The Shark unloaded.

A hail of fifty-millimeter shells swept the aliens away. Nine millimeter machine guns pecked over what remained.

Glass, dust, fragments of flesh and metal showered into the street from each enemy hiding place.

The Shark probed through the murk with infrared and lasers. Anything soft and moving it shot and shot many times.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.

IT WAS OVER. THE SHARK SET DOWN WITH ITS USUAL BONE shaking thud in the middle of a small patch of grass known as the Parc Medina, and everyone clambered out.

Chang arranged for the Shark to refuel at DD ITAA base and then told it to return to the little Parc.

Chang found Darel Hopester and his camerawoman, Sig Lei, dancing along beside her. Hopester was taking this Live right across WEXnet 7 and then to all the other nets, planetwide. His voice was in his public mode, warm, reassuring yet newsy.

"Shattered glass is ankle-deep in some parts of the street here. I repeat, this is the Medina, the fashion hub of Doisy-Dyan, struck today by a murderous conflict with what are supposed to be alien lifeforms."

Hopester was pushing up beside her. "So, Colonel, is this it? Is the state of emergency over?"

Damn you, Hopester, how should I know?

She smiled; it was weirdly frightening to actually be on live TV with an audience of millions.

"We don't know yet, for sure. But the fighting here in Doisy-Dyan seems to be over."

There were troopers in the bulky armored suits of the orbital marine corps. They towered like giants on their exoskeletals. She recognized Cormondwyke.

Then Blake bounced in, with a crash and a hiss from his suit and skeletals.

"Colonel, we've checked pretty much the whole street here, and there doesn't seem to be any more of them."

"Thank you, Captain Blake."

"Cormondwyke's got something for us to take a look at now, you want to see it?"

"Of course."

She looked back; Hopester was right there.

"Uh, maybe you'd better get the viewers ready, Mr. Hopester. This may be pretty horrible."

Hopester just fed it all into the camera, warning the squeamish to turn their sets off right there.

Chang joined Blake down the street.

Shattered glass and wall ceram was piled up. Parts of a car, fragmented by the Shark's big guns, were scattered through the shards.

Blake and Cormondwyke were examining a collection of pieces of one of the creatures. They had about two thirds of one roughly pieced together on a paisley sheet blown out of some luxury-hotel window. It was vaguely human, but elongated and too thin.

"Still can't find the legs; we think they may be buried somewhere down that way," Cormondwyke said quietly.

"What the hell is it?" she said, staring at the shattered face. The skull looked like it might even have been human once, except that it had been compressed and elongated. A section of rib cage stood out sharply; the bones were dark gray, the flesh a pale pink.

"Far as we can tell it was a human being, a woman perhaps. But it's been transformed."

"By what?"

"This stuff." Using a rake, Comrondwyke pulled out some gray threads, then a darker thing the thickness of rope. He tugged hard and a length of this slipped out of the flesh in the dead thing's shoulder.

At intervals of an inch or so it was ringed with white tendrils. Membranes slid out with it, along with dark red blood.

"You can pull this stuff out of any piece of them," Blake said.

"That looks perfectly disgusting, gentlemen." Chang turned her head. Sig Lei caught the movement perfectly and then gave her a big wink. great TV!

"There's a brain like structure, too," said Blake. "Here."

He pushed over a pulpy, gray bag filled with a convoluted paste laced with blood vessels.

It had been shot completely away from the rest of the creature and had not been retracted.

Chang felt a shudder run down her spine.

"Directive 115 all right."

"You were right, Colonel," Blake said.

Hopester had Lei lens it all, but he kept his commentary very brief.

Cormondwyke turned to him and said in a loud voice, "Just think of having that in your body running things, telling you what to do, eh? A lot of gray slimy worms."

Hopester turned away.

Luisa was looking down the street; the incredible high tension of the past few days was starting to fade out of her. It was over and she'd made it! The things had attacked too soon, with inadequate strength.

The planetary forces had been alerted and were ready. This would be no Saskatch-type horror.

"So Luisa." Hopester was talking. "Is this it, is it over"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Until we get reports of more activity I guess it is. But I'm not relaxing the directive; we have a lot of work yet to do."

"Your gunship got them all."

"Except for the three that were killed in Bo-Dui."

