His first shot took the warrior in the right shoulder, under the clavicle. A dark blotch blossomed there like an ugly flower in the moment that he was thrown backwards, sent sprawling on the boards. The second shot had apparently missed him entirely. He sat up, touched the hole in his slumped shoulder, stared in open astonishment at the blood on his hand. But pain didn’t seem to have registered at all – not yet. When it did, a second later –
The warrior’s howl wasn’t a human sound at all. It was something far more primal than that. It came from night-dark caverns in an alien world beyond strange boundaries of space and time. And it was shocking and frightening enough to match the man himself.
He would have hurled himself at Khuv, indeed he crouched down and made ready to do so, but the three-man flame-thrower squad was in the way. The machine they handled wasn’t the small man-pack variety that can be carried on one man’s back; it was a weighty thing consisting of a fuel tank on a motorized trolley which one man controlled while another walked alongside with the flame-projector. The third member of the squad held a large flexible asbestos shield, fragile protection against blow-back.
The man from the sphere, wounded though he was, smashed his gauntlet weapon through the asbestos shield and almost succeeded in knocking it from the keeper’s hands. Before he could withdraw the gauntlet, which seemed to be stuck, Khuv shouted: ‘Show him your fire! But only show it to him – don’t burn him!’
Perhaps they were a little too eager: a jet of flame lashed out, lapped at the warrior’s side where he screamed his rage and terror and turned away. And when the fire was snuffed out at its source, still chemical flames leaped up the man’s body from his side, burning away his beard, eyebrows, and setting fire to the single lock of black hair on his head.
He began to blister, screamed his agony and beat at the flames with his left hand. Then he snatched the asbestos shield from the soldier who held it and hurled it at the squad. Before they could recover from this, he turned and staggered, still smoking, back toward the shiny white sphere.
‘Stop him!’ Khuv shouted. ‘Shoot him – but in the legs! Don’t let him go back!’ He began firing, and the man jerked and staggered as bullets smashed into the back of his naked thighs and lower legs. He had almost reached his objective when a lucky shot hit him behind the right knee and knocked him down. But he was close enough to the sphere to try hurling himself into it. Except –
– It threw him back! It was as if he’d tried to dive through a brick wall.
And at that moment, watching the film, Jazz had known – as those who had been present had known, and everyone who’d seen the film since – that the Gate was a mantrap. Like the pitcher plant, it allowed its victims access, then denied them egress. Once through the Gate, the creatures from the other side were stuck here. And Jazz had wondered: would it be the same for someone going through from this side? Except of course there was no way anyone was ever going to find out – was there?
‘Now he has to come quietly!’ Khuv was jubilant. As the firing ceased he ran down the walkway toward the flame-thrower squad, stood behind them watching the pitiful antics of the man from the Gate. At that moment Jazz had found himself feeling sorry for the weird visitor, but the moment had not lasted long.
The man sat up, shook himself dazedly, reached out a hand toward the shining sphere. His hand met resistance, could not proceed. He got to his knees, turned to face his tormentors. His scarlet eyes opened wide and glared his hatred at them; he hissed at them, spat his contempt onto the walkway. Even with great yellow blisters bursting and seeping their fluid all down his right side, crippled and -helpless? – still he defied them.
Khuv stepped to the fore, pointed at the gauntlet on the warrior’s right hand. ‘Take it off!’ he made unmistakable gestures. ‘Get rid of it – now!’