Sam Hall: The Complete Adventures by Poul Anderson

Author:Poul Anderson [Anderson, Poul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2021-09-15T21:00:00+00:00

They burst into speed. Foot-thrust sucked at Fraser’s strength and wind, impact jarred his teeth, his harsh breathing filled his ears.

The destination didn’t seem to come any nearer. He ran and ran across emptiness, as a man runs in nightmare . . . and then in an instant Aurora lifted white before him, less than a mile away, with the topmost curve of the battleship’s hull glimmering above, on the far side; and he saw the battle to the east.

The land seemed to crawl with gannycats, tiny beetle shapes that veered and darted, barely visible in the night. Shells burst among them, soundlessly blooming in fire. Smoke and rock chips flew high each time in a cloud but settled quickly, so that while everything was in motion nothing really seemed to change. Now that he was over the horizon, his receiver screamed with voices.

“—here, this way, Tim!”

“Arnesen’s squadron, deploy!”

“Steinmeier, get your men out on foot!”

“—goddamnit, goddamnit, goddamnit—”

—until the racket ceased to have meaning, became one with his pulse and pant and slamming footfalls. He switched his own transmitter back on. Under these conditions, it couldn’t give him away to a detector. There was no longer time to be afraid. He had only a second in which to try to cherish the memory of Eve, and fail to conjure up her face; then he was too busy.

Tom Hoshi’s band swung west, to approach the spaceport from an uncontested direction. As they neared Aurora, Fraser glimpsed men in the open, not far from the east side of town. They dashed about in ways that appeared merely Brownian. He wasn’t even sure whose side they were on. Both, perhaps. Swayne would likely have assigned such of his men as he could spare from operating the ship’s guns and keeping the city dwellers corked up, to double as infantry with what small arms were available.

The buildings were now alongside, now behind. They hid the battle and cut off much of the radio noise. Fraser saw Tom turn at right angles and plunge toward the spacefield.

Something grabbed and threw him. He landed with a shock that smashed blackness through his head.

A moment he lay in whirling and ringing. The world came back to him, he sat up and knew with vague amazement that he was alive. His skull throbbed and there was a hot salt trickle across his lips. But he lived.

Automatically he checked for an air leak. No sign of any. A craterlet had opened in the lava some yards away. Must have been a near miss by a shell, he thought in an impersonal fashion. The expanding gases had bowled him over, but done no serious harm. If the warhead had been designed to scatter shrapnel in a horizontal plane—but it was intended for use against ships and space stations. He got to his feet and bounded zigzag after the others. Pain touched his side. He ignored it.

Rock gave way to concrete. The Olympia loomed near, an ugly, heavy outline in the half-light. They saw us coming, Fraser told himself, but now we’re inside the artillery’s area of coverage.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.