the thickness of a buttress. One of the other men picked up the light and gave a hasty look around. Yso entered the shaft and began to climb down and Ewan indicated that Horne should follow her.
'How big are they?” Ewan was asking, and the man who had been the lookout said.
'Two single-seaters, and the other one's bigger. Carries three anyway, maybe four.'
The shaft was not deep. There was an ancient and shaky-looking tunnel beneath it, short enough so that light from its far end seeped back in. “It comes out in a bend of the stream you nearly fell into,” Yso said. “There's a fair-sized cave there, where the tower guards used to keep their mounts hidden in the old days. We have our fliers there.'
Horne heard the stone door shut with a hollow grating sound overhead. For a few minutes there was only the enclosed and magnified sound of people moving and breathing in a tunnel. Then the noise of running water became louder and louder, and there was another noise mixed with it-a shrill high whistling. The cone-shaped fliers were close at hand.
Horne said, “What if they know about this passage and the cave too?'
Ewan answered from behind him, “Then we fight.'
'Could I have my stunner back now?'
Ewan gave it to him, saying, “It isn't much. Our guns are better. But you might as well have it.'
The daylight got brighter and the tunnel ended in a long slantwise flattish cave, quite obviously made by water erosion in the days when the stream had been higher and mightier in its bed. The muddy water rushed along now some distance below and there was a trail angling down to its brink that might possibly be climbed by animals with good stout claws. In the cave, standing improbably erect on their pointed bottoms and looking like oversize tops with their shiny round bubble canopies in place, were two three-place fliers.
Yso laid a hand on Horne's arm and said, “Come with me.” She started to run toward one of the fliers. Ewan spoke briefly to the three other men. They nodded and ran to the second flier. Ewan joined Yso and Horne.
The shrill whistling was very loud now, officious and irritating, rasping to the nerves. Horne kept glancing apprehensively at the long open front of the cave, which was really little more than a shelf gouged out of the riverbank. But now they were at the cone.
The light landing-ladder was down. Ewan climbed it, pressing a button on the rim. The canopy raised up. Ewan jumped in and leaned over to give Yso a hand up. Horne followed her. The cone was steady as the Rock of Gibraltar on its anti-grav compensators.
There were three seats in the small circular cockpit, two behind the operator's seat where Ewan was already taking his place. Horne sat behind with Yso. The canopy clapped shut.
Yso made a sudden sound that was almost, but not quite, a scream. Horne looked out through the clear plastic bubble.
A single-place flier had dropped down into the little gorge of the stream and was hovering outside the cave. Horne could see quite plainly the expression of the pilot's face as he looked in.
'I guess,” said Horne, “we fight.'
The next few seconds went by so fast there was no counting them. Ewan said, “Strap in,” and hit the levers on the flat control board in front of him. Horne clipped the padded belt around his waist. The cone lifted up and quivered and its jet unit bellowed softly in the cave. Yso, her face set and strained, was hunched over a small[? missing text] closing relays. The cone was a larger craft and considerably more space to maneuver had served his hitch in the Federation Navy in the last border war. But you made out with what you had. He checked over his stunner and then put it away. It would not do him any good here.
The flier outside the cave had shot up out of sight. The second cone rose and cut in its propulsion unit. Ewan had the communicator going now. He was talking to the man at the controls of the other cone. “Break for it. Once we get outside we can fight them.'
'Let's go together, then. Spread. I'm hot.'
'Watch out for the big one. It's probably heavy-armed. All right.'
The two cones slammed on full power and went out of the cave like projectiles. The anti-grav lift slammed them again, this time from underneath, and they went straight up to avoid hitting the opposite wall of the gorge, shooting apart then in opposite directions. It was masterly flying. But it wasn't good enough.
The enemy was on top of them.
Horne looked up to see the pointed bottom of a one-man flier just above him, almost close enough to touch. Instinctively he ducked and it flipped away just microseconds short of a collision that would have wrecked both of them. Yso punched a firing-stud and a spurt of pinkish light a hundred feet long leaped out viciously toward the darting hull. But in the same second Ewan altered his own course with violent suddenness. A return beam, but smaller and shorter, flicked at them from the small flier. Both missed.
'You spoiled my aim,” said Yso matter-of-factly. “They're not police, that's’ sure. No insigne.'
'Vellae?” said Horne. He was looking at Yso with considerable interest.'
'Obviously. What's the matter, haven't you ever seen a woman fight before?'
'When I was in the Navy some of my best men were women. Are you Navy?'
'Skereth Planetary. We're not so big but we do know our business.'
'Get that other one,” said Ewan sharply. “There. Can you do it?'
The other one-man flier and the big cone with four men in it had concentrated on the second cone, which had happened to come closer to them. They were leaping and bobbing all over that part of the sky, their bubble canopies flashing dull glints of gold and crimson from the clouds above.
Yso said, “Hold steady. I'll try.'
CHAPTER IX
She led. The wicked pink beam lashed out from some orifice in the rim of the hull. The big cone shot aside and the beam flicked by and hit the one-man craft, burning viciously against its bull. Grav-shields crippled, it up- ended and plunged downward, but meanwhile the big cone got two shots in against the hull and canopy of the escaping craft. Horne heard them clearly like two cracks of an enormous whip. The one against the hull was glancing. The one against the canopy hit square. The plastic fused. The men beneath it took fire like torches. It looked like a cruel death and it was, but it was also very quick. The hull floated on, tilted drunkenly, a great cup holding flame and ash and bitter smoke.
Ewan said something under his breath, and Yso turned her head away, looking sick. But there was no time for mourning. The big cone had made a perpendicular leap straight up and was now high above them. The smaller one was down on the deck, almost brushing the long grass.
Ewan's hands moved fast on the controls. Horne felt himself pushed hard into the belt and then into the seat, his neck all but snapping as the cone skittered wildly in an attempt to break free. Twice he saw pink flashes in the air. Then something hit them a violent blow. They were all thrown forward and down. Horne's belt held him in his seat but his head just missed the corner of Yso's firing panel on its way down to hit his knees. When he got his breath partly back he saw that Ewan was lying on the control board and not sitting up. Their cone was spinning in a crazy spiral, going up and away to nowhere.
Yso mumbled something about, “They hit us.” She was dazed, but hanging on, trying to make sense. Horne unclipped his belt. The motion of the cone almost hurled him through the canopy but he clung to the back of Ewan's seat with all his strength and pulled himself over to where he could grasp Ewan's shoulder.
'Is he dead?” asked Yso.
'I don't think so. Banged his head—” Ewan was bleeding profusely from the nose. The controls were all slippery with it. Horne heaved Ewan out of the way and tried to remember which levers were which. He had flown these craft before, but not for quite a while. He pulled one and it was the right one and the spinning motion slowed.
'Make it fast,” said Yso flatly. “They're right after us.'
It must have been the smaller flier's less lethal beam that had hit them glancingly from below. Now both it and the big one were closing in for the kill. Horne said, “Keep ‘em busy,” and began the business of getting the unconscious Ewan unbuckled and out of the operator's seat and himself into it.
