screen, just behind the lowest air-sled. Bingo! He spoke into his Command set. "Angel-5, Angel-6, Angel-7: recon team, four men, bearing two niner one from your location, distance twenty feet, facing away from you. Buck-5: air sled, apparently directly over your location. Do not leave cover before it's taken out. Buck-8, you will handle Buck-5's air-sled and notify him when you've done so. Digger-9: air-sled bearing zero four zero from your location. Directly up the ridge. Take it out on signal. I will deal with the third and final air-sled near the target zone. Do not leave position until all three are destroyed. Out."
Dvenitch put down his set and nudged Major Kliffsey next to him, a technical weapons specialist. "Ready, sir."
"Here goes nothing."
Dvenitch eased the IR shield back. They had just a few seconds now. Kliffsey emerged to stare intently at the big, trembling air-vehicle just above the valley floor.
"Falmuth Apparition," he muttered, "modified." Hauling out a complicated weapon, Kliffsey fitted the pads to shoulders and forehead and took aim at precisely the right spot to inactivate without destroying. Dvenitch drew a bead on his own air-sled and held it.
Kliffsey fired with a whining, ringing report like no weapon Dvenitch had ever heard. Dvenitch fired immediately, a shaped charge round that took a piece out of his air-sled's left response-surface, high up near the conning bubble. The vessel slammed to the ground. Almost simultaneously, his men took out the other two air-sleds and the recon team. One sled settled down hard; the other lurched down a hillside and exploded. All of Dvenitch's men threw off their IR shields and stood with weapons aimed. A glance showed Dvenitch his men had the ridgelines covered, the overhead approaches, and every surface access-route.
Dvenitch now spared a glance for the Apparition. It was apparently intact, but had settled to the ground and wasn't moving. A bubble in its top surface suddenly showed dim light, and Dvenitch knew what that meant. The interpreter did not wait for orders, but clapped a loudspeaker to his lips and spoke sternly in the Soogoonda usage. Dvenitch saw a man in the weapons-blister look around in the direction of the loudspeaker, then begin rotating a heat-gun toward it. Regretfully, Dvenitch fired a shaped charge round. It sparked the blister's surface, hardly making a noise. Smoke obscured the interior.
A hatch opened in the side of the craft. "Wih tsurrender," yelled a man. "Dohng' shoot. Wih'll comb out."
"Do it, then," called Dvenitch. He squeezed his push-to-talk five times, got his reply, then stepped up from the concealment enclosure and began threading his way down the hillside. When he had reached bottom, nine men had emerged from the Apparition, hands on their heads. The two living air-sled pilots had been herded to the middle of the valley-floor, followed by the two recon team members who had survived their wounds.
Major Kliffsey scrambled past with a dousing assembly, pushed the hose into the hatch of the Apparition, and thrust a lever over. The hose hissed, then roared, and after a moment a bulge of white foam burst from the hatch. Kliffsey turned the tank off and sighed with relief. After a few seconds, the foam collapsed and became a sparse liquid that ran out of the Apparition.
The prisoners' commander, a Colonel, spoke. "Zah wass dampin foam, for heat grenades."
"Of course," said Dvenitch.
"Ih-you knew wih were combin! How?"
Dvenitch said dryly, "Questions later, and we'll be asking them."
There was a flash; then, far out on the flats, a shattering explosion. An aircraft streaked by overhead, and there was another explosion, still farther away.
"Ih-you were even weddin for our beck-op," said the Colonel accusingly.
Dvenitch did not reply. He could see a large hovercraft approaching, to bring in experts and take out prisoners.