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Jo
They looked like people with a gun trained on them. An outdoorsman's instinct caused him to whirl and look back of the plane, back toward the tumbled ruin two hundred yards behind his ship.
Three ru
They were gray. There were about the size of men. They wore big faceplates.
Tolneps!
They were closing the distance fast. Only seventy-five yards away.
Jo
He crouched, cocked the weapon, and sent a spray of fire at the figures.
They checked as though surprised. Then they began rushing at him in a crouching run.
The AK 47 slugs had not halted them.
Tolneps! What did he know about Tolneps? He had read the Psychlo manual only a few days ago. Eyes! They were half-blind and without faceplates couldn't see.
He fumbled with the single-shot lever.
They were strung out, the nearest was now only fifty yards, the furthest about sixty.
Jo
It had taken too long.
The leading one was almost upon him.
Fangs!
Faceplate!
No time to fire.
Jo
He completed the movement with a slash of the barrel.
The Tolnep didn't go down but he swerved.
Poison fangs. Mustn't get too close.
Jo
He fired and fired at point-blank range. The force shots pounded the Tolnep to the ground.
Jo
He hadn't had the handgun on “Flame.” But the sheer force of it had knocked the Tolnep out. The faceplate was shattered; the strange eyes were glazed and rolled up into the head. Obviously knocked out.
The others! Where were they? One was ru
That one was trying to get back to a ship!
Jo
Back on the ground he knelt, steadied himself, and fired a single well-aimed shot at the Tolnep trying to get to his ship. No effect!
Jo
Jo
The Tolnep erupted in a pillar of fire!
Swinging to the other one, Jo
Jo
Getting a safety line from the ship, Jo
He looked human but he was so dense no wonder the AK 47 had no effect. The slugs had just glanced off.
He felt the situation was in hand. It had happened too fast for the three escort planes to do anything and they were up there, circling now. He supposed they had been too far behind him to have seen the Tolneps begin their charge.
Jo
Jo
That ship over there. Was it about to fire or blow up or something?
Jo
They had certainly hidden it well. They had used a deep recess in the rubble and pushed the ship in until it was invisible from the air, maybe flown it in backward.
He approached it gingerly. It had blast ca
Jo
He put his hand on its side to climb into it. The ship was vibrating. Something on it was ru
He peered at the panel. Several lights were blinking. The controls were totally strange. He had no idea what alphabet those letters were part of. He didn't know what kind of power it had beyond the generality in the Psychlo manual that they were usually “solar powered.”
Better not touch those controls. It might take off.
He glanced out at the crowd about three hundred yards away.
They were just standing there, fixed in place.
For a moment he felt sort of fixed in place, too. But maybe that was just battle reaction.
Something in this ship was ru
The lethargy he felt was increasing.
Well, anything that ran had to have power one way or the other. Where was a power cable? He found a big thick one under the panel. It led down to an exposed accumulator.
There was a coil of line in the back of the craft and Jo
The cable snapped off the accumulator.
There was a ferocious flash of sparks.
At once, three things happened. The craft stopped vibrating. The lethargy Jo
Jo
As he passed his plane, the German copilot was fumbling his way out of the door. He called something but
Jo
Reaching the crowd, Jo
The Coordinator's mouth was moving and Jo
Suddenly he realized it was this confounded helmet of Ivan's. Jo
"... and how did you get here?” the Coordinator was saying.
“I flew in!” said Jo
“That's my ship right over there!”
“There's a creature on the ground!” said the Coordinator. He was pointing at the tied Tolnep. “How did he get there?”