"We're at fifty thousand feet, pre-chutes deployed," he announced completely casually.

"Captain Blake, so good of you to check in. What the hell do you mean by dropping without orders to?"

"Sorry, sir, I thought situation demanded it."

"No song and dance, Blake, but you do that again and I will have you court-martialed without fail. Do you read me?"

Blake grunted his assent.

"Now listen up, Captain. I want you to drop along the south side of the field. Drop at combat speeds, there's an accurate sniper down there."

"Where's the enemy, Colonel?"

"As far as we can tell they're occupying parts of the terminal buildings."

Blake hesitated for a second. "Look, Colonel, in that case we should drop right onto the terminal building."

"Captain Blake, I don't need any heroics from you right now. There's no need to risk any men just yet.

We'll deploy defensively around the field. If I need any heat applied, Yang can drop orbital fighters, or torpedo them from orbit even."

"Colonel, while the enemy are in such small numbers we should go in and get them. Before they can break out."

"i'm not risking men just yet. You'll drop to the south side of the field and form up in line."

"Colonel Chang, I'm having trouble hearing you," Blake said after a pregnant pause.

"Blake, stop that, don't you Darel"

Something in her tone moved Blake to compromise. "We're dropping on the far side of the field, Colonel, and then we'll form up and move on the terminal building."

"You drop on the south side and form up in line and you wait for my orders, you hear me, Captain Blake!"

"Yes, sir."

"Good, Chang out."

Major Yang from the orbiter was waiting.

"I have two fighters descending now, Colonel, ETA four minutes if you want."

"Hold off for now. I want an attack capability every five minutes from here on, can you do that?"

"Of course, Colonel, at combat strength of two fighters in each slot."

"Good, I'll be on the scene within the hour. We need to contain these things and if possible to capture them."

"Is that Directive 115, sir?"

"Yes, Major, it is. An attempt is to be made to capture them if the situation allows it."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then we incinerate them."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE.

FROM THE ROOF OF THE BLISTER THEY SLID DOWN, UNDETECTED, to the chopper-park platform. A group of people was filing aboard a nearby helicopter for the half-hour trip to the suburb of West Bream.

At the last moment they joined this group and pushed on board behind them.

It was a wide-body, with seats for eighteen people in the cabin. The hostess approached, a frown forming.

Rhem Kerwillig stepped forward and spoke quietly in her ear. "Listen, these two behind me have weapons and they will kill you at once if you do not let them stay aboard."

Her eyes flashed wide in fear. She'd been afraid this might happen today, as a result of the massive panic. Some crazies with guns would try and hijack the chopper.

She leaned back mentally to her survival training. She was supposed to pretend to cooperate. Then press the emergency button that would activate the chopper's defenses against gunmen. After that she'd have two seconds to hit the floor and the microwaves would fry the terrorists' heads. After which she'd be doing her best not to look at the bodies.

That's what they told them to do in training school and that's what she would do.

But the intruders had other ideas. Rhem gestured to her to come into the rear of the jet, where the hostess station made a hidden space.

Once she was there the Reena thing stepped close and grabbed her around the arms and held her immobile.

"Don't make a sound, otherwise I know they'll kill you," Rhem begged.

The chopper was already lifting away; the passengers were either intent on the windows or the TV screens in front of them. The Reena thing held her so hard it was impossible to touch any of the emergency buttons.

The tower park of Cowdray-Kara City faded behind them. Hostess Nanci felt totally helpless.

Something had gone wrong here; this was not the way it was supposed to be.

The Battlemaster, meanwhile, bad completed a scan of the control section of the helicopter. The hostess was the nominal pilot, a skill now reduced to simply typing in the chopper's destination on a small keypad. The controls were lodged in her station.

"Make change of destination," it said to her.

The hostess stared back at the Battlemaster. The woman holding her had the strength of several men; it was impossible to move, even to rock the woman back on her feet.

"Listen," Rhem Kerwillig whispered, "these people will kill you, I've seen them kill others."

'Where the hell are they from?" she hissed, close to complete panic.

"I don't know," Rhem said. "Just do what they say. Look, I'm trying to keep you alive, y'unnerstand?"

She fought down her urge to scream. She understood. In the training they had always told them that if for some reason one couldn't bit the emergency buttons one was to go along with the terrorists. One was to try not to excite them.

She was allowed to move to the little keypad computer station. She gave her thumbprint to the pad and then typed in the code to enter a new destination.

"All right, where do they want to go?"

She and Rhem were looking at the Battlemaster. It gulped, and the eyes seemed to pop in and out of the head.

"Get close to spaceport. Land close as possible," it rasped.

Hostess Nanci shivered; that voice just didn't sound human. Were these things people or some kind of cyborg device?

She compressed her lips. "Well, the closest we ever go to the spaceport is Bream Central. We set down there on a public "How far is that from the spaceport?" Rhem said quickly.

"I don't know, but I can look for you. Here's a map."

If they were cyborgs, then the microwave defense beams would have little effect. They would kill her right then and there. Hostess Nanci refrained from hitting the emergency button and diving to the floor.

The Battlemaster memorized the map. From the pad at Bream Central to the Air&Space boundary was five kilometers. The spaceport part of the complex was situated at the focal point of the lines of huge booster cradles that fanned out to the south and west. From the closest part of the boundary fence to the spaceport buildings was a distance of four kilometers.

Ringing this side of the spaceport was a six-lane highway, doubtless choked with traffic trying to reach the terminal. Past the highway was the spaceport fence.

