All the tea-party proprieties about a flyer needing a college education and years of training had been thrown out as the attrition of the war made them untenable. Roy had heard that kids as young as fourteen were in the new classes at Aerial Combat School.

Edwards had caught the glance. "Want to take over, Fokker? Be my guest."

"No thanks, Colonel. I'm just here to make sure you don't mess up and spike us into the drink."

Edwards laughed. "Fokker, know what your problem is? You take this war stuff too personally."

"Tell me something: D'you like flying for a bunch of fascists?"

Edwards snorted derisively. "You think there's that much difference between sides, after ten years of war? Besides, the Neasians pay me more in a week than you make in a year."

Roy wanted to answer that, but his orders were to avoid friction with Edwards. As if to remind him of that, a sudden aroma wafted under his nose. It was pipe tobacco, but to Roy it always smelled like a soap factory on fire.

Gloval was at it again. But how do you tell your commanding officer that he's breaking regs, smoking aboard an aircraft? If you are a wise young lieutenant (jg), you do not.

Roy turned back to study Macross and forgot Gloval, Edwards, and everything else. There lay the blackened remains of a ship like nothing Earth had ever seen before.

"Great God!" Roy said slowly, and even Edwards had nothing to add.

The wreck was cool, and radiation readings were about normal. Previous fly-bys hadn't drawn fire or seen any activity. The helo set down a few dozen yards from the scorched, broken ruin. In another few moments the team was offloading itself and its equipment.

Gloval, a tall, rangy man with a soot-black, Stalinesque mustache, captain's hat tilted forward on his brow, was establishing security and getting ready for preliminary external examination of the wreckage. He was square-shouldered and vigorous, looking younger than his fifty-odd years until one saw the lines around his eyes.

But while the preparations were going on, Lance Corporal Murphy, always itching to be on the move, couldn't resist doing a little snooping. "Hey, lookit! I think I found a hatch!"

Gloval's voice still retained its heavy Russian accent. "You jackass! Get away from there!"

Murphy was standing near a tall circular feature in the battered hull, waving them over. With his back to it, he didn't see the middle of the hatch open, the halves sliding apart. He couldn't hear his teammates' shouted warnings, as several long, segmented metal tentacles snaked out.

In another moment, the unlucky marine was caught and lifted off his feet. The service automatic in his hand went off, then fell from his grasp, as he was yanked within. None of the others dared to shoot for fear of hitting him.

The hatch snapped shut. Gloval spread his arms to hold back Roy and some of the others; they would have charged for the hatch. "Stand where you are and hold your fire! Nobody goes any closer until we know what we're dealing with!"

An hour later things had changed, although the explorers didn't know much more than they had at the beginning.

At Admiral Hayes's insistence, Doctor Emil Lang had been choppered ashore to supervise. Lang was Earth's premier mind, by decree of Hayes and Senator Russo and the others in the alliance leadership, the final authority on interplanetary etiquette.

Lang ordered everyone into anticontamination suits, then directed a human-size drone robot to make preliminary exploration of the ship. When the robot, essentially a bulbous detector/telemetry package on two legs, stopped dead in front of the hatch as the hatch reopened, Lang looked thoughtful.

The robot refused to respond to further commands, the hatch stayed open, and there was no sign of activity within. Lang's eyes narrowed behind his suit's visor as he concentrated.

Lang was a man just under medium height, slight of build, but when it came to puzzling out the unknown, he had the courage of a lion. Disregarding his orders, he directed Gloval to select a party to explore the wreck. Gloval picked himself, Roy, Edwards, and eight of the grunts.

"Get those spotlights on," Lang instructed. "And you may chamber a round in your weapons, but leave the safeties on. If anyone fires without my direct order, I'll see that he's court-martialed and hung."

Unnoticed, T.R. Edwards made a wry face inside his suit helmet and flicked his submachine gun selector over to full auto.

The lights they'd brought-spotlights mounted on the shoulders of their web gear-were powerful but not powerful enough to reach the farthest limits of the compartment in which they found themselves. Lang and Gloval only studied what was before them, but from the others were soft exclamations, curses, obscenities.

It resembled a complex cityscape. The alien equipment and machinery was made of glassy alloys and translucent materials, with conduitlike structures crisscrossing in midair and oddly shaped contrivances in every direction. The spacecraft was built to a monumental scale.

Readings still indicated no danger from radiation, atmospheric, or biological contamination; they removed the suits.

"We will divide into two groups," Gloval decided, still in charge of the tactical decisions. "Roy, you'll take four marines. Dr. Lang, Edwards-you'll be in my group."

They were to work their way forward, following opposite sides of the wreck's inner hull, in an attempt to link up in the bow. Failing that, they would observe as much as possible and fall back to their original point of entry in one hour.

They started off. No one heard the inert probe robot suddenly reactivate and step through the open hatch in their wake, moving more nimbly than it had a few minutes before.

Fifteen minutes later, in a passageway as high and wide as a stadium, Roy paused to shine his shoulder-mounted lights around him. "This place must be playing tricks on my eyes. Does it look to you like the walls're moving?" he asked the gunnery sergeant behind him.

The gunny said slowly, "Yeah, kinda. Like there's a fog or somethin' flowin' through all the nooks and crannies."

Roy was about to get them moving again when he heard someone calling softly, "Caruthers. Hey, man, where y' at?"

Caruthers was the man walking drag at the rear of the file; they all turned back to see what was going on. Caruthers had fallen far behind for some reason; but he was rejoining them, his spots getting nearer. But something about the man's movement wasn't normal. Moreover, his head hung limply and he appeared to be moving considerably above them, as if on a catwalk.

They flashed their beams his way and stood rooted in astonishment and stark terror. Caruthers's body hung on a line, like a tiny puppet, held in the hand of a humanoid metal monster seventy feet tall.

The armored behemoth swung its free hand in their direction. They didn't have time for permission to react; they wouldn't have listened if Lang had denied it, anyway.

Roy and the gunny and the other marines opened fire, the chatter of their submachine guns loud in their ears.

Their tracers lit up the darkness, as the bullets bounced off the monster's armor as if they were paper clips.

Its right hand loosed a stream of reddish-orange fury. A marine disappeared like a zapped bug, turned to ash in an instant.