But she only flinched and squealed, burying her frightened face in her hands as the power gun skidded across the ledge and went clattering over the brink, well out of reach.
Zuarra saw it all with that total clarity of vision that comes in the moments of greatest peril. But she could not move, frozen with fear.
Time slowed to a stop. The world hung breathless, as if waiting.
Then—
“Down on your face, girl!”
The hoarse shout seemed to come to her ears from an immense distance. She puzzled slowly over the meaning of the words, and then, her will frozen into a mindless state like a tranced dream, she complied, kneeling on the edge of the shelf of strata, like an acolyte prostrating herself before a monstrous idol.
The dim shadows that veiled this portion of the cliff split apart—cloven asunder by a fierce spear of intolerable fire.
Suoli squeaked fearfully, and tried to crawl into the solid rock of the cliff to hide herself.
The bolt caught the dragon directly between its open jaws.
Its ugly head literally exploded in a flying splatter of burnt - bone and crisped gobbets of meat.
Oily black gore fountained into the air from the stump of its neck. Claws clutched spasmodically on the lip of the ledge, the hard stone squeaking under their pressure.
Slowly the serpentine body bent backwards over the abyss. The claws lost their hold, and the twitching body, coiling and uncoiling slowly, toppled from the ledge to thud into the loose rocks at the bottom of the cliff.
And it was all over… .
Unable to free his wrist from the twisted reins of the loper, Brant had awkwardly fumbled his second power gun from its holster, aimed it clumsily with his left hand, and fired, snapping off a shot aimed by sheer instinct alone, as time was running out.
The dial which adjusted the width of the beam was still set to the narrowest aperture—the needle-beam setting to which he had adjusted the weapon when he had used it yesterday, hunting lizards for meat.
This meant, of course, that the shot would have to be a direct hit, which was risky. But the urgency of the situation was such that there was certainly no time for him to try to thumb the dial to a wider beam setting.
Fortunately—for Zuarra—he was a dead shot, even with his left hand.
The woman knelt, stunned and shaking, where she had crouched in mindless obedience to his shouted command. She seemed oblivious to her surroundings.
Eventually, Brant got his hand free, returned the power gun to its holster, and clambered down to the ledge where the two native women were.
He put his arm around Zuarra and raised her to her feet. She cowered against him, hiding her face against his breast. He patted her trembling shoulder, speaking gently to her as one comforts a frightened child.
Erelong, the whiteness left her face and her eyes took on an expression of awareness. Still in his arms, and clinging to him for support, since her knees were rubbery and her legs seemed nerveless, she looked at Suoli with an expression of icy contempt.
Before that scathing expression, the soft little woman flushed, dropped her own gaze, and bit her full lower lip in vexation.
“Are you all right, girl?” asked Brant urgently.
The Martian woman met his searching gaze.
“I am unharmed, O Brant,” she whispered tonelessly. And then, a moment later, she added:
“It was well for Zuarra that you fired your f’yagha weapon when you did.”
He nodded, with a rare smile lightening his usually dour, grim expression. Then, half carrying and half dragging her, he took her to a place of safety at the back of the ledge, and helped her to sit, offering her water, which she drank greedily.
They rested for a time, saying nothing. Eventually, little Suoli came to join them. She reached out one timid hand to touch Zuarra, but the other woman jerked her arm away, not even looking at her friend.
Brant said nothing, but observed it all narrowly.
The harsh, whistling cry of the loper still stranded on the ledge above them roused the Earthsider to a remembrance of their situation.
Night would soon be upon the world, and the cliffside was dangerous enough by day; it would be perilous to attempt to negotiate it under conditions of darkness. And there might well be other rock dragons coiled waiting in their lairs beneath the shelves of stony strata.
“Do you feel steady enough to continue climbing down?” he inquired. Zuarra got to her feet and made that Martian gesture which was the native equivalent of a nod.
Leaving the women to climb down by themselves, Brant went back up to the ledge where the loper stood, crying plaintively, and began again to guide it down the stairlike shelves of stone.
Night had long since come down, dark-winged, over the world by the time the three of them and the beast reached the bottom of the cliff at last, and Brant searched for and retrieved the pistol that he had tossed toward Suoli.
Fastidiously avoiding the cadaver of the rock dragon—which still writhed in the slow undulations of its death-spasms, the two women gathered fat, water-bearing leaves from the plants which grew thickly in the shelter of the cliff and fed them into the pressure still, while Brant erected the two tents and fed the loper its dinner of plant fiber.
They lit a fire in the flat pan and shared the remaining meat from yesterday’s kill between them. The women did not speak and Brant remained silent. From time to time, Suoli stole a shy glance at her companion, who ignored her presence as if she did not even exist.
Brant set up precautions against the dangers that he knew were all too present. This close to the crumbling side of the cliff there could well be many nests of rock dragons, so he unlimbered a protective fence made of aluminum pegs and a single strand of wire attached to a small dialectric accumulator. If anything touched the low fence during the night, it would suffer an electrical shock which should be sufficiently painful to drive off even the hungriest predator.
Fortunately, they did not have to worry about sandcats this close to the cliff, as those dreaded beasts preferred the vast expanses of the dustlands where they were wont to tunnel subterranean lairs.
The women went to their tent, but Brant lingered by the firepan, too bone-weary for slumber.
He heard low voices in conversation. Words rose to an angry pitch. There came the sound of a ringing slap and Suoli’s shrill squeak of pain.
Thereafter, the voices subsided.
Brant grinned wolfishly, and sought his own tent.
With dawn they rose from rest, and Brant observed, but made no comment upon the fact, that Suoli seemed more cowed and subdued than was usual.
She also had an ugly, purplish bruise beneath one eye.
Zuarra met his eyes flatly, but said nothing about the events of the night.
Brant saddled up the loper, struck the tents, and recoiled his protective fence into its niche in the saddlebags.
They rode on into the morning.
5 The Strangers
All that morning they rode along the clifflike edge of the ancient continent, where the loose rocks and debris made their footing far easier than the talcum-fine sands of the dustland would have afforded them.
Brant was looking for a deep, capacious cave in the cliffwall, one that would give them the ultimate protection from beasts and inclement weather. And, preferably, a cave that was not already occupied by one of the dangerous predators that abound on Mars.
The three of them took turns riding in the saddle, and this time Zuarra did not yield her turn to Suoli, who was therefore made to plod wearily along on foot as often as her companions. The weak little woman whined and snuffled a little at this lack of preferential treatment, but to her protestations Zuarra paid no attention, her face set in grim mien.