Ernst turned to Cadmann, something beyond fear or pain in his face, only a pleading silence that was shattered by a single urgent word:

"Please..."

Cadmann shouldered his rifle and fired: at the creature, at Ernst, at the night, as logic dissolved and terror coursed through his body like electrical sparks arcing from pole to pole.

And Ernst exploded.

The gas cartridges!

A bright nimbus of flame played around the bodies, and Cadmann shielded his eyes.

The creature howled its wrath and pain as a fireball of jellied fuel engulfed the rough wet leather of its squatly amphibian body. It reared back, shrieking, turned and ran.

To Cadmann it seemed to fly downhill like a meteor or a rocket missile: one long stream of fire ending at the pool. It skimmed across the surface of the pool, then sank almost in the center. Its agonized howl ended suddenly. The flame went out. The pool smoked and steamed like a caldron of soup. A trail of fiery webbed footprints, improbably far apart, sputtered for a few moments and died.

Cadmann pushed his foot at the thorn barrier. An entire section of it simply fell to the ground. His rifle drooped in his arms.

Cadmann doffed his jacket and flailed at Ernst's flaming, smoking corpse. The heavy nylon was melting, burning his hands, but he continued beating at the corpse mechanically, ignoring the pain that was beginning to surface, until the last flickering tongue had died.

Ernst's body was charred and broken and chewed, barely recognizable as anything that had ever been human.

Cadmann knelt by it, breathing deeply to stave off shock. His entire left side felt like raw meat.

Ernst stared at him, through him. Cadmann reached out trembling fingers to close the eyes, but there were no eyelids, nothing but singed, smoking, crinkled black flesh, flesh dark as any African's, flesh black as coal with pinkish-red pulp showing through a few cracks.

Cadmann turned to the side and was suddenly, violently ill.

GRENDEL'S ARM

What of the hunting, hunter bold?

Brother, the watch was long and cold.

What of the quarry ye went to kill?

Brother, he crops in the jungle still.

Where is the power that made your pride?

Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.

Where if the haste that ye hurry by?

Brother, I go to my lair—to die.

KIPLING, "Tiger Tiger"

"Skeeter Three, this is home base. Do you copy?" Zack listened to the answering crackle of static, and cursed under his breath.

Standing close behind him, Sylvia Faulkner held her sides gingerly. Sudden stress had drained her, made her legs unsteady, her belly feel swollen and tender.

The entire colony was in a barely contained state of panic. There would be little sleep tonight, and a heavy demand for stimulants and mood stabilizers before morning.

Zack was holding up well, but his eyes were frightened.

Sylvia's body cried out for somewhere dark and warm to curl up and sleep, just dream the nightmare away. But she had done it: she had held herself under control while she examined Alicia's corpse and identified the bloodstains left smeared in an empty, broken cradle.

The aborted rescue party had only worsened the situation. Too many of the men had families now, wives and children that they were reluctant to leave. There seemed little reason to march out into the fog, searching for what no one really wanted to find.

Gregory Clifton's haggard face still floated in her memory. The sound of his voice as he begged desperately. Please—I need your help. Help me find my baby. Please... I... His words had trailed away as the sedative took hold.

"Skeeter Three, this is home base. Do you copy? We have you on radar now. Just come on in, Cadmann." Zack rubbed his hands on his pants. His voice was cracking. "Is Ernst with you? Do you have the calf?" Another pause.

Sylvia folded her hands, staring down at them disconsolately. "Maybe the radio is broken."

"I hope so," Zack said miserably. "God, I hope so. I don't want to go looking for him in the morning. For them. How in the hell did this happen?"

The door clattered open, and the air took a chill as Terry entered the communications shack. His hands clutched at the edges of his windbreaker. "Greg is out now," he said sharply. "It's not exactly what you'd call sleep, but it's an improvement. We don't want him up and around when Weyland comes back." He paused thoughtfully. "He is coming back, isn't he?"

Sylvia glared at him.

"All right, all right—I don't want a lynching party. Nobody's calling

Weyland a baby-killer. I just want the truth. About now I don't know what to think."

The fog outside was still a hovering, isolating curtain. In only two hours Tau Ceti would rise and burn much of the mist away. Until then it stifled sound as well as sight and aggravated their sense of dread.

Zack rubbed his eyes. "That idiot. He had to go out and get the job done himself."

"He's an idiot all right," Terry said. Then, exhaling harshly, he added, "But goddammit, just this once, I hope he was a successful idiot. Christ, poor Alicia."

Sylvia reached out to her husband, gripped Terry's fingers tightly and pulled him close. Two deaths. Two deaths in a population of less than two hundred.

One percent of their microcosm dead in one swoop, without any explanation, any answers. Perhaps just a series of warnings that they had all been too rational to heed.

Everyone except...

"Cadmann. Can you hear me?" Zack adjusted the microphone's sensitivity. "Come in, please."

There was a commotion outside, yelling, and through the fog she could hear the beat of the Skeeter's rotors as they whipped the air.

"Thank God," Zack said fervently. "Weyland."

Leaning on Terry, Sylvia levered herself up out of her seat. "I want to go out," she said.

She expected opposition from Terry, but he just nodded. "Let's go," he said. "I guess everyone should be there."

The air pad was directly behind the com shack, an asphalt-paved square with a target circle painted in white and a ring of landing lights implanted around the edge.

Those lights splashed whitely against the belly of the Skeeter, beamed grainily up at the insect shape that hovered as if suspended by the fog. Its cargo hoist was empty. Its silver belly pivoted slowly on the axis of its top rotor. A ghost ship bobbing on a sea of air.

Rick Erin and Omar Isfahan were trying to wave Cadmann down, motioning with flashlights, talking worriedly into the flat rectangular comcards clipped to their shirt collars.

She could hear Zack's voice over the nearest one, could hear it grow more tense as the hovering Skeeter's transmitter remained mute.

Most of the colony was out now—a forest of frightened, weary faces graven with unanswered questions.

"Cadmann—can you hear me? Come on down. Come on and land, Cadmann. You must be running on fumes anyway... Come on, Cad. We just want to talk to you. We've had some trouble down here, and maybe you can help us understand it. Come on down, Cad..."

There was a long pause, and then Sylvia heard Cadmann's voice. A small, weak, plaintive voice.

"I'm sorry," it said. The Skeeter wobbled as if Cadmann was having trouble flying and talking at the same time. "I didn't mean for anything to go wrong. You've got to understand. There wasn't any way that I could have known how fast that thing is. There w-wasn't any w-way I could have known."

Terry's eyes narrowed as a low mutter swept the crowd. "What the hell happened to him?"

A million possibilities shouted against each other in Sylvia's mind. She remained silent, afraid that anything she said would make the situation worse. Somehow.