There was a long moment before Amid answered. "It'll be hard enough for us," he said. "For Artur impossible. " "Then lock him up, as I say."
Amid did not answer. Hal got to his feet. "I'm sorry," he said gently, looking down on the old man who seemed to have shrunk within the confines of his chair until he was no bigger than child-sized himself. "Sooner or later everyone reaches a day on which he or she has to face things like this. It does no good to pretend such a day won't ever come."
He waited, a moment longer. "It's your decision," he said. "If you think of some way I can help, call me. I'm going to get some rest now, while I can."
He went out. The following morning he watched the sunrise as usual with Old Man and then took his position on the ledge's lip with the scopes. Calas joined them shortly thereafter. But it was a good three hours after that before the first of the searching groups down below began to go to work, and at that time some of them had just wakened.
Hal leaned forward suddenly and turned up the magnification on one of the scopes. "Calas," he said. "What's that they're putting on the ends of their needle guns? Something like an explosives thrower."
Calas looked. "Oh, that," he said. "They're catch-nets. They use them a lot when chasing escaped prisoners - or taking any prisoners they'll want to question before they shoot them. You know how a needle gun works?"
Hal smiled. "Yes," he said. As he had learned, growing up on Dorsai, the riflelike needle gun was a universal favorite as a weapon for field troops mainly because its magazine could hold up to four thousand of the needles that the weapon fired.
Each of the needles could be lethal if it hit a vital spot, but a spray of them was almost certain to bring down a human target, one way or another. The needles were slim little things, hardly bigger than their average namesakes that were used for ordinary sewing. A kick from a machine-wound spring unit or from a cylinder of highly compressed air flicked the needles clear of the muzzle of the gun and started them toward their target. But each needle was like a miniature rocket. A solid propellant, ignited by the needle's escape from the muzzle of the rifle, drove it up to three hundred meters in a straight line toward whatever it had been aimed at. All needles fired on the same trigger pull formed a spiral pattern that spread as it approached its target, like shot from the muzzle of an ancient shotgun.
The advantages lay, therefore, in the amount of firepower from a relatively light weapon, plus the fact that the needle gun was almost invulnerable to disablement through misuse. You could drag it through the mud, or recover it from being under half a mile of water for six months, and it would still work. Moreover, the fact that it could be used in poorly trained hands to spray the general area of an enemy like a hose, made it extremely popular.
It also could deliver a number of auxiliary devices, kicking them clear with spring or compressed gas, to be self-propelled toward a particular target. But this catch-net device was one Hal had never encountered before, probably because, as Calas had said, its design fitted it rather for police than military use. "They've got seeker circuits in the noses," said Calas. "Once fired, the catch-net capsule homes in on the first human body it comes close to - combination of body heat, bodily electrical circuitry and so forth, I understand - and when it gets right close to them, it blows apart and spreads a net that drops over the body. As I say, they use them for recapturing prisoners and things like that. In fact, I think the catch-net was designed in the first place for prison guards and police crowd control. That sort of thing."
Hal checked the other scopes. All the soldiers who were ready to begin searching had the catch-net capsules perched like blunt-nosed rockets on the barrel-ends of their needle guns.
He sat back to see how the search would develop. As the sun mounted in the sky, this second morning, all the individual search units were finally at work. Hal checked the command post at the roadhead and saw that Liu was still there, with the sergeant Calas had called "the Urk" in attendance. Outside Liu's shelter an operations table with map screen in its surface and permanently mounted scopes stood in the daylight. One of the vehicles in which the searching party had come out was still there and parked by the table, undoubtedly generating power for the table, as well as the comforts of the command shelter, on tight-beam circuit.
Old Man reached over suddenly, just before noon, and tapped with his finger on the screen of the scope before Hal. Hal looked, but saw nothing to explain the other man's drawing his attention to it. Still, the slim, yellow fingertip rested on the screen, which was now showing a mass of forest undergrowth just beyond the two soldiers they had in focus there at the moment. Hal kept his eyes on that area of the screen, waiting, and, after a moment, he too saw what had caught Old Man's eye - a flicker of movement.
He watched. A small, slim, brown body was moving parallel to the searching soldiers, at a distance from them of perhaps ten meters. Hal continued to watch and for a moment she was fully in view, before the greenery hid her again. It was Cee, with, as before, nothing but the length of vine with its split-open pod shape a few inches to one side of her navel. "I don't think they've seen her," said Hal. "No," answered Old Man. "Seen who?" demanded Calas. Once more Old Man's finger tapped and held on the screen. Calas stared at it. After a long moment he whistled softly and sat back.