40

As Merral reached the bottom of the slope, the sled, full of men in uniforms grappling with gear and weapons, came silently skimming down through the shadows toward him. It slowed down briefly. He clambered clumsily on board, and outstretched hands guided him roughly into a seat near the front. The sled renewed its acceleration down the valley. All around him, Merral glimpsed anonymous-looking, pale, stern-faced men bracing themselves, holding guns, and checking webbing and straps. Lorrin Venn, scared excitement written across his face, passed him a helmet, while someone else fastened a belt around him. As someone passed him a small package labeled with ominous red symbols, Merral heard Frankie, sitting at the front of the sled, yelling into his helmet microphone. Merral, unable to make out his words, presumed he was talking either to the Emilia Kay or Zak’s team.

Suddenly he turned to Merral. “What happened?” he shouted, tightening his helmet strap.

“They fired a big ball of flame without warning!” Merral yelled back, aware of the men around him on the sled listening. “It exploded over them. They didn’t really have a chance! Then they fired again!”

Frankie shook his head angrily and turned to face forward.

The rock-strewn valley was opening up on either side of them now as they raced down, and then suddenly they were out onto the flat delta surface and into the full glare of the rising sun. Philip slowed the sled down to align it with the exact coordinates for the computer-controlled approach.

To the south of them, Merral glimpsed a turbulent column of dense white and gray smoke spiraling up from the waters of the lake. He tried to derive some comfort from its quantity, telling himself that it looked as if someone at least had survived long enough to trigger the smoke canisters.

“Now!” Frankie shouted. Merral caught a glimpse of Philip hitting a red switch newly welded on the control panel.

The booster pack ignited.

There was a surging, booming roar from the rear of the sled. Merral, pressed back against his seat, felt the hull beginning to vibrate like a beaten drum as the sled raced, with growing speed, over the desolate ground and green reed clumps.

They were still accelerating as they came to the water’s edge, and Merral found himself holding on even tighter as the slipstream began to whip past him and snatch at clothing and straps. The sled was impossibly low, and he felt that there was barely a handbreadth between them and the wave crests. Every so often they clipped the top of a wave with a hissing slap and the sled gave a little bound that made Merral’s tense stomach quiver again. At any second, he expected the sled to overturn. Glancing back at the shoreline they had come from—already diminishing into the distance—he could see the wake of spray and fumes trailing behind them. They will have seen us now, he thought, looking ahead to where the great dark silhouette of the fuselage of the intruder ship was now rising up above the approaching shoreline.

Merral braced himself again, remembering that at any moment the computer would use the gravity-modifying engine to flick the sled sharply to the side. A maneuver, he unhappily reminded himself, that they had never done at anything like this speed and that the sled had never been designed for.

Now!

The sled jerked a dozen meters to the right, bobbed sharply, and struck the wave crests with a great slapping noise. Merral felt that if he hadn’t been strapped in he would have been thrown free of his seat. Yelps of exhilaration mixed with alarm went up from the other men. Over the roar of the motor, Merral could hear the creaking of the titanium skin and girders under the strain of the jump. The sled wobbled, smacked the water again, recovered its equilibrium, and raced onward.

Merral peered ahead, squinting into the dazzling sun, his eyes fixed on the intruder ship still visible only as a vast silhouette.

They were still accelerating but no longer at such a fast rate. Merral saw that they were already halfway across the lake.

They hit a wave. Water flew up everywhere into the sunlight, and for a second, a faint, ghostly rainbow appeared. A covenant sign, Merral told himself, his mind numbed by the wild vibration. We must have hope and have faith.

The sled shot sideways, this time to the left, and again he found himself pounded back against the seat frame.

Now there was spray all around him, and Merral felt cold water on his face and seeping into his clothes.

From under the rear of the intruder vessel came a bright yellow flash. Then, like an infant sun, a glowing orange disk of fire came streaking straight toward them.

There was shouting around him. Everyone ducked.

Just as it seemed that they would be engulfed by the spinning fireball, the sled suddenly shot to the right. Barely two meters away, the fiery sphere—a man’s height or more in diameter—flew past them with an angry hissing noise. The smell of steam and smoke drifted past from its wake.

Merral was suddenly aware of a new grimness on the faces of the men around him. Any remaining exhilaration had been removed by the realization that they had been fired upon. The beach was fast approaching, and there were other questions to ask.

