"Search me." "Let's get outta here." "Can't. We gotta finish the job, or Scarf'll burn us alive." "Then we better stick together from now on," Flume said. "You two finish cutting the hole but now make it deeper. I'll keep watch. Soon as you're ready we'll load 'em in, seal it up with stuff from around here, and scram." As Hodak watched, Patch and Swat recovered sufficiently to raise their soil-fusers and direct the nozzles at the tunnel's wall. An amber glow formed on the fuser's tips and the tunnel wall's surface bubbled and flowed toward the floor in the light gravity. Wielding the fusers expertly they distributed its liquefied substance in a rough, irregular pattern, blending it in with the surrounding surfaces. The excess that reached the floor quickly hardened to match the rubble strewn about. Flume, back against the opposite wall, weapon high and ready, peered tensely about. Finally satisfied, Patch switched off his fuser and tapped Swat on the shoulder. Swat glanced at him, switched off, and they stepped back. "This'll do it," Patch said. "Load Angel in first. The back of the hole is too small for the big guy." He leaned over, grasped the open-eyed head by a hank of hair and flung it into the hole. The head disappeared with a soft thud. Swat joined Patch; each grasped one of the body's arms and legs and they heaved it in after the head. Patch leaned into the hole and pushed the solid flesh as far as it would go. Turning, he motioned Swat toward Ram. For a moment Flume faced away from Hodak. He did not see the boomerang before it twisted around his throat and was gone. Intent on Ram, Swat and Patch saw neither the strike nor the weapon. They heard a gurgling sound and whirled. Flume was on the tunnel floor, blood pulsing from the neck of his headless torso. The head, itself, had rolled against the opposite wall, eyes open. Panicked, they fired frantically down the tunnel in both directions. The boomerang back in his hand, Hodak waited. An open assault was unacceptable, both for himself and for Ram. He would be cut down with a single sweep of the killers' heavy handguns, and with his identity revealed, Scarf would track down the Sentinels with a vengeance. Snapping a quick peek he saw Patch and Swat back to back in the middle of the tunnel, facing in opposite directions and whispering to each other in terror. Guessing the distance between the two he extended the boomerang slightly and pressed the pip. Stepping away from the wall Hodak threw the boomerang around the bend. One of the targets must have seen it coming. There was the beginning of a scream. Boomerang back in hand, Hodak walked around the bend. Patch lay quietly; Swat's body still quivered. Hodak took less than five minutes to enlarge the hole, load the newly dead in with their companions, and smooth the surface to match the tunnel's wall. Ram, groggy, sat against the opposite wall and watched. Chapter THIRTY