Prev | Current Page 181 | Next

Norton, Andre, 1912-2005

"Star Born"

Then one after another
dropped away from the center mass and lay unmoving on the floor.
Seeing that he could control them, Raf turned his attention to the
others about the standing warrior.
Again he sent the spray wide, and they subsided. As the last curled on
the pavement, the alien moved forward and, with a snarl, deliberately
turned the full force of his beam weapon on each of the attackers. But
Raf plowed on through the limp pile to the warrior they had pulled
down.
There was no hope of helping him--death had come with a wide tear in
his throat. Raf averted his eyes from the body. The other warrior was
methodically killing the stunned animals. And his action held such
vicious cruelty that Raf did not want to watch.
When he looked again at the scene, it was to find the narrow barrel of
the strange weapon pointed at him. Paying no attention to his dead
comrade, the alien was advancing on the Terran as if in Raf he saw
only another enemy to be burned down.
Moves drilled in him by long hours of weary practice came almost
automatically to the pilot. The stun gun faced the alien rifle sight
to sight.


Pages:
169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193