"He's warning--"
"Oh, nice of him to heterodyne it. I wish I had a roboship. I'd drive
it into his beam and tell him that he clipped my men--"
Stellor Downing grinned at his unit commander. "I told you he'd duck,"
he said loftily.
"Wouldn't you?"
"Nope. I'd drive into it and see if he'd shut it off before I hit it."
"Supposing he didn't shut it off?"
"Don't ask me," said Downing. "If he did, it would be to spare the
men with me. If I ducked at the last minute, it would be for the same
reason. If we were alone, I wouldn't dive into a beam--but we might
try a bit of rivet-cutting."
The unit commander's face whitened a bit. That was an idea he disliked.
And yet some day he knew they'd get to it. Just as practically
everybody knew it.
The hard ground of Mojave whirled up at them, and the twin spirals
flattened out. Like a whirling nebula, they spun, slowing as they
dropped.
Clancey groaned from the top of the tower: "There ain't room for fifty
ships in Circle One. There ain't room for six ships fighting one
another. Holy--"
The spattering of force-beams, tractor and pressor, died as the last
hundred feet of altitude closed in. The ships, still wabbling slightly,
slowed their spinning around and curved to drop vertically for fifty
feet.