zed, the former with
a heavy boar-rifle and the latter with a hunting pistol in each hand,
and Hadron Dalla brought up in the rear with her rifle. It was she who
noticed a movement along the rim of the balcony above and snapped a
shot at it; there was a crash above, and a shower of glass and plastic
and metal fragments rattled on the pavement of the court. Somebody had
been trying to lower a scanner or a visiplate-pickup, or something of
the sort; the exact nature of the instrument was not evident from the
wreckage Dalla's bullet had made of it.

The rooms Dirzed and Sarnax entered were all quiet; nobody seemed to
be attempting to cut through the ceiling, fifteen feet above. They
dragged furniture from a couple of rooms, blocking the openings of the
lifter tubes, and continued around the well until they had reached the
gun room again.

Dirzed suggested that they move some of the weapons and ammunition
stored there to Prince Jirzyn's private apartment, halfway around to
the lifter tubes, so that another place of refuge would be stocked
with munitions in event of their being driven from the gun room.

Leaving him on guard outside, Verkan Vall, Dalla and Sarnax entered
the gun room and began gathering weapons and boxes of ammunition.
Dalla finished packing her game bag with the recorded data and notes
of her experiments. Verkan Vall selected four more of the heavy
hunting pistols, more accurate than his shoulder-holster weapon or the
dead Olirzon's belt arm, and capable of either full or semi-automatic
fire. Sarnax chose a couple more boar rifles. Dalla slung her bag of
recorded notes, and another bag of ammunition, and secured another
deer rifle. They carried this accumulation of munitions to the private
apartments of Prince Jirzyn, dumping everything in the middle of the
drawing room, except the bag of notes, from which Dalla refused to
separate herself.

"Maybe we'd better put some stuff over in one of the rooms on the
other side of the well," Dirzed suggested. "They haven't really begun
to come after us; when they do, we'll probably be attacked from two
or three directions at once."

They returned to the gun room, casting anxious glances at the edge of
the balcony above and at the barricade they had erected across the
openings to the lifter tubes. Verkan Vall was not satisfied with this
last; it looked to him as though they had provided a breastwork for
somebody to fire on them from, more than anything else.

H