As she spoke, a burst of flame spatted sand in front of their sled. The
shower of exploding particles blasted against the cowling.
Firebird turned off the light and spun the sled in towards the
buildings. She sped into the shadows along what had once been the
short main street of Pheme. Then they darted into a shadow between two
buildings.
"There may be more than one of them," said Nathan.
The girl shook her head. "Searchers for the Seven Jewels do not work in
pairs. Not for long, anyway. One of them soon kills the other when they
do," she added enigmatically.
Nathan glanced at her sharply, wondering if she were reminding him of
their own precarious agreement--or accusing Tabor.
They emerged cautiously from the sled, each gripping one of their flame
rifles in addition to the smaller lances.
"That shot came from the flat-roofed building at the end of the
street," said Nathan.
"We'll get on the roof of this one," said Firebird. "It's a hotel. It's
the highest in town. We can fire the other building and get anyone
trying to escape."
No other shots came their way. Nathan feared their assailant was
leaving the building on the corner and trailing them up the street.
They entered the old hotel. A foot of sand covered the first floor.
The stairs were slippery with it. Shattered windows let the cold night
breeze flow through. On the second and third floors they disturbed
coveys of sand bats who fluttered and squeaked and poured out the
windows in a black cloud.
The enemy would certainly know their location now.
They came out onto the roof through a broken penthouse door, and in the
faint moonlight they had a clear view of the decaying skeleton of the
town.
The rifles they carried would shoot flames that spread over a great
area and tended to hover like flaming coronae rather than piercing.
Thus, they would be effective in firing the buildings.
They took up positions on opposite sides of the roof and sent a dozen
shots into the base of the enemy hideout. But they had miscalculated
as Nathan had feared. A fusillade of shots came from a roof directly
across the street from them and their building burst into torrents of
flame.
They transferred their fire to the building from which the shots came.
The flames hovered and glowed like demons around the base of the
structure, but they died like wraiths.
"I remember now," said Firebird. "That's the one fireproof building in
Pheme. It was a special instrument laboratory. We'll have to smoke him
out."
The tiny orange puffs of a flame lance came steadily from varying
points of the other building as if the enemy were running about,
pausing only long enough to shoot.
The flames from the burning building had already touched off the
adjacent structures. The entire ghost town would be ablaze in a short
time. Burning brands lit on the roof beside Nathan. They died, but
others were coming in a rain of fire.
They could see the enemy by the light of the fire now. They fired the
buildings on either side and forced him to keep low. But his shots were
close and accurate. Nathan and Firebird shifted positions after each
shot, but the parapet in front of them was sieved accurately.
Then Nathan suddenly realized that the building behind them was aflame
and its light silhouetted them against the holes in the parapet. No
wonder the enemy could find them.