Battlefield Earth

Chapter 3

It was a long way to the heliport, and especially long when you had only one working leg and a cane on the wrong side. The elevators weren't working and probably never would again. Hobbling along, Jo

Somebody must have alerted the standby pilot there, for he was standing beside a mine passenger plane with the passenger door open.

“No!” yelled Jo

Of course, he was just that. But

Colonel Ivan popped up at the pilot door and opened it. The two Russians literally threw Jo

A little confused, the standby pilot started to close the passenger door but was brushed aside by three Russians who, out of breath, had come tearing down the stairs. They leaped into the plane with a clatter of assault rifles.

Colonel Ivan was magically on the other side of the plane helping Robert the Fox and two kilted Scots into the ship and then got in himself.

The pilot was a Swede. He was getting into the copilot seat and saying something in a language Jo

Moon? No, the pocket of whites there among the Bantu had been contacted too late for anyone to be fully trained yet. Then he realized the pilot was only there for local runs, really a cadet.

Jo

“We charge!” said Colonel Ivan. Evidently he had worked very hard at his English. Jo

The wide doors had been left open and sunlight streamed in. He sailed the plane out into a beautiful summer day.

Ah, the mountains, the white mountains, majestic and calm against the dark blue sky! The ravines with their black shadows, the trees with their soft, dark green. And there was a bear. Cantering along a slope, bound on some important errand no doubt. And a whole herd of bighorn sheep, looking up at what must now be the ordinary sight of a plane on this route.

With his left hand romping on the console Jo

What a beautiful planet! What a lovely planet! Well worth saving.

The standby pilot was watching Jo

A rider? Jo

“A Inaner," said Robert the Fox. “South America. They tend the herds now.”

Jo

What a beautiful day to be his first day out.

And there was the compound. What an awful lot of people! Must be thirty or forty of them looking toward the ship.

Jo

He opened the plane door and put the first and fourth fingers of his left hand in his mouth and blew a piercing whistle. Above the babble his trained ear heard what it wanted to hear: hoofs! And there came Windsplitter.

Jo

Windsplitter was nickering and bouncing about, glad to see him, and almost knocked him down with a tossing nose.

“Let's see the leg,” said Jo

“You're all right,” and shook the offered hoof.

Jo

Now to ride around and find the confounded Chamcos. And find out about the delay in this transshipment rig.

But people were pressing around his horse. Black faces, brown faces, tan faces, white faces. Hands touching his moccasins, hands trying to give him things. And all talking at once.

He felt a twinge of guilt. Smiling faces, welcoming faces. It put a trifle of a blot on his day. If these people only realized it, he might very well be a total failure. And those lovely skies up there might soon go gray with death.

His lips tightened. He had better get about his business. Adulation was, if anything, a little embarrassing, particularly as he strongly felt he might not have earned it.

More hoofs. The voice of Colonel Ivan barking Russian at somebody. Leading six horses at a dead run, another Russian sprinted up. A barked command and Colonel Ivan and four Russians mounted up and Robert the Fox was mounting. There must have been a Russian and horses waiting at the compound.

The two kilted Scots pushed their way through the crowd to either side of Windsplitter's head and began to gently part the throng so Jo

Just as he thought he was going to get moving, a small boy in a kilt elbowed his barefoot way to Windsplitter's head and dropped a lead rope on it. His piping voice came out of the hubbub: “I am Bittie MacLeod. Du

Even though Windsplitter guided only with a heel and other signals, Jo

Behind him came five Russians with long poles– lances?– in their stirrups, pe

Jo