The man with the rifle prowled around the ship, looking carefully out
across the plains.
Then, angrily, he turned and said something at the door of the
helicopter, and a second head appeared. There was a short discussion
that Dave could not hear, and then the second man came out carrying
a tool kit and headed for the lab. The first man got back into the
helicopter and took off towards the main building.
Dave nodded. It was reasonable to suppose that Claverly, and then
Phelps, after finding themselves in this half-world alone, had gone
back to the main laboratory to see if they could raise the attention of
their friends. Dave himself could have been expected to follow, running
after the jeep that had taken the others back to their lab. The hunter
expected to find Dave wandering disconsolately around the other lab.
When the helicopter had disappeared, Dave arose and scuttled across the
plain towards the building he had left. He felt like a battleship on a
clear ocean in broad daylight trying to slink unseen behind an enemy,
but there seemed no way to avoid it. At any rate, the workman was
paying no attention to his surroundings.
Within the walls of the laboratory, the workman was unlimbering his
tool kit. He was an efficient workman. It was his job to repair the
television camera and it was his cohort's job to track down and dispose
of Dave.
He went to work on this basis and ignored the possibility that Dave
might be stalking him--until Dave came silently up behind him and
kicked the small sectional ladder out from beneath the workman's feet.
Dave's fist came plunging through the windmill of flying arms and legs
and connected solidly beneath the workman's ear. Startled, off-balance,
and then slugged, the workman came to earth with a dull thud and
sprawled motionless. Dave snarled and made doubly sure with a thrusting
heel-kick against the workman's jaw and throat. The workman was not the
first man to die from such a kick.
Then, in a matter of minutes, Dave was wearing the dead workman's shirt
and trousers and was plying the tools on the television camera deftly.
Dave had not wrecked the thing, he had just swung his weight against
its moorings and displaced it. The problem was simple, and was handled
by a couple of adjustable end-wrenches. It could have been done by
sheer strength, but not with the desired precision. So Dave loosened
the nuts that held the flexible couplings and slid the camera back into
its original perfect registry with the camera in the real world. He was
tightening the nuts again when he heard the helicopter returning.
Dave stooped and packed the tools back in the kit, folded the
collapsible ladder and stowed it atop the tools, and then stood up and
waved at the pilot.
The helicopter landed. The pilot got out and called, "Have you seen
him?"
This was in a foreign tongue that Dave understood, and could speak
acceptably.
"He jumped me," called Dave, pointing with his toe at the inert figure
on the floor beside him.