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of red light pathetically useless against the deadly nervous systems of the
translucent Photoids.
Geeliwan suddenly growled and leaped ahead. The furcot had smelled the
smell-too late. It had been masked by the miasma of the burning station. The
light caught him above the eyes in midjump. He fell to the floor, a silent,
crumpled heap.
Losting had the snuffer up and was firing before the furcot fell. There
was the distinctive soft phut of the tank seed bursting. In the near dark,
someone screamed. Then it was quiet.
From behind a twisted, bent section of floor an unsteady figure rose
-Logan. Swaying, she dropped her pistol and reached down with both hands to
pull the jacari thorn from her right breast. A tiny blot of red appeared,
staining her tunic. She stared at it dumbly.
Losting had reloaded when the second beam caught him in the side, ripped
through skin, bone, nerves, and organs. Usually the shock of such extensive,
abrupt destruction was enough to kill instantly. Losting, however, was not a
normal man. He dropped to his knees, then toppled onto his left side. Still
alive, he clutched with both hands at his side. The snuffler clattered to the
damp metal floor.
Logan staggered forward a couple of steps and tried to say something to
the hunched-up figure on the floor. Her mouth worked but nothing came out.
Then her eyes glazed over as the potent nerve poison took hold, and she fell
like a tree. She lay there unmoving like a broken toy doll, one arm bent
grotesquely under her.
From a black tunnel nearby two figures rose cautiously. Cohoma walked to
the still form of Logan and knelt beside her. Hansen continued past with
barely a glance at her, toward Losting. Behind him, finding neither pulse nor
heartbeat, the scout pilot muttered bitterly, "He's got you there, Kimi."
The station chief kept his pistol trained on Losting as he approached. In
the hollowness of the death-filled corridor, the hunter's breathing sounded
loud. Hansen had lost much of his clothing and all of his bureaucratic
demeanor. He was panting heavily. Kinky gray hair formed a mat over the bulge
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of his stomach.
"Before I kill you, Losting, why?"
"Born knew," the hunter gasped painfully. A profound numbness slowly
blanketed him, creeping over his body from the burned side. "He told you. You
take without giving. You take without asking. You borrow without returning.
You do not emfol. Our- world."
"It's not your world, Losting," Hansen said tiredly. Behind them, Cohoma
suddenly looked thoughtful. He murmured something about empathetic foliation
and forced evolution. Hansen didn't hear him. "But you refused to accept that.
Too bad." Hansen turned and called. "Muerta? Hofellow? check his animal."
A man and woman, one armed with a pistol and the other with a machete,
emerged from the side accessway. Taking no chances, the woman put another
burst into the head of the supine furcot, but Geeliwan was already as dead as
he would ever be.
"Damnation and hell!" Hansen roared, anger and frustration finally coming
together within him at the same time. "No reason- no reason for any of this!"
He gestured around, then looked back down at Losting, his voice full of sorrow
at the waste. "Don't you see-you didn't stop us! I've got four people?" He
glanced back at Logan's motionless body. "No-three people left."
Every word caused a sharp pain to shoot through Losting. Each one was a
new surprise. "You are all dead. All your little sky-boats are broken and so
is the big- shuttle. Your little weapons are dead and so are your walls and
webs. The stormtreader beat the life from them. The forest will come for you,
now."
Hansen wore an expression of pity. "No, Losting. It was a good try you
made. You almost did it. But we've plenty of food, and water from the sky
every night. I know how fast this hylaea grows. It may very well obscure this
station before our next relief ship arrives. It's true our shuttlecraft can't
fly again. But its internal systems check out operational, including
communications. I don't believe those gas-bag prisms will come back, and I
don't think we'll be attacked by anything else capable of penetrating a ship
hull. This forest can bury us under an avalanche of green, but our distress
signal will still be picked up.
"You've managed to cost some people a lot of credits and a lot of
trouble. They won't be pleased. But they'll rebuild this station, start over
again-because of the immortality extract, Losting. You can't begin to imagine
what ends people will go to to secure it.
"We won't make the same mistakes again. Well rebuild halfway around this
planet, far from your tribe. The new outpost will have aerial patrols, three
times as many guns and bigger, with independent power-up systems. And we'll
make a clear space four times as wide and twice as deep.
"No, we won't make the same mistakes again. You're a brave man, Losting,
but you've failed. A great pity. I'd rather have been your friend."
"Grv-rbber?" Losting whispered.
Hansen leaned close, the muzzle of the pistol never wavering. "What's
that? I didn't hear-?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]