Merral wiped cold spray from his eyes and tried to focus on the bouncing image ahead. The black ship now dominated the view, and below it Merral could make out distinct shapes of the long-limbed, slouching ape-creatures. At their feet, cockroach-beasts with their restless rocking movements scuttled around. Merral had a worrying impression that there were more of them than there ought to be. The ship, too, was bigger than he had imagined.

We’ve miscalculated. His stomach lurched. It’s too late to turn back.

There was another flash, but this time it came from the nose of the ship and the sphere of flame flew north over the waters. A second gun, Merral thought in alarm as he traced the projectile’s motion. Its target, another dark dot trailing spray and fumes behind it, was racing onward to the intruder ship.

He jabbed the man next to him. “Look! Zak’s team!” he shouted, and as he watched he saw the second sled jink sideways. A moment later, the ball of flame sprinted harmlessly past it.

His own sled lurched violently to the left again, and water flew around them.

He could hear Frankie and Philip shouting together, their voices barely audible over the roar of the booster, the hiss of spray, and the booming slap of the hull against the waves.

Frankie leaned toward Merral, bellowing at him with exaggerated movements of his mouth. “Sir, Philip wants to go straight at the gun! A smoother landing there. Better hang on tight!”

Then there was another burst of light from the rear of the great black ship, and Merral saw a new flaming sphere coming toward them.

No! He suddenly saw with relief that it was aimed to their right and would easily miss them. Then he realized that it had been so directed that when—as must happen any second—the sled made the next lateral slip, their rightward slide would take them into its path. Their tactics had been deduced and already countered.

“Down everyone!” Merral screamed, pressing himself down against the hard wet metal and expecting at any second to be thrown into the water.

Suddenly the sled lurched.

But to the left.

The flaming globe hissed well away from them. Merral made a mental note to praise whoever had written the program. If he got the chance.

As he looked at the shore, his relief was short-lived. They were barely seconds away from the water’s edge, and they were clearly going too fast. The beach was rough and boulder strewn, and the cliff face beyond it seemed horribly close. They had to decelerate.

Merral watched Philip maniacally flicking switches. He was struck by the fact that there was now water slopping around inside the hull and that his feet were already soaked.

The booster cut out.

At that precise moment, Philip tugged on a control panel lever. The nose of the sled rose up into the air and the rear end struck the water with an awesome, shuddering crash.

For a fearful instant, Merral, flung viciously against his safety belt, was aware of boiling white water below and pale blue sky above. From all around him came the awful noise of creaking and flexing metal. Just as he was sure they were going to tip over, the nose came down and cracked onto the water in a bone-jarring blow. A fountain of white spray gushed up all around.

The sled ploughed on.

They were slower now. Yet a glance at the shore ahead where the sands were glittering in the new sunlight showed they were still not slow enough. On the intimidating, charcoal black bulk of the ship he could make out details of the fins, ramp, and legs. Beneath the ship, creatures of both sorts were running around across the gleaming sand like animated black paper cutouts, their legs kicking up little sprays of sand as they ran. With a ghastly feeling in the pit of his stomach, Merral realized that there were far too many intruders. They had indeed badly miscalculated.

There was a screaming whine as the engines were thrown into reverse. Out of the corner of his eye, Merral glimpsed red lights flashing furiously on the control panel.

Philip was turning the sled now, swinging it toward the rear of the ship, tilting it like a racing yacht. Now they were aiming straight for where two of the ape-creatures, their odd shapes warped still further by vastly elongated shadows, were swinging the barreled gun toward them.

Sensations now came in so fast that Merral had barely time to assimilate them: rippled sands under the water, little waves breaking against the strand, spray in his face, intense black shadow under the ship, Philip suddenly flicking the gravity-modifying engine switch, the knife edge of fear in his stomach.

The sled struck the water again with a ferocious, deafening smack.

For a second it bounced up and then, lunging forward, thudded heavily onto the shore.

There were now new sensations: the scream of metal on sand and rock, the hissing spray of grit flying everywhere, the mountainous rear of the ship sliding above them like a vast black roof blocking out the sun, and the dull brown pebbly cliff racing toward them.

At the gun, black animal shapes were suddenly trying to throw themselves out of the way.

They struck the gun.

