. “We may never get another chance, lover,” she whispered, her lips once again brushing against his. “You wouldn’t want to die knowing we’d missed it, would you?” The tip of her tongue tickled lightly over his lips and pushed gently between his teeth.
They kissed deeply.
Ryan was the one who pulled back. The taste of Krysty’s mouth and the feel of her tongue lashing against his seemed to steal the air from his lungs; the intimate contact left him hungry for more.
He pushed up to his knees and looked around. In the hard light of the kliegs, no one else was stirring. The other companions were out of sight in their own dimples.
“Do it quiet,” he told her as he lay down beside her.
“Quiet as a mouse, lover,” she said, unfastening his fly with practiced fingers.
Krysty did try to keep it under wraps; he had to give her that. Biting her lower lip and digging her nails into her palms, she managed to stifle herself while he thrust into her over and over again. But in the end, she couldn’t hold back. She arched up from the glass and let out a piping cry.
Ryan covered her mouth with his hand and finished in a sprint, along with her. Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms for a long while, finally falling into a light sleep.
It seemed as if they had only just drifted off when they were awakened by the thwup-thwup-thwup of approaching rotor blades. The noise got louder and louder and then the gyroplane’s landing lights speared down on them from the black sky. As the aircraft descended onto a flat spot outside the ring of klieg lights, Ryan and Krysty had to turn their heads and shut their eyes to avoid the wind whipped glass dust.