Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 116: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

114 willing.” Barlennan hesitated a moment, then gave consent. The guard of the islander was taken over by a pair of knife-equipped sailors, and the crossbow given to the munitions officer. He bore it away to his store lockers with an expression that wiped the superiority from the prisoner's face as he saw it. Barlennan looked a trifle worried as Krendoranic opened one of the flame lockers, but the officer knew what he was doing. He removed a small bundle already wrapped in light-proof ma- terial, thus giving evidence of at least some of his occupation during the nights since they had left the village of the river-dwellers. The bundle was roughly spherical, and evidently designed to be thrown by arm-power; like everyone else, Krendoranic had been greatly im- pressed by the possibilities of this new art of throwing. Now he was extend- ing his idea even farther, however. He took the bundle and lashed it firmly to one of the crossbow bolts, wrapping a layer of fabric around bundle and shaft and tying it at either end as securely as possible. Then he placed the bolt in the weapon. He was not able to draw it fully because of the bulge on the shaft, but that did not bother him; the difficulty he had in cocking convinced him that there would still be plenty of kick. He had, as a matter of duty, familiarized him- self with the weapon during the brief trip downstream and the reassembly of the Bree, and had no doubt about his ability to hit a sitting target at a reasonable distance; he was somewhat less sure about moving objects, but at least the gliders could only turn rapidly if they banked sharply, and that would give him warning. At his order, one of the sailors who formed part of his flame-thrower crew moved up beside him with the igniting 7 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION device, and waited. Then, to the intense annoyance of the watching Earthmen, who had been prevented by their inability to understand Barlennan’s language from fully grasp- ing what was occurring anyway, he crawled to the nearest of the radios and set the leg of the bow on top of it to steady himself and the weapon in an upward position. This effectively prevented the human beings from seeing what went on, since the radios were set to look outward from a cen- tral point and neither of the others commanded a view of the first. As it happened, the gliders were still making relatively low passes, some fifty feet above the bay, and coming directly over the Bree oh what could on an instant’s notice become bomb runs ; so a much less experienced marksman than the munitions officer could hardly have missed. He barked a command to his assistant as one of the machines approached, and began to load it carefully. The moment he was sure of his aim, he gave a com- mand of execution and the assistant touched the igniter to the bundle on the slowly rising arrow point. As it caught, Krendoranic’s pincers tight- ened on the trigger and a line of smoke marked the trail of the missile from the bow. Krendoranic and his assistant ducked wildly back to deck level and rolled upwind to get away from the smoke released at the start; sailors to leeward of the release point leaped to either side. By the time they felt safe, the air action was almost over. The bolt had come as close as pos- sible to missing entirely; the marks- man had underestimated his target’s ‘speed. It had struck about as far aft on the main fuselage as it could, and the bundle of chlorine powder was blazing furiously. The cloud of flame was spreading to the rear of the glider and leaving a trail of smoke that the és Conmicloooks com