Quickly the Battlemaster contrasted this information with what it had previously memorized from its survey of the human databases.

Twenty minutes later they put down at the pad in Bream Central. The Battlemaster had decided not to slay the passengers. It waited, holding the hostess tight, in the darkened hostess station until the passengers had left.

The passengers were now milling about the pad, baffled at finding themselves in Bream Central instead of West Bream.

The Battlemaster snapped Hostess Nanci's neck and laid her body down gently on the floor of the station.

Then they exited and moved past the passengers and into the pad's lobby.

An airline official was bustling toward them. "What's happening?" the official said.

"We don't know," said Rhem. The others pushed on, moving quickly through the lobby and out the door. The official stared after them for a moment before he was engulfed by a circle of passengers who wanted to know why they weren't in West Bream.

Outside they found themselves in an open space, surrounded by parking structures. A four-lane road ran straight as a die toward the spaceport, where an elevated highway could be seen, forming a great snake of concrete surmounted by glittering traffic glued fast in gridlock. Beyond this rose the rust-red booster cradles of the shuttle field.

The four-lane road was lined with large one-story buildings, warehouses, and manufactories. The Battlemaster, by now familiar with many aspects of the human culture, surmised at once that this was a nonresidential district.

It was important to move on from here at the best possible speed, however. There were some taxis waiting near the chopper pad. Rhem explained their function; the Battlemaster recalled reading of them in its survey of transportation modes in the human culture.

Rhem signaled to the nearest and they rode swiftly down toward the spaceport.

The road ran out in a bank of dirt. A few grimy shacks were dug into this dirt. Above it rested the concrete feet of the highway's pylons. Beneath the highway were centuries of trash. A few scraggly weed trees struggled to survive in the junk. More shacks, with drug-addicted wretches lurking within, were set upon trails hacked through the debris and vegetation. Nets were set up above to prevent tossed bottles and other items from hitting the shacks below.

The driver wanted credit. Rhem gave him the Benuil card, but it was returned. The credit line had been used up; it was worthless. Rhem told the driver that he had no other source of credit and that it would be best for the driver to just go away.

The driver, a heavyset fellow with an orange curly beard, thrust himself from his vehicle, his hand reaching for his side arm. What had once been Reena was already beside him. Her fist speared the man in the throat.

He buckled. Her right foot connected to his ribs and he went down. In a second the Secondary Form had removed the side arm and held it ready to execute the man.

The Battlemaster was aware that many human eyes were on this scene. If they killed this human it would bring more attention to their trail.

It bade the Secondary Form refrain. It told Rhem to send the human on his way.

Rhem swallowed. Whatever it was that was inside Reena, it knew how to move a human body at astonishing speeds.

"Look," he managed; his throat was dry. "Get the fuck out of here while you still can, got that?"

The taxi driver was happy to escape with no more than a bruised throat and ribs. He drove away at high speed.

"Come." The Battlemaster beckoned them on through the tumbledown slum shacks and mounds of debris beneath the highway. The inhabitants drew back behind their doors and stilled their chatter as they passed.

The Battlemaster had reasoned from the beginning that it would be too difficult to infiltrate as passengers aboard a shuttle ship at this time of panic and social hysteria. Security everywhere would be heightened.

The booster-cradle field was protected by a smart fence, sunk two meters into the ground, with posts every two meters. The three meters aboveground was topped by sharp-wire.

However, there were storm drains set around the field. These were a meter wide and were protected by heavy steel grilles. They were a feature of the design of these fields and a weakness that the Battlemaster had noted. The Battlemaster knew that the fence was computer-controlled from a central node of authority. The steel grilles in the storm drains, however, were not so connected. They were simply passive devices.

Rhem Kerwillig was wilting badly by now. It had been hours since they had last eaten anything. He had been going for hours and hours with this endless tension and stress, surviving on the leash of these alien monstrosities that infested the bodies of Reena and Larshel.

He watched and was staggered as the two things took hold of the heavy steel grille over the storm drain.

They heaved at it. There was a long, tense moment, when nothing gave, and then the concrete around the grille began to crack and flake and suddenly gave way on one side and the grille came free.

The things quickly tore it loose.

Rhem wondered if any of the massed motorists, stuck solid in traffic fifty feet above them, had heard enough to become interested in what was going on in the dark cleft of the storm drain. He doubted it.

He also doubted that any human beings before had ever performed such a feat.

Then it was time to get on his hands and knees and crawl into the drain. He protested with a groan; he was exhausted, why didn't they just kill him and toss him aside? But they had not finished with Rhem Kerwillig; they shoved him down and goaded him into the storm drain.

Climbing the drain was just about worse than death. It was narrow and dark and terrifyingly claustrophobic, and whenever he slowed the things struck him from behind and forced him on. There were bugs in there, too, probably kachi. He felt them run over his hands and once or twice they crawled on his body and in his hair.

It seemed to take forever, but eventually he discerned a light ahead, and with bleeding, battered hands and knees he finally arrived in a pool of light, beneath another grating set in a well some five feet above.

The things reached up and took hold of the bars. They gave a mighty heave, and the grating gave way in one corner and sagged in.

The Larshel thing reached up and pulled the sagging corner down with a terrific squeal of tortured metal.

There was just room to wriggle through now. The Reena creature went first.

They shoved and pulled Rhem through. He found himself on the landing field, in the shadow of a booster blast cradle.

Great, he thought, now we get fried when the next shuttle boosts out of here.