He looked down again, at the glint of that bright pin on the rock.
“But what could have attacked him?”
“I think we’ll know the answer,” Jay Kalam said softly, “when we find the bearded stranger who shot at Giles and Hal.”
He reached to unsnap the cartograph from his belt.
He had brought that tiny instrument to map their movements.
He opened the cover and peered at the record strip.
“We’re nearly seven miles from where the prison used to be,” he said thoughtfully.
“Until we have more information, we must assume that Justin Malkar died somewhere near his ship.
Our logical next step is to explore this vicinity, following a widening spiral—”
“Ah, so!” Giles Habibula nodded apprehensively.
“Let’s get away from these bones, before that monster comes back to pick them!”
They tramped on again, shivering hi the fog.
Bob Star led the way around crumbling boulders, up frozen slopes, across shallow valleys of eternal night.
Jay Kalam watched the glowing instrument, and softly called directions.
They had found no other clue, and they had swung back toward the shelter of the wreck, when Bob Star turned aside toward something looming hi the darkness like another boulder.
A vague shadow, it took on reality as he stumbled wearily toward it.
The gleam of metal checked him.
He made out the black ovals of observation ports, and the bulge of a gun turret.
A trembling hope took Ms breath.
He heard Jay Kalam calling him, and ran back silently.
“Quiet!” he whispered.
“That’s a ship—
His words were cut off by a beam of blinding light that struck the frosty ground beside them.
“They heard us!” he gasped.
“Get down—”
They dropped flat, scrambled for cover behind a rock.
A sudden sword of violent flame stabbed the rock, spattering incandescent fragments.
“Bob?” whispered Jay Kalam.
“Giles?
Hal?
All safe.” “Aye, Jay,” rumbled Hal Samdu. “But where are the others?” “Bob?” the commander called again. “Giles?”
But the frozen dark made no reply.
Bob Star, standing nearest the ship, barely escaped the flaming beam from the great proton gun.
He felt the shock of it as he dropped, and saw the slender needle swinging after him, still faintly glowing from that first discharge, a pointing finger of death.
He scrambled desperately away from it, toward the ship itself.
The needle reached the bottom of its travel, and flamed again.
Frozen rocks exploded behind him, but the shock reached him only faintly.
Safe beneath the reach of the needle, he ran back to the main entrance valve.
An instant’s inspection told him it was locked.
“Lad!
Where are you, lad?”
The frightened voice of Giles Habi-bula startled him.
“Ah, the wicked things that can happen to a poor old soldier of the Legion!”
Bob Star saw him scuttling toward the hull with a surprising agility, to escape the reach of that glowing gun.
“The first flash blinded me,” he whispered bitterly.
“I ran in the wrong direction, and now we’re trapped against the ship.
If we try to get away, they can cut us down.”
“Here, Giles!”
Hope touched Bob Star again.
“Can you open this lock?”