“What’s it doing now?” Krysty asked.
“Looking,” Jak replied.
“Looking for us,” Ryan said. “Nobody move, not a muscle.”
When the nose of the aircraft swung past them, they all breathed a sigh of relief. The machine continued to turn, climbing higher as it did so, then from the peak of its spiraling ascent, it suddenly banked and dived on them at incredible speed.
“By the three Kennedys!” Doc cried. “It has seen us!”
Ryan shoved J.B., hard. “Go! Everybody, head east! I’ll make it follow me.”
There was no time for argument. Their last best hope was to scatter. Ryan already had drawn his SIG-Sauer. He led the diving aircraft, aiming well below it, and squeezed off three shots in rapid succession. He didn’t expect to down the machine with 9 mm bullets, but he did expect to see them send sparks flying off its black skin.
There were no sparks. The craft had soaked up the slugs like a sponge, or he’d missed it altogether.
The gunfire did draw the attention of the pilot, who immediately angled the craft’s dive toward him.
With a glance at the others, who were already taking cover behind the row of spires to the right, Ryan bolted across the jagged terrain, back the same way they had come. As he ran, he fired his pistol in the general direction of the aircraft.
Ryan didn’t know what the range of the plane’s laser blaster was, but he had a sixth sense when it came to being locked in someone’s sights. At that moment, his alarm bells clanged. With a monumental effort he dived headlong, throwing himself behind a man-sized horn of rock. In the same instant there was a blinding flash of light, a wave of intense heat and a rocking explosion, which was followed by the whipping suction of a violent gust of wind. Over his shoulder he saw the black ship zoom past. The stone that had been his cover had been destroyed. Three feet of its tip sliced off clean. Nothing was left of the missing part. The light beam had detonated it like a gob of plastic explosive.
Ryan took a two-handed grip on the SIG-Sauer and, as the airship turned, he punched out four evenly spaced shots. He knew the capabilities of his hand-blaster and the limits of his own skill. At a range of fifty yards, with a steady hold, he could just about guarantee where the bullets would fall. And that was certainly inside a circle smaller than ten feet in diameter.
Yet he scored no visible hits.
“Fireblast!” he snarled, jumping up and ducking between a pair of towering spires.
With the others no longer in sight, Ryan was free to think about his own survival. It was a safe bet that he couldn’t outrun the flying machine. Experience had taught him that he couldn’t outshoot it, either. His only chance was to outthink its pilot.
The black ship approached his position, then stopped at a distance of seventy feet. Maintaining its altitude, it jockeyed first one way then the other, trying to get a decent shot angle on him.
Ryan pulled back behind cover as the laser cut loose again. This time the flare of light didn’t wink out. The beam was sustained. The wave of heat made him groan. Smoke started to curl up from his hair. As the beam gnawed at the rock, it gave off a painfully shrill tone and he could feel the massive monolith vibrating. The rock crag weighed in the vicinity of two hundred tons. At its base, the circumference was probably twenty feet. Ryan was glad to learn that there were some things the aircraft’s weapon couldn’t shoot through in a single blast.
Then it got noticeably cooler. Shielding his eye from the glare, Ryan saw that the pilot had switched his point of aim to the pinnacle of the spire above him, a place where the rock was much thinner.
Time to move.
As he leaped away from the base, high overhead there was a thunder-crack explosion and the huge pinnacle came crashing down in a golden rain of sparks. The impact raised a cloud of dust that enveloped him.