There was a prolonged grinding crash of metal upon metal. With an appalling soft, liquid thud, something large and black and as limp as a child’s toy flew overhead, its outstretched limbs flailing against the sun.

The sled slewed and jolted crazily and then, with an insane ear-piercing screech, they came to a halt in a cloud of dust and sand.

For a brief, stunned instant there was a numbed silence.

Then, apparently from everywhere at once, furious shouts and cries erupted. Some—familiar and human—were from the sled as the men tried to leap free. Others—wild and animal—came from underneath the intruder ship.

Merral, partly dazed by the impact, fumbled for his belt release catch and clambered free, trying to orient himself. They had stopped just behind the intruder ship. As he stood unsteadily on the sand he could see, towering above him as high as a five-story building, the curved, blackened rear surface of the ship broken only by three inset thruster nozzles.

The foot of the cliff was less than ten meters to their right. As he realized how close they had come to hitting it, he heard a sudden, bellowed warning.

Something the size of a small man, brown and shining like wet wood, was racing toward him. On the edge of his vision, Merral saw another cockroach-beast coming from his left. Behind that was another. And another.

Merral raised his gun and, trying to steady his shaking hands, flicked off the safety switch. There was a gratifying hum from the stock as the electronics came to life. He sighted on the heaving chest of the cockroach-beast and fired. The gun hissed. Merral saw the hard central ridge of fused plates become momentarily illuminated with a red disc of light. There was a faint wisp of smoke. With a rattling and spluttering scream, the creature toppled over.

As Merral trained his gun on a new target, there were bellows, screeches, and yells all around him, and he was suddenly aware that he was in the midst of a bitter and chaotic hand-to-hand battle. All about him soldiers, ape-creatures, and cockroach-beasts were locked into a melee so intense that it was impossible to work out what was happening. Immediately to his left, a yelling man was kicking wildly at a cockroach-beast slashing at his legs with its bladed fingers. Barely thinking, Merral reversed his gun and swung the butt as hard as he could against the creature’s plated head. There was a sharp and sickening crack, and the beast was flung backward onto the ground.

The soldier the beast had been attacking aimed his gun and fired repeatedly at it. There was a smell of blood, steam, and fear.

Another cockroach-beast, its carapace the color of old leaves, leapt ferociously at Merral, who dodged desperately to one side. Its pincer-like digits slid a handbreadth away from his face and clattered harmlessly on his armored jacket.

For a fraction of a second, Merral glimpsed dark eyes glaring at him and the moist, twitching slot of a mouth opening and shutting around yellowing, needlelike teeth.

Thrown off balance, his attacker tumbled to the ground beyond him. With a leap of surprising energy and speed, it sprung back upright and turned to face him, chattering angrily as it flexed its armored legs.

As Merral raised the gun, it jumped at his face. Instinctively, Merral jabbed with the barrel, striking the creature in the neck while it was in midair. The beast toppled back and hit the sand. As it tried to rise, Merral, aiming the gun by intuition, fired twice. With an uncontrollable rattling of limbs, the cockroach-beast fell back onto the bloodied sand.

Almost at his feet, a soldier, his helmet awry, was rolling on the ground, locked in a bitter embrace with a thrashing black ape-creature that almost dwarfed him and whose arms were clamped round his throat. A fellow soldier danced around the struggling pair, stabbing and slashing away with his bush knife at the hairy limbs whenever he could. Beyond him, another man, screaming in fear or anger—or both—was furiously hitting a further ape-creature in the face with the butt of his gun.

As Merral ran over to help, he saw two more ape-creatures running toward him with their elongated arms held high and their teeth bared. He turned, fired, and missed. He found the focus beam switch with wet fingers, slid it to the “wide” setting, and fired again and again. The shots seemed to have no effect and the creatures were almost upon him. Then, as suddenly as if it had been a machine, the leading ape-creature stopped dead in its tracks. Its jaws opened wide in a howl of pain and it began slapping its shoulder, from where Merral saw a trickle of smoke emerging. Suddenly a line of yellow flames flickered along the massive chest and leapt across to the wrist of the beating hand. With a series of pitiful screams, the creature turned and loped frantically toward the lake where it plunged its smoldering body into the waters. The other creature fled back under the hull of the ship.

