"What weapon does he have that will destroy the ship?" Org Rider demanded suspiciously. "You told me he had no such weapon."
"He lied," the giant growled moodily. "I knew he lied. And perhaps he is lying now, how can I tell? I can understand so little of what he says!"
"What does it matter?" repeated Org Rider, quelling the rising surge of feeling in himself. "Let us do as he asks."
They left Ben Yale just inside the undergrowth, lying on the scarlet moss, peering over the sights of his tree- trunklike weapon, chuckling and muttering to himself in his strange language. And they moved like ghosts through the vegetation, circling around.
They paused fifty yards from the beach. The foul deathweed stench of the Watchers reeked in their nostrils as Org Rider whispered savagely, "How do we know when he will destroy the ship? We should have arranged a signal."
"Should have, should have," Redlaw rumbled. "But we didn't, boy." He scowled toward the beach. "If only I were sure of him. I hate like poison to get closer! Those golden ropes of theirs can smell a man, and they never sleep. Still—" He sighed. "I'll try to get them with this thing"—he patted the laser weapon—"and you go after them with your bow. With any luck they'll be disorganized . . ."
He broke off. There was a sharp, flat crack from across the lake and a puff of grayish smoke. Out of the smoke emerged a needlelike metal object lancing across the lake toward the Watcher vessel. It struck, and opened into a bright flower of flame.
Blam.
The sound of the explosion was far louder than they had expected. The mottled vessel of the Watchers seemed to lift off the sand, and fall slowly. Bright flame spouted from the hole that the stranger's weapon had made in its side.
"Curse him," Redlaw howled, "we should have been closer! Do the best you can, boy!" And he loped toward the Watchers, firing with the laser weapon. Sounds like the tearing of paper came from it, and Watchers fell before it.
Org Rider ran to the side of the lake, dropped to one knee, and began launching arrows toward the Watchers. While one was still in the air he was notching and aiming the next. He did not wait to see how successful he was, but out of the corner of one eye he saw one Watcher leap high over the vessel with a startled squeal, an arrow protruding clear through him. Another, squalling and hooting, lay on the ground, tugging at a shaft through his throat, while his drumming feet revolved him in a complete circle around his shoulders.
"They've broken!" Redlaw exulted over his shoulder. "Come on, boy! Let's go in and finish them off!" As he spoke his laser weapon sliced through the golden coils, and another blast from it burned a crisply sizzling hole through a Watcher skull. Now the giant flung the laser to the winds and, screaming as he leaped, bowled in on the Watchers, hacking at them with his cleaver. Org Rider was just behind. The two of them drove the Watchers back like avenging angels. With every stroke of Redlaw's cleaver and the boy's knife a Watcher squealed and fell from their paths.
Zzzzzzat!
The noise was louder than anything Org Rider had ever heard, and for a moment he did not understand what it was.
Then he saw that the Watcher vessel was not, after all, quite dead.
From a round bulge on its top something flashed like lightning, and the great ripping sound lashed at his ears again. The Watcher ship was firing its main armament. Not at them, Org Rider realized—not that there was any question about that; if the laser cannon had been aimed at them they would never have known what hit them—but probing across the lake for the bazooka. Zzzzzzat!, and a bee-tree went up in smoke, smitten by a lightning bolt Zzzzzat.', and a sudden corridor opened up in a stand of deathweed.
"Grab the girl!" Redlaw bawled. "Let's get out of here before they finish with Pertin and start on us!"
There were still Watchers alive and Org Rider yearned to catch and kill every one; but he knew Red- law was right. He bounded to the side of the girl. She was just beginning to sit up. The blood had been squeezed out of her limbs for so long she was numbed and tottering.
Org Rider felt almost as dizzy as she was. All this was so terribly new and confusing! The needle-bright light of the laser, the harsh explosions and lightning- bolt sizzling of the long-range battle across the lake were entirely out of his experience, in a life lived in the perpetual pink-gray dawn of Cuckoo. He was not afraid; but he was disoriented.
Still he had to act. He grabbed the girl's arm and pulled her away. She did not resist, except to break free for a moment and pick up a piece of metallic equipment. Then she was with him, bounding as fast as they could into the shelter of the woods, Redlaw close behind. The last Watcher on his feet outside the ship challenged Redlaw, but lost his head and half his trunk to the keen-edged cleaver. Then the giant was beside them, shouting, "Hurry! We've got to get out of sight!" The girl could not have understood his words; but she didn't have to, the need was clear.
At last there was another bazooka shot from across the lake, and this one was clean and true on the bulge at the top of the Watcher ship. It blew up in a gout of flame.
All three of them cheered.
"We did it, boy!" the giant bellowed. "Beat the Watchers in fair fight! It's the first time it ever happened in all the time of the world!"
Org Rider crowed in pleasure, pummeling the girl's back as though she were another man. Exultant, laughing, as delighted as he, she clapped him on the shoulder with a force that sent him spinning.
He picked himself off the ground and looked at her with new respect. She was no timid, frail maiden! She was as strong as he. And yet—she seemed more feminine than any woman he had ever seen. More so even than the girl who had married his brother. A glow of color began to light her death-pale face, and he found himself staring into her widening eyes. They were a bright-flicked brown, like the wild flowers that colored the grassworld after the rain. Even with the hated reek of the Watchers still fouling his nostrils he could smell the faint scent that came from her, a clean sweetness that swept away the Watchers' fetor and left him with the fragrance of the rain itself, after the flatworld had been brown and dry.
"Stop mooning, boy!" Redlaw ordered, laughing as he said it. "We've beaten one shipload of Watchers, but they're not through yet. There'll be more. When this ship doesn't report in, they'll send another to look for it. If they managed to send off a distress report, that ship is on its way now!"
Org Rider tore his eyes off the girl. "All right. Which way?"
The giant gazed about. "We'll have to go back around the lake," he decided. "First place, we'd best try to find Ben Yale, if he's still alive. Second, I don't think we can get out this way. That's bare rock up there. We'd be easy targets on it—and I see blue on those rocks, boy; I think it's the slime. We don't want to go near that."
Org Rider nodded and turned to the girl. Speaking as clearly as he could, gesturing to make his meaning plain, he said: "Come. We leave here. Now."
She laughed. She touched the metallic thing she had picked up and spoke, and from the thing came a flat, dead voice that said: "I understand. I agree. And"—to Org Rider even the lifeless metallic tone of the translator could not keep all feeling out of the words—"with all my heart I thank you both."
The boy was enraptured. He recognized the speaking machine; it was the same as Ben Yale's, but whole and working properly. In Ben Yale's conversations with Redlaw he had become accustomed to being excluded; it had not occurred to him that an undamaged machine would make it possible for him to be in one-to-one contact with this wondrous person.
He caught the girl's hand, and they followed Redlaw back toward the lake margin—
And stopped.
From behind the wrecked Watcher vessel a lance of green fire spat out at them.