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If they believed that the Terran flitter was immobilized when he, and he alone, was not behind its controls, this was just the move they would make. But there they were wrong. Soriki might not be able to repair or service the motor, but in a pinch he could take it up, send it westward, and land it beside the spacer. Each and every man aboard the RS 10 had that much training.
Soriki was still in the second passenger place, but he, too, shared that with another of the men from the city who rested across bony knees a strange weapon rather like a Terran rifle. No, the spacemen were not prisoners. According to the official statement they were allies.
And war by fire aroused in them that old horror. Surely Soriki must feel it too, and when the com-tech did not comment, Raf was sure of that. He hoped that the slaughter had made some impression on the captain and on Lablet into the bargain.
But the basic pattern is there to study. And with the scanner to sort out those record strips did you adjust them, Soriki?" "They're all ready for you to push the button. If the scanner can read them, it will. I got all that speech the chief, or king, or whatever he was, made just before we left." "Good, very good!"
Now that Soriki mentioned it, Raf remembered that the alien party who had gone into the city had huddled together, and that several of the black-and-white warriors had fanned out ahead as scouts might in enemy territory. "They didn't go any farther than that building to the west either." That Raf had not noticed, but he was willing to accept Soriki's observation.
For the first time Raf was shaken out of his own preoccupation with his dislike for the aliens to wonder if they could be moved by a similar distaste for Terrans. Lablet might be interested in that as a scientific problem the pilot only knew how he felt and that was not comfortable. Soriki got out and walked across the rock, stretching.
But there was some measure of relief in knowing that Soriki was left behind and that they had this slender link with escape. He had tramped the streets of that other alien city. There there had been some semblance of habitation; here was abandonment.
Instead, apparently coming to some decision, he swung around to face Raf. "You went out with that scouting party today. Think you could join them again, if you see them moving for another foray?" "I could try." "Sure," Soriki chuckled, "they couldn't do any more than pop him back at us. What do you think about them, sir? Are they fixing to blast us?" But the captain refused to be drawn.
Dalgard ran lightly to the tower at the same moment that Raf shifted his weight from one foot to the other behind a parapet as he spied upon the knot of aliens gathered below him in the street.... The pilot had followed them since that early morning hour when Soriki had awakened him. Not that the chase had led him far in distance. Most of the time he had spent in waiting just as he was doing now.
But the discipline which had shaped him almost since birth sent him now to check the flyer and wait, inwardly impatient, for Hobart, Lablet, and Soriki, the com-tech, to join him. The wait was not a long one since the three others, with equipment hung about, tramped down the ramp as Raf settled himself behind the control board of the flyer.
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