Suddenly Merral was aware that the men around him were looking for new enemies. The attack was over. Around the sled were strewn the bodies of their attackers; perhaps seven cockroach-beasts and three ape-creatures, looking far less human in death than in life.

Frankie, his face streaked with blood and looking this way and that with a wild-eyed gaze, was gesturing frantically to a stack of metal struts and plates some way back against a pile of boulders near the cliff.

“Back! Over here!” he shouted, his voice hoarse. “Take cover!”

Slowly, their pale faces proclaiming their shock and horror, the men followed his gesture, picking up weapons and helmets as they went. Two were limping, one badly. A sobbing man was led away past Merral, clutching a hand shorn of fingers. An ape-creature writhed momentarily and then lay still.

Guns, chest armor, and surprise gained us this brief victory, Merral thought, a part of his mind marveling at his ability to analyze under stress. A glance around suggested that all of his men lived, but that two at least were injured to the point that they could take no further part in the fighting. Next time, it may be different. As the thought came, he realized that the next time might be only seconds away.

Frankie, his trousers torn and dirtied by red smears, ran over to him. “Sir, better take cover with us. . . .” He looked ahead under the ship. “There’s dozens more there!” he cried, his voice ringing with alarm.

Merral looked over to see more dark forms emerging off the ramp and gathering in the deep shadows under the hull. Instinctively, he ducked down behind the tilted sled, gesturing to Frankie to join him. As the lieutenant squatted next to him, Merral looked around, trying to take stock of the situation, noting that the remaining men were running or limping to take cover behind the equipment pile.

Frankie stared at Merral, his hands shaking. “I could never have imagined it, sir.” He swallowed and looked at Merral with astonished and troubled blue eyes. “Sorry, I’m kinda shaken up. I ended up sticking my gun barrel in the mouth of one of those ape things. I had to pull the trigger. . . .” He closed his eyes and shuddered. “Sir, can you imagine what happened?” he asked.

“Take it easy, Frankie,” Merral said, patting him on the arm, feeling faintly ridiculous as he did it. “You’ve a done a good job so far. Any ideas for the second half of the match?”

Frankie shook his head. “Sir, I’m afraid . . . well, I don’t think we can go ahead with the plan—” He looked around. “We are down to twenty-seven, twenty-six men. There’s another twenty or so of them and more coming. And that front leg’s past them. What do we do, sir?”

There was such a pathetic note in his voice that Merral felt a spasm of pity for him. The exercises at Tanaris had been so simple. This was reality. A situation they were unprepared for, a location away from where they were supposed to be, and an enemy that was more horrible and more numerous than they had expected.

“Zak’s team?” Merral asked. “Did you see what happened to them?”

“Zak’s team? Oh yeah. I think I saw them land north of the ship, sir. They were being fired on too. And there was a bay there.”

“Let’s hope they made it,” Merral said

Frankie glanced down, saw a smear of blood and black hair on the Lamb and Stars emblem on his armor jacket, and began to rub it clean with a finger.

“Sorry, sir. I guess I look a mess, eh?” Frankie’s jaw began moving up and down as if he were chewing something. Then he seemed to snap back into reality. “Sir, there are too many for us to attack.”

Merral glanced back to the rest of the team, who were taking cover behind the equipment piles and enlarging depressions in the sand. “True, Frankie. Let’s go for Game Plan B.”

“Game Plan B, sir? What’s that? I don’t remember that.”

“Easy, Frankie, easy,” Merral said, feeling that by trying to calm Frankie he was calming himself. “You get your men to take cover by those boulders. Dig down into the sand like they are doing now, but get them as deep as they can. And use that equipment for cover. If you can keep firing and hitting one or two of them, that will help. Slowly whittle them down until we get more people here.”

“Sir, is that okay?” Frankie asked, his eyes wild. “I mean we are supposed to take the ship. Orders.”

“I know, Frankie. But they aren’t going to fly away with everybody outside. Keep everybody there. If they show signs of taking off, then you can risk everything and run and attack the legs.”

Frankie’s eyelids flickered, then he swallowed, turned around, and began shouting instructions to the men to dig down and make defenses.

Merral looked ahead to the ship. Beyond the massive rear legs with their pipes and pistons, he glimpsed creatures running and hiding behind some of the piles of metal and camouflage sheets near the ramp. He turned his gaze to the lake, taking in the smoke still hanging over the water behind him. Where was the other sled?

