Jem

For some reason Margie’s right knee was only scraped and sore, while the left one was bloodily gouged, the leg of the coverall worn through, the skin itself long since rubbed away. It was harder and harder for her to keep up with the two ahead of her. God had not intended her to crawl through tu

She paused and glanced at her watch. Still more than a quarter of an hour before the device would go off. Before that the two grenades they had left at bends in the tu

She heard a quick, quiet scuffle down the tu

Then silence again.

“Van?” she called. “Major Vandemeer?”

The dirt walls swallowed her words, and there was no reply. Painfully she rolled herself over, turned herself around, and crawled back.

The mouse-droppings odor was very strong. She touched the switch of her little helmet light and saw that the major was dead. One of the burrowers had been here, and the dart that protruded from Vandemeer’s face proved it.

“Shit,” whispered Margie, and then belatedly lifted her head and drew her pistol. The light showed nothing for sure down the crooked, uneven tu

When she looked again there was nothing there. But every few meters there were little side passages and bays, and a dozen Creepies could be waiting there for her to turn her head.

She almost raised her voice to call the others back but stopped herself as she was opening her mouth. For what?

They could not bring the major’s body back. Doubled over as it was — he seemed to have been turning when he was shot — he almost blocked the tu

There was a better way. She had two grenades left. She pulled one off her belt, set it to ten clicks, turned around, and scuttled as rapidly as she could after the others. When she had counted a hundred seconds, she dropped, locked her hands over the back of her neck, and waited for the distant, muffled thud that told her she had dropped a part of the tu

When the grenade went off, it occurred to her that it was strange she had not caught up with the others. “Sam! Chotnik! Sound off !” she cried. They didn’t answer; they hadn’t heard her order to stop. She left the helmet light on and hurried after them, the pain in her knee no longer signifying. When the red numerals on her watch told her it was time for the nuclear blast, she still had not caught up.

She rolled over on her back again. For this blast it did not matter whether she protected her neck. She would be killed or she would not, and the only factor that mattered was whether there was enough earth between her and the explosion. There should be. When the impellers drove the sets of plutonium needles in to mesh with each other, there would be a nuclear blast. But not a big one. They would not stay in contact more than a few microseconds. If she had placed them right, they would expend their force up through the roof of the tu

At that moment the explosion occurred. Right on time. And she was still alive.

It was not even frightening. It was, she thought, as it would have been in her mother’s womb if her mother had fallen. Some external event had taken place. But here in the tu

So that part of the plan, at least, had worked. Now, if Kris could rally the patrol to the attack — If they remembered their radiation ponchos and the wind was not too unfavorable — If the Greasies did not pull themselves together fast enough to resist — If the bomb had been in the right place after all — There were too many ifs. Her place was with her troops, not here.

A sighing, slithering sound a few meters behind her caught her attention. She turned the headlamp toward it and saw that a section of the roof had collapsed into the tu

Shaken loose by the nuclear blast? Maybe. More likely not. Creepies had been known to try to trap a foe by plugging tu

It was time to get out of there. Doggedly detaching herself from the pain and from the fear that one of them was silently creeping up behind her, she resumed her crawl.

In ten meters her head struck dirt.

She turned on the light again. It was fresh dirt. The burrowers had closed both ends of the tu

Margie Me

Fingers then.

She dropped the pistol and tore at the dirt plug with her bare hands. Furiously. Then in terror. At last because there was nothing else for her to do.

From horizon to horizon, as far as Charlie could see, there was a solid undercast of clouds, and taller ones poked up all around. The storm was weakening off toward the ocean, but here, somewhere above the Greasy camp, it had been hours since he had seen the ground at all, days since he had last seen the little party of his friend ’A

As they labored upward a new flock came sailing down from the Pole, and Charlie led his tiny fragment to join it, eager for a new audience for his songs about the new friends from Earth, hungry to hear songs he had not heard before. It had been long and long since he had joined in a proper eisteddfod, and his soul ached for it. The new flock was small, fewer than sixty adults, but there were voices in it he had never heard, and he sang greeting toward them with joy.