We dived down the ramp. Jack went left, Jimmy center, and I to the right. We were at the top of a wooded slope and my momentum and the slant put me right where I wanted to be—flat on my face. I rolled behind a tree and looked over to see Jimmy almost hidden by a bush.
Here, hundreds of miles from where we had been picked up, it was misting under a familiar rolled gray sky. From the other side of the ship and from below there was the sound of gunfire. Our boy was pinned down fifty yards below us among some rocks that wouldn’t have sheltered properly anything larger than the tiny animal I had been feeding earlier in the day. The boy in the rocks was Riggy Allen and he was fighting back. I saw the sighting beam of his sonic pistol slapping out. About thirty feet toward us up the slope was the body of Riggy’s horse. Riggy turned his head and looked at us.
Riggy’s attackers, the ones that weren’t separated now on the far side of our ship, were dug in behind trees and rocks, at least partly hidden from Riggy, as he was partly hidden from them. From where we were, though, they could be seen more clearly.
I took all this in in seconds, and then I raised my pistol and fired, aiming at a man firing a rifle. The distance was greater than I had counted on and the shot plowed earth ten feet short, but the man jerked back.
This was the first time I had fired the pistol. It bucked in my hand and it made a considerable noise. In a sense, there was a certain satisfaction in it, though. A sonic pistol is silent and if you missed the most you could expect was a sere and yellow leaf. This gun made enough noise and impact in your hand that you knew that you were doing something and a miss might raise dirt, or make a whine, or rip a tree—enough to make the steadiest man keep his head down.
I aimed higher and started to loft my shots in. Jimmy was doing the same thing, and the net effect was enough that the firing at Riggy stopped. Riggy got the idea, stood up and began racing up the hill. Then my gun clicked empty and Jimmy’s firing stopped, too. Jack continued to fire, but except for one burnt arm, the result was less obvious to those being shot at and as our firing stopped, those heads came back up again and took in the situation. They began firing again immediately. Riggy gave a twitch and a hop and went flat behind the body of his horse.
I reloaded as fast as I could, and then I was firing again. Jimmy started firing, too, and Riggy was up and running again. Then I started thinking clearly and held my fire until Jimmy stopped. The instant he stopped, I started again, a regular squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, not caring whether I hit a thing as long as those heads stayed down.
As I finished, Jimmy opened again and then Riggy was past us and up the ramp. He went flat in the doorway there and started firing himself. I retreated up the ramp, then Jack, then Jimmy. When Jimmy was inside, I yelled for George to lift the ramp. He was either watching or he heard me, and the ramp lifted smoothly up and locked in place.
Shots were still coming from the other sides of the ship, so I yelled at Jimmy to go left. I cut through the middle, tripping and practically breaking my neck on one of the chairs.
In the doorway, I skidded flat on my face again and looked for targets. Then I started firing. The three I was covering for used their heads and slipped aboard one at a time. As the second one came aboard, I heard Jimmy call for his ramp to be raised. My third was Venie Morlock, and as she ran aboard, I couldn’t resist tripping her. I yelled to George.
Venie glared at me and demanded, “What was that for?” as the ramp swung up.
“Just making sure you didn’t get shot,” I said, lying.
A second later, Jack yelled for the last ramp to be raised. My last view of Tintera was of a rain-soaked hillside and men doing their best to kill us, which all seems appropriate somehow.
Riggy said that he had been completely unhurt by the barrage,