Part 7 (1/2)
It was something of an advantage not to be wearing a helmet. Even with the best of acoustical systems, hearing inside a helmet tended to be distorted and dimmed. The men couldn't hear him as well as he could hear them. And since they couldn't hear themselves too well, they made a little more noise than he did.
A s.p.a.ce boot came into view around a big rock, and Wayne aimed his needle-beam at the spot where the man's head would appear.
When the head came around the rock, Wayne fired. The man dropped instantly. _Sorry, friend_, Wayne apologized mentally. _Two down.
Fifty-seven to go._ The odds were still pretty heavy.
He knew he had to move quickly now; the others had seen the man drop, and by now they should have a pretty good idea exactly where Wayne was.
He picked up a rock and lobbed it over a nearby boulder, then started moving cat-like in the other direction. He climbed up onto another boulder and watched two men move away from him. They were stepping warily, their beam guns in their hands. Wayne wiped away a bead of perspiration, aimed carefully, and squeezed the firing stud twice.
_Four down. Fifty-five to go._
A moment later, something hissed near his ear. Without waiting, he spun and rolled off the boulder, landing cat-like on his feet. Another crewman was standing on top of a nearby boulder. Wayne began to sweat; this pursuit seemed to be indefinitely prolonged, and it was beginning to look unlikely that he could avoid them forever.
He had dropped his pistol during the fall; it was wedged between a couple of rocks several feet away.
He heard someone call: ”I got him. He fell off the rock. We'll take him back down below.”
Then another voice--ominously. ”He won't mind. He'll be glad we did it for him--afterwards.”
”I'll go get him,” said the first voice. The man stepped around the side of the boulder--just in time to have a hard-pitched rock come thunking into his midsection.
”Oof!” he grunted, took a couple of steps backwards, and collapsed.
_Five down. Fifty-four to go._ It could go on forever this way.
”What's the matter?” asked the man who had replied to the first one with those chilling words.
”Nothing,” said Wayne, in a fair imitation of the prostrate crewman's voice. ”He's heavy. Come help me.”
Then he reached down and picked up the fallen man's beam gun. He took careful aim.
When the sixth man stepped around the rock, he fired. The beam went wide of the mark, slowing the other down, and Wayne charged forward. He pounded two swift punches into the amazed crewman, who responded with a woozy, wild blow. Wayne ducked and let the fist glide past his ear, then came in hard with a solid body-blow and let the man sag to the ground.
He took a deep breath.
_Six down and only fifty-three to go._
He crawled back to the edge of the precipice and peered down into the valley. There was no one to be seen. It was obvious that Colonel Petersen was still enforcing the six-man rule.
As he watched, he saw the airlock door open. A s.p.a.cesuited figure scrambled down the ladder and sprinted across the deadly sand of the valley floor.
It was Sherri! Wayne held his breath, expecting at any moment that one of the little monsters beneath the sand would sink its vicious needle upward into Sherri's foot. But her stride never faltered.
As she neared the precipice, another figure appeared at the airlock door and took aim with a gun.
Wayne thumbed his own needle-beam pistol up to full and fired hastily at the distant figure. At that distance, even the full beam would only stun. The figure collapsed backwards into the airlock, and Wayne grinned in satisfaction.