THEIR MASTER

"It finally got to you."

"It finally got to me."

Renchett had gri

Calling down the saucer was a simple matter of putting a request through the command cha

"Just so long as me and my crew go out on the same e-vac as you," he said.

"What about the saucer?"

"Forget the saucer. There's going to be a hell of a lot of material left behind before this scramble's over."

Beneath them, Hill 4078 came into sight. Its cleared top stuck out of the surrounding fungus jungle like a bald head. On one side, sappers were still burning off the vegetation. Clouds of black smoke rolled into the air and were driven away from the site by a brisk wind. A number of e-vacs were already on the ground.

"I bet the bastard officers are getting away first."

Warning lights started flashing on the saucer's control panel.

"We're ru

Maso glanced swiftly at Rance. "You didn't tell me that we'd hit enemy fire."

Rance's expression was bleak. "What did you expect? The Yal are going to use every last chiba on this rock to slow us up."

Pulses of green energy arced lazily up from the fungus. Crew and passengers were pushed down into their couches as the saucer accelerated and banked steeply.

"I'm turning back."

"Back to what? There's going to be enemy around any place that e-vacs are jumping off." "Dear God!"

The craft rocked and rolled as an energy pulse burst beside them. Maso's fingers danced over the control keys. The saucer lifted vertically.

"I'll try and get above the flak."

There were two more explosions, but neither was as close as the first.

"Body gu

"Check."

"When we're over the hill, I'm going to drop fast. I want blanket fire on the surrounding jungle. Anything to make those Yal gu

"Check."

"Comm here, chief. I'm getting a demand for identification from traffic control on the hill."

Rance spoke into his communicator. "Tell them we got an A-thirty priority clearance." "But we don't."

"If it's as much of a mess up down there as we think it is, they ain't going to know. Try and sound like an officer."

"Okay, I hope you're right."

A few seconds later, the comm operator came back on. "They seem to have bought the story. We're cleared to land."

"Dropping on my mark."

The ship fell like a stone, decelerating only at the last, bone-wrenching moment. Halfway down, the guns opened up with a shuddering roar.

"Torquing up here, Chief."

"Don't worry about it, I don't intend to take this thing off again."

The saucer hovered as its landing legs extended, and then it touched down. The passengers and crew unstrapped and stood up. Rance looked all around the cabin.

"If we run into a problem, let me do the talking."

The port opened. The saucer had set down some distance from where an e-vac was ru

"Get down! Incoming! You by the saucer, get under cover."

Rance looked quickly around. There were some half- 1 finished slit trenches on their left. The digging equipment I seemed to have been abandoned by its crew.

"Run!"

They sprinted and dived. Orange fireballs streamed] from the jungle below them in a lazy curve that ended in] a tight group of explosions. A ground transport blew up. | Pieces of metal pattered down around the crouching J men.

"I've had better welcomes." "No shit."

"This is a place to get out of."

The firing ceased. There were three other figures also I sheltering in the trench. The trio were all sappers. They] had to be the digging crew, and they were probably the I ones who had shouted the warning. Rance called out to j them.

"Is that the end of it?"

"Stay down. There's likely to be a second burst. They mostly dust us off after a ship gets away. The bastards usually do us a second time to see if they can catch us I creeping out of our holes."

In absolute confirmation of the sapper's words, a sec- j ond burst of fire hit the area. Again it stopped. The sappers left it a couple more minutes before they raised their j heads.

"Looks like they've given it a rest." "How long have they been out there?" "They started last night." "Have they been hitting the perimeter?" "Not yet. So far they've just set up a couple of firing j positions."

"Who's in command here?"

"There ain't nobody in command. The officers are all 1 too busy getting their ass off planet. The closest thing is j the field police who are going around shooting everyone they don't like the look of."

"So where do I go to hook up with my ship's e-vacs?"

"You could try the traffic control dome. That's the big one over in the center. I doubt you'll get too far, though. We heard that they had just two standards to get everyone off this rock."

"Two standards? Is that all?"

"That's when the cluster's supposed to jump."

There was less time than even Rance had imagined. The sappers were climbing out of the trench and remounting the digger.

"Keep your heads down. And watch out for the head-hunters."

Rance turned to the troopers and the saucer crew. "You all heard that. We're going to go to this dome and see if we can bullshit a line to our own battle e-vacs."

Dyrkin and the others climbed out of the trench. The saucer crew seemed unwilling to leave its shelter. Maso was about to say something, but Rance cut him off.

"Did you think it was going to be easy?"

"We're going to get ourselves killed here."

"So what else is new?"

"You co

Rance turned to go. "Take it or leave it. It doesn't matter to me. Now you've got us here, we ain't going to sweat it if you don't go the rest of the distance."

He started walking away. The troopers fell into step behind him. The saucer crew reluctantly followed. In the open spaces, people moved very fast. They tended to congregate in areas of cover. Most seemed to have little to do but wait. At regular intervals, a steamer would drop into the area. Their detonations had producted an acne of craters between ten and fifteen meters across. There was a burned-out digger beside where two craters overlapped. It appeared to have been bulldozing the first crater flat when the second missile hit. The field police, identifiable by the gray tabards that they wore over their suits and the starbursts on their helmets, prowled in groups of five or six. They were constantly stopping and questioning individuals. Rance and his party moved from one piece of cover to the next, doing their best to avoid them in a way that didn't appear furtive. While they were taking a breather in the shadow of a crawler, they saw their first execution. Seven men, naked except for their facemasks and placards that hung around their necks and proclaimed them to be deserters, were forced to their knees around the rim of a crater. The head-hunters stood behind them and burned each man in the back of his head. The bodies toppled forward into the crater, and a digger moved up to fill it in.