Little green men? Orphu sounded like a poorly engineered voice-synthesis device, sounding each word out as if he’d never heard it before.

Thousands of LGM. On hundreds of ships.

Feluccas? said Orphu.

Feluccas, those big barges they used to transport the stones for heads, larger sailing ships, smaller ships . . . they’re all sailing toward Olympus Mons, mixed in with the Achaean ships now.

Why? asked Orphu. Why are the zeks sailing toward Olympos?

Don’t ask me! shouted Mahnmut. I just work here . . . uh-oh.

Uh-oh?

The sky’s full of fiery streaks now, like meteors flaming down from space.

The gods resuming their bombardment? asked Orphu.

I don’t know.

Which direction?

What? said Mahnmut. If he had been designed with a jaw, it would be dropping now. The sky was a latticework of fiery streaks, with the circular portals showing Olympus Mons in a dozen places around Ilium and the sky filled with black barbed machines jetting back and forth at increasingly lower altitudes. Thousands more Achaeans and Trojans had rushed into the first portal after Achilles and Hector, while tens of thousands more Trojans and their allies were taking up defensive positions on the walls of Ilium and on the plain just outside the Scaean Gates. Gongs rang out. Drums beat. The air sizzled with energy and echoed with roars. Achaeans ran to defensive positions on their trenches, sunlight glinting on polished armor. A thousand Trojan archers on the Ilium ramparts went to full pull on their bows, arrows aimed skyward. A score more of black ships put out to sea from the Achaean camp. Mahnmut couldn’t pivot fast enough to take it all in.

Which direction are the meteor trails going? said Orphu. West to east, east to west, north to south?

What the hell does it matter which direction? snapped Mahnmut. No, wait, sorry. They’re coming from all parts of the sky. Making cross-hatches against the blue.

Any of them heading for Ilium? asked Orphu.

I don’t think so. Not directly. Wait, I can see something at the end of one of those trails now . . . I’m zooming in . . . good heavens, it’s a . . .

Spaceship? said Orphu.

Yes! breathed Mahnmut. Fins, hull, roaring engine . . . it looks like a cartoon of a spaceship, Orphu. It’s hovering on a column of yellow energy. The other meteors are also ships . . . some hovering . . . one coming down. Uh-oh.

Uh-oh again? said Orphu.

That hovering spaceship appears to be landing, said Mahnmut. So are four or five of the smaller black flying machines.

Yes? said Orphu. The Ionian sounded calm, perhaps even amused.

They’re landing on the ridge near you! Almost right on top of you, Orphu! Stay put, I’m coming! Mahnmut began running on all fours at top speed for the ridge where the yellow spacecraft exhaust was kicking dust and small rocks a hundred feet into the air. He couldn’t see Orphu through the dust as the various machines set down next to the amazon’s tomb. The barbed flying machines were extending a complicated tripod landing gear. The weapons on the landing hornet ships were swiveling, targeting Orphu. Mahnmut saw this just before he lost sight of everything as he galloped into the dust storm.

I’m not going anywhere, sent Orphu. But don’t sprain a servomechanism hurrying, old friend. I think I know who these guys are.

60

The Equatorial Ring

Rolling in the terrace darkness with Caliban, it felt to Daeman as if the monster were trying to tear his arm off. Indeed, the monster was trying to tear Daeman’s arm off. Only the metallic fibers in the thermskin and the suit’s automatic response to seal all rends kept Caliban’s teeth from ripping the meat off Daeman’s arm and then tearing the bones one from the other. But the suit wouldn’t save Daeman for much longer.

The man and man-beast crashed into tables, rolled among post-human corpses, bounced off a girder, and rebounded in microgravity from a glass wall. Caliban would not release his grip and hugged Daeman tightly to him with long fingers and prehensile webbed toes. Suddenly the creature relaxed its bite, pulled its slavering head back, and lunged for Daeman’s neck again. Daeman blocked the lunge with his right forearm again, was bitten to the bone again, and moaned aloud as they bounced back to the terrace railing. In spite of the suit’s automatic closing, blood jetted out in discrete spheres, bursting on impact with Daeman’s suit or Caliban’s scaly hide.

For a second they were wedged against the terrace railing and Daeman was staring into Caliban’s yellow eyes, only inches from his own. He knew that if his punctured forearm wasn’t in the way, Caliban would bite through his osmosis mask and rip his face off in a second, but what really passed through Daeman’s mind at this moment was a simple phrase and an astounding fact—I’m not afraid.

There was no firmary standing by to fax his dead body away and fix it in forty-eight hours or less, no blue worms waiting for Daeman now—whatever happened next was forever.

I am not afraid.

Daeman saw the animal ears, the slavering muzzle, the scaly shoulders, and he thought again how physical and fleshy Caliban was. He remembered from the grotto the obscene pink of the animal-thing’s bare scrotum and penis.

As Caliban pulled his teeth free to lunge again—even while Daeman knew that he couldn’t block the lunge toward his jugular a third time—the man reached down with his free left hand, found yielding globes, and squeezed as hard as he’d ever squeezed anything in his life.

Instead of lunging, the monster jerked its head far back, roared so loudly into the thin air that the noise echoed in the almost airless space, and then the beast struggled to break away. Daeman ducked low, shifted both hands lower—his right arm bled, but the fingers on that hand still worked—and squeezed again, hanging on and being dragged behind as Caliban writhed and kicked to break free. Daeman imagined pulping tomatoes with his powerful hands, his human hands, he imagined squeezing the juice out of oranges, of bursting pulp, and he hung on—the world had receded to the will to hang on and squeeze—and Caliban roared again, swung his long arm, and struck Daeman hard enough to send him flying.

For several seconds, Daeman was not conscious enough to defend himself or even to know where he was. But the creature did not use those seconds—he was too busy flailing and howling and holding himself, his scaly knees flying high as Caliban tried to crouch and hunch in midair. Just as Daeman’s vision began to clear, he saw the monster flail his way back to the terrace, grab the railing, and fling himself the fifteen feet between him and Daeman. The long arms and claws were already halfway to him.

Daeman groped blindly amidst the chairs and tables around him, found his iron pipe where it had bounced, lifted it to his shoulder with both hands, and savagely swung the metal into the side of Caliban’s head. The sound was most satisfying. Caliban’s head snapped aside and his flailing arms and tumbling torso crashed into Daeman, but the man flung the beast to one side—feeling his own right arm going numb now—and he dropped the pipe, leaped for the terrace railing, and then kicked up toward the semipermeable exit thirty feet above.

Too slow.

More used to the low-gravity, powered by hate now beyond human measurement, Caliban used hands, feet, legs, and momentum to rebound off the terrace wall, catch the railing with his toes, crouch, spring, and beat Daeman through the air to the marked panel above them.