Odal looked up and saw Hector squatting, reaching for more ammunition. The Kerak warrior stood up quickly, his own fists filled with stones. He cocked his arm to throw. .. .
Something made him turn around and look behind him. The boulder loomed before his eyes, still tumbling slowly as it had when he’d thrown it. It was too big and too close to avoid. It smashed into Odal, picked him off his feet, and slammed him against the upjutting rocks a few meters away.
Even before he began to feel the pain inside him, Odal began trying to push the boulder off. But he couldn’t get nough leverage. Then he saw the Star Watchman’s form standing over him.
“I didn’t really think you’d fall for it,” Hector’s voice said in his earphones. “I mean … didn’t you realize that the boulder was too massive to escape completely after it missed me? You just threw it into orbit … uh, a twominute orbit, roughly. It had to come back … all I had to do was keep you in the same spot for a few minutes.”
Odal said nothing, but strained every cell in his painracked body to get the boulder off him. Hector reached over his shoulder and began fumbling with the valves that were pressed against the rocks.
“Sorry to do this … but I’m not killing you … just defeating you. Let’s see, one of these is the oxygen valve, and the other, I think, is the emergency rocket pack. Now, which is which?”
Hector’s hand tightened on a valve and turned it sharply. A rocket roared to life and Odal was hurtled free of the boulder, shot completely off the planetoid. Hector was bowled over by the blast and rolled halfway around the tiny chunk of rock and metal.