He drew down in his sights as carefully as he could in the darkness, and pulled the trigger. As the smoke thinned out a little he thought he saw something beyond which indicated a man staggering and falling.And then the lights went on.
ONE:Albin, watching him, whistled inaudibly under his breath. A minute went by silently. The light in the room began to diminish.The threat of a real boyish thrashing and the cool, matter-of-fact way that Si and Shorty conducted themselvesprecisely as if chopping trees or mowing a fieldsteadied the boys wonderfully.
The boys listened with sinking hearts. More than three times as many rebels as they themselves numbered, and perhaps fiercer and stronger than those they had already encountered.Pete was soon brought up, panting and tired."I would not repeat myself if it were not for the urgency of this matter." Dr. Haenlingen's voice hardly echoed in the square small room. She stood staring out at the forests below, the coiling gray-green trees, the plants and rough growth. A small woman whose carriage was always, publicly, stiff and erect, whose iron-gray eyes seemed as solid as ice, she might years before have trained her voice to sound improbably flat and formal. Now the formality was dissolving in anger. "As you know, the mass of citizens throughout the Confederation are a potential source of explosive difficulty, and our only safety against such an explosion lies in complete and continuing silence." Abruptly, she turned away from the window. "Have you got that, Norma?""I ain't no kid, to be led along by the hand," answered Pete sturdily, refusing the offer. "I'll keep up somehow. But you can't expect my short legs to cover as much ground as them telegraph poles o' your'n.""Here, what're you givin' me that broken loaf for?" demanded Gid, stopping in his distribution of meat. "Give that to Pete Skidmore. He's the littlest."