Vrel spread his hands. “What about Cade and the others? We were supposed to wait for them.”
“I’m going to try and find out what I can now,” Dan threw back, already running toward a frond-covered bunker protected by sandbags and logs, partly dug into the ground nearby. Vrel turned toward the flyer. Luodine followed after Dan, Nyarl close behind her. Inside the bunker was a map table and cabinets of electronics, weapons and kit slung along one wall, and a half dozen or so people, two talking into phones, two more following something on screens, one marking a map, a girl in a camouflage smock watching the scene outside through a firing embrasure in the bunker wall. Dan was talking tensely with a man in a peaked cap who seemed to be in charge. He waved for Luodine and Nyarl to wait a moment as they entered. One of the operators was calling into a microphone. “Emergency! Repeat, emergency! Divert! Do you read me, Yellow Fish? You must divert. The LZ is under attack.”
“It’s them,” Dan told Luodine and Nyarl. “They’re on their way here now. They’ve got Cade and the woman. But they can’t land in this.”
“Where will they go?” Luodine asked, daze at trying to take it all in.
“I don’t know. They’ll . . .” Dan’s voice trailed off as the operator became alarmed.
“Hello? . . . Hello, Yellow Fish. . . . Yellow Fish, come in. . . .” He waited, looked across, and shook his head. “We have lost contact. They were taking fire.”
“Jesus! What’s this?” Eyes turned to the girl watching the outside. A peculiar violet light was coming in through the embrasure. Dan and the officer in the peaked cap stared uncomprehendingly for a moment, then moved toward the entrance, practically pushing the two Hyadeans out ahead of them. They emerged to find the surroundings bathed in a strange radiance of an eerie, electrical quality.
“What is it?” the officer asked, bewildered.
Dan shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything likes it.”
Then, abruptly, it was gone. Their eyes took several seconds to readjust to normal illumination. Then Dan touched the officer’s arm and pointed across the open stretch of landing strip. The violet had shifted to an area beyond the far tree line and was now revealed as a pencil of light coming down from the sky. Even as they watched it shifted again, as if probing. Then the column flickered briefly in several pulses that turned it brilliant orange, and the entire area surrounding the base of the beam erupted into a fireball expanding above the trees. Moments later, a concussion wave swept across the landing area, followed by a blast of wind that bent the treetops, sent a storm of leaves, sand, and pieces of wreckage swishing across the open ground, and toppled Luodine over a wall of logs fronting the entrance to the bunker. A rain of torn branches and debris began falling over the entire area.
The flyer, already moving from its parking spot, lurched visibly and then steadied. Dan pulled Luodine to her feet. Nyarl was holding onto the top of the log wall. “What about the others?” Vrel called from the doorway of the flyer as it neared, at the same time turning.
“They’re down somewhere!” Nyarl yelled. “We have to go! Now!”
“Go where? We have no plans.”
“It doesn’t matter! Just GO!” Dan shouted, pushing Luodine toward the flyer. Vrel heaved her in, Nyarl followed with the door closing, and the flyer began accelerating toward the open ground. Then it was under the strip of sky, airborne, climbing. It rose to skim the treetops. Smoke and fires were everywhere, with aircraft dotting the sky in all directions.
“That light. What was it?” Luodine gasped as she buckled into one of the seats.
“Orbital bombardment maser,” Nyarl said. His voice sounded strained. “Ours. Area obliteration weapon. I didn’t know we were using anything like that here.”
* * *
For a while they flew north toward the main basin of the Amazon, away from the combat zone, debating what to do. Returning to Tevlak’s seemed risky, with no idea of the situation there. Vrel had lost his Terran phone somewhere in the confusion. Nyarl was reluctant to use the flyer’s system, since incoming calls to Tevlak’s would probably be monitored and could be traced back. In the end, Luodine remembered an Indian tribe that she had spent some time with as part of putting together a program on Terran cultural diversity. They lived in a remote area north of the main river and had no interest in worldly affairs. And they were friendly—not to each other, especially, but they were to the blue-giant aliens, to whom they apparently attached a religious and mystical significance. Nyarl found the location in his records, and in less than two hours the craft was descending toward a forest clearing showing leaf-thatched huts scattered around a stream, watched by an awed crowd of brown-skinned figures and children, most of them barely clothed. They remembered Luodine well, and greeted her and her companions with laughter, much excited chatter. A spicy meal was arranged for the evening, attended by the whole village and accompanied by dancing apparently put on for the aliens’ benefit, despite their exhaustion, and the presentation of gifts ranging from a sweet fruit preparation to a necklace made from flowers, beads, and the dyed shells of nuts. The arrivals fell asleep in the hut provided for them, still too numbed by events of the day to be capable of discussing any further options objectively.