"The truth?" said Dumarest. "How can it be determined? How -" He broke off as a dull report echoed in the chamber. "What is that?"

"Nothing." Cazele was on his feet, smiling, hands extended in a soothing gesture. "Some fireworks. A small celebration. You were about to ask a question?"

One forgotten as Dumarest looked at Nadine. "We're leaving," he snapped. "Now!"

Outside it was dark, starlight illuminating the low towers, the shuttered windows. A bright point rose to expand in a glare of light and the rolling thunder of an explosion. Dumarest remembered the missiles from the ship and the panic they had caused. Beneath his hand he felt the structure of the tower, the fretted stone a match for the enigmatic cone on the field.

"Earl! Look!" Zehava pointed at the sky. "There! On the horizon!"

A patch of cloud or something which could have been smoke. It expanded as he watched, dark against the stars, grim, menacing.

Nadine flinched as more explosions tore the air. Alarms, not fireworks. Cazele had lied and Dumarest guessed why.

"Give me your gun. Run to the ship and have the captain sound the recall. We leave when I give the word." He turned to Zehava as Nadine obeyed. "Have our people spread the word then get to the ship. Hurry!"

He ran down a narrow alley and halted at a door beneath a swinging sign. One depicting hands clasped in friendship. The door was locked.

"Open!" His boot crashed against the panel. "Open this door or I'll smash it in! Open!"

The gun in his hand blasted lead and flame, bullets tearing into the panel, ceasing as it swung open to reveal a scared face, the dim shape of a body. Both vanished as Dumarest lunged through the opening. Beyond lay tables and chairs, the hunched bodies of natives, the arrogant figures of Kaldari.

"Emergency!" The rasp of his voice demanded attention. "Return to the ship. Pass the word to those who need to know. Move!"

A second tavern then a place filled with soft scents and seductive music, the roar of his gun destroying the sensual atmosphere, his snapped command rising above feminine screams. Then he was running towards the field as the strident blast of the recall rang through the air. Zehava was at the port.

"Stand by to seal," said Dumarest. "When I give the word don't hesitate. We'll be taking off immediately."

In the bridge Chapman turned, scowling, from his controls. "What's this all about?"

"Trouble." Dumarest looked at the screen, the dark smear depicted on it, now closer than before. 'They tried to trap us. The reason for the delays. If they hadn't fired the alarms we wouldn't have stood a chance."

"I don't understand."

"The pylas aren't what they seem. Neither are the people. We offered them something new." Dumarest frowned at the screen, the figures between the town and field. Too few and moving too slowly. "Get ready for take-off."

"Now? Those people will never get here in time."

"I'll give them all there is." Dumarest added, savagely, "Damn it, captain! Do as I say! Do you want to lose the ship?"

Nadine was with Badwasi at the firing controls. His screens also showed the spreading cloud of darkness. One now almost covering the sky.

"It gives me the creeps," he said, as Dumarest joined them. "It's like a hand reaching for us. Something from the unknown."

"Can you hit it?"

"I can blast the air where it is. You want that?" His hands danced over the controls, converting the screens to register infra-red, sucking in his breath at what they showed. "Hell! Look at that!"

A cloud of scarlet flecks, moving, dancing, creatures whose body heat registered in burning hues. A host of winged bodies spreading and glowing as if with inner fire. Even as they watched it came closer, becoming a collection of individual points, a blizzard of scarlet snow.

"We can fire," said Badwasi, "but it wouldn't do any good. It would be like trying to stop rain by shooting the drops from the air. What the hell is it?"

A swarm. The pylas moving from their nests in the hills. Obeying the instinctive directive which governed their survival.

"They're social insects," explained Dumarest. "Like ants or bees, one queen able to lay a multitude of fertile eggs. The natives have become hosts of a kind. The things take blood and give something in return. A symbiote, perhaps, an exchange which gives a doped tranquillity. That's why the people are so vague. But it's more than that. Sometimes they inject an egg. Maybe to breed a new queen. It grows in the stomach. When ready it breaks free. That's why the natives are so scared and hide when they hear the alarm."

Nadine said, "Is that what happened to Nigel and the dead girl?"

"The cabin was sealed," said Dumarest. "Zehava thought the creature must have slipped inside when Tighe took his walk. That wasn't possible. The cabin was designed to prevent it. The pylas had to have come from inside. The rip in the girl's stomach gave the answer."

That and the creature he had seen in the case, the serrated mandibles, the wings, the needle-like proboscis, the tail-assembly. Many social insects built nests of seeming stone. Others sealed potential dangers beneath layers of extruded material. The towers, the walls, a ship if it should be too tardy in escaping. They would coat the hull, enter the ports, clog the machinery, block vents, ruin the delicate balance essential for flight.

Dumarest wondered what type of vessel lay within the enigmatic cone on the field. How long it had rested there. What had happened to the crew.

"Captain!" His hand slapped the communicator as the cloud came dangerously close. Scarlet flecks which tore savagely at those still in the open and smeared the hull with liquid stone. "Let's go! Zehava! Close the port!"

"Earl! You can't. There are people out there. Give them a chance!"

They'd had their chance and wasted it.

"Now!" His voice rose above the staccato blast of the siren, the warning to those outside to stay clear. "Do it or be sucked out! Captain! Save the ship! Hit space! Now, damn you! Now!"

To send it into the relative safety of the void, leaving helpless victims behind. Sacrifices to his overwhelming need to complete his journey to Earth.

Chapter Twelve

The metal of the ship held more than the quiver of the Erhaft field. There was a continual susurration from the bulkheads, the hull, the decks and stanchions. Vibration trapped from a multitude of sources, traveling the confined world of the vessel, using it's structure as diaphragms.

Lying on his bunk, eyes closed in sleep, Dumarest was laved with whispers which held the sound of a woman crying, the deeper tones of a curse, tapping, clicks, rustles, laughter, the echoes of what could have been desperate prayer. Ghost-voices. Phantoms which created dreams to haunt the sleeping confines of his mind.

He stood on an endless plain wreathed in swirling mist facing a soaring range of mountains from which came all the sounds there ever could be. Voices which promised paradise, threatened hell, offered delights beyond imagination, warned of dangers yet to come. Tones voiced by men long dead, women now dust, all long dispersed in space and time. Other sounds; the whimper of a starving baby, the pleading wail of a terrified child, the snarl of hate from a man, the frenzied screaming of a beaten woman.

Echoes of what he had once known as home.

Figures surrounded him, hands extended, voices demanding that he give what he held. The body of a small rodent killed by a stone from his sling. His prey and hope of life, the nourishment which would sustain him through another day.

Running he escaped them to be faced by other shapes. Sombre figures, gaunt, faceless, menacing in scarlet robes. Their hands were concealed within wide sleeves, but their demands were the same. For him to give them the secret he held. One passed to him by a woman who had demonstrated to him the true meaning of love.