Frankie nudged him. “Sir, should I call Perena and warn her?”

“Good idea. Hadn’t thought of that. If there are more of those guns around the ship, she could be in trouble.” He looked around. “Tell her to come in from the east and land the men on the slope above the ship. But not to approach from the lake.”

“Yeah. Land on the cliff top . . . Makes sense. It’ll give us some protection from an attack up there. Okay. I’ll do it.”

“Good,” Merral answered, relieved that, in spite of being traumatized, his lieutenant showed signs of being able to think. “If these things get up top, we’ll have a problem.”

“Yeah, sir. Right. We don’t need another attack from there.”

As Frankie took out his diary and talked into it, Merral examined the ship further and wondered how he was supposed to make an entrance. The ramp itself was out of the question. It was almost a hundred meters away, and he could see dark forms edging out cautiously in front of it. It would take at least a hundred men to assault that entrance.

But was the ramp the only possible access point? Merral turned his attention to the complex lattices of discolored pistons, struts, and pipes that made up the rear legs. Stained by grease, they ran up some twenty or more meters from the great square feet and extended up inside the fuselage. On the back of the right leg was a narrow metal ladder that ran up from near the ground into fuselage wells where it was screened by some sort of hanging bay doors.

Merral decided there was a reasonable chance that it connected with the ship’s interior. Anyway, there seemed no other option. He planned his actions. A short, rapid dash would bring him to a leg; once there, the leg would give him cover as he climbed, and at the top, the hanging doors would give further protection.

Frankie’s voice, now slightly brighter, broke into his thoughts. “Sir, I got through. She’ll be with us in fifteen minutes and will off-load the men to the east as close to the ship as she can. I guess we stay down here and wait and fire at the creatures, I suppose.” He seemed to catch Merral’s gaze. “Sir, you’re not still going to try and get inside?”

“Yes,” Merral answered. “That’s what I’ve been told to do. Can you and the others make a distraction? get those intruders to keep their heads down?”

“Sir, if you think it’s wise . . .” Frankie’s expression suggested he was of another opinion.

“Wise? I’m not sure,” Merral replied, aware as he spoke that someone had run up to join them from where the men were taking cover. He turned, recognizing Lorrin Venn and feeling a great relief that he was not badly injured. However his pale, fraught, and bloodstained face suggested that what was left of Lorrin’s enthusiasm had died in the fighting.

“Sir,” Lorrin spluttered to Frankie, revealing a torn lip and a chipped tooth, “we reckon there are men there. Under the ship. Wearing some sort of armor and with guns.”

As Merral peered into the shadows at the far end of the ship, something whistled past his head. There was a dusty explosion on the cliff wall.

“Lorrin, get down!” he bellowed, ducking down below the sled.

Aware that Lorrin had remained standing, he reached up and jerked the uniformed leg. “Get down!” he repeated.

There was a further whistle and, with it, a soft splattering noise.

The leg shook violently.

Merral stared up to see Lorrin clutching his throat, blood oozing through the closed fingers. With an expression of stupefaction on his face, Lorrin sagged slowly down to his knees as if in slow motion and then collapsed forward. Merral was suddenly conscious of Lorrin’s chest heaving under his armor and of Frankie gasping in horror beside him.

Treat it as a logging accident, Merral ordered himself. Go into the automatic first-aid mode you have been trained for.

“Lorrin,” he said, his voice thick and distant as he fumbled for his medical pack on his belt, “Perena’s going to be here soon.” He tore the pack open, his fingers jamming against each other. The ship has good facilities, and Felix Azhadi is a trauma-care expert.

As he pulled out the bandage, Lorrin thrashed sideways. Merral knew that it was too late for Felix or anybody to save Lorrin now. All he could do was clutch his thrashing wrist.

An only child, Merral suddenly remembered with a deep and piercing bitterness, as Lorrin twitched and kicked his way into death.

There were more fierce whistles overhead now. Something hit the cliff and stone chips flew out in a spray of fragments around them. Behind him, Merral saw some of the remaining men frantically digging deeper into the sand with bare hands and improvised tools. Others were heaving up metal struts to give them more protection.

Frankie, his face a ghastly white, was gaping at the body. He looked at Merral. “Sir, Lorrin’s dead?” he gasped, swallowing hard and blinking. “O Lord God . . . Sorry, sorry . . .”

