3 x T

A Rof Golani ship abruptly vanished from the radar tank. Voskop W Wurd screamed something that the translator rendered as, "How extremely unfortunate." A good deal of juice seemed to have been squeezed out somewhere.

More ships started disappearing. No matter what sort of Foitani perverts crewed it, no matter that it had been grounded for twenty-eight thousand years, the ship that had been a tower was a formidable killing machine. Voskop W Wurd made noises suggesting a wild animal with a leg caught in a trap. Pawasar Pawasar Ras sounded calmer?that seemed the way on Odern?but no happier.

After a dismayingly short while, the course of the battle grew clear: the Great Ones were mopping up everything the modern Foitani could throw at them. Pawasar Pawasar Ras ordered one of his few surviving ships to break off and head back to Odern.

Voskop W Wurd yowled a phrase that sounded as if it would have made a pretty good operations order for the end of the world. "A cowardly act," the translator reported bloodlessly.

"By no means," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "Suppose we are defeated and destroyed here. That will leave the kwopillot free to rampage through the Foitani sphere, with no one to know what they are until they come within smelling range. Our homeworlds must be warned. What I do is wisdom. Deny it if you may."

The Rof Golani warleader did not reply directly, but spoke into his headset. Before long, one of the red blips in the radar tank turned tail and boosted toward hyperdrive kick-in. Voskop W Wurd said no more about it. No Foitan Je

"I just hope the Foitani sphere is all these revived Great Ones worry about for a while," Greenberg said. "If they have records of humans, they know where Earth is."

"They'd find out soon enough anyway, from dealing with the Foitani from Odern," Je

Trouble was, in fact, already here. The ship that had spent a geological epoch being a tower was still dreadfully efficient in its own role. Gallant to the end, the Foitani from Odern and Rof Golan kept attacking long after they must have known they were doomed. Back on Earth, a long time ago, tribesmen had shown insane courage by charging straight at machine-gun nests. But for making them end up dead in gruesomely large numbers, their courage hadn't got them anything. Similar bravery served the Foitani no better now.

"Attack from space imminent," Pawasar Pawasar Ras called. "Prepare to resist to the end."

Je

He hugged her. She hugged him, too. She did not care what the Foitani thought, not now. The only good thing she saw about being here was that the end would probably be quick. The Great Ones up there had overwhelming weapons and could hardly miss.

Voskop W Wurd said, "Get me a hand weapon, Oderna, that I may shoot at my slayers as they destroy me."

Je

Je

Pawasar Pawasar Ras saw things in a different light. He said, "So you have called to gloat, have you, kwopil?" Je

The Great One called Solut Mek Kem said, "By your murderousness, I gather your kind still exists, vodran." Je

But for once, the problem was not the translator's fault. Pawasar Pawasar Ras said, "Vodran? I do not know this word, Solut Mek Kem."

Voskop W Wurd echoed him, less politely: "Trust the stinking kwopillot to come up with a foul-smelling name for proper people."

"You've grown old in depravity, to think it the proper state for Foitani," Solut Mek Kem said. "I see the race has had time to degenerate physically as well as morally, else our sphere would not be plagued with such hideous specimens as you."

Voskop W Wurd told the Great One what he?or was it she this time??could do to himself, in explicit anatomical detail. Je

When the Rof Golani warleader ran down, Pawasar Pawasar Ras added, "You tax us with murderousness, yet outside this tower which is now a ship, you kwopillot wantonly slaughtered a great many Foitani, many of them unarmed and all of them mentally disabled by whatever means you employed to keep us from your precinct on Gilver."

"You are vodranet," Solut Mek Kem said. "You deserve no better. As I said, we had hoped our fellows would have exterminated you from the galaxy by the time we reawakened. Though I see it is not so, we shall join with the worlds of our kind and finish the job once and for all."

"What worlds of your own kind?" Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "Kwopillot have no worlds. They merely plague true Foitani whenever a nest of them appears. This is so on every world where our kind survives, and has been so ever since the Suicide Wars cast our sphere down into barbarism."

"Lie all you like, vodran," the old-time Foitan said. "We could not have been destroyed in a few centuries."

Je

Pawasar Pawasar Ras brushed her away, or tried to. She hung onto his massive arm. "Are you stricken mad?" he said. "Get away. This is not your concern."

Unexpectedly, Voskop W Wurd came to her rescue. "Why not let the creature talk to the stinking kwopillot?" he demanded. "Do kwopillot deserve any better?"

"There is some truth in what you say, warleader," Pawasar Pawasar Ras admitted. Under other circumstances, Je

"Thank you, honored kin-group leader." Je

"So you vodranet consort with sub-Foitani, do you?" Solut Mek Kem interrupted. "We might have expected it of you."

"Will you listen to me?" Je

"It is amusing, vodran." Solut Mek Kem still refused to speak directly to Je