All the barbs were down. A trooper was helping Glabrio get out from under the bodyguard. The hilt of his dagger stuck from beneath the ape’s chin like a hazelwood beard.
Everybody was all right, everybody who counted. Slats hopped over the litter of bodies with the bag the local—his head now sitting on the stump of his neck with a startled expression—had brought to show.
“Get out!” Slats screamed. “The wormhole generator has been damaged!”
Something had been damaged, sure enough. The ice into which Froggie’d pinned the Commander had burned completely away, and the hissing scar was spreading across the floor. Froggie grabbed a trooper’s shoulder and jerked him toward the mouth of the cave.
“Go!” he said. He reached for another man, but they were all moving in the right direction, stumbling and cursing. Glabrio bent to pick up his shield but thought again and lunged through the opening instead.
There was a smell like the air gets sometimes just before a thunderbolt. Froggie stamped out of the cave with only Slats behind him. “Venus Mother of Men!” he said as the forest enfolded him, blissfully cooler than the place he’d just left.
Three-Spire, unhurt and unnoticed, sprang from the sizzling, sparking portal. “I will help you—” he cried.
Slats put his four hands on the ground and kicked with both feet. The barb aide toppled backward, into the cave again. His scream stopped while he was still in the air.
The walls of the cave vanished. It was like looking into the green depths of the sea. Three-Spire fell, his body shrinking but remaining visible even when it was smaller than a gnat glimpsed through an emerald lens.
Froggie blinked. The basalt spike was before him again. His right arm ached, and the night was alive with noises of the forest.
Nobody spoke for a moment. Lucky was bandaging Messus’ left forearm; it was a bad cut, definitely a job for the medics from the Harbor.
Froggie rubbed his right wrist against his thigh, trying to work the feeling back into it. His shield was scrap, but he guessed he’d carry it to Kascanschi.
“We’re done here,” he said. “Let’s get back to the damned town and Slats can call for help. It’s safe to do that now.”
“Top?” said Lucky. He glanced toward where the cave had been, then straightened his head very quickly. “Is there going to be trouble? Because of, you know, what happened?”
“No,” said Slats forcefully. When they left the Harbor just a few days ago, Froggie wouldn’t have believed the bug had the balls to do what he’d done—any of the things he’d done—tonight. “The event will never be reported. Our rivals have lost their considerable investment when we destroyed the dimensional portal; they will fear severe sanctions in addition if the truth comes out. We will gain credit for discovering a product of unexpected value on this planet.”
“Let’s go,” said Froggie, slinging what was left of his shield behind him. “I’ll lead.”
“We’ll gain, you say,” Glabrio muttered. “The Commander gains, you mean. Third of the Fourth don’t get jack shit.”
“You’re alive, aren’t you, Glabrio?” Froggie said as he stepped off on his left foot. “You’d bitch if they crucified you with golden nails!”
The squad swung into motion behind him. Over the noise of boots and equipment Slats said, “The first thing the Commander will gain is this satchel of prepared drug which I rescued before the portal collapsed. I will present it to him myself. I estimate there are three thousand euphoric doses in it. And one fatal dose, I suspect.”
Froggie chuckled. He was looking forward to seeing Queenie. After a night like this, you needed to remind yourself you were alive.
Not that it’d been a bad night. Froggie thought again about the way his sword had slid through a blue suit and the ribs beneath it.
He chuckled again. In some ways this had been the best night of Froggie’s life.
A CLEAR SIGNAL
Mark L. Van Name
One month to the day after Jim’s execution, the aliens showed up at my gym. It was a Tuesday morning, and, as usual, R.C. and I had the place to ourselves. R.C. was in the far rear corner of the large free-weight room, methodically pumping his way through a warm-up set of hack squats. I had just finished my last set of bench presses and was sitting on the bench, trying to decide whether to add an extra chest exercise or call it a day. When the three aliens came through the gym’s steel door without setting off any of the alarms, we both reached into our gym bags and kept our hands on our weapons, waiting to see what would happen.