The Time of The Cat 29
TWENTY-NINE
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As it developed, the Indians had tracked one of the Pugs here and were trying to figure out how best to get it out of the Quonset hut. I explained the transporter system, and they seemed disappointed.
“You mean that he’s not in there, then,” said Charlie. “We were hoping to scalp him. We know for certain that he took William’s kid sister. We’ve been following their trail for a couple of hours, but it don’t look good. We found some of her clothes about a mile back, along with some blood sign.”
“I can understand it if you guys want to go, but it’s going to be dangerous. The transporter in that building leads to Loveland, Colorado, and probably into a mess of those aliens as well.”
“I ain’t never been to Loveland, but I think I’d like to go and check it out,” said Stormbreaker. “Why don’t you all wait here for about an hour while we go get some more useful weapons.”
It was more of an order than a question, so we assented.
It wasn’t more than thirty minutes before they all came back. Five of them had AKs with boxes of cartridges, and Stormbreaker and Charlie both had AR-10s. I briefed them about the Pugs being hard to kill. Frankly, I didn’t think the AKs would do much to a Pug. The cartridge is a good, close-range deer round, but the Pugs were a lot harder to kill than a deer. The good news was that the AR-10s shot a lot more powerful rifle round. That might just get the attention of the Pugs, especially if they were hit in a sensitive area, which would be... Oh, I don’t know where. They seemed to be tough all over without any weak points.
We opened the Quonset door without any problems and found it to be empty except for a pile of a few clothes. The men looked over the pile, and Charlie said, “This hat belonged to Lucy.” He had a grim look in his eye that implied that whoever had taken Lucy out from under the hat was in trouble.
There was a kind of an office in the back of the hut. It was cubical in shape and partitioned off part of the rear quarter in the middle of the structure. The transporter door was on one side of the outside of this room. One of the Indians opened the door to the cubicle and looked inside.
“There’s nothing in there at all,” he observed. “That funny door on the outside end of this room don’t go through. There’s just another wall with a little space behind it.”
The others looked puzzled and turned to Liz and me.
“The transporters don’t go through into another room. They’re like an elevator. You get in, press the button and then get out someplace else. Only the someplace else might be a long ways away,” I explained again in what I hoped were terms that they’d grasp.
I immediately realized that I’d underestimated them, for Charlie said, “It’s just like that TV series with the matter transmitters.”
The others nodded, and I affirmed the speculation. “We’ve both been to another planet through one of these, so they can take you anywhere. The only thing is that they don’t all connect, and sometimes you have to take a round-about path to get somewhere that’s nearby,” Liz explained.
“That’s OK, lady,” said Stormbreaker. “I’m fine with going through as long as I ain’t going to be converted into some kind of mutant fly or something.”
“No, they seem to be reliable. We haven’t had any problems with growing wings or anything,” I responded, perhaps a little too facetiously. The Indians gave a collective snort of disbelief and looked at each other.
We finally got organized, lined up, and squeezed into the transporter, weapons ready. When it opened, we were in some kind of animal stall. We could hear some shouting, and there was the poofing sound of splinter guns shooting near one end of the structure. We worked our way out carefully through the outside exit to the adjacent corral to see that we had come out of a stable door near the back of a faded red barn. Looking towards the front, I could see the backside of several Pugs looking around the corner at something.
This was an opportunity that was too good to waste. I indicated to Stormy that he should get his guys to shoot the Pugs while Liz and I went around the other way to see if there were any more. We’d barely gotten halfway around the back when the Indians started shooting with a noise that reminded me of several battles in which I’ve been involved.
The cat jumped out of Liz’s arms and dashed off somewhere into the nearby tall grass, staying low. I thought that was just as well. He couldn’t help in this situation.
We continued on around the back and peeked around the other side of the barn to see another batch of Pugs working their way toward the front of the building. Unfortunately, one of them saw us, and they started shooting in our direction. We both returned fire and then ducked back. There was a whiz of splinters flying past the corner, and we waited for a moment. The Indians were still banging away on the other side of the barn, but it was quiet on our side.
The remaining Pugs were laying low and waiting their chance to shoot splinters at us. I poked my head around the edge and almost caught a splinter, so I pulled back with a curse.
Liz grumbled about me being stupid and dug in her clothes. She finally pulled out a compact from somewhere. Women seem to have the ability to have those things stored just about anywhere on their bodies.
She flattened out on the ground and opened it, holding the mirror so she could see around the corner.
One good thing about the splinter guns, from our perspective, was they had almost zero penetrating ability when it came to things like wood, so she was perfectly safe in her action. If one of the Pugs had been shooting a human rifle, the corner of the barn would have provided next to no cover at all.
She looked at me and hissed, “There’s only two of them left. One’s looking this way, and the other one seems to think that someone is coming around the other end of the barn.”
Just then, Jefferson let out a battle screech and showed himself briefly in the tall grass out to the right of us. He was about ninety degrees out from where the Pugs were, and as they turned to look at him, Liz slid forward and shot the one that was oriented towards us.
That left one. He was trying to shoot at the grass, and I hoped that the cat was out of the way. The splinters might not go through wood, but they clipped right through grass blades like a lawn mower. He was intent on killing the cat as if Jefferson was more of a danger to him than we were.
He was wrong. I took aim and planted a splinter in his arm. That abruptly stopped the cat-shooting exercise. Suddenly there was a whole chorus of rifle and splinter shots, and someone around the front of the barn yelled, “All clear!”
It sounded like Rudy, and it was!