FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103  
104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   >>   >|  
front of the mob, who now had their backs turned and were staring in the direction in which they had last seen the vehicle. Again, von Schlichten plowed them with rockets and harrowed them with his guns. Some of the Skilkans were trying to get over the high fences on either side of the road--really stockades of petrified tree-trunks. Others were firing, and this time they were shooting at the airjeep. It took one hit from a heavy shellosaur-rifle, and, immediately, the driver banked and turned away from the road. "Dammit, why did you do that?" von Schlichten demanded, lifting his foot from the gun-pedal. "Are you afraid of the kind of popguns those geeks are using?" "I am not afraid to risk my vehicle, or myself, sir," the lieutenant replied, with the extreme formality of a very junior officer chewing out a very senior one. "I am, however, afraid to risk my passenger. Generals are not expendable, sir; neither are they issued for use as clay pigeons." He was right, of course. Von Schlichten admitted it. "I'm too old to play cowboy, like this," he said. "Back to the Reservation, telecast station." Looking back over his shoulder, he saw eight or ten more flares alight, and the ground-flashes of exploding shells and rockets; the air above the road was sparkling with gun-flames. Jarman must have had some contragravity ready to be sent off on the instant. While he had been out, somebody had gotten a TV-pickup mounted on a contragravity-lifter and run up to two thousand feet, on the end of a steel-tough tensilon mooring-line. The big circular screen was lit, showing the whole Company Reservation, with the surrounding countryside foreshortened by perspective to the distant lights of Skilk. The map had been taken up from the floor, and a big terrain-board had been brought in from the Chief Engineer's office and set up in its place. In front of the screen, Paula Quinton, Barney Mordkovitz, Colonel Cheng-Li, and, conspicuously silent, Jules Keaveney sat drinking coffee and munching sandwiches. Half a dozen Terrans, of both sexes, were working furiously to get the markers which replaced the pink and white pills placed on the board, and one of Captain Inez Malavez's non-coms, with a headset, was getting combat reports directly from the switchboard. Everything was clicking like well-oiled machinery. On the TV-screen, the Residency area was ablaze with light, and so were the ship-docks, the airport and spaceport, the s
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103  
104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Schlichten

 

afraid

 

screen

 

contragravity

 

Reservation

 

rockets

 

turned

 

vehicle

 
surrounding
 

distant


lights

 

foreshortened

 

countryside

 

perspective

 

office

 

Engineer

 

terrain

 
Company
 

brought

 

showing


mounted
 

pickup

 

lifter

 

instant

 

staring

 

thousand

 

circular

 

mooring

 

tensilon

 

Mordkovitz


reports

 

combat

 

directly

 
switchboard
 

Everything

 
headset
 

Captain

 

Malavez

 

clicking

 

airport


spaceport

 
ablaze
 
machinery
 
Residency
 

Keaveney

 

drinking

 
coffee
 

silent

 

conspicuously

 

Barney