“Yes, Frankie!” Merral said, trying to suppress both guilt and anger. “Now get back there and shoot back!” Return fire, the manuals had called it.

“And, Frankie, I’m going for that right rear leg and going up in from there. Tell everybody to aim for the men, not the creatures. The men are the ones with the guns. After you start shooting, I’ll count to five slowly, then run.” Merral was surprised at how cool his voice sounded. He looked at Frankie, wondering if his words had registered.

“Okay, sir; the right leg. A count of five. And Lorrin?”

Merral stared at the body by him, struck by the bloodied hand lying on the gray sand, its fingers wide open as if ready to receive something.

“Later. He’s gone Home.”

“Oh, what a mess. Sorry,” Frankie muttered, his fists clenching and unclenching, and Merral glimpsed tears in his lieutenant’s eyes.

“It is, Frankie. Better get back to your men. Stay low, and when I give you a signal, fire at the intruders. The men mainly.”

Frankie seemed to take control of himself. “The men. Okay. Be careful, sir.”

“I will be,” Merral answered automatically before he realized how stupid it sounded.

He saw Frankie touch Lorrin’s outstretched hand. “Sorry,” he said in a tone of immense sadness. Then, bent double, he raced back to his men.

Merral stared at the ship, forcing himself to concentrate on the task ahead and not think of Lorrin next to him, dead and silent.

There were shouted orders behind him, and more whistling sounds and small explosions broke out against the cliff. Something, somewhere, clanged off a piece of metal. Merral slung the gun across his shoulder and prepared to run.

He turned and caught Frankie staring at him with an inquiring look from over a bulwark of gray metal plates, stones, and camouflage fabric.

Merral crouched into a running position and raised his thumb.

“Fire!” came the shout, and there was a jumble of hissing sounds behind him. Bitter, angry shrieks came from under the ship. Merral slowly counted to five.

He ran.

He had intended to dodge from side to side, but in the end fear drove him to run as fast and straight as he could. Ducking as low as possible, he raced across the sand, expecting at any moment to feel something hit him. He was aware of the grit under his feet and things whining and whistling past him.

A stone or a ricochet bounced off his armored jacket with a harsh clipping noise. Sand spat up around him. Something seemed to skim by his helmet, and from somewhere there was the smell of burning.

Now, though, the ship’s leg was in front of him. Gasping for breath, Merral ran gratefully behind its protective bulk. But he knew he dare not stop.

Urgently, he began pulling himself up the ladder as fast as he could. He was under no illusions that the foot of the leg, midway between his men and the enemy massing around the ramp at the front of the ship, was safe.

Rung by rung, his chest heaving under his armor, Merral clambered upward, aware of the heavy gun tugging at his shoulder and the bush knife clattering against the ladder.

He was no more than a dozen rungs up when he felt the ladder vibrate sharply. He glanced down to see an ape-creature, its black hair lank and wild, climbing up after him with fluid movements of long arms. It turned its face up to him, showing bottomless dark eyes and pale flaring nostrils.

Merral redoubled his speed but, in a second, his ankle was grabbed in a ferocious and tightening grip.

Barely thinking, Merral slipped the gun off his shoulders, grasped the strap and let it drop butt first.

There was the sharp crack of metal on bone as the gun’s butt struck the creature’s skull. Merral heard a soft groan. The pressure on his ankle was suddenly released, and something large and heavy tumbled down, striking the ladder as it went.

There was a deep thud from the landing leg pad.

Without looking down, Merral shouldered the gun and resumed his hectic scramble upward. Weighed down by his weapon and encumbered by the stiff armored jacket and helmet, he found the climb difficult. Twice he felt his feet slide on the oil-stained rungs. Below him, and from under the ship, he could hear renewed firing and wild screaming in response. Trying to ignore it, Merral kept on climbing.

Suddenly he found himself inside the dark sanctuary of the undercarriage cavity. There, gasping for breath, he paused and listened to the shouts and noises from below. He glimpsed, far below, the still figure of the ape-creature sprawled on the sand at the foot of the ladder. It could almost have been asleep, but the pool of glistening crimson fluid around it denied that interpretation. There had been deaths all round this morning. Merral felt a spasm of pity for the creature he had slain. He wished it were all over. He glanced back to where, beyond the tilted sled and the intruder bodies, he could see his men behind the piles of metal tubing and rocks. They were feverishly scooping and pushing away sand to make their position more fortified. With their backs protected by the cliff, it seemed a reasonably secure position. If there were no further direct assaults, they might be safe until the reserves arrived.

