For a short moment, the bullets stopped—Jacobs doubled his efforts and shuffled faster, passing the halfway mark.
Kack-ack-ack! A fantastic barrage of shells tore against his chest, toppling him. The suit still held, but he had had the wind knocked from him. He lay very still, choking on the stale air that penetrated the thin eye slits of the hood, his stomach throbbing with protest, his lungs afire with the need for oxygen. Slowly, he forced the pain from his chest and regained a normal—if somewhat speeded—breathing pattern. Then he concentrated on appearing dead.
Bullets skipped over the pavement, ricocheted from his suit. The ice water shimmered with the rippled wakes of the shells. Finally, the killerbot stopped firing. Jacobs lay still, thankful that the bulk of the suit concealed the rise and fall of the rib cage. Several minutes passed. The killerbot opened up again for thirty seconds, then stopped again. Time crawled by unbearably slow. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. Jacobs thought it might be safe now. He licked his lips of the sweat that had trickled down his face, tasted the salty fluid on his tongue. It would take him the best part of a minute to gain his feet, considering the weight of the bullet-proof garments. He would just have to hope that the killerbot would not be watching him, would not see him until he had gained at least ten yards. Sucking in breath, he pushed up with his hands. . . .
He was lucky. Apparently, the killerbot had shifted its attention back to the men at the front barricade. He found his feet, wiggled on weak, shaky legs. That was not good. He would have to will away any weakness until he had reached the comparative safety of the walls ahead. Laboriously, he dragged himself along. He had gone another thirty yards before the killerbot caught the movement and opened with heavy frag slug fire.
The slight downward trend in the street had helped him. He rolled, bullets pinging from the pavement on all sides.
Abruptly, the thudding of shells against his fibrous armor ceased. Hands groped for him, pulled off his hood. He blinked his eyes, looked up into Cullen’s thin, young face, and smiled. “Thanks.”
“I thought you were dead!”
“So did it,” he stopped grinning. “What’s the situation?” “I think it’s going to be a front-on attack. Any normal killerbot would have exposed itself to our fire by now. It is cunning. And I think it must have some sort of shield.”
“They wouldn’t waste a shield on a killerbot!” Jacobs said, mentally tabulating the high cost of manufacturing and maintaining a shield projector. They were even too expensive for normal police work.
“Just the same—”
“Well, if we have to initiate a frontal, we might as well start,” Jacobs said, taking command of his suit. Cullen sighed audibly with the realization that the hot potato had just changed hands for the last time that night. Anything went wrong after this, Jacobs would carry the blame.
“What first, Phil?”
Jacobs put his eye to one of the tiny lenses, surveyed the wide panorama it gave him. “We can’t wheel the shield up to the front door. When we get directly under him, he could just shoot down and pick us off. The door is closed. I suspect it may also be locked. We might all get cut down trying to blow it.”
“Now what?”
Jacobs kept his eye to the lens. The illusion of a rain-soaked, empty midway still clung to him. The yellow light gleamed starkly on the black street. For a moment, he thought he could see the carousel with its garishly painted horses. Perched on the shoulders of the grinning beast was a small, dark-haired boy. Kenny, he whispered. And the illusion shattered, melted back into the light-rimmed puddles. “Call back to the first barricade for a demolition packet. Well move this barrier along to the side of the building. There is bound to be another doorway. We’ll blast our way in and go up and take him.”
Cullen looked dubious. But having no plan to offer, he called the barricade officer and requested a demolition packet. Ten minutes later, the suitcase came spinning across the street in their direction. It slid behind the front barrier, right into Cullen’s hands.