Frogmouth by William Marshall

quickly, "No, farther. You almost had him, Phil, so the second shot must have been almost forty yards too." He said, deciding, "Say thirty-eight yards." Spencer said solicitously, "It doesn't still hurt, does it?"
    Auden said, "Yes." Auden said, "If there are guns around—if people are bloody shooting or firing and dieseling or whatever the ruck they're doing, it's time to call in the SWAT team and kill them." The Tibetan needed killing. Auden said, nodding up at the hill, "SWAT can lay in a sniper with a Remington bolt action and when the bugger gets to about step number sixty-five—"
    "The Tibetan didn't shoot you!" Spencer, coming forward and pushing Auden hard on the shoulder to bring him back to reality, said, "The Tibetan—"
    Auden said, "Ow!" He staggered. He limped.
    Spencer said, "Phil, the physical exertion, I know—"
    Auden said, "I put my shoes on!"
    "It's best. If you don't, your feet will swell up." Spencer, trying to take his mind off it, said, "Dieseling: that's where, in order to increase the range of an air weapon, you put a little drop of light oil behind the pellet in the breech and then, when the blast of compressed air hits it, the speed of the pellet leaving the barrel is increased by the explosion of the oil." He said thoughtfully, "So, I suppose, in this particular case you could say he fired an air pistol."
    In this particular case you could say he was about to fire a partner. Auden, still wincing, said, "You were down here. You should have heard it."
    "An air weapon, especially one leaning against a metal object for steadiness, doesn't make a bang, it makes a—" He leaned down again. Spencer, pointing his finger and going "poof" to prove that fingers leaned against a metal skip made only a poof! noise said, "He must have allowed for the wind—"
    "There wasn't any wind!"
    "Well, he had to allow for that too." Spencer, still with the finger, said, "Pooff!" He looked at Auden, smiling.
    Auden said, "I could have got him! If I hadn't been shot, I could have got him!"
    There were two pellets in the envelope. Spencer, nodding with a total lack of sincerity, said, "Sure."
    "I was inches away!"
    "Well—" Spencer said, "Well, a few inches anyway." Spencer, tapping the pellets in the envelope, said, "You have to remember that the Tibetan was shot too."
    "He was shot higher up than I was! He was shot five steps away—" Auden said quickly, "Four steps away and he was shot somewhere in the back! I was shot in the arse! I was in mid-stride." Auden said, "He was shot in the small of the back as he was turning around to give up! I was on top of him!" Auden said suddenly, mystically, "Bill, I flew !. I was flying ! You know all that Zen stuff about becoming the object and the action and—that happened to me! I wasn't running, I was the running. I wasn't chasing the Tibetan I was the Tibetan being chased!" His feet, suddenly, in line with his enlightenment, stopped hurting. Auden, starting to hop up and down, to flex, to exercise, to work out, said without room for argument, "I did it! All that Om stuff! I became Om !"
    Spencer said softly, "Poor old Wang."
    "To hell with Wang! I did it for Wang at the beginning, but when I started running, when I hit the hill, when I was ascending —" Auden, coming forward and taking Spencer hard by the shoulder to put his face an inch from Spencer's nose, said in a hard whisper, "Bill, when all that happened, I became One !"
    Well, Half anyway. Spencer, releasing himself from Auden's grip, said looking up toward the hill and then down at the two diesel marks on the side of the skip, "Well . . ." Spencer said, "You're right. Let's call in SWAT and have everybody killed."
    "What about Wang?"
    Spencer said, "To hell with Wang." Spencer said, brushing the thought away with his hands, "There are worse things in the world than a massive coronary at twenty-three years of age." Spencer, looking down with friendly concern at the two misshapen blobs of flesh stuffed into Auden's