sent the alarmed insects into a frenzy. Men
boiled out of the domes, the majority of them running for the horse
pasture. One or two were mounted on ponies that must have been staked
out in the settlement. The main war party of Apaches skimmed silently
through the grass on their way to the ship.

The three who were armed with the alien weapons had already tested their
range by experimentation back in the hills, but the fear of exhausting
whatever powered those barrels had curtailed their target practice. Now
they snaked to the edge of the bare ground between them and the ladder
hatch of the spacer. To cross that open space was to provide targets for
lances and arrows--or the superior armament of the Reds.

"A chance we can hit from here." Buck laid his weapon across his bent
knee, steadied the long barrel of the burner, and pressed the firing
button.

The closed hatch of the ship shimmered, dissolved into a black hole.
Behind Travis someone let out the yammer of a war whoop.

"Fire--cut the walls to pieces!"

Travis did not need that order from Jil-Lee. He was already beaming
unseen destruction at the best target he could ask for--the side of the
sphere. If the globe was armed, there was no weapon which could be
depressed far enough to reach the marksmen at ground level.

Holes appeared, irregular gaps and tears in the fabric of the ship. The
Apaches were turning the side of the globe into lacework. How far those
rays penetrated into the interior they could not guess.

Movement at one of the holes, the chattering burst of machine-gun fire,
spatters of soil and gravel into their faces; they could be cut to
pieces by that! The hole enlarged, a scream ... cut off....

"They will not be too quick to try that again," Nolan observed with cold
calm from behind Travis' post.

Methodically they continued to beam the ship. It would never be
space-borne again; there were neither the skills nor materials here to
repair such damage.

"It is like laying a knife to fat," Lupe said as he crawled up beside
Travis. "Slice, slice--!"

"Move!" Travis reached to the left, pulled at Jil-Lee's shoulder.

Travis did not know whether it was possible or not, but he had a heady
vision of their combined fire power cutting the globe in half, slicing
it crosswise with the ease Lupe admired.

They scurried through cover just as someone behind yelled a warning.
Travis threw himself down, rolled into a new firing position. An arrow
sang