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He triggered the shield which snapped over them for a windbreak and brought the flitter up into the spreading color of the morning. Beside him Hobart pressed the button of the automatic recorder, and in the seat behind, Soriki had the headset of the com clamped over his ears.
He wished that Hobart would explain just what he was to look for, but the captain appeared to think that he had made everything perfectly plain. And he walked off with Lablet, heading to the globe, as if there was nothing more to be said. Soriki stretched. "I'd say we'd better take it watch and watch," he said slowly.
Then they saw the bay, stretching out wide arms to engulf the sea. It could have harbored a whole fleet. And marching down to its waters were broad levels of buildings, a giant's staircase leading from sea to cliff tops. "They had it here !" Raf saw what Soriki meant by that outburst. Destruction had struck.
The warrior sharing his seat was sulking now, twisting about to look back at the island as Raf circled in ever-widening glides to get away from the site and yet not lose track of the globe when it would have finished its dirty business and take once more to the air. But the alien ship was in no hurry to leave. "They are making sure," Soriki reported. "Giving the whole island a fire bath.
It was only fitting that something of the same process give him help in return. Obediently he stretched out on the sand and closed his dim eyes, trying to picture Soriki in the small cabin which held the com, slouched in his bucket seat, his deceptive posture that of a lax idler, as he had seen him so many times.
He lounged about with Soriki for the rest of the afternoon, watching the ceaseless activity of the aliens. It was plain that they were intent upon packing into the cargo hold of their ship everything they could wrest from the storage house. As if they must make this trip count double. Was that because they had discovered that their treasure house was no longer inviolate?
Well, I don't like crack-ups, and I'm the pilot!" But he didn't believe that the com-tech was really protesting. Soriki had been very quiet since they had witnessed the attack on the island. "Grim-looking place," was his second comment as they touched ground. Since Raf privately had held that opinion of all the alien settlements he had so far seen, he agreed.
Just tune in your helmet buzzer." It needed a com-tech to think of a thing like that! A small adjustment to the earphones built into his helmet, and Soriki, operating the flitter com, could give him a guide as efficient as the spacer's radar! He need not fear being lost in the streets should he lose touch with those he was spying upon. "You're on course!"
Some of the towers were broken off, a causeway displayed a gap Once it had been a breathtaking feat of engineering, far more impressive than the highway, now it was a slowly collapsing ruin. But before they had time to take it all in Soriki gave an exclamation. "Something coming through on our wave band, sir!" He leaned forward to dig fingers into Hobart's shoulder.
There was Soriki He could not claim the com-tech as any special friend, but at least during their period together among the aliens he had come to know him better. Now, as if Dalgard had read his mind and he probably had, thought Raf with a flash of the old resentment he had another question. "And what was he is he like?"
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