On the one hand he was fairly astonished to find that there really had been some kind of animals or creatures involved. The video made that clear. On the other he was relieved that the Directive 115 emergency was over. And yet he would have liked to have seen some action, perhaps an orbital reduction of the planetary surface even. All this jumping around, mobilizing the Sector Fleet, complete disruption of normal operations. It needed something more.

Jean Povet was whispering to Chang again. "Colonel, I have Scopus Central on Deep Link."

"Admiral, I'm sorry but I've got Central Command on line."

Heldheim's face froze tight. Tohoto!

So his intelligence had been correct. This Chang was a plant from Central. They were after him, the bastards! They thought they could pull him down over this ridiculous penny-ante smuggling racket on Wexel. This was a chump change exercise that he allowed to reward worthy subordinate types, like Cachester.

"Colonel Chang here," Luisa said.

"Chang, this is Tohoto."

"Sector General, what can I do for you?"

"First you must accept our congratulations. We have seen breakdown of latest video transmission.

There have been casualties but the menace has been contained. You did well."

"Thank you, Sector General."

"However, this is not entirely over."

"No, indeed not, sir, we still don't know the creatures' movements."

"Indeed, indeed. But we do have the witness, this Professor Reese?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good, I want her right away. Frigate Shaka will collect her from Empress Wu within six hours your time."

Jean Povet was whispering again. And the Sector General was still speaking.

"Colonel, I have Sergeant Lagedeen, he has some information I know you'll want to see."

"Excuse me, Sector General, one moment.

"What kind of info, Sergeant? I have the sector general on Deep Link."

"It concerns a credit card, one from that farm where we know there was an attack."

"The Benuil farm up in the Ruinarts."

"Right, there was an ATV missing from that farm which we have been unable to track. However, the South Kara police have just notified us that a check of the data banks shows that a credit card belonging to Jaad Benuil was used several times in South Kara state."

Chang pursed her lips. South Kara State was on the other side of the Ruinart Mountains from Doisy-Dyan. What might this mean?

"Jean, tell the Shark to get back here at once. Sector General, it appears we have a potential lead on more Directive 115 activity.,'

"What is it?" said Tohoto, plainly unused to being kept waiting on a Deep Link line for any reason.

Chang briefly explained and then asked for orders to countermand Heidheim's order that she present herself aboard Empress Wu.

Tohoto assented and passed them to Heidheim, who accepted with a stony face.

Chang ordered Blake and the rest of the assault squad to get aboard the Shark when it reappeared.

"Okay, Jean Povet, scramble on this. I want to see a schematic of the movements of that card."

"Right away, sir. Strand will have that for you momentarily."

With a tremendous thrum of rotors the Shark reappeared, and sank down onto the Parc. Chang hurried to board. Hopester was watching; he fell in behind, signaling to Lei to follow.

They slipped back on board the Shark right behind Cormondwyke and the strike team.

The Shark took off again and climbed away from the tower while Chang ascertained that there was enough fuel for another suborbital passage if that was needed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

THERE WAS JUST ENOUGH SPACE, AND BARELY ENOUGH AIR IN the small cargo container, for Rhem and whatever it was that Reena and Larshel had become. The smell of Reena's burnt skin was horrible.

Reena had saved them by prying up one end of the shuttle's cargo hold door. The ship was already in boost mode; there was no going back, mainly because everything back there was getting extremely hot right then.

Rhem crawled inside. Larshel forced his way in and helped Reena in last. She'd been burned., there was the smell of roasted flesh in the air.

The shuttle was lifting off, the g-forces were rapidly increasing, the thunder of the engines filled the world.

Rhem felt his hair standing on end. The light in the cargo hold was dim, but it was enough to see that Reena was still moving around with virtually undiminished capacities, and yet her backside had been cooked to a crisp. Her clothing was mostly gone; the plastics had melted right onto her skin in places.

How could she still be doing this? It was impossible; any human being would be lying down, screaming with pain.

Meanwhile, Larshel had broken into a cargo pod. Thousands of reels of tape-complex spilled out. A few reels popped and unwound. With a few brisk motions the Larshel thing dug the rest of the tapes out and pushed Rhem inside before following with the singed Reena.

Once inside the things managed to pull the cargo pod closed and sealed it airtight.

The g-forces crushed Rhem to the floor of the pod, but they didn't kill him. Soon the shuttle boosted clear of the atmosphere and entered low orbit. Rhem recovered a little, although breathing the fetid air was soon pretty disgusting.

They knew they'd reached the orbiter by the resumption of sounds, heavy thuds and clangs from all around them.

Aboard the orbiter the docking mechanisms opened the cargo bay, and they escaped into the cargo-access network.

In the light he saw that Reena's burnt skin had sloughed off. New pink skin had regrown beneath the burns. In a matter of minutes she was getting back to her naturally sensuous self, at least physically.

From the access network they broke into a maintenance well in the hab ventilation system. There they were able to rest temporarily. Rhem was asleep in a second or so.

He was shaken awake a little later. The Larshel creature had returned with frozen foodpax. Rhem wondered where it'd found them.

Still, nutrosteak, fries, and peas tasted great to Rhem no matter if it was frozen. He bit and chewed it as enthusiastically as the things, which swallowed it in large chunks. This gorging filled the little room with bizarre noises.

