The two sat in silence on the edge of their beds. They did not have long to wait. There was a yell from down the hall. It was chopped off, and a moment later a clinking sound told them a key was being turned in the big padlock. A bolt shot back; the door swung open. Two Hawks stood up, not knowing whether he should expect rescue or death from a gun. Six men wearing hoods stood in the corridor. Their clothes were lower-class Hotinohsonih civilian wear. Two held six-shooters; two, single-shot rifles; two, long knives.
A thickset man spoke Hotinohsonih in a deep bass. He spoke it with a foreign accent. “Are you Two Hawks and O’Brien?”
Two Hawks nodded and said, “Give us guns. Or knives, anyway.”
“You have no need of them.”
“I have two of my guns locked in the wall-safe,” Two Hawks said. “One of them is an automatic pistol, a rapid-fire mechanism that would greatly improve the fire power of the Blodlandish. I need it for a model.”
The thickset man hesitated, then said, “It’d take too long to get it from the safe. We don’t have the time to drill and blow.”
“I know the combination,” Two Hawks said. “I’ve stood behind Doctor Tarhe and watched him enough. He’s rather absent-minded.”
“Very well. But hurry. We don’t have much time.”
Two men preceded the others down the hall. Deep Voice gestured with his pistol for the two Americans to go before him. At the end of the hall, the attendant who had cried out, Kaisehta’, lay face up on the floor. The top of his head was bloody; his eyes and mouth were open. The skin beneath the dark pigment was a bluish-grey.
“The sons of bitches didn’t have to kill him!” O’Brien said. “Poor fellow! I didn’t understand a word he ever said to me, but he could make me laugh. He was a good Joe.”
“No talking,” Deep Voice said. They went down another hall, across the dining-room and into Tarhe’s study. Two Hawks pulled up the painting that was supposed to hide the safe. By the light of a flashlight held by Deep Voice, he turned the dial, marked with the numbers of the modified Akhaivian alphabet. The door swung open, and he found his derringer and automatic in a small cardboard box.
Deep voice extended his hand for the weapons. Reluctantly, Two Hawks gave them to him. Evidently, they were as much prisoners of the Blodlandish as of their former captors.
The party left the studio and went to the main front door of the asylum. Two men with rifles stepped out on the big verandah and a minute later came back with an all-clear. Two Hawks and O’Brien, followed by the other four Blodlandish, stepped through the door. The city down below was dark except for fires here and there that had not yet been put out. The moon was behind thick dark clouds.
They started down the steps, their destination two autos. These were parked behind a shrubbery along the curve of the driveway to their left. The front ends of the cars were barely visible. Just as the two riflemen reached the ground, the flash and bang of guns came out of the shrubbery. Two Hawks pushed O’Brien hard toward the ground and then hurled himself down the steps and out in a dive.
He hit the bare dirt with a force that almost knocked the breath from him and rolled sideways. When he was in the shrubbery that grew along the base of the verandah, he stopped. More fire spurted from the small arms of the men in the bushes. The two Blodlandish who had been in front of him were on the ground at the foot of the steps. One was wounded or dead. The other fired at the Perkunishans from a prone position. Two Hawks presumed that the attackers were Perkunishans and they had come with the same idea as the Blodlandish but a little later.
A man above Two Hawks screamed. A body fell over the verandah railing just above him and crashed down on his legs. By then the other Blodlandish had scattered for cover behind posts and the railing of the verandah. A Perkunishan toppled from the bushes. The others took up a new position behind the Blodlandish cars. Lights were coming on in the house and outlining the men on the verandah. A Blodlandish slumped over the railings, his gun falling into the ground under the bushes near Two Hawks. The man with the rifle grunted and quit firing.
Two Hawks crawled to the gun that the agent had dropped. With this in his hand, he left the relative safety of the steps and bushes and snaked towards the dead or unconcious rifleman. Using the body as cover, he searched through its pockets. He found several small boxes, slid one open, and felt cylindrical shapes packed within. They were linen cartridges with brass percussion caps.
He examined the revolver with his fingers, broke it open, and filled the six chambers. Behind him, O’Brien groaned and said, “I’m hit. My arm’s numb. Oh, Christ, I’m bleeding! I’m going to die!”
“Shut up about dying,” Two Hawks said. “You sound too strong to be badly hurt.”
He rolled over and felt O’Brien’s upper left arm. His fingers came away sticky. O’Brien said, “I’m going fast. The life’s pumping out of me with every beat of my heart.”
“Quit crying,” Two Hawks said. “You just think you’re dying, maybe because you want to. It’s only a flesh wound and not very deep at that.”
“You ain’t the one who’s hit.”
Two Hawks raised his head to look over the body. Two men on the verandah and two behind the cars were still shooting. Then one—he looked like Deep Voice—turned to shoot through the window behind him at the light bulbs outlining him. There was a sound as of a fist hitting flesh, and he flew forward. He pitched on his face and was lost from Two Hawks’ view except for one foot. His revolver, however, launched from a nerveless hand, broke the window.
The survivor ran for the corner of the house. He bent over while he ran and fired at the Perkunishans. Their bullets smacked into the wooden walls. Just as he reached the corner, he sprawled out and slammed into the floor. Two Hawks supposed that, since he did not get up, he was either hit or playing possum. If he was acting, he had done a good job, since his gun had also clattered on the floor.
“Two Perkunishans left—that I know of,” Two Hawks whispered to O’Brien. “And they must have orders to take us dead or alive. Maybe they don’t care which, otherwise they’d not have cut loose at us in the dark.”
He looked over the body again. He could see no men. They were probably crouching behind the cars, reloading their revolvers and discussing a plan of attack. They could not safely presume that everybody was dead or incapacitated. They would have to come out from behind the cars.
Nor would they have much time to check. There was much noise in the house, voices shouting questions, a patient screaming, and the sound of feet running back and forth. They would have tried to phone the police, but the wires would have been cut.
Nevertheless, the gunfire could attract the police patrols on the streets in the city below. They could soon be coming up the winding hill, and, if they did, the Perkunishans would find their car blocked. Unless, that is, they had left their vehicle below and had come up on foot.
Two Hawks waited patiently, his revolver cocked. O’Brien groaned, and Two Hawks told him to shut up. He removed the long knife from the scabbard of the fallen rifleman. With one hand, he hefted it and tested its balance. It would make a good throwing knife and would give him a fair chance to demonstrate how effective his hundreds of hours of practice had been.