He stopped trying to reach his feet, told Leah to be still, and fumbled the pistol out of his holster. He laid on the ground, as if he were too weak to continue, and waited for the copter to make another pass. He did not know if he could manage what he was about to do, but he had to try. A moment later, the glass-bubble cockpit” swept at them, tilted so the pilot could get a good look. He was grinning, and his finger was on the trigger for his gun.
Had Davis misjudged? Was the pilot just playing with them, tiring them and then killing them like a cat does with a mouse, without any concern about when the ground forces would arrive in the other copters? There was no doubt at all in his mind that the man in that control seat was a sadist. No other sort of man could have that expression with his finger on the trigger of a deadly weapon.
He rolled, brought up the pistol, and fired two rounds into the glass of the machine, directly at the man in the chair. The sharp sound of the gun sounded unrealistic.
The copter pulled up, passed over them, stalled, and spiraled into the earth a hundred yards away. It burst into orange and blue flames that stopped the gurgled scream of the pilot before he and Leah had reached the trees that had been their goal.
“The blanket!” she said when they were in the cool shadows of the trees.
“It was shredded. Useless. The radiators wouldn’t work even if there was enough of it to crawl under. We’ve got to make time.”
In the distance, the sound of approaching aircraft . . .
“Now!” he hissed.
She followed him into the trees, along another herd path. Without the suitcase they made far better time, for she was easily able to keep up with whatever pace he set as long as the ground was flat and relatively easy-going. They had gone perhaps five hundred yards when one of the huge Alliance copters, a troop carrier, shuddered by, just above tree level. Davis looked up, afraid he might see the hoist lowering armed men, but the worry was unfounded. He bent his head and concentrated on making time. He hoped the craft was not planning on depositing a crew somewhere ahead and letting the fugitives collide with them.
Even though the machine could not attack other men, Davis was pleased to see Proteus floating twenty feet ahead, hull gleaming, marked in one spot by the dark crease of a bullet that had been fired from the one-man copter back on the open field. As long as Proteus was nearby, Davis could remain sane. As children had security blankets which were of no use to ward off their enemies but which still gave them comfort, so he had his protection robot which could not do him any good in the battle in which he was now engaged but which still provided solace because of its past associations with triumph over death and danger.
Then the forest flared crimson . . .
There was a wash of flame, like liquid, bursting through the trees across their path, sweeping over Proteus,
And there was sound: a bellowing thunder . . .
Concussion: a fist that thumped the ground and tossed both of them down—hard.
The Alliance had given up on the bring-them-back-alive approach and was now set to destroy them, whatever the cost. The rep whose duty it was to direct Demos’s forces had cracked, had let his ego snap and rule supreme over him. Davis and Leah had made a fool out of the searchers once too often; now, with the murder of the single-man copter pilot on his record, Davis was a dangerous fugitive against whom any means of capture or destruction was sanctioned by law.
The chemical flame died as swiftly as it had erupted, though some of the yil trees—tough and durable—near the center of the blast were still burning furiously.
Davis leaped over a twisted mass of metal, started to help Leah across it, before he realized it was the hulk of Proteus. The protection robot had been caught near the center of the grenade eruption and had been smashed open down the middle. The guardian was gone; the security blanket had been taken from him.