Where Hume had fired his ray there was fierce activity, as the living feasted on the slain and quarreled over the bounty. But from other quarters the crawling advance pressed on.
"I have only one more flame flare," Hume stated.
One more flare--then they would be in the dark with the mist hiding the forward-moving enemy.
"I wonder if they are watching out there?" Rynch scowled into the dark.
"They--or what sent them. They know what they are doing."
"You mean they must have done this before?"
"I think so. That L-B back there--it made a good landing, and there are supplies missing from its lockers."
"No. There might have been real castaways landed here. Not that we found any trace of them. Now I can guess why--"
"But you Guild men were here, and you didn't run into this!"
"I know." Hume sounded baffled. "Not a sign then."
Rynch threw the last of his stones, heard it clink harmlessly against a rock. Hume balanced an object on the palm of his hand.
Rynch had sighted the flashing out of the dark from the river bank, making a pattern of flickers which bore no relation to the infernal lights at the water's edge.
Hume's ray tube pointed skyward as he answered with a series of short bursts.
"Take cover!" The call came weirdly out over the water, the tone dehumanized. Hume cupped his mouth with one hand, shouted back:
They flattened, lay almost in each other's arms, curled on that narrow space. Even through his closed eyelids Rynch caught the flash of vivid, man-made lightning crashing first on one side of the islet and then on the other, and sweeping every crawling horror out of life, into odorous ash. The backlash of that blast must have caught the majority of the lights also. For when Rynch and Hume cautiously sat up, they saw only a handful of widely scattered and dulling globes below.
They choked, coughed, rubbed watering eyes as the fumes from the scorched rocks wreathed up about their perch.
That voice had come out of what should have been empty air over their heads. A gangling line trailed across their bodies, a line with a safety belt locked to it, and a second was uncoiling in a slow loop as they watched.
In unison they grabbed for those means of escape, buckled the belts about them.