"Oh, shit, I don't know. I don't know anything about this. I was just holed up, outside the law, and this thing came in and made me go with it. And it killed everybody else, 'cept Larshel, it took him over like it took over Reena. And since then I've seen stuff, oh, man, I don't know how to say it. I mean, you wouldn't believe the weird shit I have seen. "

"Yeah, don't try right now. Just answer questions. "

"Yeah, fine with me. "

Suddenly the form of Reena jumped and twitched and her suit seemed to explode outward. Something white and gray moved across the surface of the ramp toward Rhem and Heldheim with the speed of a striking snake.

They screamed and hurled themselves away, and Rhem was the quicker by a good meter. He moved with the speed of instinct, like a rat dodging a rattlesnake.

The thing was on Heldheim's suit. It tore a way inside, through the seam under the right arm, frantic to get to warm flesh.

Heldheim tried to stop it with his left hand. It broke his wrist with a pair of small tentacles, and then it was inside and on his skin.

Heldheim was up on his knees and shrieking for mother and mercy and all the other things that people shriek for when such agony as this is applied. His shrieks rang over the commo channels as his body was invaded and taken as hostform.

"What the fuck is happening?" Chang screamed.

"It's on him, that thing, it came out of Reena and it's on him. Oh, shit, I saw it, it's inside his fucking suit!

I saw it get in. "

Heldheim was springing about with the desperate energy of a bucking bronco as his screams ascended into shrill whistles of agony.

"Fire!" Chang said.

Bullets smashed the-helmet and sent a fountain of red spray across the ramp surface.

It evaporated in seconds into the thin cold gas around them.

"Move, Rhem Kerwillig, before it can get after you!" the same woman's voice said.

Rhem needed no further urging; he sprinted toward them.

Behind him Heldheim's body came back to life and began to hop after him. More gunfire smashed it down and tossed both it and the dying Secondary Form inside it back down the ramp.

Rhem looked back and then slowed his pace. The thing was dead; not even the alien horror could live through that.

The people with guns were coming out of concealment. The woman was urging them to extreme caution.

"There's still one unaccounted for, where the hell is it?"

Rhem pointed to the eye-shaped opening on the inner wall of the gallery. "That's the one that used to be Larshel, it went into the pit through there. "

"It went through one of those openings?"

"Yes."

"Shit, it's climbing past us. Damn it, but it is just so damned, fucking tricky!"

Two of the figures carrying guns scrambled into the nearest hole and leaned out over the pit, playing their lights upward and then downward.

"Missed him, it got past us!"

"What's it trying to do?" a second woman said.

"It told us we were witnesses. We had to go back to the surface. It's gonna set the controls for the heart of the sun. "

"It said that to you? It talks?"

"You bet it talks. This was its homeworld, it took us to see the Gods."

"The Gods?"

"God-Kings then, I don't know. Anyway, they're all dead and they've been dead for a long time. "

Chang understood. "It's trying to get back to the Wu. Then it's going to jump the Wu into the primary, set off a supernova. "

"Oh, shit. "

"We better hurry. Move it, everyone, back to the surface, we've got to stop it from getting away. "

But even as they ran up the ramp, Chang knew she had been beaten again. The thing had got past her and was no doubt moving up the ramp much more quickly than she could.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT.

THEY RAN, THEY SCRAMBLED, BUT IT WAS STILL MORE THAN an hour before they staggered out of the caves and recovered the surface of the dead homeworld of the Gods of Axone-Neurone.

The shuttle from the Wu was gone.

Chang squatted down in despair, her breath echoing harshly inside her suit.

Neither of the drop ships could get off the surface, so they were stuck. If the Wu did what she expected it would do, they would die here when the primary exploded.

Caroline Reese understood all this perfectly well; she, too, felt a familiar sense of utter despair. This was the end, then, of their lives, in total waste, when they had so much strange and terrible information to give to the rest of humanity. It would all disappear with them. This left her feeling intensely angry and at the same time ready to laugh. It was inexplicable but there it was. The universe was a helluva place to live in, and it was just as bad to die in, too.

And then abruptly there came new hope. The commo crackled into life and Captain Thama of the frigate Essex broke in.

Essex was the advance guard of the Fleet, and she was insystem and close by the dead planet and in fact had already launched her pinnace boat for a rescue snatch from the surface, responding to the maydays from the Shaka's drop boats.

Chang moved across to the second drop boat and went inside through the evac lock. She turned on the boat's pilot commo station and got video of Captain Thama, a brown-skinned fulesian male with a serious demeanor.

Chang had no time for ceremonies. "Captain Thama, I'm Colonel Luisa Chang. I've got something that has to be relayed to Fleet Command. "

"Yes, Colonel, anything we can do."

Chang wondered, Was it possible? A Fleet captain prepared to cooperate for once-maybe her luck had changed.

