They began to run, away from the wrecked ship and toward the row of houses, bunched together and looking warily over their shoulders. One of the globes in particular seemed to have decided to follow them--probably it had been ordered to after the ship crashed. Now Wyatt could see a circle of round shuttered ports around its top, and one of them had opened. A large sort of gun or projector was rising from the hole on a flexible mount, bobbing about in an inquisitive fashion like the head of a bird on a long neck. Suddenly it made a point directly at them and a brilliant white beam shot toward them. They leaped for cover between the houses, but the beam was short. Where it hit the ground it erupted into a shower of green sparks. "Heavy-duty stunner," Makvern said. "When one of those hits you you stay down till the battle's over." They ran again, ducking and dodging between the queer round-roofed houses. "Don't they kill?" Wyatt asked. "Not often. The very old, little children, invalids. It's humane, as weapons go." Another white beam sizzled down close behind Whitfield, bursting green where it hit. The red globe towered over them against the sky, grotesquely like a huge round-bodied quadruped with a ludicrously small head on that bobbing little neck. "I don't reckon," said Burdick, "that we're going to outrun that for long." * * * * * Thurne turned a slitted panther look on the globe and said, "I can lead you by safer ways, if you can run very swiftly ahead of it for a little time." "We can run," said Makvern. They ran. Wyatt, Burdick and Whitfield all had ideas about giving Brinna a hand, only to find that she was going fleet as a deer with long clean strides. They ran their hearts into their throats and the breath clear out of them and they made it into a long colonnade that covered the walk beside a great building covered with the rows of sculptured dancing gods that seemed to delight Thurne's people. In the broad street men were dragging more of the queer little cannon into place. Their body-fur was dark and mottled with sweat. Several of them left the cannon and came leaping toward Makvern's party, their teeth and claws bared, but Thurne shouted at them in his own tongue and they stopped reluctantly. The five who had been captive with Thurne now ran to join the men with the cannon, which were already hurling shot at the stalking globe and not hurting it at all. Thurne pointed to a wide low door and said, "In here." They crowded through. Over his shoulder, in the brilliant sunlight outside, Wyatt saw green fire in the street. The cannoneers fell down and the little guns were silent.