When they had eaten all the food, they rested. Rhem dropped instantly back to sleep.

He had no idea how long he slept, but all too soon he was shaken awake. The Reena thing was there.

It had new clothes on, a set of maintenance overalls with spaceboots. She, or it, tugged impatiently on his arm. He followed her on a tortuous route through the innards of the orbiter.

Eventually they dropped into a small maintenance station, where a roof panel had been removed.

It was a narrow room with a multiscreen observer station at the end.

One crewman had been killed there. He had been a solidly built young man with reddish hair. Blood had gummed up on the floor. It had dried on a lot of the equipment in front of the crewman's station.

The other crewman was locked in a deadly embrace with the Larshel thing. Larshel was clutched close to the man, connected by a number of gray-white growths that sprouted from mouth and nose and the forearms. The crewman was surrounded in a mesh of similar growths, or tentacles, which Writhed together slowly, like restive snakes.

As he watched the growths darkened and then sank into the meat of the doomed man.

The fellow's clothing had been stripped off his body none too gently and thrown aside. Larshel lay on top of him as if they were lovers. Then there was a whipping retraction; the snakelike tentacles pulled out of the man and vanished inside Larshel's body as he stood up.

Now the victim collapsed into a fetal ball and was placed to one side of the little room.

The Reena thing pointed to the screens. "What is happening? Find the information."

Rhem nudged the screen to television mode. Someone had been tuned to WEXnet 7, the premier newschannel, because up came their ongoing broadcast concerning the Directive 115 crisis.

Startling video of the dead things from Doisy-Dyan was being shown. The story of the Doisy-Dyan attack was the big news of the day. There was a lot of coverage.

Stunned, Rhem found himself catching up on the news. The disturbances in Doisy-Dyan had been the work of the creatures they had left back at the Penskava farmstead. These creatures were humans modified by wormlike alien lifeforms that could control and manipulate the human body, even change it, with complete ease.

Rhem stared at the Reena thing. That was it. They had taken over Reena and Larshel. That, that horror on the screen, that was what he was dealing with.

He found his mouth bad gone utterly dry.

This was the work of some terrible alien lifeform. They kept saying "Saskatch monster," and he thought of all the videos he'd seen involving monsters.

The Larshel thing returned with spacesuits; one still had someone in it, unconscious.

Rhem watched the Reena thing pull the man out of the suit and egg him. Tentacles grew out of Reena's hands, mouth and nose. They invaded the man, who woke up and struggled briefly with hoarse croaks before his body was taken. Later he was placed next to the other, darkening in the corner.

Captain Cachester had managed a rather smooth return to the ranks of the ITAA military.

With Chang's sudden disappearance toward the north, the coast became clear and Cachester and Forsht drove the Wasp back into town and right up to the first shuttle that was being readied for takeoff from Doisy-Dyan spaceport.

Only when he was off the ground did he call Commodore Benx and tell him that he, Cachester, was obeying Heidheim's order and reporting in person to the Empress Benx had merely snarled dismissively and turned back to the turmoil at CK Air&Space.

Then, aboard the orbiter, he had bumped somebody for the shuttle up the well to the Empress Wu.

Sitting there, feeling safe at last, he noticed that the woman sitting across the aisle was familiar. It annoyed him that he could not immediately identify her. She was blond, in mid-life, but he thought younger rather than older and a little heavy, a couple of kilos overweight perhaps.

Then it came to him; she was the one on the news video.

"You're Professor Reese, aren't you?" he said, leaning across toward her.

She had been sunk in gloomy introspection and was taken quite by surprise by this.

"Yes, how did you know?"

"They've got you spread all over the news; you're the one who dug the monster up."

"Actually, I didn't."

He snorted. "Come on, you're the one they've got. They're going to pin all this on you, that's the ITAA way."

He smiled at her, enjoying himself for the first time in days.

"The name is Cachester, by the way, Captain Cachester, commander of the Doisy-Dyan Space Center."

Her brow furrowed at that.

"I thought Colonel Chang was the commanding officer." He hissed and pulled back into his own seat and made a dismissive gesture.

"Chang is just the dirtside CO, the 624 OSF. Wexel is a Fleet Command posting; the planetary commander is normally Commodore Benx, to whom I report, myself. I'm normally second in command for the system."

Caroline was mused to a sullen amusement.

"So that's why they kept the shuttle waiting for you." He smiled faintly.

"You're in one hell of a lot of trouble, lady." "You bet I am."

"You're going to do time, ITAA time."

"You think I don't know that? Are you trying to gloat or something?"

He blinked.

"You're the one that's responsible, aren't you? Everything I've seen says you dug this thing up and kept it secret."

"No, I wasn't the one who dug it up. You don't understand, nobody understands."

He chuckled mirthlessly. "I'm afraid you're simply a traitor to your race. I don't know exactly what it is you've done, but those things killed a helluva lot of people. They are really going to make an example out of you."

With which cheering observation he slid back completely into his own seat and left her alone.

Chang's Shark zigzagged northward across South Kara State like some colossal metal dragonfly, as she tracked the now uncovered trail of the unknown creatures.