When they finished and were as warm as they could get, Hulann closed the case, shoved it through the window. It slid down the hood, caught in among the rocks of the column on that side. He went out next, back into the maelstorm, and pulled Leo through the broken windscreen. They scrambled down until they were on the ground. Hulann fetched the case. He had Leo hold the heat unit, though the boy protested that Hulann was the naked one. He promised he would take turns with the unit now and then, and stay within a few feet of the boy in order to benefit by what it broadcast.
They turned and faced up the slope. Though daylight was now upon the land, visibility had not increased much. He could see an extra thirty feet, no more. The sky was low and threatened to stay that way for many hours to come. Hulann was thankful. At least, in the gloom and the walls of dancing flakes, Leo would not be able to see how far the top of the mountain really was
'I'll break a way,' he said to Leo. 'Stay close, in my steps. Crawl when I crawl, walk when I walk. Okay?'
'I can take orders,' the boy said haughtily.
Hulann laughed, slapped him on the shoulder, then turned and took the first step of the trek back to the highway? ? and simultaneously heard the first word of the Phasersystem alert
Banalog stiffened in his chair when he heard the beginning of the Phasersystem alarm. The last traces of the sweet-drugs had left him an hour earlier, though he had decided to wait as long as possible before giving the alarm that would wake the Hunter and send him stalking Hulann and the boy. At first, he thought this alert had nothing to do with Hulann. It was being given by a woman named Fiala, an archaeologist and moderately well-known essayist in certain technical circles. When he ascertained, after the first few words, that she too was now tied and gagged by Hulann, he waited no longer. He added his voice to hers.
Moments after they had finished, there were naoli in his office to untie him, to take the gag from his mouth. One of them was a military officer named Zenolan, an extremely large person, a foot taller than Banalog, a super lizard with a head half again as large as a head should be. He took the empty hypo with the traces of sweet-drugs in it from the hands of one of the other naoli.
'Sweet-drugs?' he asked Banalog unnecessarily.
'Yes.'
'When?'
'Last evening,' Banalog lied.
'Why was he here?'
'A session under the machines.'
Zenolan looked at the equipment hanging in the recessed section of the office ceiling. 'A session? At night?'
'Early evening,'' Banalog said. 'And it was because he had forgotten his appointment for this afternoon. Or so he said. I contacted him to get him in after hours. He was reluctant even then. Tried to make excuses. I wouldn't have any of it.' He looked at Zenolan to see what effect the story was having.
The big man seemed to believe it. 'Go on,' he said.
'Then, when he was here, he tried to outwit the machines. Which is impossible, of course.'
'Of course.'
'When I found his secret, that he was harboring a boy — well, he overpowered me, smashed my head against the floor, knocked me out before I thought to use my Phaser contact. When I woke, he had me tied and drugged.'
'You're sure it was not any earlier than last evening?'
Banalog looked perplexed. 'If it had been, the sweet-drugs would have worn off. I would have contacted you sooner.'
'That's what I mean.'
'Are you suggesting-'
'No,' Zenolan said, shaking his huge head. 'Forget it. I'm just upset.'
Banalog snorted to show his contempt. He knew better than to get too irate. Too much anger would make them suspect he really did have something to cover. He was pondering his next move when his desk phone buzzed. He wondered what private message he was receiving that could not be sent over the Phasersystem. He picked up the receiver and said hello.
'You will come to see me in ten minutes,' the smooth, cold voice on the other end said. 'I will want your full story.'
It was the Hunter Docanil
The Hunter Relemar stepped out of the thousand-gallon storage tank in the foundry yards in the city that had been Atlanta. He opened his Phasersystem contact and informed the military officials who assigned his missions (and, incidentally, everyone else linked to the Atlanta area system and the Fourth Division system) that he had completed his assignment. Then he broke contact.
He did not look back at what had been Sara Laramie.
He stuffed his clawed hands into the pockets of his greatcoat and walked across the yards toward the exit gate.
There was only a slight chill in the air, yet he could not go without clothes, as other naoli could.
He was a Hunter.
He was different.
Elsewhere at that time:
Fiala finished the necessary tapeforms for application for director of her archaeological team. The job that should have been hers in the first place. There was no problem now. She could not help but get it. Hulann had cracked without her help. She felt terribly pleased with things.
David watched the dawn from the viewglass of the engineer's room in front of the plummeting Bluebolt as it streaked down a two-mile incline toward a flat plain where speed could be safely raised. It was one of the nicest dawns he had seen in some time. When it was over and day had insinuated itself on the world, he planned to go back to the sleeping car for a nap.
The body of the dead naoli guard who had fallen under Hulann's shuttlecraft was annointed with sweet-drugs, wrapped in a purple shroud, and burned
The edges of the conversion cannister crater near the Great Lakes continued to crawl forward, hissing and spitting green light
Chapter Seven
Attention: it struck Hulann with the force of a piledriver, mentally and emotionally, not physically. He stood very still, receiving the alert until there was nothing more to be heard except official messages and directions which could do him little or no good now.
'What is it?' the boy asked.
'They have discovered my absence and know its reason.'
'How?'
'They found the traumatist I tied and gagged. And the woman from whom I stole the shuttle.'
'But how do you know this?'
'The Phasersystem.'
Leo looked perplexed, screwed his face up until his eyes and mouth seemed to be sucked in towards his nose. 'What's that?'
'You-you haven't such a thing. We do. A means of talking together without talking. For intercommunication.'
'Mind reading?'
'Sort of. Only it's all mechanical. A little thing they implant in your skull when you've just grown big enough to come out of the brood hole.'
'Brood hole?'
'Every house has a brood hole near its warren where-' Hulann paused, blinked his big eyes. 'Forget it. For
