Free Mindworlds by Phyllis Gotlieb Page A

their sensors identified the targets. Spartakos had jammed their electronics as soon as their signals reached him.
    But: “That force-field was an error on my part,” the Lyhhrt said calmly. “It delayed the signal.”
    Ned had not enough handkerchiefs to wipe his sweat off, and said through wildly chattering teeth, “Oh yeh.” No force-field? Saw himself licked to ashes by that sharp flame tongue. He pulled himself up, still violently shaking. He had been skimmed by missiles before, but never two at once.
    Where are they?
    â€œCome and see,” the Lyhhrt said.
    There was rage in the voice and thought. Ned did not want to follow, but the cave was a dead end. He stepped carefully past the charred walls over the ash-strewn floor, avoiding the puddle. The sky was still dark with brilliant stars, dimly lit with a pink streak in the east.
    Two figures were standing immobile before the cave’s opening. They were crying out faintly through the thick bubble helmets, a thick man in dark glasses, a tall woman with yellow hair; since their electronics had been disabled they
could not move in the flame- and bullet-proof suits. The suits, heavy akrytex dark as charcoal, could have stood by themselves anywhere, like the rocks at Stonehenge. “They’re from Brezant?” Ned asked.
    â€œYes. They did not send their barflies after us this time.” He walked around the two figures, came back to stand beside Ned and pointed at the weapon, suit glove still gripping and aiming it at them. Ned knew it, the long-barreled Quadzull: the one weapon Zamos originally had forced its Lyhhrt slaves to design for the Ix, and this one had been modified for Earthers.
    â€œIf you’ve been shielding me how did they track us?”
    â€œSweat, spit, skin flakes. We have not moved very far from your bar.”
    Not a very good choice, Lyhhrt. One more “error. ” “We better move away from here pretty fast.” For the first time Ned noticed that the Lyhhrt-workman had reshaped himself back into the O‘e beggar he had been at the curbside beneath the Lyyhrt-world restaurant. To be less noticed . Oh yes. Ned sensed Spartakos at his shoulder, fixed in a stare at Lyhhrtas-O’ e.
    As the Lyhhrt-O’e was intent on the two attackers. “What shall we do with these?” A question half to himself and half to the man and woman in the suits, the one with the gun and the other with the flamer. “I wonder if those suits would still protect at close range … .”
    Ned sensed more than mere toying with the thought. The pair were frantically twisting and crying out, their bubblehelmets misted with their breath.
    Spartakos had begun to say, “No, Maker—” but Ned overrode him. “Lyhhrt, neither of these is the one that killed your Other, and this is my home. I come around here two or three times every tenday and I live five minutes away with my wife and kids. If I disappear and two bodies turn up
there’s gonna be more people after us than even Spartakos can count.”
    After a long moment the humble O’e face turned away. “Yes,” the Lyhhrt said. His voice cracked. “Time to leave.”
    â€œDo they have enough air?”
    â€œThey have enough air. Whoever comes by in a boat will find them.” He turned to Spartakos, who could not take his eyes off Lyhhrt-as-O’e. But neither said a word as the Lyhhrt went back into the cave to lock up and hypnoform his shelves, flick off his lamp. He led the way out: not to the east up the Grottoes steps where Dusky Dell’s Happy Hour had folded itself up until noon, but westward around the jut of the cliff toward the much larger steps an ancient civilization had hewed out of the live rock of the cliff’s face.
    Ned forged his way up the giants’ stairway under the blaze of stars that seemed now like the constellations of another world, a day-and-a-half away from being at least