Troop carriers were armored against small-arms fire but, unlike landcruisers, not against heavy weapons. The projectile struck just below the turret. The carrier burst into flames at once. Escape hatches popped open as its crew and the fighting males it bore tried to escape. Some did; fire from Deutsch gunners cut down others.

“Smash that Tosevite!” Nejas screamed from the intercom speaker taped to Ussmak’s hearing diaphragm. Normally a calm, collected commander, he sounded as furiously excitable as any ginger-licker after three tastes.

By contrast, Ussmak was coldly furious. “It shall be done, superior sir,” he said grimly, and steered straight for the foxhole from which the Big Ugly had emerged. He made sure he put a tread right on it, then locked that tread and turned the landcruiser in its own length, crushing the Deutsch male as if he were grinding an insect underfoot. Then he drove on.

“It’s not revenge enough,” Skoob complained.

“It certainly isn’t, by the Emperor,” Nejas agreed. “The Deutsche came out ahead in that exchange.”

As he’d been trained since hatchlinghood to do, Ussmak cast down his eyes at the mention of his sovereign. Before he could raise them-WHAM! The impact against the front of the landcruiser was like a kick in the muzzle. He’d been in a landcruiser that had taken shell hits back in the SSSR, but never one like this. But the armor held-if it hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been sitting there thinking about how hard he’d just been hit.

Commander and gunner normally went through a series of orders identifying a target and designating it for destruction. This time, Skoob just said, “With your permission, superior sir,” and fired after a tiny pause. That hesitation was enough to let the Deutsche fire again, too. WHAM! Again an impact that jolted Ussmak, again the shell failed to penetrate.

The landcruiser rocked with the round Skoob fired. “Hit!” Ussmak shouted as flame and smoke spurted from behind bushes. Not even the best Big Ugly landcruiser gun could pierce the frontal armor of one of the Race’s landcruisers, but the reverse did not hold true.

“Forward,” Nejas ordered. Ussmak gave the engine more throttle. The landcruiser leaped ahead.

More Deutsche, Ussmak discovered, were armed with those alarming rocket projectors. They killed two troop carriers that he saw, and managed to set one landcruiser afire. Few of the males who used the projectors escaped. The blast from the launchers showed just where they were, and gunners sent heavy fire their way-nor was Ussmak the only male to take more direct measures of extermination.

He’d almost reached a town marked on the map as Rouffach when Nejas ordered, “Driver halt.”

“Halting, superior sir,” Ussmak said obediently, though the command puzzled him: despite the antivehicle rockets, they’d been driving the Big Uglies before them.

“Orders from the unit commander,” Nejas said. “We’re to pull back from this position and resume our previous offensive.”

“It shall be done,” Ussmak said, as he had to say. Then, not only because he’d been through a lot of combat with a lot of crews but also because the deaths of his previous crewmales made him much more an outsider than males of the Race usually became, he went on, “That doesn’t make a lot of sense, superior sir. Even if we were beating them, we haven’t smashed the Big Uglies here, and by going off we’ve just given the Deutsche by the big river a couple of days’ rest to strengthen their defenses. They were tough enough before, and they’d stay that way, even if we had forced our way through some of them.”

For a considerable time, Nejas did not answer him. At last, the landcruiser commander said, “Driver, I fear you demonstrate imperfect subordination.” Ussmak knew he was imperfect in any number of ways. That was a long way from saying he was wrong.

“Take off your clothes,” Ttomalss said. The little scaly devil’s Chinese held a thick, hissing accent, but Liu Han was used to it and followed it without trouble.

She used the little devil’s speech in return: “It shall be done, superior sir.” She wondered if Ttomalss could detect the weary resignation in her voice. She didn’t think so. The little scaly devils were interested in learning everything they could about people, but only as people might be interested in learning everything they could about some new kind of pig. That people might have feelings didn’t seem to have occurred to them.

Sighing, Liu Han pulled off her black cotton tunic, let her baggy trousers and linen drawers fall to the dirt floor of the hut in the refugee camp west of Shanghai. Outside, people chattered and argued and scolded children and chased chickens and ducks. The marketplace lay not far away; the racket that came from there was never-ending, like the plashing of a stream. She had to make a deliberate effort to hear it.

Ttomalss’ weird eyes swiveled independently as they examined her. She stood still and let him look all he cared to; one thing more than a year’s association with the little scaly devils had taught her was that they had no prurient interest in mankind… not that she would have aroused prurient interest in many men, not with a belly that looked as if she’d swallowed a great melon whole. Her best guess was that the baby would come in less than a month.

Ttomalss walked up to her and set the palm of his hand on her belly. His skin was dry and scaly, like a snake’s, but warm, almost feverish, against hers. The little devils were hotter than people. The few Christians in the camp said that proved they came from the Christian hell. Wherever they came from, Liu Han wished they’d go back there and leave her-leave everyone-alone.

The baby kicked inside her. Ttomalss jerked his hand away, skittering back a couple of paces with a startled hiss. “That is disgusting,” he exclaimed in Chinese, and added the emphatic cough.

Liu Han bowed her head. “Yes, superior sir,” she said. What point to arguing with the scaly devil? His kind came from eggs, like poultry or songbirds.

Cautiously, Ttomalss returned He reached out again and touched her in a very private place. “We have seen, in your kind, that the hatchlings come forth from this small opening. We must examine and study the process most carefully when the event occurs. It seems all but impossible.”

“It is true, superior sir.” Liu Han still stood quiet, enduring his hand, hating him. Hate filled her, but she had no way to let it out. After the Japanese overran her village and killed her husband and little son, the little scaly devils had overrun the Japanese-and kidnapped her.

The little devils had mating seasons like farm animals. Finding out that people didn’t had repelled and fascinated them at the same time. She was one of the unlucky people they’d picked to learn more about such-again, as people might explore the mating habits of pigs. In essence, though they didn’t seem to think of it in those terms, they’d turned her into a whore.

In a way, she’d been lucky. One of the men they’d forced on her, an American named Bobby Fiore, had been decent enough, and she’d partnered with him and not had to endure any more strangers. The baby kicked again. He’d put it in her belly.

But Bobby Fiore was dead now, too. He’d escaped from the camp with Chinese Communist guerrillas. Somehow, he’d got to Shanghai. The scaly devils had killed him there-and brought back color photos of his corpse for her to identify.

Ttomalss opened a folder and took out one of the astonishing photographs the little scaly devils made. Liu Han had seen photographs in magazines before the little devils came from wherever they came from. She’d seen moving pictures at the cinema a few times. But never had she seen photographs with such perfect colors, and never had she seen photographs that showed depth.

This one was in color, too, but not in colors that seemed connected to anything in the world Liu Han knew: bright blues, reds, and yellows were splashed, seemingly at random, over an image of a curled-up infant. “This is a picture developed by the machine-that-thinks from scans of the hatchling growing inside you,” Ttomalss said.