Erik Fennel

“ Whenever the girl was not attending to the routine tasks of daily life he bombarded her with questions. She asked in turn about Earth and the colony, and at some of his answers stared and giggled as though suspecting him of concocting fantastic lies for her benefit.
At her suggestion he did not wander alone, although most of the Venusians regarded him with suspicious curiosity rather than hostility.
"Trust no one," she warned him. "For the Chosen have spies everywhere. Komso may know or suspect that you come from the Above but the less he knows about you the better." ”

“ Barry was a demon spy, and Xintel had turned against her own people to mate with him.
Barry felt certain the priest had deliberately led his men into disaster for the psychological effect. He had been building hatred, and to one of Komso's mentality, seven deaths would be a negligible price for this crowning touch.
Drawn together by a spreading terror the people massed near the center of the city, each seeking company to stem their rising panic of helplessness. Their mutterings increased, their mood grew uglier. ”

“ Then he lay very still beneath the unwinking Martian stars while the thin, chilling night wind whispered through the deserted, sand-drifted streets.
The Gravinol was gradually leaving his brain, leaving him feeling fully alive for the first time since he had entered the Special Corps back on Earth at the age of seventeen. He wasn't sure he liked being so completely alive, for it was all he could do to keep his body from cringing under the expectation of another, better-aimed bullet. ”

“ After Bill left I checked Mike's pulse. It was weakening slighty from over-anaesthesia so, much as I dreaded having a lunatic awake in the ship with me, I had to let him recover consciousness.
He glared at me and fought against the pneumatic cushions that held him gently but tightly.
"You fool!" he raved. "You abysmal idiot! Don't you realize you're dooming Earth to an eternity of Martianization?"
It gave me a squirmy feeling to hear him talk that way.
"There is no war," I said soothingly, trying to reason with him. "It's all in your head. ”

“ In that instant the Earthman knew he had walked into a framed-up battle against an expert, and with the expert's chosen weapons, just as Komso had planned it.
He must smash that plan. Still empty-handed he braced his feet against the bottom and dived. The Chosen One's knife made one startled lunge and then Barry's hand caught Czerki's wrist. For a second Earthman and Venusian glowered face to face, the Venusian's expression of surprise changing to pain as Barry's Earth-trained muscles tightened. ”

“ It was sheer bad luck that brought Colonel Hammer around the corner of the building just as Nick prodded his captive out into the sea of mud, and more bad luck that the camp's commander was nervously fingering a night gun.
Nick felt the gun's light beam fall upon him, saw the red sighting spot, and felt a stunning tug at his shoulder just as he threw himself flat. Then Harmon's pistol rocked in his hand and Hammer's body vanished in a shower of coruscating orange sparks.
Groggily Nick pushed himself to a sitting position. He tried to move his arm and found it limp. ”

“ Bill asked.
"Mars."
We sat up straighter. Somehow in the five years that had passed without authentic news from the Red Planet we had taken it for granted that things there had settled down once more to a slow, lethargic normality. We hadn't realized the full impact of Mike, as amplified by the Hustic.
"Those Martians!" Tlenow mewled, his whiskers twitching in agitated disgust. "They are crazy. All crazy. They mate, but they use no sense in how they mate. Like Earthmen. ”

“ Barry barely glimpsed the shark-like creature that burst through the ranks of Komso's men. Straight as an arrow it came, ignoring those it knocked aside.
Komso's third scream broke in the middle, unfinished. Then there was only a spreading pink stain and a few remnants.
The dead silence that followed was broken by a yell of horror. Out to sea specks of light grew brighter by the second. Warriors and women alike milled in confusion, leaderless, and when one man started a panic-stricken dash up the slough, the others dropped their weapons and followed. ”

“ The overlord of the Martian Exploitation Company had come to investigate in person, bringing his own personal cruiser.
Nick tried to rest, falling at last into an uneasy sleep disturbed by dreams of rippling streams and drenching rainstorms. He slept until the rays of the sinking sun crept under the ledge to bring him back to the realization of his arid, deadly surroundings.
But somewhere amid his dreams an idea had been born.
"You can handle a spacer, can't you?" he asked.
"Certainly. You don't think Dad handled the Trailblazer alone?" ”

