Thurne of Obran spoke for them all. "We will fight," he said. "We will
fight gladly." He turned and pointed, his eyes blazing with a feral
light that made him look more like a black panther than a human man.
Wyatt followed his gesture and saw a misty blue planet rushing toward
them in the golden glare of the primary.
Burdick said matter-of-factly, "Before we do any fighting we got to get
out of here, so we better start looking for holes."
They looked. They had no way of knowing whether they were being watched
as they had been on the flagship, but they had to risk that. They
tested every rod and searched in vain for a weak spot. They tried by
main force and by cleverness and there was no way. And the blue misty
planet rushed closer and spread into a vast globe, and the blue color
faded into greens and browns and ochres, splotched with the harsher
blue of water. A high-pitched shrieking began and grew in intensity.
The blaze of the sun was softened and the stars were blotted out.
Clouds whipped and rolled and were gone, and the wild downward rush
stopped. The ship hung in a greenish sky, and there was a yellow desert
of sand and tumbled rock below. Cutting through the desert was a gorge
with a river in the bottom of it, and where the river left the gorge
at the edge of the desert was a green and most beautiful land full of
little streamlets and flashing lakes, with queer-colored orchards and
many-colored fields. And in the middle of the land there was a city.
"Obran," Thurne said.
Wyatt took the rods in his hands and strained until the veins swelled
to bursting on his forehead and his face was crimson.
He could not budge them, but the other rods that barred the corridor
suddenly slid up out of the way and Makvern stood there with another
officer behind him.
Makvern said, "Wyatt--"
But Wyatt had already spun around and launched himself like a charging
bull at Makvern.
He hit him and knocked him back into the other officer. There was a
moment of wild confusion, while Burdick and Whitfield and the others
piled through the door and into the fray. Wyatt was only clearly aware
of one thing and that was that he had Makvern down and that he was
going to kill him and it was all very pleasant. Then Whitfield was
hauling at him and saying something about needing this one later on and
Wyatt allowed himself to be hauled away, and the fight was over. This
much of it, at least.
Burdick pulled Makvern to his feet and held him with one arm doubled
behind his back. The Turcoman was methodically strangling the other
officer and Wyatt went over and made him stop, explaining that the man
might be necessary for flying the ship. Then he turned back to Makvern,
who was shaking his head hard to clear it.
"Take their stunners and keep watch," Wyatt said to Burdick and
Whitfield. "No-Name, you hold him. Good. Don't be afraid to hurt him a
little--remember Cochise." He spoke then to Makvern. "How do I raise
that partition?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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