“Shall we yield? They might be content to shoot me, and the imprisonment of you two might not be cruel.
“You signal a no.”
“My mother passed on an ancient sayin’ to me,” Diana told them. “Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”
“Ah, the young do not truly understand they can die,” Axor sighed. “Yet if any possibility whatsoever is left us, what can we in conscience do other than try it?”
Still the Tigery prowled. “I am thinking, I am thinking—” Abruptly he halted. He drove the knife into a bole so that the metal sang. “Javak! Yes, it was on my horizon—a twisted path—But we must needs hurry, and not give the foe time to imagine we are crazy enough to take that way.”
The south side of the Mencius range dropped a short distance before the land resumed its climb. This was unpeopled country, heavily wooded save where the canyon of the Averroes River slashed toward the sea, and on the higher flanks of the mountains. Kukulkan had told Diana it was a game and recreational preserve. The location of the spaceport here dated from troubled early days, when it might have become a target, minor though it was. Perhaps its isolation had been a factor in the conceiving of the Merseian plot.
Despite everything, the girl caught her breath at the sight. Clear, apart from a slight golden fleece of clouds, the sky was pale below, deepening in indigo at the zenith; but still night cast a dusk over the reaches around her. Heights to north and south walled in the world. Only at the ends of the vale did the sun-ring shine, casting rays that made the bottom a lake of amber. Where trees allowed glimpses, the hills above were purple-black, the snow-caps in the distance moltenly aglow. Air was cool on her brow. Quietness towered.
Wonder ended as Targovi pointed ahead.
Beyond the last concealment the forest afforded was a hundred-meter stretch, kept open though overgrown with brush and weeds. A link fence, to hold off animals, enclosed a ferrocrete field. Her pulse athrob but her senses and judgment preternaturally sharp, she gauged its dimensions as five hundred by three hundred meters. Service buildings clustered and a radionic mast spired at the farther end. Of the several landing docks, two were occupied. One craft she identified as interplanetary, a new and shapely version of Moonjumper. The other was naval—rather small as interstellar ships went, darkly gleaming, gun turret and launcher tubes sleeked into her leanness—akin to the Comet class, but not identical, not designed or wrought by humans—What ghost in her head blew a bugle call?
Huge and vague in the shadows, Axor whispered hoarsely, “We take the Zacharian vessel, of course.”
“No, of course not,” Targovi hissed. His eyes caught what light there was and burned like coals. “I was right in guessing the islanders are as militarily slovenly here as at the centrum, and have armed no watch. The thought of us hijacking a spaceship is too warlike to have occurred to them. But the Merseians are bound to have a guard aboard theirs. I know not whether that’s a singleton or more, but belike whoever it is knows how to dispatch a seeker missile, or actually lift in chase.” Decision. “However, we may well dupe them into supposing we are after the easier prey, and thus catch them off balance. The dim light will help—”
When he burst from concealment, Axor carried Diana in the crook of an arm, she would otherwise have toiled far behind him and Targovi. The pounding of his gallop resounded through her. She leaned into his flexing hardness, cradled her rifle, peered after a mark.
It was an instant and it was a century across the clearing, until they reached the fence. Axor’s free arm curved around to keep torn strands off her while he crashed through. Nevertheless, several drew blood. She barely noticed.
Men ran from the terminal, insectoidal at their distance, then suddenly near. She saw pistols in the hands of some. She heard a buzz, a thud. Axor grunted, lurched, went on. Diana opened fire. A figure tumbled and lay sprattling.