The copter pulled up, passed over them, stalled, and spiraled into the earth a hundred yards away. It burst into orange and blue flames that stopped the gurgled scream of the pilot before he and Leah had reached the trees that had been their goal.
“The blanket!” she said when they were in the cool shadows of the trees.
“It was shredded. Useless. The radiators wouldn't work even if there was enough of it to crawl under. We've got to make time.”
In the distance, the sound of approaching aircraft…
“Now!” he hissed.
She followed him into the trees, along another herd path. Without the suitcase they made far better time, for she was easily able to keep up with whatever pace he set as long as the ground was flat and relatively easy-going. They had gone perhaps five hundred yards when one of the huge Alliance copters, a troop carrier, shuddered by, just above tree level. Davis looked up, afraid he might see the hoist lowering armed men, but the worry was unfounded. He bent his head and concentrated on making time. He hoped the craft was not planning on depositing a crew somewhere ahead and letting the fugitives collide with them.
Even though the machine could not attack other men, Davis was pleased to see Proteus floating twenty feet ahead, hull gleaming, marked in one spot by the dark crease of a bullet that had been fired from the one-man copter back on the open field. As long as Proteus was nearby, Davis could remain sane. As children had security blankets which were of no use to ward off their enemies but which still gave them comfort, so he had his protection robot which could not do him any good in the battle in which he was now engaged but which still provided solace because of its past associations with triumph over death and danger.
Then the forest flared crimson…
There was a wash of flame, like liquid, bursting through the trees across their path, sweeping over Proteus,
And there was sound: a bellowing thunder…
Concussion: a fist that thumped the ground and tossed both of them down — hard.
The Alliance had given up on the bring-them-back-alive approach and was now set to destroy them, whatever the cost. The rep whose duty it was to direct Demos's forces had cracked, had let his ego snap and rule supreme over him. Davis and Leah had made a fool out of the searchers once too often; now, with the murder of the single-man copter pilot on his record, Davis was a dangerous fugitive against whom any means of capture or destruction was sanctioned by law.
The chemical flame died as swiftly as it had erupted, though some of the yil trees — tough and durable — near the center of the blast were still burning furiously.
Davis leaped over a twisted mass of metal, started to help Leah across it, before he realized it was the hulk of Proteus. The protection robot had been caught near the center of the grenade eruption and had been smashed open down the middle. The guardian was gone; the security blanket had been taken from him.
For a moment, he was paralyzed with fear, unable to cope. Then, slowly, as two other phosphorescent grenades erupted around them, barely missing killing them, he remembered that she was depending on him, that he had to move, that he had to go one more lap of this journey. He had thought he could not commit violence, and he had committed plenty, starting with that rat he had destroyed in the gas shelter. He had drought he could not do without the adulation of his fans; he had found he was wrong. He had thought he could not survive against other men more rugged than he, against an uncompromising Mother Nature — but he had. Thus far, anyway. In short, he had discovered an entirely new Stauffer Davis, opened up avenues within himself that he had not known existed. It was because of her, the slight girl with wings, and he must not let her down, must not violate the trust she had given him.
Many of the trees were aflame now.
The snow had melted in rivers of whirling water, and the earth was even muddy in some places.
“This way!” he shouted above the crackling and burning, above the sound of copter blades which overlaid the holocaust.
She took his hand, followed him down a narrow corridor of brush and trees which was not yet burning. As they passed through, a grenade struck behind, setting that corridor ablaze as well. They had made it out of the fiery trap without any time to spare.
But the Alliance pilots were apparently able to see them, for they shifted the area of attack and began lobbing chemical grenades to the left and the right. Walls of fire burst into crackling existence around them, and the corridor of safety between was quite narrow indeed. Far ahead, another aircraft began seeding the woodland floor with still more explosives. It seemed as if the okay had been given to destroy a few miles of woodland in order to destroy the prey.
Davis was forced to shield his eyes from the intense heat that made them water and impaired his vision. The world was suddenly a place of illusion and delusion, where firewalls looked only inches away one instant, then seemed to flicker in the distance the next. The snow melted, seeped into the thawing earth and formed mud that sucked at their boots as they tried desperately to negotiate their way down the closing corridor of unburned land. Leah was having trouble walking, for her slim legs had not been made with the sort of musculature necessary to combat the gluelike earth. He walked beside her, helping her, all but carrying her.
He wished he could stop and strip off his clothes, for he was perspiring heavily beneath them. His face, he thought, was receiving a third degree burn and was peeling and bubbling. He saw her face was red-tinted, too, and that rivulets of sweat coursed down her small, pixieish features.
The roar of the fire had become so great that the noise of the hovering copters was no longer audible. He was certain, though he refused to accept it, that they were about to die…
Then, as they came to the end of the pathway and found they were surrounded by fire on all sides, he saw the cliff through the flames, to their left. Beneath the veil of terror that had been drawn down over all his. thoughts, his mind still functioned, perhaps more quickly and cleverly than ever, spurred on — as it was — by desperation. The cliff, somehow, represented a momentary salvation. He could not think why, except that it might offer shelter of a minimal nature where, now, they had none at all. He held her to him, tried to see the rocks more clearly, tried to pick a spot where they should strike for. But the shimmering waves of heat and the licking orange tongues made any detailed examination of the way ahead impossible.
Leah clutched at him, whirled, tried to push herself away. Her Alaskan coat had caught fire. Small, bluish flames danced along the bottom of it. He fought her attempt to stay away from him, carried her to the ground, and fell on top of her, using his own body and clothing to smother the fledgling blaze. He tried to shout, in her ear, what he wanted to do, but the manic scream of the blaze was too great to overcome, and she could not make out what he said, even when his lips were pressed to her ear.
He got to his feet, drew her up, and grasped her, lifted her from the ground, against his hip, when he was certain she understood that she was not to fight him, no matter what he did. Then, forcing himself to use every ounce of energy within him, he burst forward into the fire and through the six-foot line of it, to the cliffside he had caught a glimpse of earlier. As they came out of the fire, he fell, rolling under the overhang of the rock where there was still some snow and a great deal of water puddled in shallow pools, dousing their clothes which had leaped into flame.
The recess under the overhang was about seven feet deep, and a small cavelet, tucked to one side, was wide enough to accommodate both of them and put another eight feet between them and the fire. There was still a great deal of heat, but not more than they could bear. Together, they checked themselves for wounds. Leah was only “sunburned” on the face and had a twisted ankle. He also had suffered facial burns of moderate severity but had picked up another souvenir of the encounter which could mean more trouble to their progress and escape than any burn ever could. In his thigh, on the outside, four inches above his right knee, he had collected a piece of scrap metal from the exploding casing of a chemical grenade. The sharp piece of steel was embedded deep in his flesh, and dark blood welled around it.
“Well have to get it out,” she said.
“How?”
“The medkit, the speedheal will—” She stopped speaking and looked suddenly horrified.
“Exactly,” he said. “It was in the suitcase that got shot up.”
“But you'll get blood poisoning!”
“How far to Tooth?” he asked.
