With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he sat up as if he had been propelled by a spring mechanism. The melted spot above his head was not the only breach of the shelter. There was a second hole past his shoulder where another column of hot air had worked its way through, and there were four places whose thinness was apparent from the amount of light that passed through and flushed into the cavelet. In a very little while, their sanctuary would cease to exist.
The disaster had been unavoidable. They would have frozen to death without the heat blanket, even with the body heat that would have collected in the tiny room. Yet the heavy amount of heat produced by the device was bound to be more than the snow could filter to coolness without, itself, being melted. Unavoidable, yes. A surprise, no. He should have thought of it, should have tried to arrange some method of waking in the middle of the night to turn it off, to give the crystalline walls of their dugout a chance to recuperate. He had been tired and had given in to the urge to consider the victory last night a final victory — when he knew perfectly well it could only be temporary. The Alliance
He sat there, very tense, waiting for the sound of a soldier, waiting for the startled exclamation of discovery and the shout of triumph. But when, after a long while, he heard nothing, he pulled up the sleeve of his coat and checked the time. It was already past midday. The soldiers would have had sufficient time, starting at dawn, to comb the valley again. They were gone by now, surely.
He tickled Leah's nose until she finally lifted an eyelid to stare at him sleepily with an expression that said she had not decided whether to kiss him or pulverize him. “They're gone,” he informed her.
She sat up, yawning. “For now.”
“I'm supposed to be the pessimist here.”
“You've infected me, then,” she said, smiling thinly.
They had a breakfast of vitamin paste, chocolate, stew, and water. Though that was not the most agreeable combination to put into their stomachs and begin the day on, they both agreed that every bite of everything had tasted like something they might have purchased in a delicacy shop. After toilet duties had been finished with, and they had exercised their cramped and aching muscles thoroughly enough to dare to put them to the torture of more walking and climbing, they made their way up the last thousand feet of the ridge, to the brink of the valley which had been so heavily guarded last night and was now so lonely and bleak.
They looked back the way they had come, to the mountain they had crossed the day before. Three helicopters fluttered around the tops of the yil trees on that last mountain, and from the flurry of hoisting and lowering, it appeared the search had been shifted to this area and that a good number of ground troops were involved. Such a fortuitous decision would never have been made by the Alliance if Davis had prayed for it, he was certain. But without hope, their luck had changed for the better, and the enemy was off on some wild goose extravaganza behind them. Perhaps they would make Tooth after all.
They turned, went down the other side of the ridge, out of the forest into a clearing three hundred yards across which broke between two arms of the heavy woods. The sky was only partially clouded, and bits of sun shone down on them, making their faces warm as they walked. They moved briskly, though they knew the enemy was far behind, for they had become accustomed to moving in shadows and felt oddly as if they were on a stage when out in the open. They did not have to worry about leaving prints, for the troops and helicopters which must have been here until just a short while ago had destroyed the smooth blanket of windblown snow.
Halfway across, Davis saw something which did not seem right, though he could not pinpoint what it was. He carefully examined the area of the approaching woods which he had been watching when the feeling of uneasiness had descended over him, and saw it again, in a patch of brush: the gleam of sunlight on glass or metal…
“Veer left,” he said.
She asked no questions, but did exactly as he instructed.
“Walk as fast as you can, but don't break into a run.”
The moment their pace picked up, the camouflage net dropped away from the one-man scout copter which had been on sentry duty, and the machine kicked its rotors on, danced off the ground, and sped toward them, the sound of its blades cracking in sharp echo on the open basin between the trees.
“Run!” he shouted, grabbing the suitcase and wrenching it from her. He knew the copter pilot had radioed the other Alliance aircraft that he had found the fugitives and that the area of search would be hot on their trail in minutes. He also knew, with a certain dread, that though the Alliance might want to take them alive, this pilot probably also had orders to kill if they seemed about to gain the next strip of woodland before the other copters could arrive. They would not have the slightest idea how the two of them had hidden in a valley searched two or three times with thermal tracking units, and they would not want to give them a second chance to use the same trick.
“Run! Run!” he shouted to her as she lagged behind him by half a dozen paces.
The woods looked so far away.
The first stutter of gunfire burst from the one-man copter and tore into the ground fifteen feet behind them.
X
“Faster!” Davis shouted.
She stumbled and went down.
The copter swept overhead, its landing skis no more than six feet above them as it passed. The deafening, chaotic explosion of its blades ate into Davis's bones and made him feel as if he were in a great blender, being spun around the walls.
He ran back to her, helped her up, cradled her in his arm and, half dragging, half carrying her, he ran for the trees and the safety they offered, no matter how short-lived that safety would be when the ground forces and the other three copters arrived.
The one-man craft arced, doubled back, fluttered in toward them, the sun opaquing its glass-bubble cockpit and giving it the look of mercury. The pilot banked, bringing the side-mounted machine gun into the proper angle, and let off another burst of shells.
Davis was spun around and sent crashing head over heels with Leah in his arm. For a short, horrible moment, he was certain he had been hit in the arm, for it was numb. But he saw there was no blood… And he saw that the suitcase had been hit, taking the full brunt of the bullets. It was torn up the middle, and everything it had held was shredded and spilled across the snow: the plastic with which the lean-to could be made, the heat blanket which was their only protection against the stinging, awful cold of the night…
“He's coming back!” Leah shouted, struggling to her feet, trying to help him up.
He gained his feet, grabbed her with his numbed arm, and ran, wondering how they would survive another night without the warmth of the blanket, wondering If it might not be better for both of them to just stop and offer themselves to the pilot of the little craft, open their arms and get it over with in the quick bite of the bullets.
The copter passed, spraying the ground immediately ahead of them with heavy fire.
Davis stumbled and went down in his urgency to keep from running into the death zone. Lying there, trying to get up, he realized that the pilot could have killed them easily before this, that he was trying to see if he couldn't contain them, slow them from the woods until the others had arrived to take them alive. And he was doing very well at that. Only seconds could remain until ground troops would be arriving.
He stopped trying to reach his feet, told Leah to be still, and fumbled the pistol out of his holster. He laid on the ground, as if he were too weak to continue, and waited for the copter to make another pass. He did not know if he could manage what he was about to do, but he had to try. A moment later, the glass-bubble cockpit” swept at them, tilted so the pilot could get a good look. He was grinning, and his finger was on the trigger for his gun.
Had Davis misjudged? Was the pilot just playing with them, tiring them and then killing them like a cat does with a mouse, without any concern about when the ground forces would arrive in the other copters? There was no doubt at all in his mind that the man in that control seat was a sadist. No other sort of man could have that expression with his finger on the trigger of a deadly weapon.
He rolled, brought up the pistol, and fired two rounds into the glass of the machine, directly at the man in the chair. The sharp sound of the gun sounded unrealistic.
