Melissa shuddered, staring at the arm, and a shivering breath came from her. Glancing about for a minute, her father put his free hand for a moment on her shoulder.
"Easy, girl," he said. He squeezed her shoulder for a second and then was forced back to his loophole as a new burst of shots rang against the body of the car. "They'll rush us - any minute now," he muttered.
Sitting cross-legged in the dimness like a figure meditating and remote, Mondar reached out and took one of the staring girl's hands in his own. Her gaze did not move from the arm in the ditch, but her own grip tightened, tightened, on Mondar's hand with a strength that was unbelievable. She did not make a sound, but her gaze never moved and her face was as white and still as a mask.
The shots from the jungle stopped suddenly. Mondar turned to look at Eachan.
The Dorsai looked back over his own shoulder and their eyes met.
"Any second now," said Eachan, in businesslike tones. "You're a fool if you let them take you alive, Outbond."
"When there is no more point in living, I can always die," answered Mondar, serenely. "No man commands this body but myself."
Eachan fired again.
"The bus," said Mondar, calmly, "ought to have gotten close enough to hear the firing and phoned, by this tune."
"No doubt," said the Dorsai. "But help'd have to be on top of us right now to do any good. Any second, as I said, they'll give up sniping at us and make a rush. And one pistol won't hold off a dozen or more... Here they come now!"
Through the aperture, over the soldier's shoulder strap, Mondar could see the two waves of camouflaged-overalled figures that erupted suddenly from both sides of the jungle trail and came pouring down upon the car. The little handgun in Eachan's hand was speaking steadily, and, magically - for its voice was almost lost in the general din and uproar - figures in the front of the rush were going down.
But there was only a matter of fifteen meters or so for the attackers to cover; and then the jungle and the little patch of sunlight Mondar could see were blotted out by camouflaged overalls.
The gun in Eachan's hand clicked empty - and in that second, just as the shape of the first guerrilla darkened the opening through which Cletus had gotten out, the wild yammer of a dally gun roared from behind the attackers, and they melted like sand figures under the blow of a heavy surf.
The dally gun yammered on for a second longer, and then stopped. Stillness flowed in over the scene like water back into a hole made in a mountain lake by a falling stone. Eachan pushed past the frozen figures of Mondar and Melissa and crawled out from the car. Numbly, they followed him.
Limping on his artificial right knee joint, Cletus was climbing out of the ditch, dragging the shape of the dally gun behind him. He got to his feet on the roadway just as Eachan came up to him.
"Very well done," said the Dorsai, with a rare note of warmth back in his usually stiff voice. "Thank you, Colonel."
"Not at all, Colonel," said Cletus, a little shakily. Now that the excitement was over, his one knee that was still flesh and blood was trembling with reaction, invisibly but perceptibly under his uniform trouser leg.
"Very well done, indeed," said Mondar, as quietly as ever, joining them. Melissa had halted and was staring down into the ditch where the dead driver lay. It was his arm that had been upflung, obviously with intention by Cletus, as he lay thrashing about like a deeply wounded man, unseen in the ditch. Melissa shivered and turned away to face the rest of them.
She stared at Cletus out of her white face, in which a strange mixture of emotions were now intermingled. Mondar spoke:
"Here come our relief forces," commented the Exotic, gazing skyward. A couple of battle aircars, with a squad of infantry aboard each, were dropping down to the roadway. A hiss of a braking airjet sounded behind them and they turned to see the bus slide into view around a turn in the road. "As well as our signal section," he added, smiling a little.
5
The command car, its compressor damaged by guerrilla fire, was left behind. One of the battle aircars carried its four surviving passengers the rest of the way into the port city of Bakhalla. The air-car dropped the four of them off at the transport section of Alliance Headquarters in Bakhalla. Eachan Khan and Melissa said good-bye and left by autocab for their own residence in the city. Mondar opened the door of another autocab and motioned Cletus inside.
"You'll need to go to Alliance HQ for your assignment and billeting, and that's on my way. I'll drop you off."
Cletus got in; Mondar reached to punch out a destination on the control board of the autocab. The cab rose on its air cushion and slid smoothly off between the rows of white-painted military buildings.
"Thanks," said Cletus.
"Not at all," said Mondar. "You saved all our lives back in the jungle just now. I want to do more than just thank you. I take it you might like to talk to Dow deCastries again?"
Cletus looked at the Outbond curiously. All his life he had enjoyed watching people of strong aims at work to achieve them; and in the five days since he had met Mondar he had become aware of a purposefulness in the Exotic that might well be as dedicated as his own.
"I thought deCastries went down to Capital Neuland."
"He did," said Mondar, as the autocab made a right turn into a somewhat broader boulevard and began to approach a large building of white concrete with the Alliance flag flying on top of it. "But Neuland's only twenty-five minutes from here by air. The Coalition hasn't any direct diplomatic relations with our Exotic government here on Kultis, and neither our people nor Dow want to pass up a chance to talk. After all, it's really the Coalition we're fighting - Neuland couldn't last six weeks without them. So I'm giving an unofficial little party at my home this evening - with a buffet supper and general conversation. Eachan and Melissa will be there. I'd appreciate having you, too."
"Be happy to come," said Cletus. "May I bring my aide?"
"Aide?"
"A first lieutenant named Arvid Johnson, if I'm lucky enough to find him still unassigned," Cletus said. "One of my former students at the Academy. He came to visit me when he was home from here on leave a couple of months ago. It was what he told me that got me interested in Bakhalla."
"Was it? Well, bring him by all means." The autocab slid to a halt before the walkway leading up to the entrance of the large white building. Mondar pressed a button and the autocab door next to Cletus swung open. "Bring anyone you think might enjoy it. About eight o'clock."
"We'll be there," said Cletus. He turned and let the walkway carry him up into the Headquarters building.
"Colonel Cletus Grahame?" echoed the narrow-faced, young second lieutenant at the cluttered desk behind the glass door of the billeting and assignments office, when Cletus confronted him. "You're to report to General Traynor immediately - immediately when you arrive."
He had a high tenor voice and he grinned unpleasantly as he spoke. Cletus smiled agreeably, asked directions to the general's office and left.
The glass door he finally found marked Brigadier General John Houston Traynor led him first into an outer office where a square-set, half-bald colonel in his early fifties stood, evidently just completing the giving of some directions to an overweight, thirtyish captain behind the room's single desk. Finishing, the colonel turned around and eyed Cletus.
"You're Grahame?" he asked abruptly.
"That's right, Colonel," said Cletus pleasantly, "and you... ?"
"Dupleine," said the other, ungraciously. "I'm chief of staff to General Traynor. You're not going into the officers pool, then?"
"I'm on special assignment from Geneva, Colonel," said Cletus.