For a growing body of observations indicated that, on land and sea, under sea and in their skies, the colonists were at last making ready to strike back.

Rochefort heard the shrieking for the better part of a minute before it registered on him. Dear Jesus, dragged through his dullness, what ails me? His muscles protested bringing the skimmer around. His fingers were sausages on the control board. Beside him, Nasution slumped mute, as the boy had been these past days (weeks? years?). The soft cheeks had collapsed and were untidily covered by black down.

Still, Rochefort’s craft arrived to help those which had been floating above a ground patrol. The trouble was, it could then do no more than they. Energy weapons incinerated at a flash hundreds of the cockroach-like things, twenty centimeters long, whose throngs blackened the ground between shrubs. They could not save the men whom these bugs had already reached, and were feasting on. Rochefort carefully refrained from noting which skimmer pilots gave, from above, a coup de grace. He himself hovered low and hauled survivors aboard. After what he had seen, in his present physical shape, Nasution was too sick to be of use.

Having evidently gotten wind of meat in this hungry land, the kakkelaks swarmed toward the main base. They couldn’t fly, but they clattered along astonishingly fast. Every effort must go to flaming a cordon against them.

Meanwhile the Avalonians landed throughout Equatoria. They deployed so quickly and widely — being very lightly equipped — that bombardment would have been futile. All who entered Scorpeluna were Ythrian.

The chief officers of medicine and planetology confronted their commandant. Outside, an equinoctial gale bellowed and rang through starless night; dust scoured over shuddering metal walls. The heat seemed to come in enormous dry blasts.

“Yes, sir,” the medical chief said. Being regular navy rather than marine, he held rear admiral’s rank. “We’ve proven it beyond reasonable doubt” He sighed, a sound lost in the noise. “If we’d had better equipment, more staff — Well, I’ll save that for the board of inquiry, or the court-martial. The fact is, poor information got us sucked into a death trap.”

“Too many worlds.” The civilian planetologist shook his gaunt head! “Each too big. Who can know?”

“While you gabble,” the commandant said, “men lie in delirium and convulsions. More every day. Talk.” His voice was rough with anger and incomplete weeping.

“We suspected heavy-metal poisoning, of course,” the medical officer said. “We made repeated tests. The concentration always seemed within allowable limits. Then overnight—”

“Never mind that,” the planetologist interrupted. “Here are the results. These bushes growing everywhere around… we knew they take up elements like arsenic and mercury. And the literature has described the hell shrub, with pictures, as giving off dangerous vapors. What we did not know is that here is a species of hell shrub. It looks entirely unlike its relatives. Think of roses and apples. Besides, we’d no idea how the toxin of the reported kind works, let alone these. That must have been determined after the original descriptions were published, when a purely organic compound was assumed. The volume of information in every science, swamping—” His words limped to a halt.

The commandant waited.

The medical officer took the tale: “The vapors carry the metals in loose combination with a… a set of molecules, unheard of by any authority I’ve read. Their action is, well, they block certain enzymes. In effect, the body’s protections are canceled. No metal atoms whatsoever are excreted. Every microgram goes to the vital organs. Meanwhile the patient is additionally weakened by the fact that parts of his protein chemistry aren’t working right. The effects are synergistic and exponential. Suddenly one crosses a threshold.”

“I… see…” the commandant said.

“We top officers aren’t in too bad a condition yet,” the planetologist told him. “Nor are our staffs. We spend most of our time indoors. The men, though—” He rubbed his eyes. “Not that I’d call myself a well man,” he mumbled.

“What do you recommend?” the commandant asked.

“Evacuation,” the medical chief said. “And I don’t recommend it, I tell you we have no alternative. Our people must get immediate proper care.”

The commandant nodded. Himself sick, monstrously tired, he had expected some such answer days ago and started his quiet preparations.

“We can’t lift off tomorrow,” he said in his dragging tones. “We haven’t the bottom; most’s gone back to space. Besides, a panicky flight would make us a shooting gallery for the Avalonians. But we’ll organize to raise the worst cases, while we recall everybody to the main camp. We’ll have more ships brought down, in orderly fashion.” He could not control the twitch in his upper lip.

As the Imperials retreated, their enemies struck.

They fired no ground-to-ground missiles. Rather, their human contingents went about the construction of bases which had this capability, at chosen spots throughout the Equatorian continent. It was not difficult. They were only interested in short-range weapons, which needed little more than launch racks, and in aircraft, which needed little more than maintenance shacks for themselves and their crews. The largest undertaking was the assembly of massive energy projectors in the peaks overlooking Scor-peluna.

Meanwhile the Ythrians waged guerrilla warfare on the plateau. They, far less vulnerable to the toxicant peculiar to it, were in full health and unburdened by the space-suits, respirators, handkerchiefs which men frantically donned. Already winged, they need not sit in machines which radar, gravar, magnetoscopes could spot across kilometers. Instead they could dart from what cover the ground afforded, spray a trudging column with fire and metal, toss grenades at a vehicle, sleet bullets through any skimmers, and be gone before effective reaction was possible.

Inevitably, they had their losses.

“Hya-a-a-ah!” yelled Draun of Highsky, and swooped from a crag down across the sun-blaze. At the bottom of a dry ravine, a Terran column stumbled toward, camp from a half-finished emplacement. Dust turned every man more anonymous than what was left of his uniform. A few armored groundcars trundled among them, a few aircraft above. A gravsled bore rapidly mummifying corpses, stacked.

“Cast them onto hell-wind!” The slugthrower stuttered in Draun’s grasp. Recoil kept trying to hurl him off balance, amidst these wild thermals. He gloried that his wings were too strong and deft for that.

The Ythrians swept low, shooting, and onward. Draun saw men fall like emptied sacks. Wheeling beyond range, he saw their comrades form a square, anchored by its cars and artillery, helmeted by its flyers. They’re still brave, he thought, and wondered if they hadn’t best be left alone. But the idea had been to push them into close formation, then on the second pass drop a tordenite bomb among them. “Follow me!”

The rush, the bullets and energy bolts, the appallingly known wail at his back. Draun braked, came about, saw Nyesslan, his oldest son, the hope of his house, spiral to ground on a wing and a half. The Ythrian squadron rushed by. “I’m coming, lad!” Draun glided down beside him. Nyesslan lay unconscious. His blood purpled the dust. The second attack failed, broke up in confusion before it won near to the square. True to doctrine, that they should hoard their numbers, the Ythrians beat back out of sight. A platoon trotted toward Draun. He stood above Nyesslan and fired as long as he was able.

“Take out everything they have remaining in orbit,” Cajal said. “We need freedom to move our transports continuously.”

His chief of staff cleared throat. “Hr-r-rm, the admiral knows about the hostile ships?”