Then Hari felt something shift in Ipan. Ancient, instinctive responses stopped his retreat, tensed the body. No time to flee, so fight.
Ipan set himself, balanced. The two might go for his arms so he drew them back, crouching to bring his face down.
Ipan had dealt with four-legged pack hunters before, somewhere far back in ancestral memory, and knew innately that they lined up on a victim’s outstretched limb, would go for the throat. The canines wanted to bowl him over, slash open the jugular, rip and shred in the vital seconds of surprise.
They gathered themselves, bundles of swift sinew, running nearly shoulder to shoulder, big heads up-and leaped.
In air, they were committed, Ipan knew. And open. Ipan brought both hands up to grasp the canines’ forelegs.
He threw himself backward, holding the legs tight, his hands barely beneath the jaws. The wirehounds’ own momentum carried them over his head as he rolled backward.
Ipan rolled onto his back, yanking hard. The sudden snap slammed the canines forward. They could not get their heads around and down, to close on his hand.
The leap, the catch, the quick pivot and swing, the heave-all combined in a centrifugal whirl that slung the wirehounds over Ipan as he himself went down, rolling. He felt the canines’ legs snap and let go. They sailed over him with pained yelps.
Ipan rolled over completely, head tucked in, and came off his shoulders with a bound. He heard a solid thud, clacks as jaws snapped shut. A thump as the canines hit the grass, broken legs unable to cushion them.
He scrambled after them, his breath whistling. They were trying to get up, turning on snapped legs to confront their quarry. Still no barks, only faint whimpers of pain, sullen growls. One swore vehemently and quite obscenely. The other chanted, “Baaas’ard…baaas’ard…”
Animals turning in their vast, sorrowful night.
He jumped high and came down on both. His feet drove their necks into the ground and he felt bone give way. Before he stepped back to look, he knew they were gone.
Ipan’s blood surged with joy. Hari had never felt this tingling thrill, not even in the first immersion, when Ipan had killed a Stranger. Victory over alien things with teeth and claws that come at you out of the night was a profound, inflaming pleasure.
Hari had done nothing. The victory was wholly Ipan’s.
For a long moment Hari basked in it in the cool night air, felt the tremors of ecstasy.
Slowly, reason returned. There were other wirehounds. Ipan had caught these just right. Such luck did not strike twice.
The wirehounds were easy to see on the lawn. Would attract attention.
Ipan did not like touching them. Their bowels had emptied and the smell cut the air. They left a smear on the grass as he dragged them into the bushes.
Time, time. Someone would miss the canines, come to see.
Ipan was still pumped up from his victory. Hari used that to get him trotting across the broad lawn, taking advantage of shadows. Energy popped in Ipan’s veins. Hari knew it was a mere momentary glandular joy, overlaying a deep fatigue. When it faded, Ipan would become dazed, hard to govern.
Every time he stopped he looked back and memorized landmarks. He might have to return this way on the run.
It was late and most of the station was dark. In the technical area, though, a cluster of windows blossomed with what Ipan saw as impossibly rich, strange, superheated light.
He loped over to them and flattened himself against the wall. It helped that Ipan was fascinated by this strange citadel of the godlike humans. Out of his own curiosity he peeked in a window. Under enamel light a big assembly room sprawled, one that Hari recognized. There, centuries ago, he had formed up with the other brightly dressed tourists to go out on a trek.
Hari let the pan’s curiosity propel him around to the side, where he knew a door led into a long corridor. The door opened freely, to Hari’s surprise. Ipan strolled down the slick tiles of the hallway, quizzically studying the phosphor paint designs on the ceiling and walls, which emitted a soothing ivory glow.
An office doorway was open. Hari made Ipan squat and bob his head around the edge. Nobody there. It was a sumptuous den with shelves soaring into a vaulted ceiling. Hari remembered sitting there discussing the immersion process. That meant the immersion vessels were just a few doors away down-
The squeak of shoes on tiles made him turn.
Ex Spec Vaddo was behind him, leveling a weapon.
In the cool light the man’s face looked odd to Ipan’s eyes, mysteriously bony. Long, thin, the expression hard to read…
Hari felt the rush of reverence in Ipan and let it carry the pan forward, chippering softly. Ipan felt awe, not fear.
Vaddo tensed up, waving the snout of his ugly weapon. A metallic click. Ipan brought his hands up in a ritual pan greeting and Vaddo shot him.
The impact spun Ipan around. He went down, sprawling.
Vaddo’s mouth curled in derision. “Smart prof, huh? Didn’t figure the alarm on the door, huh?”
The pain from Ipan’s side was sharp, startling. Hari rode the hurt and gathering anger in Ipan, helping it build. Ipan felt his side and his hand came away sticky, smelling like warm iron in the pan’s nostrils.
Vaddo circled around, weapon weaving. “You killed me, you weak little dope. Ruined a good experimental animal. Now I got to figure what to do with you.”
Hari threw his own anger atop Ipan’s seething rage. He felt the big muscles in the shoulders bunch. The pain in the side jabbed suddenly. Ipan groaned and rolled on the floor, pressing one hand to the wound.
Hari kept the head down so that Ipan could not see the blood that was running down now across the legs. Energy was running out of the pan body. A seeping weakness moved up the body.
He pricked his ears at the shuffling of Vaddo’s feet. Another agonized roll, this time bringing the legs up in a curl.
“Guess there’s really only one solution-” Hari heard the metallic click.
Now, yes. He let his anger spill.
Ipan pressed up with his forearms and got his feet under him. No time to get all the way up. Ipan sprang at Vaddo, keeping low.
A tinny shot whisked by his head. Then he hit Vaddo in the hip and slammed the man against the wall. The man’s scent was sour, salty.
Hari lost all control. Ipan bounced Vaddo off the wall and instantly slammed his arms into the man with full force.
Vaddo tried to deflect the impact. Ipan brushed the puny human arms aside. Vaddo’s pathetic attempts at defense were like spiderwebs brushed away.
He butted Vaddo and pounded his massive shoulders into the man’s chest. The weapon clattered on the tiles.
Ipan slammed himself into the man’s body again and again.
Strength, power, joy.
Bones snapped. Vaddo’s head snapped back, smacked the wall, and he went limp.
Ipan stepped back and Vaddo sagged to the tiles. Joy.
Blue-white flies buzzed at the rim of his vision.
Must move.That was all Hari could get through the curtain of emotions that shrouded the pan mind.
The corridor lurched. Hari got Ipan to walk in a sideways teeter.
Down the corridor, painful steps. Two doors, three. Here? Locked. Next door. World moving slower somehow.
The door snicked open. An antechamber that he recognized. Ipan blundered into a chair and almost fell.
Hari made the lungs work hard. The gasping cleared his vision of the dark edges that had crept in, but the blue-white flies were still there, fluttering impatiently, and thicker.
He tried the far door. Locked. Hari summoned what he could from Ipan. Strength, power, joy.
Ipan slammed his shoulder into the solid door. It held. Again. And again, sharp pain-and it popped open.