He tossed the third sending unit back to its owner.
The lizardmen looked at one another. The nearest shifted his grip on his pointed staff.
Hansen smiled at him. “I wasn’t lying about feeding you yourself either, boyo,” he said.
The lizardman shrank back.
“So I think I better leave this with whichever of you wants it,” Hansen said. He lifted the helmet from his head, judged the distance, and lobbed it in a high arc that descended directly in the center of the three Lomeri.
Mud gouted as all three creatures jumped for the prize. One grabbed it with both hands and shrugged off the others with a quick twist of his shoulders. He squawked as one of his fellows stabbed him hard enough in the belly that the staff’s modest point tented the scaly hide on the victim’s back as it tried to exit.
The killer gripped his weapon an instant too long. His uninjured fellow leaped for his throat and clamped it with the jaws that had so impressed Hansen. Blood, as red as a mammal’s, sprayed in all directions.
The killer let go of his staff. He tried to pry apart his fellow’s jaw hinge, but the teeth had done their work, and his arms were already losing strength.
The surviving lizardman pitched aside the corpse his jaws had nearly decapitated and straightened. He was laughing.
The hideous glee turned in mid-cackle to a shriek that mounted the scale of audibility as the Lomeri struggled with his slave collar. The last sound he made was a clicking grunt, an instant before he toppled face down into the pond. His legs continued to thrash, but no bubbles rose from the water covering his nostrils.
The lizardman with the staff through his guts dropped his sending unit. He bent forward, trying to reach the fallen helmet. His fingers touched it, but he didn’t have enough strength remaining to pick it up. His limbs splayed as he fell.
Hansen worked the helmet out from beneath the twitching body. Now that he wasn’t wearing it, he could see that there was a single blue diamond where the plastic covered his forehead. “Hello, Walker,” he said as he put the helmet on.
An edaphosaur grunted happily. The herd was separating again.
“That was unnecessary,” said Walker tartly. “You could have killed them yourself with the first sending unit.”
“I’ve done a lot of unnecessary things,” Hansen said. His eyes had no expression, but his palms went cold with the thoughts that flamed through his mind.
“The only ones I regret,” he went on, trying to control the sudden quiver in his voice, “are the people I’ve killed when I didn’t have to.”
Hansen looked at the bodies. All of them were still moving. He wondered if they’d squirm till it thundered. “If that lot needed to die,” he said, “then they’d die. Their choice.”
“Pft,” said the voice in his earphones. “But so long as you succeed, I won’t object to the technique.”
“Can you guide me to Strombrand’s place?” Hansen asked.
“Of course.”
“Then let’s go,” Hansen said, rubbing his hands on his coveralls as if trying to burnish the feel of death from his skin. “I think he’ll be in the market for somebody to round up his herd for him.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Hansen expected a rough palisade around a squalid village, and a sanitation problem worse than that of Peace Rock.
Instead, the high black wall which loomed from the mud and mist was seamless. It had the smooth glint of plastic or surface-sealed concrete. Beyond the wall was a geodesic dome, also black and bulging nearly a hundred meters into the air. The low towers at intervals along the outer wall were too small for living guards—
But just about right for the sensors and weapons of an automatic defense array.
Hansen stopped.
“Go up to the gate and claim admittance as a lone traveler,” Walker ordered. “Strombrand should feed and house you for three days.”
“Right,” said Hansen, keeping his arms at his sides and his hands open toward the sensors. Walker didn’t want him dead; that was one of the few things that Hansen did know with confidence.