The red and yellow landscape stretched away before me. To either side the dark-red stone of the building made a fence. There were other trees, far off, but I could not see the tree that had been shooting at us. It was blocked off by the structure.
“Can we get that door open again if we go out?” I asked.
Still holding it open, Hoot sidled around and had a look at its outside panel. “Undoubted not,” he said. “Constructed only to be opened from inside.”
I hunted for a small boulder, kicked it out of the ground and rolled it over to the door, wedging it tightly so the door would stay open.
“Come along,” I said. “We’ll have a look. But be sure to stay behind me.”
I headed to my left, walking along the wall. I reached the corner of the building and peered out. The tree was there.
It saw me or sensed me or somehow became aware of me the second I poked my head around the corner, and started shooting. Black dots detached themselves from it and came hurtling toward me, ballooning rapidly as they came.
“Down!” I yelled to Hoot. “Get down!”
I threw myself backwards and against the wall, huddled over the crouching Hoot, burying my face in my folded arms
Out beyond me the seed pods thudded. Some of them apparently struck against the corner of the building. The seeds went whizzing, with dull whistling sounds. One struck me on the shoulder and another took me in the ribs and they did no damage but they stung like fury. Others slammed against the wall above us and went ricocheting off, howling as they spun.
The first burst ended and I half stood up. Before I got straightened, the second burst came in and I threw myself on top of Hoot again. None of the seeds hit me solidly this time, but one grazed the back of my neck and it burned like fire.
“Hoot,” I yelled, “how far can you run?”
“Scramble very rapidly,” he said, “when materials at me are being hurled.”
“Then listen.”
“I hearken most attentively,” said Hoot.
“It’s firing in bursts. When the next burst ends, when I yell, try to make it to the door. Keep close to the wall. Keep low. Are you headed in the right direction?”
“In wrong direction,” said Hoot. “I turn myself around.”
He twisted underneath me.
Another salvo came in. Seeds peppered all around me. One nicked me in the leg.
“Wait,” I said to Hoot. “When you get in tell Miss Foster to get the packs on those hobbies and get them moving, We’re getting out of here.”
Another burst of pods came storming in on us. The seeds rattled on the walls and skipped along the ground. One threw a spray of sand into my face, but this time none hit me.
“Now!” I yelled. Bent low, I raced for the corner, the rifle in my hand, and intensity lever pushed to its final notch. A blizzard of seeds caught me. One banged me on the jaw, another caught me in the shin. I staggered and half went down, then caught myself and went plowing on. I wondered how Hoot was doing, but didn’t have the time to look.
Then I was at the corner of the building and there was the tree, perhaps three miles away-it was hard to judge the distance.
I brought the rifle to my shoulder. What looked like black gnats were swarming from the tree, coming at me, but I took my time. I got my sight and then I pressed the trigger and twitched the rifle downward, sidewise in a slicing motion. The laser beam blinked for a moment, then was gone, and in that instant before the seeds struck, I threw myself flat upon the ground, trying to hold the rifle high so it didn’t absorb the full impact of the fall.
A million fists were hammering at my head and shoulders and I knew what had happened-some of the pods had struck the corner of the building and exploded, showering me with seeds.
I struggled to my knees and looked toward the tree. It seemed to be reeling and, as I watched, began to topple. I wiped the dust out of my eyes and watched as it came farther and farther out of plumb. It fell slowly at first, reluctantly, as If it were fighting to stay erect. Then it picked up speed, coming down out of the sky, rushing toward the ground.
I got to my feet and wiped the back of my neck, and the hand, when it came away, was bloody.
The tree hit the ground and beneath me the earth bounced, as if it had been struck a mighty blow. Above the place where the tree had fallen a geyser of dust and other debris billowed up into the sky.
I took a step to get turned around, headed back toward the door, and stumbled. My head ballooned and as it ballooned, was filled with fuzziness. I saw that Hoot stood to one side of the open door, but that the way through it was blocked by a perfect flood of the ratlike creatures. They were piling up over one another, as if a wide front of them, running hard, had converged upon the narrowness of the door and now were funneling through it like water through a high-pressure hose, driven on by the press of their frantic need to gather up the fallen seeds.
I fell-no, I floated-down through an eternity of time and space. I knew that I was falling, but not only was I falling slowly, but as I fell the ground seemed to draw away from me, to surge downward, so that no matter how I fell it always was as far away, or farther, than it had been to start with. And finally there was no ground at all, for night had fallen as I fell, and now I was plunging down through an awful blackness that went on and on forever.
After what seemed an endless time, the darkness went away and I opened my eyes, for it seemed that I had closed them as I fell into the darkness. I lay upon the ground and when I opened my eyes I found that I was looking up into a deep-blue sky in which the sun was rising.
Hoot was standing to one side of me. The ratlike things were gone. The cloud of dust, slowly settling back to the ground, still stood above where the tree had fallen. To one side of me the red stone wall of the great building reared up into the sky. A heavy, brooding silence hung above the land.
I rose to a sitting position and found that it took all the strength I had to lever up the top half of my body. The rifle lay to one side of me and I reached out and picked it up. It took no more than a single glance to see that it was broken. The shield of the tube was twisted out of shape and the tube itself had been knocked out of alignment. I dragged it to me and laid it across my lap. I don’t know why I bothered; no man in his right mind would ever dare to fire that gun again and there was no way I could fix it.
“Drink your fluids I have done,” Hoot honked cheerfully, “and put them back again. I hope you have no anger at me.”
“Come again?” I croaked.
“No need to come again,” he hooted at me. “Done it is already.”
“What is done already?”
“Your fluids I have drunk...”
“Now wait just a goddamn minute,” I said. “What is this fluid drinking?”
“Filled you were with deadly substances,” he said, “from being struck by seeds. Deadly to you, but deadly not at all to me.”
“So you drank my fluids?’
“Is only thing to do,” said Hoot. “Procedure is approved.”
“Lord love us,” I said. “A walking, breathing dialysis contraption.”
“Your words I do not grab,” he complained. “I empty you of fluids. I subtract the substances. I fill you up again. The biologic pump you have inside you scarcely missed a pump. But worry worry worry! I think I was too late. Apparently now I wasn’t.”
I sat there for a long moment-for a long, long moment-and it was impossible. And yet I was alive, weak and drained of strength, but still alive. I thought back to how my head had ballooned and how I’d fallen slowly and there had been something very wrong with me, indeed. I had been hit by seeds before, but only glancing blows that had not broken skin. This time, however, there had been blood upon my hand when I wiped my neck.