Science fiction; Space and time -- Fiction; Time travel -- Fiction
The Apache shoved open each door he passed with one shoulder, and twice
he played a light beam on installations within cabins. He had no idea of
their use, but the wholesale destruction of each and every machine was
what good sense and logic dictated.
There was a sound behind. Travis whirled, saw Jil-Lee and beyond him
Buck.
"Up?" Jil-Lee asked.
"And down," Buck added. "The Tatars say they have hollowed a bunker
beneath."
"Separate and do as much damage as you can," Travis suggested.
"Agreed!"
Travis sped on. He passed another door and then backtracked hurriedly as
he realized it had given on to an engine room. With the gun he blasted
two long lines cutting the fittings into ragged lumps. Abruptly the
lights went out; the burr of the alarms was silenced. Part of the ship,
if not all, was dead. And now it might come to hunter and hunted in the
dark. But that was an advantage as far as the Apaches were concerned.
Back in the corridor again, Travis crept through a curiously lifeless
atmosphere. The shouting was stilled as if the sudden failure of the
machines had stunned the Reds.
A tiny sound--perhaps the scrape of a boot on a ladder. Travis edged
back into a compartment. A flash of light momentarily lighted the
corridor; the approaching figure was using a torch. Travis drew his
knife with one hand, reversed it so he could use the heavy hilt as a
silencer. The other was hurrying now, on his way to investigate the
burned-out engine cabin. Travis could hear the rasp of his fast
breathing. Now!
The Apache had put down the gun, his left arm closed about a shoulder,
and the Red gasped as Travis struck with the knife hilt. Not clean--he
had to hit a second time before the struggles of the man were over.
Then, using his hands for eyes, he stripped the limp body on the floor
of automatic and torch.
With the Red's weapon in the front of his sash, the burner in one hand
and the torch in the other, Travis prowled on. There was a good chance
that those above might believe him to be their comrade returning. He
found the ladder leading to the next level, began to climb, pausing now
and then to listen.
Shock preceded sound. Under him the ladder swayed and the globe itself
rocked a little. A blast of some kind must have been set off at or under
the level of the ground. The bunker Buck had mentioned?
Travis clung to the ladder, waited for the vibrations to subside. There
was a shouting above, a questioning.... Hurriedly he ascended to the
next level, scrambled out and away from the ladder just in time to avoid
the light from another torch flashed down the well. Again that call of
inquiry, then a shot--the boom of the explosion loud in the confined
space.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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