Astounding Science Fiction (British Edition) — page 37: what you’re looking at

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

_ THE GULF BETWEEN 35 western boundary of the laboratory area, then down along it. Trees had been transplanted beside the highway in years past and he kept under the shelter of their concealment as he ran. He stopped once, to dart out on the pavement where a jeep lay overturned and riddled with machine-gun bullets. The B.A.R. man was sprawled life- lessly beside it, his heavy automatic rifle still in his hands. Knight seized the rifle and the belt of cartridge clips and ran back to the shelter of the trees as a plane spotted him. Its bullets cut twigs from the limbs above him and made a thunk-thunk sound as they buried themselves in the trunk of the tree. Then the plane was gone and he ran on toward the western entrance that was the closest to Lab 4. The fighter planes widened in their circling to leave a clear space above the laboratory area as he reached the gate, then the troop-transport planes came in—six of them. The sky blos- somed with chutes, the Russo-Asian paratroopers firing even as they de- scended. Other rifles were firing from within Center and from the area out- side the main gate, and occasionally a paratrooper would jerk, then dangle limply in his harness as he drifted downward. The last group of planes came in; a light, fast bomber surrounded by a protecting ring of fighters, The objec- tive of the light bomber, he saw, was the landing strip nearest to Lab 4. The bomber’s mission would not be to bomb the landing strip, and there could be no doubt as to the identity of the passenger it carried. It slowed and dropped to make its landing and he began to run toward the ground- control station and Lab 4 that set two hundred feet beyond it. He was protected from the fighter planes by their own paratroopers and the aim of the paratroopers, shooting from their swinging suspensions, was uncertain as they tried to catch his running, weaving figure in their sights. Bullets kicked up puffs of dust beside and behind him but none touched him. He had reached the ground-control station when the first paratrooper reached the ground. The vicious rip of a burst of well-aimed bullets slammed against the steel corner of the building a split second after he had rounded it. Two more paratroop- ers landed even as he ran for the door of the station, adding their fire to their comrade’s. It was two hundred feet to the ship and, now that they were on the ground, the aim of the paratroopers would be deadly and certain. He would never live to run a tenth of the distance to the ship. And the others were landing, by three’s and four’s. But it didn’t matter—he would be in supreme control of the ship from the auxiliary station. The guards were lying before the door of the station, dead, and the door was ajar. Simultaneously, he saw the other thing that was happening; the roof of Lab 4 was sliding back and the walls were dropping into the ground. He leaped through the door- ' way and to one side as paratrooper bullets hammered at him, the auto- matic rifle held ready before him. The room was deserted but for the robot, George. George turned away quickly from the control panel at the far end of the room, and Knight saw the switch was on that lowered the walls of Lab 4. ‘Turn that switch off!’ he com- manded. “Raise those walls again.” The robot stepped towards him with long, swift strides, seeming not to hear him. The metal arms were half outstretched before it and a sudden icys premonition ran a cold finger up spine. EComichbooksnco (Q) im ‘