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stalking the devilkid through the shamble-town.
Gerswin regained the square, this time from the northeastern comer and
glanced over at the covered portico where the children had earlier played. They
still played, from the sounds and motions, but he started for the northern gate
from the far side of the square, avoiding the children, and the toddler who had
cried out, "Ummm!"
The walls and the narrow streets felt more like a prison with each passing step,
and he wanted out.
Forcing himself to maintain an ambling walk, he continued toward the gate,
ears alert for any change in Fynian's conduct or pace.
The gate was closed, but the two guards leaped to push open the massive
patchwork as if they were all too ready for the Imperial stranger to depart.
Gerswin could hear from the sounds behind him that Fynian was moving
closer, but he was surprised that the older man followed him outside the
shambletown and onto the flat beneath the wall.
Gerswin faced the shambletowner and watched Fynian pull a stone from his
pouch as the gate squealed shut.
"No kill, stand?" Gerswin snapped sarcastically, as Fynian straightened the
sling straps.
"Devulkid out shamble."
Gerswin pulled the stunner.
Thrummmm!
The sling and stone dropped on the hard clay, followed by the inert form of the
shambletowner.
Both guards peered over the wall from their posts beside the gate.
"Guard. No kill, stand? Fynian try kill. Dreamtime, stand?"
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Gerswin kept the stunner in full view until he was certain both guards
understood that the shambletowner was only stunned. He retreated downhill,
pace by pace, facing the wall as the gate squealed ajar and a single guard ventured
out and began to drag the unconscious Fynian within, by his foot.
Gerswin glanced toward the discarded sling and stone, then at the closed gate
and blank wall. Blank, as it had always been.
He turned and walked down the long slope through the scattered bushes and to
the north.
Chapter XXI
The pilot peered into the work area.
"Still down?"
"Yes. It's still down," answered the gray-clad technician. "Some of the fans
looked like fuel strainers, and we have one gilder/polisher. That was meant for
touch-up work, not for rebuilding an entire fan structure. That's just the
beginning.
"There's the frame. Not a single millimeter that doesn't need restressing. Got to
be more than a half-million creds of damage."
Gerswin frowned, then let his face clear.
"How long?" The tech put down her analyzer probe and turned to face the pilot.
"Lieutenant Gerswin, we do our very best. So do you, in your own way. But our
ancestors, Istvenn take their souls, left a forsaken mess. No one ever designed
atmospheric craft to fly through stone rains and acid winds, not and come out
intact." She looked down at the already stained permatile flooring.
"Is it our home, anymore? If they didn't tell us so, I'd never have guessed.
Purple-shaded grass, where it grows, and ground fog that can eat your lungs."
Her eyes came up to meet his. "How you ever got this back, I couldn't guess. And
how long it will take to rebuild it would be a bigger guess."
"Thanks," Gerswin said softly, before turning away from the tech and the
battered flitter. "Thanks."
He could feel her dark eyes on his back as he walked from the temporary
hangar-bunker that served more as a mechanical infirmary than as a
maintenance facility.
"Four flitters, and not a one fit to fly."
His steps echoed as he entered the underground tunnel back to the
administrative building, buried, like all the others, in the clay and native stone.
Even though the portal to the ecological laboratory was open, he rapped on the
wall, as if he were knocking at another officer's private quarters.
No answer. He rapped the metal bulkhead harder.
Finally, he stepped inside.
As often happened, he found the two consoles humming, but unattended, and
the swivels all empty. He scanned the telltales on the airlock control chambers,
but the indicators on five were amber. Number three blinked both green and
amber.
That was where Mahmood had to be.
He slumped into one of. the swivels opposite a busily humming console to wait,
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tapping his fingers lightly on the console and whistling a slow dirge.
Gerswin ignored the cycling of the lock and kept whistling without looking up,
even as the ecologist finished unsuiting and racking his labsuit in one of the
dozen wall lockers.
"That's cheerful . . . about as uplifting as the subsonics on a hellbumer."
Mahmood Dalgati clicked the locker shut and straightened his impeccable whites
before settling himself in the armless swivel behind the farther console, tapping
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