3 x T

The sledges crawled along. The invaders seemed too busy trying to blast the research base off the face of Gilver to bother doing anything about them. Je

She turned around again. A couple of big aliens were bounding after her and Greenberg. As she'd feared, they ran faster than the sledges. Nothing grew in the area of the Great Unknown. There was no place to hide, save possibly behind the massive columns of the colo

Greenberg had seen the Foitani, too. If he felt the same choking despair that cast its pall over her, he did not show it. In fact, he stood up on his sledge?it was slow enough and smooth enough to make that safe?and jumped up and down thumbing his nose at them. That only made them run harder?and all at once, Je

The Foitani from Rof Golan kept coming. All too soon, they were only a couple of hundred meters behind the sledges. The closer they drew, the more easily Je

Their clawed feet slapped on the smooth stone of the pro-cessionway. Je

The Foitani caught up with the sledges. They even smelled different from the Foitani of Odern?sharper, like ripe cheese, Je

Je

Greenberg gave her an odd look. "Yes, I think we may," he answered, half a beat late. "I think it's a good thing, too."

"So do I." Je

"Neither was I," Greenberg said. "I kept thinking about getting behind you and setting off Enfram Enfram Marf's shaped charge at the Foitani. By the time I decided it wasn't a good idea, they'd already gone by us."

"You still did better than I did," she said. "I forgot all about the stupid thing."

"That's not so good, Je

The sledges ground on toward the central tower. Je

Several other Foitani from Rof Golan strode the procession-way behind the first two. None passed the sledges, which by then were more than halfway from the outer edge of the radius of doom to the central tower. None shot at the sledges, either, for which Je

The tower grew closer and closer. The two sledges stopped a couple of meters away. Greenberg climbed down from his sledge, lifted the shaped charge Enfram Enfram Marf had given him, and carried it to the side of the immense white structure. He pressed it against the stone. Je

Greenberg went back to the sledge and called the research base. "We have the entry charge in place. Please advise if we should proceed, under the circumstances." Only static came from the speaker. Either no one at the base was listening, or the Rof Golani were jamming the cha

"I think we ought to blow it," she said without hesitation. "We're never going to have a better chance than this. I just hope it's not all for nothing anyway?if the Foitani from Rof Golan win, what's going to happen to the Harold Meeker?"

"That's such a good question, I've done my best not to think about it." Greenberg made a sour face. He ran wire from the charge back to the detonator. "We have a couple of hundred meters to retreat. Let's use them." The sledges went into reverse until the wire began to grow taut.

Greenberg dismounted again and got behind his sledge. Je

He let out a wry chuckle. "That would rather ruin our day's work, wouldn't it?"

"You might say so, yes," she answered, trying to match him dry for dry. She heard the slap-slap-slap of Foitani feet on the processionway. The first two soldiers from Rof Golan were getting close again. "If you're going to do it, you'd better do it now."

Greenberg glanced back toward the Foitani. He nodded. "Right you are." He brought his thumb down on the blue firing button. He grunted?squeezing the contact closed took considerable effort. Not only were Foitani stronger than people to begin with, the firing button was rigged so it could not go off by accident.

After the bombardment she'd been through, Je

She looked up over the top of the sledge. Just as in the practice run, Enfram Enfram Marf's charge had blown a neat, round hole in the white stone of the tower. Blackness lay beyond it.

Greenberg looked up, too, then grabbed the communicator. "Calling the research base. I don't know whether you can see it?for that matter, I don't know if you can hear me?but we have succeeded in making a breach in the base of the column at the center of the Great Unknown."