ows within, a flyer
spiraled up into the late afternoon sky.

Raf reached the flitter in two leaps. Without orders he had the spray
gun ready for action, on point and aimed at the bobbing machine
heading toward them. From the earphones Soriki had left on the seat
the gabble had risen to a screech and one part of Raf's brain noted
that the sounds were repetitious: was an order to surrender being
broadcast? His thumb was firm on the firing button of the gun and he
was about to send a warning burst to the right of the alien when an
order from Hobart stopped him cold.

"Take it easy, Kurbi."

Soriki said something about a "gun-happy flitter pilot," but, Raf
noted with bleak eyes, the com-tech kept his own hand close to his
belt arm. Only Lablet stood watching the oncoming alien ship with
placidity. But then, as Raf had learned through the long voyage of the
spacer, a period of time which had left few character traits of any of
the crew hidden from their fellows, the xenobiologist was a fatalist
and strictly averse to personal combat.

The pilot did not leave his seat at the gun. But within seconds he
knew that they had lost the initial advantage. As the tongue-shaped
stranger thrust at them and then swept on to glide above their heads
so that the weird shadow of the ship licked them from light to dark
and then to light again, Raf was certain that his superiors had made
the wrong decision. They should have left the city as soon as they
picked up those signals--if they could have gone then. He studied the
other flyer. Its lines suggested speed as well as mobility, and he
began to doubt if they _could_ have escaped with that craft trailing
them.

Well, what would they do now? The alien flyer could not land here, not
without coming down flat upon the flitter. Maybe it would cruise
overhead as a warning threat until the city dwellers were able to
reach the Terrans in some other manner. Tense, the four spacemen stood
watching the graceful movements of the flyer. There were no visible
portholes or openings anywhere along its ovoid sides. It might be a
robot-controlled ship, it might be anything, Raf thought, even a bomb
of sorts. If it was being flown by some human--or nonhuman--flyer, he
was a master pilot.

"I don't understand," Soriki moved impatiently. "They're just
shuttling around up there. What do we do now?"

Lablet turned his head. He was smiling faintly. "We wait," he told the
com-tech. "I should imagine it tak