The Space Guardian by Max Daniels

trained body making nothing of the distance between them. They dropped into the shadow simultaneously. The droms stood for a moment as if confused, then ambled slowly toward them.
    Lahks repeated her expletive more softly, but with equal fervor, then added, “Damn them, they’ll attract...”
    Stoat laid his free hand on her arm and shook his head. The laser in his other hand pointed steadily in the direction from which Lahks could now identify the very faint crunch and slither of a large moving body. She had thought her ears were good but Shom’s were far better, or else he had a sensitivity that went deeper. Stoat now turned his head toward the idiot, speaking softly but with single-word distinctness.
    “Shoot it in the mouth, Shom. When it opens its mouth only. Right in the mouth.”
    A soft breath exploded from between Lahks’ lips, and her body shook. The feral face whipped back toward her, and the free hand moved with the swiftness of a striking animal, but Lahks had already dodged slightly. She caught Stoat’s wrist.
    “Sorry,” she murmured, “it struck me funny. I’m not hysterical. Sure we shouldn’t wait for the whites of their eyes?”
    The shadows of hood and face plate were too deep to see into, but Lahks felt wary eyes check the rise and fall of her breathing, the steadiness of the laser in her hand.
    “They don’t have any whites.”
    The remark could have been a flat statement of fact, but Lahks again got the clear impression of laughter. She giggled silently, then gestured toward the droms squatting in a semicircle around them grinning, bobbing their heads, and at times reaching forward to prod them gently with a snout. But Stoat paid no attention. He was straining forward, peering between two drom hulks. Lahks judged angle and distance, picked up the flicker, then the shine of moonlight on the body coming around a curve of hillside some distance away. Her breath hissed out again—but not with amusement.
    Brontosaurus, but lean and agile-looking, with a horrible Allosaurus’ head perched atop a thickened, yet still sinuous, neck. But, blessedly, that head was not raised and swinging. Neck thrust out, black-pitted heat sensors wide, seemingly blind to all else, the hunter was headed toward the trap. That was good and not so good. They had run off to the right, but the path they had originally traveled had curved slightly to take advantage of easier ground. As the monster came closer, even Lahks’ practiced eye could not determine whether it would walk right into them or go by a hair’s breadth on the left.
    Instinctively, all shrank deeper into the shadow, but the rock was convex rather than concave and offered no shelter. Lahks thought she could feel the ground tremble, although she knew the beast was not that large. Five hundred meters, three hundred. . . Now it was impossible to tell whether the outthrust head was still seeking the heat trap or was fixed upon them, so direct was its angle. One hundred meters. . . Three elbows braced simultaneously on three knees; three laser pistols lifted across three wrists, as in a well-rehearsed ballet. Six eyes unaware of the harmony of motion stared, waiting for the glimmer of silver teeth in a mauve cavern, watching for the split-second when three fingers could trigger a burning light to discourage?, drive away?, wound?, kill? an invincible enemy.
    Ten meters. . . But the mouth did not open. Lahks shifted the laser infinitesimally to bring it to bear on a heat sensor. That would penetrate, perhaps sting. Only, did the beast have nerves? And then, just as it seemed the head would top them and it would be too late to fire, the angle changed, changed further. It was swinging away. Without appearing to notice them, the dragon was avoiding the semicircle of droms, which had not even glanced backward or changed their idiotic grins for a moment.
    Three long breaths sighed out. Somewhere in the back of her mind Lahks noted that Shom was not such an idiot as