Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven

alongside him. It might have been a dirigible balloon with wooden decking along the top. Men swarmed out of an interior well, anchored themselves, and hurled something. It unfurled as it came: a net.
    Svetz twisted the throttle off and dropped under the net. They pulled it back and prepared to throw again.
    Something ripped the vessel wide open. For an instant Svetz could see into a tank running bow to stern, filled with gas glowing by the light of a vermilion laser. Then the glowing gas puffed out and the vessel dropped away.
    Wind sang a reedy melody, pulled at his helmet, set up a tremor in his flight stick.
    Martian vehicles dropped past him. Nobody seemed to be firing at Svetz. Some fired at each other. None tried to match the lifting power of Svetz’s flight stick.
    And then one did. A sky yacht was floating down toward him.
    He shifted laterally. So did the yacht, matching his lift. It was brick shaped, covered with masts and nets with no regard for streamlining.
    â€œMiya, a flying yacht tried to net me, and now I’ve got another,” he said. He looked for a target. He could glimpse men, but they were under hatches, firing through slits.
    Miya said, “I’m clear. I can get to you, but not fast. I’m already in the atmosphere.”
    They must have recognized his needle gun as a weapon. The ship rose above him. A net flew. He dodged. They pulled it back and threw again. He dodged.
    Air sang past him. He could feel heat on his shoes, the backs of his legs, his forearms.
    The sky yacht’s crew tired of trying to net him. He saw puffs of flame from covered slits, and tiny metal missiles whacked the back of his flight stick. The brush discharge sputtered blue lightning and he fell.
    Nothing had hit him. He was falling with a dead stick between his legs, but he wasn’t dead yet. He twisted every control. The stick only sputtered puffs of lightning. He kicked it away from him.
    The sky yacht was falling alongside him. The net came down again, and this time, rocket pack or not, Svetz didn’t dodge. The net swept him in, and the flight stick too, and pulled him toward a wooden deck.
    Svetz fished out the flight stick and threw it overside.
    The deck knocked the wind out of him. He felt it surge under him, the yacht pulling upward. “They’ve got me,” he said.

19
    In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people; they have no lawyers.
    â€”“A Princess of Mars,” by Edgar Rice Burroughs
    Â 
    â€œDescribe the vessel,” Miya instructed.
    â€œSeventeen meters by seven, fitted out like a boat, no keel, no aerodynamic surfaces. Two long tanks with a narrow cabin between. I’m not guessing about that; I saw a tank ripped open on another craft. There are firing points forward, kinetic energy weapons, a motor aft and a deck across the whole top. I’m lying on the deck.” And he looked up at a row of silver masks.
    They wound the net around Svetz to immobilize him. Svetz said, “They look like men, what I can see. Except … one.”
    â€œDon’t leave me hanging.”
    â€œIt’s just watching. Squatting with its knees way higher than its head. Bubble helmet isn’t quite big enough for its ears. It’s wearing just the helmet. It’s covered with white … feathers! Bird ancestry.”
    â€œHanny, it wouldn’t be related to anything from Earth.”
    The crew fished his needle gun out and gathered ’round to study that. One crewman fired at something as it fell past. When he saw no result, he fired a crystal into a wooden post. It left a tiny streak of white powder. He was not impressed. He kept the needle gun.
    Several crew picked Svetz up and turned him for inspection.
    They reached through the net and opened buckles until they had freed the rocket pack and could slide it off his back. They must have recognized the bell-shapes as rocket nozzles. They were careful with it, bracing it against the