He heard a loud cry some distance behind him and whirled to see Goring staggering toward him. He was crying out in German to Agneau, warning him that Burton was just outside. In one hand he held a long spear which he brandished at the Englishman.
Burton turned and hurled himself against the flimsy bamboo-slat door. His shoulder drove into it and broke it from its wooden hinges. The door flew inward and struck Agneau, who had been standing just behind it. Burton; the door, and Agneau fell to the floor with Agneau under the door.
Burton rolled off the door, got up, and jumped again with both bare feet on the wood. Agneau screamed and then became silent. Burton heaved the door to one side to find his quarry unconscious and bleeding from the nose. Good! Now if the noise didn’t bring the watch and if he could deal quickly enough with Goring, he could carry out his plan.
He looked up just in time to see the starlight on the long black object hurtling at him.
He threw himself to one side, and the spear plunged into the dirt floor with a thump. Its shaft vibrated like a rattlesnake preparing to strike.
Burton stepped into the doorway, estimated Goring’s distance, and charged. His assegai plunged into the belly of the German. Goring threw his hands up in the air, screamed, and fell on his side. Burton hoisted Agneau’s limp body on his shoulder and carried him out of the hut.
By then there were shouts from the Roundhouse. Torches were flaring up; the sentinel on the nearest watchtower was bellowing. Goring was sitting on the ground, bent over, clutching the shaft close to the wound.
He looked gape-mouthed at Burton and said, “You did it again! You…” He fell over on his face, the death rattle in his throat.
Agneau returned to a frenzied consciousness. He twisted himself out of Burton’s grip and fell to the ground. Unlike Goring, he made no noise. He had as much reason to be silent as Burton – more perhaps. Burton was so surprised that he was left standing with the fellow’s loin-towel clutched in his hand. Burton started to throw it down but felt something stiff and square within the lining of the towel. He transferred the cloth to his left hand, yanked the assegai from the corpse, and ran after Agneau.
The Ethical had launched one of the bamboo canoes beached along the shore. He paddled furiously out into the starlit waters, glancing frequently behind him. Burton raised the assegai behind his shoulder and hurled it. It was a short, thick-shafted weapon, designed for infighting and not as a javelin. But it flew straight and came down at the end of its trajectory in Agneau’s back. The Ethical fell forward and at an angle and tipped the narrow craft over. The canoe turned upside down. Agneau did not reappear.
Burton swore. He had wanted to capture Agneau alive, but he was damned if he would permit the Ethical to escape. There was a chance that Agneau had not contacted other Ethicals yet.
He turned back toward the guest huts. Drums were beating up and down along the shore, and people with burning torches were hastening toward the Roundhouse. Burton stopped a woman and asked if he could borrow her torch a moment. She handed it to him but spouted questions at him. He answered that he thought the Choctaws across the River were making a raid. She hurried off toward the assembly before the stockade.
Burton drove the pointed end of the torch into the soft dirt of the bank and examined the towel he had snatched from Agneau. On the inside, just above the hard square in the lining, was a seam sealed with two thin magnetic strips, easily opened. He took the object out of the lining and looked at it by the torchlight.
For a long time he squatted by the shifting light, unable to stop looking or to subdue an almost paralyzing astonishment. A photograph, in this world of no cameras, was unheard-of. But a photograph of him was even more incredible, as was the fact that the picture had not been taken on this world! It had to have been taken on Earth, that Earth lost now in the welter of stars somewhere in the blazing sky and in God only knew how many thousands of years of time.
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