“Men waiting,” Simba warned.
Well, that was to be expected—Reme’s men.
“Not enemies,” Troy replied.
“We have you covered! Drop your blaster!”
Troy spun halfway around as he caught a glimpse of a uniformed shoulder, a hand holding a blaster. His arm, still stiff from the cut, went up and his fingers gripped Rerne, pulling the other to him as a shield. He heard a gasp from the ranger and an exclamation of anger.
“So this is the worth of a Clansman’s word!” Troy spat. “Would your knife oath have held any better?” Then he raised his voice to reach the others. “We got out—this Hunter lord with us. Any attempted burn- down and he roasts too!”
Rerne offered no resistance as Troy propelled him ahead into the open. There was a muttering behind but no bolt to shatter the gloom.
Sixteen
Rerne was oddly silent; he had made no reply to Troy’s accusation. That bothered the younger man; he wanted an explanation, to know that the other had not purposely led him into a trap. Now that he had a moment to think, he believed that scrap of uniform so briefly glimpsed had not been ranger dress.
“Men here—“ Again that alert from the animals.
Troy, holding the unresisting Rerne to him, stood— back to the dome wall—surveying the scene. He could see those others waiting—and they were unmistakably rangers, the hunting dress blending into the earth color of the ruins. A little beyond was what he had not dared to hope for—a flitter!
“Tell your men,” he said harshly to his prisoner, “to stand away from the flitter—now!”
“Leave the flitter,” Rerne repeated obediently, his voice as toneless as that of a corn robot. His features were set and hard, and Troy sensed his rage.
The rangers moved. When they were well away from the flyer, Troy began a crablike journey in its direction, keeping Rerne between him and the Clan men, knowing the animals were well ahead of him. Then he was at his goal, his hand on the cabin door.
His anger and fear driving him, Troy swung the blaster, laid the barrel against Rome’s head. The Hunter gasped, his knees buckled, and he dropped to the ground. Troy scrambled into the flyer, knocked down the rise lever. They climbed in a jump, which shook him across the control board and made Sahiba yowl in protest as she was scraped against that obstruction. But they were safe for the moment; he was sure the zoom had lifted them out of range of blaster fire. Free and in a flitter.
He twirled the journey dial to the east, knowing that the flyer, without any tending from him, would keep straight for the heart of the Wild. They would be after him surely. But unless they had another flitter at Ruhkarv, there would be precious time lost until they could summon one, and time was all he dared hope to gain now.
Troy’s eyes were fixed unseeingly on the night sky that held them. Food—water—shelter—His mind felt as sapped of energy as his body. He could not think properly. Of only one thing was he sure: a stubborn determination to set down the flyer somewhere in the Wild where the animals could take to the country for their own concealment.
“It is well.” That was Simba. “Good hunting here. Men cannot shake us out of these lands.”
“There is still Zul,” Troy warned sluggishly.
“There is still Zul,” Simba agreed. “But let Zul follow us before we lay a trap for his feet.”
Troy must have slept. He aroused with light in his eyes, sat up groggily, for a moment unable to remember “where he was. Then the golden sky of morning, patterned with the clouds of fair weather, recalled the immediate past. Under him the flitter rode steadily on the course he had set—eastward.
He looked down through the bubble, expecting to see the rolling plains he had hoped to find. They spread beneath him right enough, only ahead was a distant smudge of darker vegetation, the sign of a forest or more broken ground. They must have passed over a large section of the open territory during the night and were leagues deep into the reserve, farther than the Tikil hunting parties ever went. Troy rubbed his eyes, began to think again.
The only way they could be traced now was by the flitter. Suppose he were to land by the edge of that distant wood and then send the flyer off on remote control—back to the west? One way of confusing the pursuit.
But, as he reached for the controls, to take the flyer back under manual pilotage again, his time had run out. The flitter plunged crazily, caught in the side sweep of a traction beam. Troy gave one startled look to the rear, saw another flyer boring down his track.
Perhaps a more skilled pilot could have done better. His evasive swings only kept him out of the direct core of the beam the other had trained upon his craft. He set the air speed to the top notch, striving to reach the wood before the other pinned him squarely.
At last Troy set down, felt the wheels of the flitter catch and tear through the long grass. But that grass could cover his passengers’ escape. He slewed the flyer about, broadside to the first tongue of woods cover. Opening the door of the cabin before they bumped to a complete halt, he gave his last command to the animals: “Out and hide!”
Sahiba he set down himself, saw her limp into a tangle of grass with her mate, the foxes and the kinkajou already gone. Then Troy sent the flyer on, scuttling -along the ground as far and as fast from the point where he had dropped his live cargo as he could get.
The flitter rocked, half lifted from the ground. Now he was pinned to his seat, helpless, unable to raise as much as a finger from the controls. They had a pinner beam on him, and he was a captive forced to wait for the arrival of his pursuer.
Unable to as much as turn his head, Troy sat sweating out the minutes of that, wait. At least they wanted to take him prisoner, not just blast him out of the air as they might have done. Whether this was good or bad he had yet to learn. And whether his captors were rangers, patrollers, or Zul’s ambiguous force he would know shortly.
The cabin door was pulled open. Though he could not turn his head, Troy rolled his eyes to the right far enough to see that the man who had thrust head and shoulders into that confined space was not wearing the hide forest dress of the Clans, not the uniform of a patroller. Zul’s party—?
Paying little or no attention to the helpless prisoner before the controls, the other searched the floor, squeezed behind the seat to survey the storage space. Undoubtedly he was looking for the animals. And, guessing that, Troy’s spirits rose a small fraction. They had either not noted his brief pause by the tongue of woodland, or they had not understood the reason for it. They had expected to find not one but six helpless in the flitter.
The man backed out of the door. “Not here.” Troy heard his call.
Though he knew he could not fight the tension bands of a pinner, Troy strove to move just his hand. The blaster butt was a painful knob against his chest, held upright by his belt. If he could only close his fingers about that, the man by the door and the one he reported to—he could turn tables on both of them. But, though blood throbbed in his temples from his efforts, he was held motionless and unable to resist any attack the others chose to make.
His eyes began to ache with the strain of trying to – keep watch on the door of the cabin. But he did not have too long to wait. Zul, his yellow face a mask of pure and unshielded malignancy, took the place of his hireling there. As the other had done, he searched the floor of the machine, apparently unwilling or unable to accept that first report. Then he looked directly at Troy.
“They are gone!” He said that flatly.
At least vocal cords and throat muscles were not governed by the pinner. Troy was able to answer. “Where you will not find them.”
Zul did not reply to that. Withdrawing from the cabin, he gave a low-voiced order. After a moment the door beside Troy was opened, and his disobedient muscles could not save him from falling through it, drop- ping to the ground on his face.
But the fall had removed him from the direct line of the pinner, and now he was free to move as the others, protected by countercharge buttons, had moved within the machine. He tried to get to his knees but he was not quick enough. A sharp pain burst at the nape of his neck, and he sprawled forward again, into the trampled grass of the plains.