They were taken out another way, where three heavy trucks and several
smaller vehicles were drawn up. The Senyans in them wore a distinctive
harness and were armed, and the vehicles all had armor plated bodies.
Durham and Karlovic were lifted into one of the trucks, which was
already filled with Senyan soldiers. The convoy moved off.
Durham braced himself in a corner and looked at Karlovic. "Happened
fast, didn't it? Awfully fast."
"Violent things always do. You're not much used to violence, are you?
Neither am I. Neither are most people. They get it shoved at them."
"I don't think we're through with it yet," said Durham.
Karlovic said, "I told you."
For some time there was only the rushing and jolting of the truck, the
roar of motors and a kind of dim uneasy background of sound as though
the whole city stirred and seethed. Durham was frightened. The food he
had eaten had turned against him, he was stifling in his own sweat, and
he thought of Morrison cruising comfortably somewhere out in space,
smoking cigarettes and drinking good whiskey and sending down a message
now and then, the way a man pokes with a stick at a brace of beetles,
stirring them casually toward death. He ground his jaws together in an
agony of hate and fear, and the taste of them was sour in his mouth.
Somebody said to them, "We're on the spaceport highway now. It won't be
long."
A minute later somebody shouted and Karlovic caught the Senyan word and
echoed it. "Barricade!" The truck rocked and whirled about and there
were great crashes in the night that had fallen. Durham was thrown to
his knees. The truck raced at full speed. There were sounds of fighting
that now rose and now grew faint, and the truck lurched and swerved,
and then there were more roars and crashes and it came violently to
a halt. The Senyans began firing out of the loopholes in the armored
sides. Some of them leaped out of the truck, beckoning Durham and
Karlovic to come after them. A large force of rioters was attacking
what remained of the convoy, which had been forced back into the city.
Four of the Senyan soldiers ran with the two men into a side street,
but a small body of rioters caught up with them. The soldiers turned to
fight, and Karlovic said in a voice that was now curiously calm,
"If we're quick enough they may lose sight of us in the darkness."
He turned into an areaway between two buildings, and then into another,
and Durham ran beside him through the cold green mist and the dim glow
of lamps that glimmered on the alien walls. The sound of the fighting
died away. They turned more corners, hunting always for the darkest
shadows, hoping to meet a patrol. But the streets were deserted and all
the doors barred tight. Finally Durham stopped.
"How much oxygen you got left?"
Karlovic peered at the illuminated indicator on the wrist of his suit.
"Hour. Maybe less."
Both men were breathing hard, panting, burning up the precious stuff of
life. Durham said,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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