And as his feet hit the surface of the roof below it happened. There was no sound at first. But the support under him danced. He fell flat and buried his head in his arms, not daring to watch what was happening above. Force bomb all right. He had once before been caught in the backwash of one. Had Zinga and Fylh escaped in time? Resolutely he shut that fear out of his mind. There was a faint moan from Kan. Rolth—?
But on the edge of that thought came the Faltharian’s voice.
“Quite a display! Cummi likes to play rough, doesn’t he?”
The sergeant sat up. He was trembling—perhaps with reaction from that frenzied descent—but, he decided, mostly from the black rage which possessed him now whenever he thought of the Ageratan. A rage he must best or that other sensitive could turn it into a weapon against him.
“How do we get away from here?” He must depend on Rolth’s ability to pierce the gloom. For it was real gloom which walled them in now. The dancing lights of the city were gone—they were crouched in the middle of a black blot.
“Window over there—not too high to reach. What about this prize package? Do we have to lug him along?”
“He’ll wake by morning. Get him inside a room and leave him. I don’t think they’ll try another bomb.”
“Not unless they want to bring the whole place down around their heads. Let’s go. If you’ll take Kan’s legs, I’ll heave his head.”
Kartr stumbled along, trusting to Rolth to guide them. They reached a window, beat open the casement and crawled through with their unconscious burden.
“Aren’t we in the wrong building now?” the sergeant wanted to know. “I thought we climbed down over there—”
“You’re right. We’re in a different one. But this was the easiest and quickest route out. Did the boys get away?”
For the second time Kartr tried to reach Zinga—sent out those shafts of thought. Once—for a single joyful second he thought he had made contact—then it was gone. He dared not try too long, the Can-hound—if that creature still lived—or even Cummi might be able to pick up his signal.
“No use,” he told Rolth. “I can’t make contact. But that doesn’t mean we have to worry. They may be too far away—we’ve never been able to discover what governs mental reception or how far we can beam a call. And they may be lying low because the Ageratan is too near. But I did reach Zinga before the blast and they had several minutes more than we did to escape.”
That was not much to pin any hope to, Kartr knew that. But with such veterans as Fylh and Zinga it was almost enough.
“Do we try to locate Smitt?”
“I think so. Or at least we can make contact with his rebels.”
Kartr hooked his fingers in Rolth’s belt and allowed the Faltharian to tow him through dark rooms and darker hallways, while he tried to keep some sense of direction.
“Street level,” came the welcome whisper at last.
“I believe that we are facing the street which runs along the front of Cummi’s headquarters—”
But, before Rolth could affirm or deny that, a brilliant bolt of fire snapped across the dark and both of them involuntarily ducked.
A blaster shot! And that was another from down the street. A third beam brought a choked, horrible scream in answer.
“The war’s on!” Rolth pointed out unnecessarily. “And which is our side?”
“Neither, just yet. I don’t want to guess wrong and be fried,” returned Kartr grimly. “There’s one to our left—about five feet away— He’s crawling past us at an angle. I’ll try contact as he goes by and see who he is—”
The lashes of fire continued to light up the sod-grown street at intervals. There were no more cries so either the aim continued to be poor, or very, very good.
The sniper crawled across their vantage point.
“No uniform,” Rolth reported. “Looks like a civilian to me. But he knows blasters. Maybe the veteran of a sector war—”
“He’s not a Cummi man but—” Kartr had no time for a warning.
No, the man out there was not one of Cummi’s followers, but he had caught that tentative mind touch in an instant—something which had never happened to Kartr before. And his blaster swung around at the rangers.
“Patrol!” Rolth yelled.
The blaster aim wavered, and then held steady at them.
“Come out—with your hands up!” ordered a harsh voice. “I’ve set this on ‘spray’ and I’ll use it that way, too!”
Kartr and Rolth obeyed, hunking forward at a half stoop for there were other blasters busy farther down.
“Who in Space are you?” demanded their captor.
“Patrol rangers. We’re trying to contact Smitt, our com-techneer—”
“Yeah?” There was deep suspicion in that voice. “Well, you’re going to contact him now. Get going down in that direction and I’m right behind you if you try to run—”
They followed orders which brought them to a dark doorway some distance away.
“Stairs here,” Rolth informed his companion.
“Sure,” agreed the man behind them. “Go down them, and shut up!”
But five steps down brought them to a barrier.
“Knock on that four times quick, wait a second and knock again!” came the order of their guard.
Rolth obeyed and the portal moved aside. They blundered through a thick curtain and found themselves in a dimly lighted hall where two men eyed them with no pretense of friendship and blasters were pointed at their middles. But when the light touched their comets there came recognition and relaxation. One of the guardians stepped closer.
“Take off your helmets,” he commanded.
The rangers obeyed and the blinked as a torch beam centered on them.
“It’s okay. They’re not Cummi’s—they must be Patrol. Take them in to Krowli. How is it going topside?”
“We lie on our bellies and shoot—they do the same. At least we knocked out the robots’ signal cables so they can’t turn those against us again. Far as I can see it’s stalemate,” their late captor replied. “Okay. Let the old man out, boys—back to the firing line!”
“Get one of them for me, Pol!”
“I’ll do that little thing. Fry him on a platter. Good landing!”
“And clear skies!” One of the guards closed the door and rearranged the folds of the improvised blackout curtain. The other jerked a thumb at the rangers.
“Down this way.”
They went down the length of the hallway into a large room which was the scene of some activity. Several men squatted around some boxes digging machinery parts out of packing. Two others sat at a box table and three more were making a scratch meal at the far end of the room. The newcomers were waved toward the two at the table. One of them raised his head and then jumped to his feet. It was Smitt.
“It is stalemate all right.” The com-techneer ran his fingers through his hair.
Kartr and Rolth studied the crude map which lay on the table top.
“We have them bottled up in the headquarters building. By the way, did they blow the tower? We felt some sort of a shock—”
The sergeant nodded without replying aloud. “If Cummi has disruptors,” he said, “I don’t see why he lets a handful of snipers pen him in. He could blow himself a path out any time he wants to.”
“Well.” The slim, middle-aged man who shared Smitt’s table when the rangers had been brought in, stretched and grinned. “Cummi doesn’t want to blow big holes in his nice city, not if he can help it. And snipers are hard to locate.”
“Not for a sensitive,” Kartr pointed out. “Give me five minutes out there and I can tag every one of your men. Cummi need only send out the Can-hound and—”
Krowli’s grin vanished as if wiped off by a brutal hand. “You have a point there, Sergeant,” he admitted in a voice of mild tone, but the emotions seething below it were anything but mild.
“Could it be,” Rolth struck in, “that disruptor shells are not too many in Lord Cummi’s armory?”
“That thought has also occurred to us,” Krowli answered. “Only it is a little difficult to prove. Cummi has had all the arms under his control since the second day we landed. We have only personal side arms which he could not logically take from us. This whole rotten mess came about just because he was able to think faster than the rest of us. And be sure that he didn’t overlook the point of holding all the guns he could! We might storm Cummi’s headquarters, sure, but if the disruptors do work—that would be the end of the stormers. And he has two sensitives—we have—”
“Two also, if I can contact Zinga. Any more among your people?”
Krowli shook his head. “We are—were—about as ordinary a crowd of average citizens as you could find anywhere in Control territory. Cummi grabbed all those of use to him, along with the arms.”