A Blink of the Screen

gun now, but how long will you be able to aim properly? You’ll have to trust someone then – and maybe I won’t be listening.’
    And then Valienté was up and running, running into the tent and then out the other side, running strongly, one of the belts now in his hand, out through the open gateway into the waist-high grass.
    Linsay struggled up, leant against the table, raised the rifle in a shaky movement, took instant aim and fired. The distant man jerked and fell.
    Linsay half fell back into the chair, his face grey with pain.
    ‘I would have said it was you,’ he said. ‘He seemed too … simple. I’d really made up my mind it was you. If the damn fool had got the belt round him he could have
moved
out instead of running. I wonder why he didn’t?’
    ‘You scare people,’ she said. ‘That’s why. Living out here drains something from people. You’re too far away from everyone else, I guess. Still, you made the right choice of who to trust. Give me the gun.’
    He didn’t slacken his grip. She moved closer.
    ‘I’ve got to go and see,’ she said, a new note in her voice. ‘I don’t give a damn if he’s dead, but if you only winged him he might be back. Give me the gun.’
    A realization seemed to cross her mind as she looked at his hand still tight on the gun, the aim unwavering.
    ‘Oh shit,’ she said, and kicked his ankle.
    He made one movement, even as the gun went flying from his hand. He hit the belt.
    He rose into consciousness again maybe a few minutes later, lying in the grass. Straining down he could see the display on the belt buckle – plus 3 – three worlds further up.
    He’d taken the batteries out of the other belts, and done some minimal stripping down. It might take her a few more minutes to work out what he’d done and put it all together and come after him.
    Come after him she would. She would have to track him down, because she’d be bright enough to suspect that he’d cache a weapon in some handy nearby world.
    He should have cached a weapon in some handy nearby world. Would she expect him to have gone downhill, put a tiny inroad into the vast distance between himself and the first Earth?
    Possibly – which gave him a minute or two more, if she was husbanding her batteries. No. She’d all the batteries in the camp to use.
    If she was clever at putting things together she could be here
now
.
    He rolled away as she flashed into view, taking aim even as she appeared. The smack of the bullet into the ground near his head was still echoing in his ears as he moved up two worlds, wincing with pain because that meant another jolt to his ankle. Here the ground was even more chewed up, and the trees were gone. Here the Fist had begun to really hit, not just graze. Here the air was thin, depleted.
    He rolled, almost cherishing the pain because it somehow kept the darkness at bay. But she had expected that, only she gave him more credit than he deserved and emerged firing at a spot several yards away.
    Flip. And drop a bone-shaking metre on to ground that was nearly freezing. Flip. Flip. The soil here was rock now, the freezing remains of the molten guts spewed out when the Fist had really meant business. The air was thinner and the rising sun prickled oddly. It would fire him, if he stayed. Flip. She was ready for the drop, emerged with legs bent to cushion her fall. Linsay glanced at his belt with watering eyes. Plus 23. Plus 24.
    Flip. She was holding the gun one-handed, knowing he wouldn’t roll far, knowing that the thin air would tell on him first. She hit the belt switch.
    Linsay was ready. He had his mouth open, and was already turning the belt controls when she arrived again. In the one red-eyed second before his hand found the switch he saw her tumble, breath escaping in a plume of ice crystals. The gun fired and sent its bullet barrelling off towards the freezing shining stars. Then she was spinning, her face a mask, her legs still tensed from the fall that this time would be endless. About a mile off was a jagged asteroid, one of a great many out here between Mars and Venus. The Fist had pummelled harder, and here the Fist had won.
    Before he blacked out Linsay made it back a few steps, to the freezing lava flow, and managed a final roll downslope into the shade of a rock. Almost naked sunlight sleeted past, and the boundary between shade and light was knife sharp. There was air, but it was weak wheezy stuff.
    The pain seemed distant, a hot sensation rather