Dune

The movement across the sink faded away. On the entire four to five kilometer expanse of sand nothing remained but the growing pressure of the day’s heat—blurred columns of rising air.

“Be most silent now,” the Fremen whispered.

A file of plodding figures emerged from a break in the opposite cliff, headed directly across the sink. To Hawat, they appeared to be Fremen, but a curiously inept band. He counted six men making heavy going of it over the dunes.

A “thwok-thwok” of ornithopter wings sounded high to the right behind Hawat’s group. The craft came over the cliff wall above them—an Atreides ’thopter with Harkonnen battle colors splashed on it. The ’thopter swooped toward the men crossing the sink.

The group there stopped on a dune crest, waved.

The ’thopter circled once over them in a tight curve, came back for a dust-shrouded landing in front of the Fremen. Five men swarmed from the ’thopter and Hawat saw the dust-repellent shimmering of shields and, in their motions, the hard competence of Sardaukar.

“Aiihh! They use their stupid shields,” the Fremen beside Hawat hissed. He glanced toward the open south wall of the sink.

“They are Sardaukar,” Hawat whispered.

“Good.”

The Sardaukar approached the waiting group of Fremen in an enclosing half-circle. Sun glinted on blades held ready. The Fremen stood in a compact group, apparently indifferent.

Abruptly, the sand around the two groups sprouted Fremen. They were at the ornithopter, then in it. Where the two groups had met at the dune crest, a dust cloud partly obscured violent motion.

Presently, dust settled. Only Fremen remained standing.

“They left only three men in their ’thopter,” the Fremen beside Hawat said. “That was fortunate. I don’t believe we had to damage the craft in taking it.”

Behind Hawat, one of his men whispered: “Those were Sardaukar!”

“Did you notice how well they fought?” the Fremen asked.

Hawat took a deep breath. He smelled the burned dust around him, felt the heat, the dryness. In a voice to match that dryness, he said: “Yes, they fought well, indeed.”

The captured ’thopter took off with a lurching flap of wings, angled upward to the south in a steep, wing-tucked climb.

So these Fremen can handle ’thopters, too, Hawat thought.

On the distant dune, a Fremen waved a square of green cloth: once…twice.

“More come!” the Fremen beside Hawat barked. “Be ready. I’d hoped to have us away without more inconvenience.”

Inconvenience! Hawat thought.

He saw two more ’thopters swooping from high in the west onto an area of sand suddenly devoid of visible Fremen. Only eight splotches of blue—the bodies of the Sardaukar in Harkonnen uniforms—remained at the scene of violence.

Another ’thopter glided in over the cliff wall above Hawat. He drew in a sharp breath as he saw it—a big troop carrier. It flew with the slow, spread-wing heaviness of a full load—like a giant bird coming to its nest.

In the distance, the purple finger of a lasgun beam flicked from one of the diving ’thopters. It laced across the sand, raising a sharp trail of dust.

“The cowards!” the Fremen beside Hawat rasped.

The troop carrier settled toward the patch of blue-clad bodies. Its wings crept out to full reach, began the cupping action of a quick stop.

Hawat’s attention was caught by a flash of sun on metal to the south, a ’thopter plummeting there in a power dive, wings folded flat against its sides, its jets a golden flare against the dark silvered gray of the sky. It plunged like an arrow toward the troop carrier which was unshielded because of the lasgun activity around it. Straight into the carrier the diving ’thopter plunged.

A flaming roar shook the basin. Rocks tumbled from the cliff walls all around. A geyser of red-orange shot skyward from the sand where the carrier and its companion ’thopters had been—everything there caught in the flame.

It was the Fremen who took off in that captured ’thopter, Hawat thought. He deliberately sacrificed himself to get that carrier. Great Mother! What are these Fremen?

“A reasonable exchange,” said the Fremen beside Hawat. “There must’ve been three hundred men in that carrier. Now, we must see to their water and make plans to get another aircraft.” He started to step out of their rock-shadowed concealment.

A rain of blue uniforms came over the cliff wall in front of him, falling in low-suspensor slowness. In the flashing instant, Hawat had time to see that they were Sardaukar, hard faces set in battle frenzy, that they were unshielded and each carried a knife in one hand, a stunner in the other.

A thrown knife caught Hawat’s Fremen companion in the throat, hurling him backward, twisting face down. Hawat had only time to draw his own knife before blackness of a stunner projectile felled him.