Jason’s fingers hurt where he had them clamped to the chair arm. He pulled them loose and massaged them. On the screen the black-andwhite cave flowed steadily toward them. Minute after minute went by this way. Each time the animals attacked again, a few more gas grenades were used up.
“Something ahead-looks different,” the panting voice cracked from the speaker. The narrow cave slowly opened out into a gigantic chamber, so large the roof and far walls were lost in the distance.
“What are those?” Kerk asked. “Get a searchlight over to the right there.”
The picture on the screen was fuzzy and hard to see now, dimmed by the layers of rock in between. Details couldn’t be made out clearly, but it was obvious this was something unusual.
“Never saw-anything quite like them before,” the speaker said. “Look like big plartts~ of some kind, ten meters tall at least-yet they’re moving. Those branches, tentacles or whatever they are, keep pointing toward us and I get the darkest feeling in my head… .”
“Blast one, see what happens,” Kerk said.
The gun fired and at the same instant an intensified wave of mental hatred rolled over the men, dropping them to the ground. They rolled in pain, blacked out and unable to think or fight the underground beasts that poured over them in renewed attack.
In the ship, far above, Jason felt the shock to his mind and wondered how the men below could have lived through it. The others in the control room had been hit by it as well. Kerk pounded on the frame of the screen and shouted to the unhearing men below.
“Pull back, come back… .”
It was too late. The men only stirred slightly as the victorious Pyrran animals washed over them, clawing for the joints in their armor. Only
one man moved, standing up and beating the creatures away with his bare hands. He stumbled a few feet and bent over the writhing mass below him. With a heave of his shoulders, he pulled another man up. The man was dead but his shoulder pack was still strapped to his back. Bloody fingers fumbled at the pack, then both men were washed back under the wave of death.
“That was the bomb!” Kerk shouted to Meta. “If he didn’t change the setting, it’s still on ten-second minimum. Get out of here!”
Jason had just time to fall back on the acceleration couch before the rockets blasted. The pressure leaned on him and kept mounting. Vision blacked out but he didn’t lose consciousness. Air screamed across the hull, then the sound stopped as they left the atmosphere behind.
Just as Mets cut the power, a glare of white light burst from the screens. They turned black instantly as the hull pickups burned out. She switched filters into place, then pressed the button that rotated new pickups into position.,
Far below, in the boiling sea, a climbing cloud of mushroom-shaped flame filled the spot where the island had been seconds before. The three of them looked at it, silent and unmoving. Kerk recovered first.
“Head for home, Mets, and get operations on the screen. Twentyfive men dead, but they did their job. They knocked out those beasts-whatever they were-and ended the war. I can’t think of a better way for a man to die.”
Meta set the orbit, then called operations.
“Trouble getting through,” she said. “I have a robot landing beam response, but no one is answering the call.”
A man appeared on the empty screen. He was beaded with sweat and had a harried look in his eyes. “Kerk,” he said, “is that you? Get the ship back here at once. We need her firepower at the perimeter. All blazes broke loose a minute ago, a general attack from every side, worse than I’ve ever seen.”
“What do you mean?” Kerk stammered in unbelief. “The war is over. We blasted them, destroyed their headquarters completely.”
“The war is going like it never has gone before,” the other snapped back. “I don’t know what you did, but it stirred up the stewpot of hell here. Now stop talking and get the ship back!”
Kerk turned slowly to face Jason, his face pulled back in a look of raw animal savagery.