But he and Mondar were in the car now. With a hiss from its compressor, the command car's heavy body rose ten inches from the concrete and glided off on its supporting cushion of air. An opening in the jungle wall loomed before them; and a moment later they were sliding down a narrow winding road of bonded earth, with two deep, weed-choked ditches on each side unsuccessfully striving to hold back the wall of jungle that towered up on either side to arch thinly together, at last, over their heads.
"I'm surprised you don't burn back or spray-kill a cleared area on each side of the road," said Cletus to Mondar.
"On the important military routes, we do," said the Exotic. "But we're short-handed these days and the local flora grows back fast. We're trying to variform an Earth grain or grass to drive out the native forms, and plant it alongside our roads - but we're short-handed in the laboratories, too."
"Difficult - the services and supply situation," jerked out Eachan Khan, touching the right tip of his waxed gray mustache protectively as the command car came unexpectedly upon a giant creeper that had broken through the bonded earth of the roadway from below, and was forced to put down its treads to climb across.
"What do you think of the dally gun?" Cletus asked the Dorsai mercenary, his own words jolted from his lips by the lurching of the command car.
"Wrong sort of direction for small arms to go... " The creeper left behind, the car rose smoothly onto its supporting air cushion again. "Nagle sticks - dally guns - ultrasonics to set off, jam or destroy the components in your enemy's weapons - it's all getting too complicated. And the more complicated, more difficult the supply situation, the tougher to keep your striking forces really mobile."
"What's your idea, then?" Cletus asked. "Back to crossbows, knives and short swords?"
"Why not?" said Eachan Khan, surprisingly, his flat, clipped voice colored with a new note of enthusiasm. "Man with a crossbow in the proper position at the proper time's worth a corps of heavy artillery half an hour late and ten miles down the road from where it should be. What's that business about '... for want of a nail a horseshoe was lost... '?"
" 'For want of a horseshoe a horse was lost. For want of a horse a rider was lost... ' " Cletus quoted it through to the end; and the two men looked at each other with a strange, wordless but mutual, respect.
"You must have some training problems," said Cletus, thoughtfully. "On the Dorsai, I mean. You must be getting men with all sorts of backgrounds, and you'd want to turn out a soldier trained for use in as many different military situations as possible."
"We concentrate on basics," said Eachan. "Aside from that, it's our program to develop small, mobile, quick-striking units, and then get employers to use them as trained." He nodded at Mondar. "Only real success in use so far's been with the Exotics, here. Most employers want to fit our professionals into their classical tables of organization. Works, but it's not an efficient use of the men, or the units. That's one reason we've had some arguments with the regular military. Your commanding officer here, General Traynor - " Eachan broke off. "Well, not for me to say."
He dropped the subject abruptly, sat up and peered out through the open window spaces in the metal sides of the command car at the jungle. Then he turned and called up to the driver on the outside seat.
"Any sign of anything odd out there?" he asked. "Don't like the feel of it, right along in here."
"No sir, Colonel!" called the driver back down. "Quiet as Sunday din - "
A thunderclap of sound burst suddenly all around them. The command car lurched in the same moment and Cletus felt it going over, as the air around them filled with flying earth. He had just a glimpse of the driver, still holding the dally gun but now all but headless, pitching into the right-hand ditch. And then the car went all the way over on its side and there was a blurred moment in which nothing made sense.
Things cleared again, suddenly. The command car was lying on its right side, with only its armored base and its left and rear window spaces exposing them to the outside. Mondar was already tugging the magnesium shutter across the rear window and Eachan Khan was pulling the left window-space shutter closed overhead. They were left in a dim metal box with only a few narrow, sunlit apertures toward the front and around the armored section behind the driver's seat.
"You armed, Colonel?" asked Eachan Khan, producing a flat, little, dart-thrower sidearm from under his tunic and beginning to screw a long sniper's barrel onto it. Solid pellets from sporting guns - theoretically civilian weapons, but deadly enough at jungle ranges - were already beginning to whang and yowl off the armor plating of the car surrounding them.
"No," said Cletus, grimly. The air was already close in the car and the smell of crushed grass and nutmeg was overwhelming.
"Pity," said Eachan Khan. He finished screwing on the sniper barrel, poked its muzzle through one of the aperture cracks and squinted into the daylight. He fired - and a big, blond-bearded man in a camouflage suit came crashing out of the jungle wall on the far side of the road, to lie still.
"The bus will hear the firing as it comes up behind us," said Mondar out of the dimness behind Cletus. "They'll stop and phone ahead for help. A relief squad can get here by air in about fifteen minutes after Bakhalla hears about us."
"Yes," said Eachan Khan, calmly, and fired again. Another body, invisible this time, could be heard crashing down out of a tree to the ground below. "They might get here in time. Odd these guerrillas didn't let us pass and wait for the bus in the first place. Bigger package, less protection, and more prizes inside... I'd keep my head down, Colonel."
This last sentence was directed at Cletus, who was heaving and wrenching in a fury at the shutter on the down side of the car. Half-propped off the road surface as the car was by the bulge of that same surface under it, opening the shutter gradually produced a space facing on the ditch. Into which the dead driver had pitched - a space large enough for Cletus to crawl out.
The jungle-hidden riflemen became aware of what he was up to, and a fusillade of shots rang against the armored underside of the car - though, because of the narrow angle it made with the ground, none came through the opening Cletus had produced. Melissa, suddenly recognizing what was in his mind, caught at his arm as he started through the opening,
"No," she said. "It's no use! You can't help the driver. He was killed when the mine went off - "
"The hell... with that... " panted Cletus, for a fire-fight did not encourage the best in manners. "The dally gun went with him when he fell."
Wrenching himself free of her grasp, he wriggled out from under the armored car, jumped to his feet and made a dash for the ditch where the body of the driver lay unseen. An explosion of shots from the surrounding jungle rang out, and he stumbled as he reached the ditch edge, tripped, spun about and plunged out of sight. Melissa gasped, for there was the sound of thrashing from the ditch, and then an arm was flung up into sight to quiver for a second and then hang there in plain view, reaching up like a last and desperate beckoning for help.
In response, a single shot sounded from the jungle and a slug blew away half the hand and wrist. Blood spattered from it, but the hand was not withdrawn; and almost immediately the bleeding dwindled, with none of the steady spurt and flow that would have signaled a still-pumping, living heart behind it