"Nine altogether."

"Yes, not that many really. But they've caused an awful lot of casualties as it is."

Chang looked back at the disgusting stuff that Cormondwyke was still puffing out of the body. It was slippery with a weird mucus, and a fishy smell.

Was this it? Was this all there was to it. . this collection of slimy worms...?

It didn't seem worth all the commotion to her. She wondered, half-disgusted, if the Shark on its own could have handled this whole thing.

The story seemed terribly pat.

Alien critter gets loose and wreaks havoc on distant farm. Then a small group of critters attacks space base far away and then abandons base after meeting some resistance and flees through heavily armed city until delayed enough for the Shark to catch up. At which point they were annihilated and that was that Maybe they were all lucky to still be alive, but it seemed that the threat had been a whimper instead of a bang.

How had this wormy stuff managed to destroy a whole planet in that earlier era? What the hell really happened on Saskatch?

What were the people doing while this stuff took them over'?

No one would ever know, of course; there had been virtually no survivors.

Hopester was wrapping up a segment before the commercial break. Chang saw the light on Lei's minicam go blue.

"Good TV, Darel?"

He straightened up. "Great TV, Colonel. I want to thank you, on behalf of WEXnet 7, and everyone else on this planet, for what you've done."

"Well, thank you, Darel."

He was going to say something more but she held up a hand; Povet was beeping insistently in her ear.

"What is it, Jean?"

"Admiral Heidheim is on line for you, Colonel,"

"Thank you Jean. Hello, Admiral."

Hopester nodded; this was Luisa's area, it was time to butt out.

Heidheim sounded irritable. "What's going on, Chang? And where's Captain Cachester? We expected to pick him up hours ago."

"Well, sir, I'm not exactly sure I can give you an answer on either of those."

"What's that, Colonel? Are you telling me as planetary commander that you don't know what the hell is going on in your own command?"

Here we go again, thought Luisa. Back in the trenches of warfare with the Fleet.

"Well, Admiral, let me give you some answers. We had an assault on the ITAA space base here, as I'm sure you're aware."

"I am indeed and I want to see Cachester at once!"

"The assault group turned out to be small, and although they caused a lot of casualties they didn't try to hold the spaceport or even to steal a shuttle. They ran for it and wound up in downtown Doisy-Dyan, where they caused a lot of casualties and made a helluva mess but where we finally caught up with them and destroyed them."

"Destroyed them?"

"That's right, as of this moment we don't have any actives at all."

"They're all gone?"

Chang was savoring the moment. "I repeat, we have no actives."

Heldheim exploded. "This is supposed to be Directive 115.

And you're telling me it's all over?

"Well, I don't know that but I strongly suspect as much."

"Great grieti We've got half the damn Sector Fleet on its way here, and all for nothing. All because some dirt colonel gets a case of frights in the night and starts hollering for Directive 115!"

Dirt colonel! Luisa sucked in a breath.

"It was a Directive 115 situation, sir. We have plenty of physical evidence."

"Well, you'd better have, Colonel, because I want to see it. I've been hearing things from Captain Cachester and Commodore Benx that are deeply disturbing, deeply disturbing. Do you hear me, Colonel?"

Chang felt her cheeks coloring.

"This has been a Directive 115 situation, sir, you will agree once you see this stuff. You've had the video by now?"

"We've some wormy looking stuff all right. Anyway, I want to continue this conversation in the privacy of my own office.

Get yourself to a shuttle, Colonel, and report to me in person aboard this ship as soon as possible."

"Yes, sir!" Chang hoped Tohoto and the others would be able to protect her.

"How soon can you be here?"

"How soon, Jean?" she whispered aside.

Povet asked the Strand, and whispered back, "Shuttle is ready at Doisy-Dyan field. Changeover at Orbiter Ten and second shuttle to Empress Wu. Total time elapsed will be three hours fifty-two minutes."

"I'll be there in less than four hours, Admiral."

"Good, now, where's Cachester? I want to see him and I want to see him soon."

"Well, Admiral, I'm afraid the last I spoke to Captain Cachester he was in a ground-attack vehicle just outside the space base. He broke contact then and we've heard nothing more."

Heldheim was obviously unhappy with this news. And in fact, he was severely conflicted.