“How many of you reached there?” the ranger wanted to know.
The man shook his head. “No telling. We were the largest group, most all women and children. I saw three—three at least get it from those devil things. And two were burned down at the yard before we wiped out that air scum.”
“This upside—” Meshler interrupted. “Where is it in relation to the park?”
For a moment the man shut his eyes, as if trying to mentally picture the refuge site. Then he answered, “South a field and then east. It’s a big outcrop of rough rock. Vanatar thought it could be made into an extra-secure roost, and he ordered us not to blast it out. It’s the best defense they could find there.”
“No flitter landing near it?”
The man shook his head. “Only in open ground, and there you’d have to fight off those things. If they haven’t overrun the rocks—”
“Could your men get out if a flitter went on hover and we used air rescue belts?” persisted the ranger.
“I don’t know.”
The technique the ranger suggested was a tricky one. Dane had seen it done at training stations, but the Queen’s men had never had to put it into practice. And did the settlers have the proper tackle?
His question was put into words by the other more lightly wounded man.
“You have a rescue flitter here? You’d need the belts and shock lines. And you’ll have to hover low. They’re using blasters, and if you got down to the right level, one sweep would cut a belt rope.”
“We can set the hover on low.” Meshler sounded confident, but Dane thought this the wildest suggestion yet. He looked about the room. Tau was busy with the badly wounded man. His place would certainly be here. The three who had come in with the refugee flitter were in no state to go back, and Cartl might have a relapse if he made such an effort at present, which meant that the rescue mission would fall on two of them, Meshler and himself.
The ranger did not ask for volunteers. He put them all, save Tau, to work, improvising the equipment needed. They had finally a bulky belt, plus a double-woven steelion rope and a pulley hoist, which occupied so much of the interior of the flitter that Dane could not see how they could take off more than two, or at the most three, of the refugees at a time. In addition, they had to use the slower flying cargo flitter in order to rig such an installation at all. And even Cartl warned them that any overload of weight on hover might break that down.
But at dawn they took off, Meshler again as pilot, Dane and the brach, who at the last minute added himself to their company, housed in the stripped rear beside the hoist.
“This is bad.” Dane tried to urge the alien to stay behind. “We go into much danger.”
“Go with you, come with you, always, with you go our own place,” the brach stated firmly, as if in Dane alone he had any hope of returning to his mate and family. And knowing how the alien’s talents had helped them in the past, Dane could not have him put out bodily.
With the directions of the refugees for a guide, Meshler pushed the flitter at the top speed that the lumbering craft could maintain. Behind them the people of Cartl’s holding were preparing for a state of siege, while Cartl himself had gone back to the com, though he seemed to have little faith in the experiment he tried.
There was no storm, but the day was gray, and the sun was a very pallid spot of light, well veiled by clouds. Save for their two blasters, they carried no arms. And Dane tried not to imagine what would happen if the enemy had captured one of the burners and turned it aloft to singe out any attempt at rescue.
When they came in over the fields where Vanatar and his people had been clearing, the ragged scars of the interrupted work were beacon enough. The tangle of the flitter the refugees had brought down lay in a burned-out mess, eclipsing in part two crawlers it had crashed upon.
From that wreckage a lance of blaster fire shot at their own craft. Friend believing them enemy, or enemy trying to blast any rescue attempt? At any rate, that spear of light had come from a hand weapon, lacking power to reach them, though were they to descend, it might make a direct hit—
Meshler brought the flitter around, away from the park. The machine, never meant for fast or limited space maneuvering, needed all his attention at the controls. But it was the brach who gave them their lead.
“Much fear—pain—that way—” He pointed with his nose. Dane interpreted, and Meshler headed in the new direction.
They caught sight of the rocks. They looked from above almost as if they were some artificial erection rather than natural outcropping, though they stood in no pattern, only raised a mass of erosion-pitted stone skyward.
Meshler guided the flitter in closer. Halfway across the roughly cleared field was an overturned crawler. From it pointed the ugly snout of a burner, and where that lay against the soil, there was a long streak of black and smoking soil ribboning from it. Apparently the machine had been overturned with the burner going at full blast, and that had remained on to sear and roast the ground until its heating unit was exhausted.
But it had taken toll before it had been defeated. There were three half-burned carcasses on its back trail, and all of them suggested that in life they had been monstrous. More nightmare things, however, were left to prowl around the rocks, though they did not essay to attack, mainly because scuttling back around the rocky outcrop were three robo clearers, their long, jointed arms with scraper and slasher attachments at ready, threshing the air in a whirl of threat.
Two more robos had suffered. One whipped around in a dizzy circle, two smashed arms trailing behind it, bumping on the ground, half the control box that served it for a head melted away. The other did not move. Apparently its progress circuits had been shorted in some manner, but it whipped and banged the ground in a frenzy.
That these, too, had left their dead was plain from corpses cut and slashed, four of them. But the robos were good only as long as their charges lasted. Even as the flitter went into hover over the stones, two of those keeping sentry go were slowing, and one came to a complete stop, its armored arms raised high, remaining frozen so.
Meshler was fighting the controls of the flitter. As Cartl had warned, the awkward cargo carrier did not have the maneuverability of the craft he was more used to, and he was finding it hard to judge just the right height. Those below must have recognized the craft, for they waved wildly from behind the shadow of stones.
Dane kicked open the hatch and made ready to swing out the belt, but the contrary flitter was bucking, refusing to settle into a steady hover, so that the equipment swung back and forth. Whether the hoist would work, Dane dared not guess. They could only try.
He watched the belt flop loosely down, keeping the rope from tangling. That it had reached its goal he knew when the rope jerked its signal. Now—
He spoke to the brach. “Watch, see if all goes well. I must work this—”
The alien trotted to the hatch and thrust his head out, bracing his feet against one side for hold against the swing of the craft.
“They put fast a man—he has hurts—”
Sending up wounded first. Dane wished they had had the forethought to bring up at least one able-bodied helper on the first try. If the belt did not hold—
He started the hoist, fastened to the motor Cartl and one of the refugees had bolted in hurriedly. The rope went taut, and there was a groan from the motor as the strain began. It took the weight very slowly, too slowly—yet there was nothing he could do except squat here and watch it, make sure that the motor kept on working and the rope fed back evenly
The wait seemed endless, and then the brach reported. “One is here—he cannot aid himself.”