THEIR MASTER

Rance and Maltov were still in confrontation. Despite the armed men all around him, Maltov seemed to be getting the edge.

"So, do we have our compromise?"

Rance slowly nodded. It was probably the best deal that he'd get. The longtimers would certainly hate him for selling out the bulk of the men, but they'd have to share the guilt. They were getting out, too-if Maltov didn't double-cross all of them. /

"Yeah. It's a deal. When do we get an e-vac?"

"We'll go to the command dome and find out."

"Together?"

Maltov reached for his helmet. "Right.'4

Outside, Kalgol and the ten troopers were still holding the entrance to the bunker. A heavy tropical rain was falling, and the men were up to their knees in a mist of spray. Water was streaming from their suits. The hilltop landing area was rapidly turning into a desolate sea of mud.

"This ain't going to help matters any."

There was a brief conference between Rance and the other topmen, and then the whole party of troopers, plus Maltov and an escort of six field police, set off for the command dome. As they splashed their way through the mud, Rance kept everyone bunched up. If they were close to the commandant, they were probably safe from a sneak attack by the headhunters.

They were almost exactly halfway between the bunker and the dome when the alarms went off.

"Enemy in the wire, third quadrant!"

The command cha

"They're throwing everything at this one point! We can't hold them; we're spread too thin." "What is it? Chibas?"

"I can't take no more! I can't take no more!" "Cut that out!"

"There's men in among them!" "It must be some of our boys making a break for it!" "They're in gray camouflage armor, and they're firing at us."

"What the hell is going on over there?"

"There's men! Men fighting with the enemy!"

There was the sound of an explosion, and the shouting stopped. The troopers had halted. Rance was looking at Maltov.

"I suppose you expect us to go charging over there and plug the hole."

"If we're overrun, nobody will get off."

"Are you sending in your men?"

Maltov spoke into his communicator. "All available men! Go immediately to hold that breach in the third quadrant perimeter!"

He actually smiled at Rance. "Your move."

"You're right, goddamm it!"

Rance turned and faced the men. "Okay, you heard it. Let's shag it! Let's secure their forsaken perimeter for them. I want to see these men that have gone over to the enemy."

There was a good deal of cursing, but no one disobeyed the order.

"Come on! At the double! Fan out and don't bunch up. You all know the routine."

The men struggled through the quagmire, heading for the smoke and steam that were already billowing up from the firelight on the perimeter. They came under sporadic fire but kept on going. A man was hit and went down. Rance was glad that it wasn't one of his. He didn't want to lose any of his longtimers in these last minutes.

"They're hitting on a very narrow front. Maybe there ain't too many of them!"

"Don't count on it."

Rance didn't push his men too hard. There were a number of other squads converging on the same point. He didn't see why they should be the first to get there. The odds were that the first to arrive would be slaughtered.

"Easy now! Don't get crazy."

There were figures coming toward them out of the rain. Visibility was so poor that it was hard to make out exactly who or what they were, but they seemed roughly human in shape. Then they started firing. The flashes were those of Yal weapons. So these were the renegades. Another man went down. It was Dacker. Rance cursed. The troopers were returning fire. The human figures were halted in their tracks. One by one, they were cut down. At least Rance had the satisfaction of knowing that his longtimers were better than whatever these things were. A voice from the wire came over their communicators.

"They're pulling back! The chibas are pulling back!"

Just then the rain stopped. The troopers walked slowly forward. The mud sucked at their feet and ankles, and moisture hung like a hot shroud. Rance stopped beside Dacker. The trooper was quite dead. Half his chest was missing, and his suit was slowly curling away from his lifeless flesh. As Rance watched, the suit stopped moving. It, too, had died. There were bodies all over, but everyone was making for the ones in the now mangled, fungus-gray armor. Everyone wanted to know who they were. Men bent over and pulled helmets from these strange corpses.

Renchett was the first of the squad to reach a body. "Hey, Rance, get a load of this."

They were not renegades. There were marked differences between the men who fought for the Therem and these creatures. Their skins were close to orange, and their eyes had a strange slitted configuration. Either they used some sort of depilatory or they had never grown hair on their heads. They were obviously human, but equally obviously they were a different race.

"Where the hell did they come from?"

"The Yal must have bred them."

"Yeah, but why?"

"Why do the Therem use us?"

Renchett was silently shaking his head. "Maybe they captured one of the home worlds and used its inhabitants."

"Surely they'd look more like us." Hark had a thought. "Maybe the Yal took them from the Earth when they were first forced to leave it." "The Earth?"

"The original world. Our original world."

Rance walked slowly over to where Hark was standing. "What do you know about the Earth?"

Hark gave a slight shrug. "A woman told me."

"You shouldn't believe everything women tell you."

It was the worn-out topman response, and the moment Rance had said it, he felt a little stupid.

Hark just looked away. "I believe this."

Renchett was bending over one of the bodies. "You know what I think?"

"What?"

"It was probably these assholes that ski

Renchett had his knife out. He was about to carve off an ear. Rance stopped him.

"There'll be no more mutilation."

Hark was still deep in thought.

"You all know what else this means," he said slowly. "It means that we've started fighting our own kind. There are men on both sides in this damned war. Men are fighting each other for aliens that most of them will never even see."

"It sucks."

Hark was suddenly deeply angry. "Goddamn right it sucks. It makes it all totally meaningless."

The thought was still sinking in when the sky was lit by a blinding flash on the horizon.

"Nuke!"

"They don't have no nukes left!" "That's a fucking nuke."

They all threw themselves flat. The fireball was climbing into the air like a fast-rising sun.

"They must have had some stashed."

"Maybe the men were stashed, too."

"That was probably another e-vac area."

A voice from the command dome came into their helmets. "It was in the right direction for the Fourteen River base, the one that the dynes were shipping out from."

"How soon will the shock wave hit?"

The minutes passed agonizingly as the base waited for the shock. When it arrived, it came with the force of multiple hurricanes. Eddies of debris, dust, and smoke sped across the cleared ground like twisters. Men clung to the earth as the wind threatened to lift them clear off the hilltop. The shriek of static in their helmets threatened to deafen them. The ones who had remained on their feet either were whirled into the air or rolled through the mud. A gunsaucer was turned over, and panels were torn from the control dome. There was panic inside as the pressurization was lost and the men grabbed for their masks. The fury passed as swiftly as it had come, leaving behind a strange battered calm. The white mushroom cloud stood on the horizon like a terrible epitaph to the whole doomed, fruitless campaign. Nuclear weapons, although crude and ancient, were still viewed with fear and awe. Their destructiveness was so all-encompassing that their use remained a matter of desperate last resort. Touching off what amounted to a small sun on the surface of a planet was a frightening gamble.