"Tell them to hold off. If they come insystem the alien is going to jump the Empress Wu right into the center of the primary. It'll take it supernova and we'll lose everything here. Maybe even some ships from the Fleet. "

"Right away, Colonel Chang, your message is going on Deep Link now," came the response.

A moment later Thama was back. "Will you be ready for pickup by the pinnace in twelve minutes'

time?"

"Damn right we'll be ready. Just tell them to make it snappy and be ready to jump at a moment's notice.

That thing may not be waiting for the fleet to arrive before it jumps the Wu. "

Thama gulped; he had a thin neck and his adam's apple bobbed up and down.

"Oh, and one more thing," said Chang. "We have two men without spacesuits, so I hope that pinnace has some spares so we can get them out of the ship they're in without having to run a relay. "

"There are extra suits aboard the pinnace, Colonel, I'm sending instructions to the boat now. " Thama shifted slightly and looked away and then back to his conversation screen.

"All right, Colonel, got a reply off Deep Link for you. It says, 'Hold your position until pickup from Essex. Fleet Command will decide the course of subsequent action. The enemy is to be captured if at all possible. If that is not possible it is to be destroyed by combined Fleet action.' "

"Oh, no," groaned Chang. "Who's giving those orders?"

"That'll be Fleet Command, Colonel, Admiral Careno."

"If he comes in with the fleet I'm sure the alien will jump the Wu straightaway. It won't risk being disabled and captured. "

Seeing the look of disbelief on Thama's face, Chang hastened to try to explain.

"We've got a man here that we rescued from the thing. For some reason it never touched him. Told him he was to be a 'witness.' It told him what it was going to do."

"It told him?" said Thama. That was new to him; in his briefing the aliens only killed and destroyed, they never spoke to their victims. They certainly never let anyone live long in their proximity.

"It took him and Admiral Heldheim as prisoners down to the most sacred place on this burned-out old planet. Right inside this mountain I'm standing on."

"Are you saying Admiral Heldheim was alive?"

"He was alive until about an hour ago. He was killed by the aliens then in their usual manner. We then shot his body to fragments to make sure we killed the thing that was inside it. "

Thama's eyes were bulging. They had shot the body of a sector fleet admiral into fragments? And that admiral had given up his ship's Baada initiation codes? Thama gasped for air.

"This man was in the company of the alien?"

"Yes, and I realize he has to go into quarantine. We all have to go into quarantine. Probably you will, too, it's all under Directive 115. "

"Shit," said Thama, who glanced to one side as he sought some information from a side screen. "Damn it, you're right. Just my luck."

"It won't be so bad; luxury habitat."

"Quarantine with nobody but ITAA, oh, yeah, great."

Chang changed the subject. "The other thing is that this is probably the alien homeworld. We need to study it, in case this ever happens again. But we're going to lose it if he jumps the Wu into the sun. "

But Thama was still cursing his luck. "Quarantine, and who knows for how long? Shit. "

Chang felt the old irritations at work once more.

"Look, Thama, you'll get paid full salary all the while you're lounging in the pool and playing tennis and golf. It'll just be an extended vacation."

"All those medical tests"

"Shut it, Captain, I don't want to hear any more whining from Fleet officers. "

That got his attention; his eyes narrowed.

"Look, it's the damned thing's homeworld. We need to try and keep it for research purposes. "

"I don't know, Colonel. I'll pass your comments out on the Deep Link. If Fleet Admiral has any message for you I will relay it at once. Now, if you'll get ready for the pinnace I have to get on to some other things."

Chang turned around with a heavy sigh. She could only hope that the Fleet Command would pass her recommendations up the Deep Link to Over-Cluster. And then she could only hope that Over-Cluster would not make them a political football. And then, that they would act on them instantaneously, and by that time this whole place would probably be gone in supernova fire.

Virtually dazed, she opened the airlock; the thin air brought in more dust. She forgot the Schlesinger, leaving it hanging on the back of the chair.

Povet and the others were waiting for her.

"Well, we're due for pickup in a few minutes. They're going to land a pinnace right in here, so we'd better take shelter inside the drop ships. Then we need to move ass and get on board and get the hell out of here. "

"The alien is going to take the primary supernova, isn't he?" Povet said suddenly.

Trust Povet to have worked it out.

"The alien gives every indication of intending to suicide and to take every last trace of his race into nothingness with him, or it, or whatever the hell it is."

"Shit," Rhem Kerwillig said. "I hope that boat gets here in time. "

He sounded so calm, though it was primarily from exhaustion, that Chang wondered if he'd caught a case of phlegmatism from Jean Povet.

Just then Povet looked up and started to move; one hand pulled her Schlesinger up into firing position, the other slapped around the front grip.

But there was a burst of firing from behind them and Povet was hit and crumpled up and went down.

Chang was already diving away, and she already knew who was shooting and who was to blame for letting him.

Whoever had her Schlesinger didn't know how to use it all that well; Povet and Pentofski were his only victims on the first pass.

Then the ensigns were firing back with their side arms, and the gunman ducked back into the second drop ship, where he'd been hidden.