For a moment she knew terror; then she heard her husband's voice, triumphant and challenging. "Tally- ho!" he shouted. "I've got 'em!"
And without waiting for comment from the others, he aimed himself and fired his jet.
From directly behind, Zara got the full roar of the pulse jet as it thrumped giant smoke rings of steam, thrusting him like an arrow toward the onrushing orgs. There was a confusion of argument that the Pmals were unable to handle, too many beings shouting at once. What they were saying was clear enough, but Jon Gentry was paying no attenion. He had the taste of blood on his lips, and he was on the hunt.
The orgs were wise in warfare. They split up to come at this lone attacker from three directions at once. Against any of the beings that were their natural prey the strategy was winning. Against galactic weapons, it was hopeless.
Gentry's hours on the practice range on Earth had not been wasted. The first spark-hiss that marked the firing of his laser was a miss, but the second found a target. Three times then the cobalt-blue streak of his laser reached out to touch an org. Three times the creature hit screamed, the pain bellow of a tortured beast, and each time the scream was cut off as the blue ray burned through scales and flesh in a split second. Each org flamed briefly, and then tumbled, slowly and ungracefully, toward the mountain flank far below.
Gentry stopped his pulse-jet, and returned to them by wing power alone. As he came close, Zara could hear that he was singing. He swooped past her, touching her with what might have been meant for a caress of affection, but sent her spinning. "Got 'em!" he shouted. "That was worth the whole trip, Zara!"
The silver girl chimed, "It is true that you killed those creatures. I do not think it was wise to attack single-handed, however."
And the Scorpian robot muttered through its Pmal, "Confirm statement as to organic creatures. Propose consequential probability. Premise: Organic creatures are not principal adversaries. Second premise: Use of laser weapons may be counterproductive at this time."
"Ah," Gentry grumbled, "you're just scared—" Elogically, Zara thought with resentment; all the Galaxy knew that Scorpians could not be frightened, since they were not only very nearly physically indestructible but had little emotional attachment to life.
Val chimed: "I suggest we proceed to our objective. I have a strong transponder trace from a point on the mountainside fifteen kilometers away, nearly in direction of flight. The characteristics are compatible with one of the previous exploration ships."
"Propose we go there now," the T'Worlie twittered through the translator.
"Why not?" Jon Gentry said with careless courage. "I think we've seen we can deal with any problems that come up."
Zara dropped back a few meters, looking at her husband curiously. This—what was that old word? machismo?—this kind of behavior was a side of her husband she had not known very well. Of course, on placid Earth there was little occasion for physical conflict, but even so she could hardly reconcile this fire-eyed warrior with the gentle, sedentary, rather dull man she had been married to for three years on Earth. She had never questioned his courage. It had simply never occurred to her to consider it. If she had been aware of it at all, she might have considered it as a sort of mildly disturbing anachronism, like an excess of body hair or a desire for raw meat.
She was jolted out of her reverie by a sudden gabble in the Pmals. Once again several members of the party were speaking at once. The first clear transmission was from Val, who cried: "I think we are in trouble!" And it was confirmed by the Sirian's little sphincter mouth, which squeaked its inaudible message that the Pmal translated as:
"Air palping now registers three new high-speed traces vectoring toward us. Correction. Four traces. Correction. Five, six, six-plus traces. Points of origin widely separated. Suggest indications are that technological intervention is now occurring."
T'Worlie and humans, plus Val, tried desperately to see what the Sirian and the Scorpian had detected. Even for Val, however, they were still out of sight, but Val confirmed the locating: "I have the trace," she agreed.
"Recommend seeking cover," chattered the Pmal, responding to the Scorpian's signal.
Jon Gentry snorted, "What, run away? Not me! We've got weapons, let's use them."
Val pealed, "That is countersurvival, Jon Gentry. I have an alternative proposal. You organics seek cover. The Scorpian and I will intercept the opponents."
"Concurring," the Scorpian chattered through the Pmal translator at once.
"No bloody chance!" Jon Gentry blazed. "I guess you don't know much about Earthmen! Fighting's nothing strange to us. We came here to carry an equal share of the load, and that includes fighting. We're not going to hide behind a bunch of aliens!"
"He means," Zara cried quickly, "that we feel an obligation to help. And honestly, Val—don't you think we can take care of ourselves?"
The silvery girl swept her great wings up to a point over her head, thus dropping and turning toward Zara. "Doubt it very much," she pealed. "Please study the approaching objects at thirty-four degrees right ascension, eighteen degrees plus declination." She paused while Zara struggled with her telescopic visor.
"Oh," Zara said at last. "They are—formidable looking, aren't they?"
They were that. Blunt spearpoints, mottled in colors of bronze and gray that glinted with underlying metal, they were arrowing toward the galactic party at easily supersonic speeds. And those were only two. How many had the Scorpian reported? More than six—
These were not animals or primitives, these were complex and powerful technological devices, and, Zara thought with a sinking heart, no doubt armed accordingly.
"I accept offer," the T'Worlie chirped. "Come!" And Nleem stood on his head in the air, and swam his deceptively filmy wings to drive himself straight downward at the forest cover beneath them. There was a spatter of electrical fields, and he was followed by the Sirian eye.
Zara wailed nervously, "Please, Jon! Let's do what Val says." She tried to catch her husband's eye, but he was already higher than she, peering toward the approaching Watcher ships eagerly. "Please?" she coaxed.
"Not a chance!" he snapped. "You go ahead. I'm going to fight this out!"
"Then I'd better stay, too—"
"No way! Damned if you will, Zara! Now get out of the way—there's going to be a fight, and I don't want to have to worry about you getting hurt!"
Angry, and in a way she could not define, afraid—it was not physical fear, it was a deadly feeling that something was changing irrevocably in her life—Zara turned herself oyer in the air, aimed herself at the rapidly diminishing forms of the T'Worlie and the Sirian, and activated the pulse jet. Thrump, thrump, thrump,—the acceleration was terrific. She was catching up on the Sirian and the T'Worlie very rapidly.
Her previous experience had made her cautious. She did not want to overshoot this time; that would mean driving herself into the ground below. She judged the distance as well as she could, allowed the jet to build up speed for a moment, then, when she gauged she had plenty of margin left, cut the pulse and arrowed down on inertia for a few seconds. Then she rotated herself and applied maximum counterthrust with the jet to slow her fall.
Zara had thought she had left herself a large margin on the side of caution. In fact, she had started the counterthrust far too late. It slowed her headlong drop— feebly, tardily; just enough so that when she struck the treetops she was traveling at something like thirty miles an hour.
She hit hard, broke off sprigs and branches, went flying through a tangle of vines that ripped at her skin and bruised her brutally. Every snag hurt her, but every snag slowed her a fraction, so that when she hit the soggy, mossy marsh under the trees she knocked herself unconscious, but lived.