"The place could be swarming with Militia already," said the driver.
"Just go there." Falt said.
The driver obeyed. Less than two minutes brought them around the corner of a tall lightless office building and the driver brought the truck to a halt.
Ahead of them was a fenced-in area that looked as if it might encompass several city blocks. Within the fence was one tall, almost windowless cube of a concrete building, and several other long, wide concrete structures with curved roofs like sections of barrels laid lengthwise over the rectangular blocks beneath. One of these was aflame at its far end; and lights and alarm bells within that or other buildings could be heard shrilling in the distance. Beyond two truck-wide gates in the fence, now gaping wide open, the dark shapes of the other van-type trucks the Command had brought stood outlined against the light of the burning structure.
"They're still there," said Hal.
"Go in," said Falt to the driver.
"No," said the driver. "I'm staying here where I can make a run for it. You go in on foot if you want."
Falt drew a sidearm from under his shirt and held the muzzle against the driver's right temple.
"Go in," he said.
The driver started up the truck once more. They drove in. As they got closer to the trucks, a scene of ordered confusion became visible between and about them. Most of the members of the Command were engaged in the carrying of twenty-five kilogram bags of fertilizer on their shoulders, from a stack of them outside the burning building to the vans of individual trucks. The body of a man lay before the firelit front end of one of the trucks; and in the center of the activity stood Rukh, directing it.
Hal and the others left their truck; and, with Falt, Hal came up to Rukh. The rest of their team went unordered to the necessary business of loading sacks of fertilizer into their own truck.
As he and Falt got close to Rukh, Hal saw her for a moment outlined against the red light of the fire. It was as if she stood darkly untouched in the heart of the flames. Then someone passed beyond her with a sack over her shoulder and the illusion was lost. As they came up, she turned, saw them, and spoke without waiting.
"We've got three wounded," she told Falt. "No one killed; and we've chased off the district police for the moment. They'll be back shortly with help, so I'm going to have you take those three and whatever you've already got loaded and leave for the rendezvous ahead of the rest of us. They're all three in Tallah's truck, right now. Send six of your people to carry them over. How'd you do?"
"No one even hurt," said Falt. "Typical small-city guards. Not like Militia at all. They practically rolled over and put their paws in the air for us."
"Good," said Rukh. "Get moving, then. We've cut alarm communications and some of the local people are helping to contain information on the fact we're here; but I don't estimate more than another fifteen minutes before we've got Militia around our ears. Howard, if for any reason the wounded have to split off from the rest, you're to stay with them."
"Right," said Hal.
Chapter Twenty-four
He and Falt went back to the truck. Falt began reassigning members of their team, as they returned laden, to the job of bringing over the three wounded. Once a sufficient number had been sent, he put the rest as they came in to passing over to other trucks as many of the ingots as could be moved before the three casualties were brought. Five minutes later, they were out of the gates and leaving the red glow behind them; the dark ribbon of the route unwinding before the nose of their truck and the dark shapes of the foothills and further mountains rising on the night horizon under the still starlit sky. The new moon had not yet put in its appearance.
Once more Falt took the cab seat beside the driver. Hal went back into the body of the van to look at the wounded. One was Morelly Walden; and in the dim interior of the van with its single dim, overhead light, the lines and creases in the heavy face appeared deeper; so that he seemed to have aged another ten years at least into the realm of the truly old.
"It's his leg," said Joralmon Troy, looking up from where he sat cross-legged beside Morelly's stretcher, perched on its low, dark pile of fertilizer bags. "When we blew out the door of the warehouse, a big piece got him in the leg and broke it."
"Did they give you anything for the pain?" Hal asked Morelly, reading the deepness of the facial creases.
"No," said Morelly, hoarsely. "No sinful drugs."
Hal hesitated.
"If you like," he said, "there's a way I could massage your forehead and neck to help relieve the pain."
"No," said Morelly, effortfully. "The pain is by God's will. I'll bear it as His Warrior."
Hal touched him gently on the shoulder and went to look at the other two casualties, a woman who had taken a weapon burn in her right shoulder, superficial but painful, and a man who had been needled in the chest. Both these other two were unconscious, under sedation.
"We're low on painkillers," murmured one of the women who was sitting beside the stretchers of these other casualties. "Morelly knows it. He's really not that much of an old prophet."
Hal nodded.
"I thought so," he answered in an equally low voice. He turned and went back toward the cab. All three would have to be carried. That meant that if he and they split off from the others, he would have at least a party of nine under his responsibility. By the time he got to the cab, the route as seen through the windshield had narrowed down until there was room only for four vehicles abreast; and the exits were no longer ramps, but simple turnoffs. Falt had unfolded his copy of Rukh's local map, which had been issued to all the group leaders, and was looking at it in the overhead light of the cab. Ahead, beyond the mountains, the stars were beginning to be lost in a sky paling toward the dawn.
"Look here," said Falt to Hal, as Hal squatted behind his seat. "Standing orders are that any groups with wounded take priority on the safer rendezvous points over any groups without injured. Since we're the only such group - so far, anyway - that moves us from our prearranged point to this one - "
His finger indicated a starred position higher in the foothills than any others marked there.
"We ought to find more than enough donkeys waiting at that point to carry the light load we've got and sling the stretchers between a pair of beasts apiece." He turned from the map to look at the driver. "How long before we get there?"
"Maybe ten, fifteen - " the driver broke off with a grunt. They had just come around a long curve, and he was staring ahead out the windshield. His face had paled, his knuckles gleamed above the steering wheel in the glow from the instrument panel.
Hal and Falt turned to look as he was looking. Ahead - far ahead on the now-straight route - but unmistakable, were lights set up to shine on a barricade closing the road.
"God save us," whispered the driver. "I can't turn back. They've seen us by now…"
"Drive through," said Falt.
"I can't," the driver answered. He was sweating and he had eased off on the thumb-button on the wheel that controlled the throttle. They were slowing gradually, but still approaching the barricade up ahead far too swiftly for anyone's comfort. "They'll have pylons set up beyond the barricade to turn us over if I try it."
He stared at Falt.
"What're they doing out here?" His face turned back over its shoulder to look at Hal. "It's your fault! They don't know anything about the raid - they couldn't! They're out here looking for you - and now they've got us!"
The truck was close enough now so that they could pick out figures in the black uniforms of the Militia on either side of the barricade.
"Go around, then," said Falt.