the way until you see me go in."

He raised up cautiously.

"All right. Now."

He began to creep rapidly toward the slash of light from the scout-ship's open hatch. The others came behind him. He was not used to this sort of stalking, and he made more noise than the other nine put together. He hoped no one would hear it.

From the direction of the house there came a sudden crackling of shocker-beams. Kirk flung himself forward, over the last few feet. Secrecy was a lost hope now, and all that mattered was getting the sono-beam projector into the open hatchway. The bloody thing weighed a ton when you carried it, but its heft was only relative. Against armor-plate and the strong double-hull of a space-ship it would be no more effective than a bullroarer.

There was a guard of two in the hatchway. They sprang to the lip of the opening, staring toward the house, their shockers lifted. Kirk yelled, "Get 'em!" Vinson and a man on the other side of him fired almost together. The guards came tumbling forward onto the ground. Kirk dodged between them and set the sono-projector on the edge of the hatch floor. He had to reach high to do it. The others, following his orders, were hugging the curve of the hull on either side of the ladder. Kirk slammed the stud full charge and wide open.

"They're coming back this way!" yelled Vinson. He was looking toward the house. Kirk craned his neck.

The shocker-flashes flickered like heat-lightning in the night. They moved back toward the ship—probably the fifteen men, or what was left of them, were retreating from the Orville men whom Kirk had stationed in the house and yard.

He said desperately, "Stop them, damn it, can't you stop them?" The sono-beam projector was sliding out of his hands, walking itself with its own vibration across the smooth-worn metal. He had to turn to hold it.

Inside the ship there was bedlam going on, a sound of things breaking and men's voices raised in inarticulate cries. A tall gray-haired man with a captain's stars on his shoulder-tabs came at a staggering run into the passage and dropped, and lay still. His hands quivered with the jarring of the floor.

Kirk shut off the projector and threw it away. He went up the ladder, and at the top he paused a second to look at what was happening in the meadow. The Orville men who had 

 Prev. P 44/54 next