“ She was sure, and finally Barry left her, emptied his lungs once again, and floundered up the muddy bank.
His body felt heavy without the support of the water to which it had become accustomed, but it was good to be walking like a true Earthman again. He plodded inland, cautiously forcing his way through the thick swamp vegetation. The ground underfoot was a tangle of roots, slime and jagged stones.
Last City was a disappointment. Nothing was left but a few scarcely discernible mounds almost hidden by the swamp jungle. It was impossible to tell even what sort of buildings once existed. ”

“ Somehow this was worse than anything that had gone before, though that had been bad enough.
"I can blast Mars out of the Universe at will—and if there is any further interference with Earth minds I shall do so. You are afraid of me!
"Now get this, Thing. All of it. Individuality, the freedom of independent, individual action, is the right of every living creature! That includes Martians as well as Earthmen.
"You are going to stop being what you have become. You will make no more decisions for anyone. You will become once more what you were intended to be, a source of information only. ”

“ High above the dark water the hull of the spaceship glowed in the starlight. Nick headed straight toward it, sometimes swimming, sometimes floundering through deep, sticky mud that sucked tenaciously at his feet. Even in the darkness and confusion he knew his way, for Central Camp had been his home for many months.
As suddenly as it had appeared the water began to recede, draining into the ground. Nick understood. The barrier had been breached, and Martians were not able to swim. ”

“ Barry called. "You are a trickster and a fraud, and your curses are without power!"
Komso's jaw went slack and his face grew crimson. The priest spoke softly to a Chosen One.
"Men," he declared. "Only a demon could survive the curse of the Gods Of The Deeps—but even a demon can die!"
Barry almost missed seeing the Chosen One raise his crossbow, but some instinct warned him just as the weapon twanged. ”

“ The barrier sparked as though some living creature had come into contact with it, and an alert sentry scoured that area with machine gun lead. Again the barrier sparked, hot blue and green stars shooting up in a great fountain.
And then Nick could see the water itself. He ran on toward the northwest border where the terrain was lowest, trying to keep his mind on the desperate business ahead. His spirits lifted slightly as he realized that Susan had reached Merlo. ”

“ She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a woman, as well as a toxicologist.
When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging Robson Hind's features. ”

“ The exertion left him panting in the thin Martian air, so he took a breath of oxygen from his pocket sniffer bottle. Then, wanting to talk to the girl at once, he held the nosepiece to her face.
He knew when she recovered consciousness, for her head twisted suddenly and her teeth sank into his hand. He slapped her face hard, and she lay staring up at him with hatred and terror.
"You're Susan Jones," he declared.
"Murderer!" she spat, her face twisted with loathing. ”

“ He brought the nozzle of the flame thrower around. Flame blossomed and ricocheted through the water in burning globules. Concussion and shock wave threw him face down in the mud, dazzled and deafened.
He picked himself up, gagging and retching at the taint of charred flesh. The creature was still twitching in its death throes, stirring the water to opacity. Through the silt Barry could see several Venusian survivors moving feebly. ”

“ The few hundred survivors of the Special Corps, Nick among them, roaming the face of Earth in a desperate, frustrating search for the few grams still in existence, ready to commit any crime to ease their torment, clinging with fanatical, drug-inculcated loyalty to a Cause that had died with the War's end, looking endlessly for a new Cause to which to fasten their drug-inflamed energies, shunned and avoided and feared and hated by those persons not in the grip of Gravinol. ”

“ Send thou thy creatures that they may feed, that they may rend the flesh and grind the bones and destroy utterly those whom I have cursed in thy mighty names!"
Barry felt a crawling prickle of fear along his spine at the confidence of Komso's manner. Xintel's face twisted in terror as she remembered how that self-same curse had brought death to her father. The Earthman felt an almost overwhelming urge to swerve aside, to swing in a suicidal dive upon the priest and his Chosen guards. But remembrance of his duties to the colony and to Xintel overcame blind fury. ”