Hell's Gate

a rough wall, breathing hard, and wished he could shrink to mouse size or smaller. The alarm would spread from the ship throughout the entire connected complex. In moments, vacii would be pouring out of these buildings just as they had come out of the rooms of the ship in search of him.
        Looking back to the starship, he saw the long curve of its flank for the first time, a dully gleaming mass of metal quite huge and formidable. There were vacii at the portal now, looking out to be certain he was not waiting nearby to ambush them. He fired a round of narcodarts. The first alien, leaning out, took the full charge and kicked outward, unconscious before it hit the earth.
        Slipping on the now wet ground, Salsbury moved back along the building, staying with the shadows like a cockroach again, slithering, holding the narcotics pistol out to his side. Behind him were the sounds of heated pursuit.
        He turned a corner, hurried across a stone-floored courtyard where his shoes made agonizingly loud sounds, and darted into the gaping mouth of another dark alleyway. He rested there, looking the way he had come, then the way he had chosen to go. Neither looked promising. The pursuers were surely gaining. If he listened, he could hear them shouting questions to one another. But the way ahead was uncertain. He might be heading for a dead end, or circling back to the ship. The last possibility sunk into his chest like an arrow. Frantically, he tried to remember how the alleys had turned, how he had come across the courtyard. Would he bumble into the search party, fall into their arms through his own stupidity?
        It was a distinct possibility.
        For the first time, he fervently wished he were iron Victor, moving according to program without a worry in the world.
        Furious with himself for his confusion, he continued down the backstreet, his feet sucking wetly on soggy earth. There was a shout to his left as he passed another alley mouth feeding into the one through which he was running. Surprised, he tried to increase his speed, succeeded only in slipping on a patch of mud. He went down hard on his hip, cracking his head against the side of a building. He saw stars a moment, then decided he had no time for astronomy. He pushed to his feet just as the vacii who had shouted came up behind him, still hollering. He rolled to avoid being shot, pumped a dozen needles into the alien. The thing went down gagging.
        Salsbury went on, trying to move in a straight line, away from those chasing him.
        Five minutes later, he came to another courtyard, ran into it before he saw the detachment of vacii guards exiting from a side street on the other side. There was a fountain between him and the aliens, spouting dark water. The noise of it covered the sound of his pounding feet, but they saw him anyway, as he was the only other moving object in the plaza. He tried to wheel around, made the turn too sharply, and fell again. He came to his feet as he finished the roll, his left arm numb from the impact with the pavement. He ran back into the passageway from which he had come, went half a block and turned into an alley.
        Behind and in front, there were the sounds of pursuit. They were closing in from all sides; he had only minutes left.
        He came to another intersection of byways, made the wise decision not to cross it until he knew whether there were vacii on the crossing street. He leaned against the wall and looked cautiously around the corner. He was immediately glad he had not acted hastily. There were half a dozen vacii to his left, waving lights over the dark walls and in various nooks and clefts in the strange construction material that formed the compound.
        Behind there was the sound of vacii drawing nearer. Then, far down the alley from the direction in which he had come, there was a play of other torches. The even, warm light cast irregular shadows off jutting sections of compound walls. Salsbury was trapped. He could not go forward without being seen; to go back meant facing an even larger squad than the one ahead. He had not expected it to end like this.
        In fact, he refused to let it end like this. He looked up the irregular wall of the building across the narrow street and made up his mind what to do. Dropping the needle gun, the other weapon in his holster, the rucksack on his back (also recovered from the dead vacii guard) he ran across the alley,