Looking at Virginia, Chip saw it was a question of whether she dropped her burden or fell over first. Her face was looking transparent, she was so pale.
“I believe I can manage to ambulate now,” said the alien cheerily.
They put it down with great relief. Ambulate it could. But damned slowly. They got over the bridge less than twenty yards ahead of the Maggots. Never had bat-placed explosives sounded so sweet as when they took the pylon out of the middle of the bridge.
“Yes. Way to go!” cheered Chip.
It bought them minutes. But the alien was just so damned slow.
“How far? asked Chip. He’d like to kick that prickly football along. In his pouch Phylla gave a slight groan.
“Quarter of a mile, more maybe,” replied Bronstein. “We’ve just passed the booby-trapped wall.”
“I’m buggered. Gonna drop the rest of this fertilizer.”
“There’s a hole. Drop it into that.” Bronstein waved a wingtip.
Chip didn’t argue at this stage. He just did as she told him. Twenty-five pounds lighter, legging it was less of a strain.
“There are some ahead of us!” someone cried.
“And they’re closing in behind us. But not for long.” Bronstein held a detonator trigger-bar in her claws.
“I’ll get the ones in front.” Chip groped in his pocket for Fal’s lighter while sorting out the hose of the backpack sprayer. He ran out in front, ripped the backpack off, and rammed the pressure plunger up and down. He realized he wasn’t going to have time to get it on again. With a shaking hand he flicked the lighter, and pulled the trigger. The flame-torch was just in time. Grabbing the backpack by the straps he took off after the fleeing maggots.
“Run, you fuckers, run!” It was good to be on the chasing end for a change.
Behind, the bats triggered their booby trap. Hah! It was all going like clockwork! Chip brandished his torch, pointing upwards and forwards with the triumphal flame. A thin trickle of alcohol ran down the metal pipe. A little flame followed it.
Chip shook the pipe hastily before the fire got to his hand, suddenly remembering he must keep the flame nozzle pointed down. The little tongues of flame went out. Then the flames leaped back again. They were very little flames and mostly followed the drips, so long as he held the pipe slightly below horizontal. The homemade flamethrower was working really efficiently now, the flame-tongue at least six feet long.
WeeeeWOOOOOMH!!
The hammered-in spray-gun nozzle exploded out of the brass pipe. It ricocheted off the next bend in the passage thirty yards away. A huge gout of eyebrow-singeing flame leapt down the passage after it. Before, the alcohol had merely been atomized and burning. Now the small flames had vaporized the stuff inside the pipe. Chip dropped it and danced away from the flames still coming out of the pipe. The backpack was wet with alcohol . . .
“Back off! RUUUNNN!” He suited action to the words.
* * *
The heat still licked at his back. Chip swore. It was all his own fault for thinking it could go like clockwork. In combat, battle plans are by definition screwed. If the enemy didn’t mess it up for you, then you did it for yourself. Brilliantly synchronized movements were great for dance companies. Of course getting to the break-out point they’d set up to mislead the Magh’—with the enemy cooperatively doing just what they were supposed to do—had been doomed from the start.
They came back to the caved-in section where the bats had set their “distraction” booby trap. There was a dusty hole through the wall, and the ground underfoot was pure mud. The explosion had resulted in at least one crushed Maggot. A limb twitched at them. Typically, a rat bit through the joint-tissue, and thrust the leg into his pack-straps.
“Through here,” called Fal. They slithered up the muddy slope and out of the narrow lumifungus-lit tunnel into a huge hall full of long tanks. The nearest tank was leaking, obviously cracked in the blast. A group of Maggots with large hairy paddle-palps were frantically milling around the crack, trying to stop the crack with their paddles. Their entire attention seemed focused on it. Despite this, Virginia stopped dead at the point where the new adit opened into the hall.