Kickaha gave the device to Anana so she could see for herself. He said, "As far as you know, Red Orc is the only Lord on Earth?"
She put the glasses down and said, "Yes."
"He must know about these gates, then, and he's set up some sort of alarm device, so he knows when they're activated. Maybe his men are stationed close, maybe far off. Maybe Wolff and Chryseis and the Beller got away before his men could get here. Maybe not. In any case, they're waiting for us."
They did not comment about the lack of a permanent trap at the gates or a permanent guard. Red Orc, or whatever Lord was responsible for these men, would make a game out of the invasion of his home territory by other Lords. It was deadly but nevertheless a game.
Kickaha went back to viewing the four beneath the trees. Presently, he said, "They've got a walkie-talkie."
He heard a whirring sound above him. He rolled over to look up and saw a strange machine that had just flown down over the mountain to his right.
He said, "An autogyro!" and then the machine was hidden by a spur of the mountain. He jumped up and ran into the cavern with Anana behind him.
The chopping sound of a plane's rotors became a roar and then the machine was hovering before the ledge. Kickaha became aware that the machine was not a true autogyro. As far as he knew, a gyro could not stand still in the air, or, as this was doing, swing from side to side or turn around one spot. The body of the craft was transparent; he could see the pilot and three men inside, armed with rifles. He and Anana were trapped, they had no place to run or hide. Undoubtedly, Orc's men had been sent to find out what weapons the intruders carried. Under these conditions, the intruders would have to use their weapons, unless they preferred to be captured. They did riot so prefer. They spoke the activating code word, aimed the rings at the machine, and spoke the final word.
The needle-thin golden rays spat once, delivering the full charges in the rings' tiny powerpacks.
The fuselage split in two places, and the plane fell. Kickaha ran out and looked down over the ledge in time to see the pieces strike the side of the mountain below. One section went up in a white and red ball which fissioned into a dozen smaller fire globes. All the pieces eventually fell not too far apart near the bottom and burned fiercely. The four men under the trees were white-faced, and the man with the walkie-talkie spat words into the transmitter. Kickaha tried to tighten the beam so he could pick them up, but the noise from the burning machine interfered.
Kickaha was glad that he had struck the first blow, but his elation was darkened. He knew that the Lord had deliberately sacrificed the men in the gyro in order to find out how dangerous his opponents were. Kickaha would have preferred to have gotten away undetected. Moreover, getting down the mountainside would be impossible until night fell. In the meantime, the Lord would attack again.
He and Anana recharged their rings with the tiny powerpacks. He kept a watch on the men below while she scanned the sides of the mountain. Presently, a red convertible appeared on the left, going down the mountain road. A man and a woman sat in it. The car stopped near the flaming wreckage and the two got out to investigate. They stood around talking and then they got back into the car and sped off.
Kickaha grinned. No doubt they were going to notify the authorities.
That meant that the four men would be powerless to attack. On the other hand, the authorities might climb up here and find him and Anana. He could claim that they were just hikers, and the authorities could not hold them for long. But just to be in custody for a while would enable the Lord to seize them the moment they were released. Also, he and Anana would have a hard time identifying themselves, and it was possible that the authorities might hold them until they could be identified.
They would have no record of Anana, of course, but if they tracked down his fingerprints, they would find something difficult to explain. They would discover that he was Paul Janus Finnegan, born in 1918 near Terre Haute, Indiana, that he had served in a tank corps of the Eighth Army during World War II, and that he had mysteriously disappeared in 1946 from his apartment in a building in Bloomington while he was attending the University of Indiana, and that he had not been seen since.
He could always claim amnesia, of course, but how would he explain that he was fifty-two years old chronologically yet only twenty-five years old physiologically? And how would he explain the origin of the peculiar devices in his backpack?
He cursed softly in Tishquetmoac, in Half-Horse Lakotah, in the Middle High German of Dracheland, in the language of the Lords, and in English. And then he switched his thinking into English, because he had half-forgotten that language and had to get accustomed to its use. If those four men stuck there until the authorities showed up ...
But the four were not staying. After a long conversation, and obvious receipt of orders from the walkie-talkie, they left. They climbed up onto the road, and within a minute a car appeared from the right. It stopped, and the four got in and drove off.
Kickaha considered that this might be a feint to get him and Anana to climb down the mountain. Then another gyro would catch them on the mountainside, or the men would come back. Or both.
But if he waited until the police showed up, he could not come down until nightfall. Orc's men would be waiting down there, and they might have some of the Lord's advanced weapons to use, because they would not fear to use them at night and in this remote area.
"Come on," he said to Anana in English. "We're going down now. If the police see us, we'll tell them we're just hitchhikers. You leave the talking to me; I'll tell them you're Finnish and don't speak English yet. Let's hope there'll be no Finns among them."
"What?" Anana said. She had spent three and a half years on Earth in the 1880's and had learned some English and more French but had forgotten the little she had known.
Kickaha repeated slowly.
"It's your world," she said in English. "You're the boss."
He grinned at that, because very few female Lords ever admitted there was any situation in which the male was their master. He let himself down again over the ledge. He was beginning to sweat. The sun was coming over the mountain now and shining fully on them, but this did not account for his perspiration. He was sweating out the possible reappearance of the Lord's men.
He and Anana had gotten about one-third of the way down when the first police car appeared. It was black and white and had a big star on the side. Two men got out. Their uniforms looked like those of state police, as he remembered those of the Midwest.
A few minutes later, another patrol car and an ambulance appeared. Then two more cars stopped. After a while, there were ten cars.
Kickaha found a path that was sometimes precarious but led at an angle to the right along the slope. He and Anana could keep hidden from the people below part of the time. If they should be seen, they would not have to stop. The police could come after them, but they would be so far behind that their pursuit would be hopeless.
Or so it seemed until another gyro appeared. This one swept back and forth, apparently looking for bodies or survivors. Kickaha and Anana hid behind a large boulder until the craft landed near the road. Then they continued their sidewise descent of the mountain.
When they reached the road, they drank some water and ate some of the concentrated food they had brought from the other world. Kickaha told her that they would walk along the road, going downward. He also reminded her that Red Orc's men would be cruising up and down the road looking for them.
"Then why don't we hide out until nightfall?" she said. "Because in the daylight I can spot a car that definitely won't be Orc's. I won't mind being picked up by one of them. But if Orc's men show up and try anything, we have our rays and we can be on guard. At night, you won't know who's stopping to pick you up. We could avoid the road altogether and hike alongside it in the woods, but that's slow going. I don't want Wolff or the Beller to get too far ahead."