"So the gleaner-team stays put," Telek said. "But the outrider teams go to ground?"
"They certainly make themselves inconspicuous. And the Menssana gets the hell out of there."
"Damn." Telek bit at her lip. "Yeah, you're right. You think going to ground a hundred kilometers away will be safe enough?"
"The farther the better. But you've got to move fast, before they're close enough to spot your grav lifts. I don't want to find out the hard way what sort of air-to-air capability they have."
"Good point. Captain Shepherd?"
"Three minutes to lift," the other's voice came into the circuit. "We've picked a tentative hiding place three hundred kilometers northwest of here, subject to your approval."
"What, right in the path of the helicopters?" York frowned.
"No, several kilometers off their approach. There's a large section of good rock cover under a crevasse overhang there-and it's certainly the last direction the
Qasamans would expect us to run."
"Fine," Telek put in impatiently. "Just get us moving; I'll look the maps over when I have time. Decker, keep an eye on those helicopters and let us know if anything else shows up."
"Will do," York said. "And you people sit on your screens, too-they could have sneaked antiaircraft or spotters out there under the trees earlier today."
"You're a comfort in my old age," Telek returned dryly. "I've got to go now, get
Michael on the line. Talk to you later."
Telek's image vanished from the screen. "At least they can't block or trace our communications this time around," the duty officer said.
"Unless they've learned about split-frequency radio in the past six weeks," York told him heavily. "And I wouldn't put it past them." Taking a deep breath, he chased the last of the sleep from his mind. "All right, gentlemen, let's get busy. Complete sweep of the village and everything for a thousand kilometers around it. If anything's moving out there, I want to know about it."
The helicopter formation broke up about fifty kilometers west of the village, two of the smaller ones heading straight in while the others circled to the north and south. Winward's Cobras braced for an attack... but the craft made only a single pass overhead before regrouping to the east and swinging around to head north. For awhile they tracked along the road, and Pyre and his outrider-one team braced in turn. But if they were spotted there was no sign.
Continuing north, the helicopters faded into the background somewhere near the next village, disappearing from the Dewdrop's screens.
"You think they picked us up?" Justin asked Pyre as the ten Cobras of outrider-one returned cautiously to their roadside positions.
"Hard to tell," the other sighed, checking his watch. About an hour and a half to local sunrise-plenty of time for the craft to refuel, rearm, even sit around for awhile and discuss strategy, and still get back in time for a predawn attack if they wanted to. "Depends really on how good their infrareds are. Radar and motion sensors would have been pretty useless with the tree canopy this thick."
"I would have thought they'd have attacked if they'd spotted us," one of the others commented.
"Unless they still think we didn't notice them in the darkness," Pyre pointed out. "In that case they might prefer not to tip off the gleaner-team by incinerating a section of forest twenty kilometers north."
"They'll leave that for the ground troops in the morning, I suppose," someone else put in dryly.
Pyre grimaced; the news of the convoy moving south along the roads had come from the Dewdrop only fifteen minutes earlier. "Probably," he admitted. "Though if I were them I'd bring the helicopters back for the party, too. Not much point in subtlety by that time."
"What fun," Justin said. "Any other good news?"
Pyre shrugged. "Only that the convoy's not due for a few more hours at the least-which means some of us should get reasonably caught up on our sleep before then."
"Only some of us?"
"We've got to have sentries," Pyre pointed out. "Can't count on the Qasamans not to sneak something past the Dewdrop-and the helicopters might come back. Hey, get used to it, friends-this is what warfare is all about: worry and lack of sleep."
Plus, of course, a lot of dying. Pyre hoped they wouldn't have to find out too much about that part.
The helicopters' early morning flyby hadn't gone unnoticed by the gleaner-team, of course. But it wasn't until the day's testing began that they discovered the villagers, too, had heard the overhead activity.
"You can see it in their faces and body language as clearly as if they were wearing wraparound displays," McKinley told Winward tightly an hour into the interviews. "They know the government's on to us and they're fully expecting some kind of move soon, probably within a day."
Winward nodded; York and the others aboard the Dewdrop had come to the same conclusion. "Well, we certainly can't sit put for a hall-scale military operation here. What's the earliest time you can be finished?"
"Depends on how much data you want to take back," the other shrugged. "We're already combining the original day two and day three schedules, taking half the data points we'd originally planned for each-"
From one of the rooms down the hall came a muffled shriek and the crash of a falling object. "What-?" McKinley snapped, spinning around.
Winward was already moving at a dead run, auditory enhancers keyed for follow-up noises. The sounds of a struggle... muffled curses... that door-
He slammed it open to see one of the Cobras pulling a struggling Qasaman from the desk he'd apparently thrown himself across. The experimenter, picking himself up shakily from the floor behind his overturned chair, was white-faced with shock, the pale skin in sharp contrast to the oozing blood on his cheek.
Beside him on the floor lay a dead mojo. The Cobra looked up as Winward strode in. "The mojo tried to attack, and I had to kill it. I was a little too slow to stop this one."
Winward nodded as McKinley skidded into the room behind him. "Get him out of here," he told the Cobra.
"Killers," the Qasaman spat toward Winward as the other Cobra hauled him toward the door. "Foulspring excrement vermin-"
The door slammed on his tirade. "Loses a lot in translation, I'll bet." Winward and McKinley moved to the tester's side. "You okay?"
"Yeah," the other nodded, dabbing with a handkerchief at his cheek. "Took me completely by surprise-his control just seemed to snap, and there he was on top of me."
Winward exchanged glances with McKinley. "When was that? When his mojo was killed?"
"Oddly enough, no. As a matter of fact, I think they both jumped me at the same time. Though I couldn't swear to that."
"Um," McKinley nodded. "Well, the tapes will show the details. You'd better go to HQ, get those scratches looked at. No point taking any chances."
"Yes, sir. Sorry."
"Not your fault. And don't come back until you're sure you feel ready to continue. We're not in that much of a hurry."
The tester nodded and left. "If he's too obviously nervous it could skew his results," McKinley explained.
Winward nodded. He had the recorder box back on the table now and popped the rear panel. "Let's see what really happened."
The tester, it turned out, had been correct. Bird and man had attacked at precisely the same moment.
"You can see signs of agitation in both of them," McKinley pointed out, running the tape again. "The rippling feathers and snapping motions of the beak here; the shifting muscle lines in his face, here, and the hand movements."
"This is all in response to ultrasonics that humans can't hear?" Something prickled on the back of Win-ward's neck.
"Right. Just took at the tester here-he's in the same ultrasonic beam and isn't so much as sweating hard." McKinley bit at his lip. "But I wasn't expecting this much of a common reaction."