fire. Sarnax chose a couple more boar rifles. Dalla slung her bag of
recorded notes, and another bag of ammunition, and secured another
deer rifle. They carried this accumulation of munitions to the private
apartments of Prince Jirzyn, dumping everything in the middle of the
drawing room, except the bag of notes, from which Dalla refused to
separate herself.

"Maybe we'd better put some stuff over in one of the rooms on the
other side of the well," Dirzed suggested. "They haven't really begun
to come after us; when they do, we'll probably be attacked from two
or three directions at once."

They returned to the gun room, casting anxious glances at the edge of
the balcony above and at the barricade they had erected across the
openings to the lifter tubes. Verkan Vall was not satisfied with this
last; it looked to him as though they had provided a breastwork for
somebody to fire on them from, more than anything else.

He was about to step around the cabinet which partially blocked the
gun-room door when he glanced up, and saw a six-foot circle on the
ceiling turning slowly brown. There was a smell of scorched plastic.
He grabbed Sarnax by the arm and pointed.

"Thermite," the Assassin whispered. "The ceiling's got six inches of
spaceship-insulation between it and the floor above; it'll take them a
few minutes to burn through it." He stooped and pushed on the
barricade, shoving it into the room. "Keep back; they'll probably drop
a grenade or so through, first, before they jump down. If we're quick,
we can get a couple of them."