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world.
A war of cultures as mutually alien as human and Kra'agh. No doubt the winners of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral
would write the histories by which men would judge it. He wished he'd been able to see what had happened. Did the
Kra'agh think of themselves as being in the right? Did good or evil, right or wrong, always depend on who wrote the
histories once the shooting had stopped? Macklin didn't think so. It might be hard to sort the good from the bad with
the likes of the Earps and the Clantons ... but then there were people like Sarah Nevers, folks who might have faults
and might have failings but who were indisputably good people. People worth knowing. People worth saving. People
who- He heard the scream, a piercing shriek from just ahead and higher up on the ridge. It was hard to tell direction
among these echoing rock faces, but he thought it had come from that way.... It was Sarah, he was sure of it. Gripping
the Winchester tightly, bending low to stay concealed behind the rocks, he sprinted ahead, climbing the slope, his
breath coming in tight, painful gasps beneath the dazzling Arizonan sun. At the top of the ridge, he dropped into a
shallow arroyo winding north. On hands and knees, he crawled its length. Sarah's scream came again, louder this time,
longer ... a liquid shriek of pain and fear. He tried not to let the sound hurry him faster; the Kra'agh wanted him to
come, wanted to draw him into the open. His only hope was to spot the monster before it spotted him. He reached the
end of the arroyo, dropping for cover behind a large, flat rock. Beyond, the ridge crest opened into a broad, flat bowl,
rock-ringed and exposed. In the center of the bowl was Sarah Nevers.
Macklin bit off a hard curse. Sarah was alive; he could see her moving, twisting fitfully. She was also tied hand and
foot, and even from twenty yards away he could see a vivid splash of scarlet on her belly and on the rock beneath her.
It was all he could do not to leap up and go to her. Instead, he studied the ring of boulders encircling the bowl. The
Kra'agh was out there, somewhere, waiting for him. But where? Hell, the Hunter might even be one of those rocks!
Macklin was vividly aware through every sense, aware of the sharp impact of orange rock beneath blue sky ... of the
taste of hot air ... a lingering scent of decay ... of the feel of hot, sandy rock beneath his chest and arms. He heard
Sarah sob ... and caught the faintest rasp of something metal-hard dragging against stone.... Moving slowly, his eyes
anchored on the far rim of the bowl, Macklin picked up a flat stone the size of his hand and skimmed it, hard, sending it
flying off to the left. For a second or two, there was silence, and then the stone struck rock with a bright clatter.
Something moved on the far side of the bowl, just beyond where Sarah lay bleeding. It moved fast, a boulder
dissolving into a dark gray blur, moving left. Macklin brought his rifle up and fired. The Winchester's bark was
followed instantly by the shrill ping of the round skipping off rock. The shape, half glimpsed and incredibly fast, was
gone. But where? He couldn't see anything alive along that rock-strewn rim now ... and it didn't look as though the
position of any of the boulders had changed. "Macklin!" Sarah screamed, twisting around and trying to sit up.
"Macklin! Get away! It's a trap!" "Macklin!" Sarah's voice again ... but this time from the left. "Macklin! It's a trap!"
The thing was mocking her. Or him. Or both of them. "Mack... lin!" He fired, aiming at the second voice, then shifting
left and firing again, shifting right and firing a third time, throwing rounds blindly, hoping to hit something. The echoes
of the shots, the shriek of the ricochets, hung in the bright, startled air for a long second. Something-a flicker of
movement-made him look further to the left in time to see a hulking, shaggy shape against the skyline. He raised his
rifle and squeezed off another shot, cocked the lever, and fired again. There was nothing there. Had he even seen
anything at all? Macklin was beginning to realize that he was outclassed. The Kra'agh he'd killed minutes ago had been
deadly ... but badly hurt, possibly not even able to move. This one was extraordinarily mobile. If it was as silent as it
was fast, Macklin knew he would have absolutely no warning as it attacked, that it could strike from any direction, and
he would never see it coming. He searched the skyline, aware that the creature was trying to work around the west side
of the bowl in order to get behind him ... or to come at him from the flank. Either that, or it had been trying to draw his
fire, trying to pinpoint his position. The thought was as cold a shock as ice water in the face. Ducking behind the rock,
he rolled to the right, then started crawling for deeper cover down a shallow embankment, among a giant's spill of
chaotically tumble-down boulders. Before he'd crawled five feet, a sharp, fried-bacon sizzle hissed in his ear, his nose
caught the sharp tang of ozone, and the boulder he'd been hiding behind exploded with a shrill crack that left this ears
ringing. He lay flat, head down, as hot fragments pattered across his back and
bounced in front of his face ... and then he was crawling again, faster, scrambling for better cover. He chanced another
glance into the rock-bottomed bowl. Sarah was still there, slumped over on the bare rock with her hands behind her
back. He couldn't tell if she was conscious or not. She wasn't moving now. Hiss ... crack! The Hunter's beam exploded
with a sunbright flash engulfing the rock next to his face, stinging him with hurtling fragments. He yelped and tumbled [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]