He pulled himself up onto a narrow mesh walkway at the top of the ladder and stood up cautiously, catching his breath and looking around in the gloom. There was a strong smell of grease, and from somewhere came the humming of pumps. Panting from his exertions, he glanced around at the untidy complex of piping and cabling about him. He saw a number of labels in a red spidery script that he had never seen before. Despite the incomprehensibility and ugliness of the lettering, he was struck by what he saw, sensing that there was something about both the writing and the labels that spoke of humanity. Indeed, as he looked around, he felt that the whole structure, with its tubes, pistons, nuts, and bolts, seemed in some way, of human origin. There was nothing here, he was sure, that was alien. Wrong perhaps, but not alien.

Pushing such thoughts to one side, Merral concentrated on trying to enter the ship. To his relief he saw that ahead of him the gangway extended to an oval, polished, gray metal door. He approached slowly, fearful that it would be locked or that it might open to reveal attackers. He held the gun at the ready in case the door should suddenly open.

To the right of the door Merral noticed two triangular buttons. A tentative press of one of them caused the panel to slide sideways with a hissing noise. Beyond it was an ill-lit, green-painted corridor that seemed to run sideways across the vessel. As the door opened, Merral was assailed by a stale organic smell, reminiscent of old garden compost but somehow more acrid, that made him wrinkle his nose.

So, I can now enter the ship. Yet he paused.

Somehow, he was reluctant to trade the fresh air and indirect daylight of the undercarriage bay for this fetid, dark tunnel. He steeled himself to enter, but with one hand gripping the edges of the doorway, a thought suddenly struck him.

He could, he realized, simply place his charge here, trigger it, and slip back down the ladder. With this hatch blasted away or—at very least—rendered useless, the intruders would have to stay in the Farholme atmosphere. To Merral, the idea suddenly seemed a compellingly sensible proposal. It avoided the risk of his entering the ship at all. Indeed, it had the great advantage that he could be back with his men in moments. And wasn’t that where he belonged? The only problem was that the envoy had ordered him to enter the ship and do battle with the creatures inside. Yet as he thought about that command, a doubt surfaced. After all, he told himself, the envoy had not stated exactly when he had to enter the ship. Could it be perhaps that they were to achieve surrender first?

In a second, his initial doubts had multiplied. Who really was the creature that had appeared to him earlier? In fact, was he so sure it was right to obey him? After all, did not the Scriptures say that the devil himself could appear as an angel of light? Perhaps—and the idea came to him forcibly—it was a trick to lure him to his destruction.

Anyway, even if the envoy was not some demonic phenomenon, Merral told himself that it could not be ruled out that he was merely some sort of vision, a figment of his imagination as it labored under the stresses of the day. As he reflected on the idea that the envoy was either an illusion or a demonic visitation, he became aware of an appealing corollary to such interpretations. In either case, he had no obligation to keep the unwelcome promises he had made concerning Anya and Isabella. It was an attractive idea. And yet—

Torn by uncertainty and trying to stave off a decision, Merral leaned farther inside. As he did, he caught his finger on something sharp and felt a sudden stab of pain. He snatched his hand away and sucked the gashed fingertip.

His attention painfully drawn to the door, Merral glanced around the frame, noticing that there were in fact numerous rough metal edges. He was surprised. Assembly practice was always to round and polish smooth all surfaces, whether visible or invisible. Such carelessly raw edges would never have been allowed on a finished product.

In a moment his perspective changed, and he now realized that there was something about this ship that he hated to an intense degree. Fueling that hatred was a certainty that this vessel was at the heart of the corrupting evil that had descended on his land. And as his hatred blossomed, he felt that every one of the dreadful events that had happened since Nativity had ultimately originated from this ship.

Merral suddenly became aware how strange his delay at entering the ship had been. Could it have been that he had been somehow influenced? tempted? Well, he decided, if that was the case then the attempt had failed.

With renewed determination and a new anger, Merral set the cutter gun beam on wide focus and checked that the status light was on red.

Then with a brief prayer and a final glance at the ground far below, he entered the ship.