Fear That Man

crashed down on the streets, huge hunks of it smashing into the surging crowds that were trying to run from the slugs. Truck-sized plastic mortar blocks tore off heads, ripped limbs free, crushed others beyond identification. Sam saw one man split down the middle by a sliver-like portion of a steel beam. Blood fountained up and gushed over the sidewalk as the man fell forward — one half slightly to the left, the other half slightly to the right, organs spread in between. The people were like animals in panic. Mindlessly, they fled first one direction, then the other. The slugs were moving down both ends of the avenue, cutting them down in a murderous crossfire that would insure total annihilation.

Bodies piled up at a frightening rate, torn and mangled, charred unrecognizable or, when struck directly by a sizzling beam, burned down to the bones with a few pieces of black raggedy flesh clinging to the skull and ribs.

“Okay,” Buronto said. “I’ll do it.”

It was certainly not patriotic fervor that drove him to the decision. He seemed thrilled by the carnage outside. Every eruption of gore seemed to set his eye adance with new flames until they glowed almost like the eyes of a cat at night. Or was that his imagination? Sam wondered. The giant actually seemed to ooze violence.

“Good.” Sam smiled, holding his stomach in check. “Now is there any way out of here besides the front door? That looks particularly unhealthy at the moment.”

“Yes,” Buronto said. “Wait just a minute.” He leaped from the doorway into the turmoil of the street.

“Come back!” Sam shouted convulsively.

“You’ll be killed!” Coro bellowed even louder.

But the roar of the one-sided battle outside had smothered their protests.

A sled was landing a hundred feet from the Inferno, and the slugs were starting to debark, rifles hanging from pseudopods, to search the buildings for those who had had the presence of mind to stay inside and hide. Buronto reached the sled before the slugs could set tail to ground. He brought a boulder fist down on the dome-segment head of the nearest slug as it tried futilely to bring its rifle around. The fist crushed cartilage, smashed in on brain tissue. Orange blood spouted through Buronto’s fingers. As quickly as he could, he grabbed the falling slug, using him as a shield, and wrenched the rifle from its already limp pseudopod. A blast from another alien’s rifle caught the dead slug instead of Buronto, ripped a deep hole in it. And by that time the giant had the stolen gun under control.

He fanned the sled party. Blood fountained up in three separate places, drenching the street with a slick film of dull orange. Flesh caught fire and bloomed like gasoline, then subsided to a steady yellow blaze. The slugs either fell instantly or slithered about in circles until the fire had so consumed them that they were not even capable of postmortem muscle spasms.

A second sled drifted across the roofs, and its aft laser shot a long beam at Buronto, just barely missing him. He fell behind the empty sled, raised his gun, caught the alien marksman in the midsection and blew him in two. Thick alien blood rained down and spattered across the window of the Inferno.

“He’ll never make it!” Coro shouted over the chaos.

“It’s horrible,” Lotus said, clutching her lover.

“He’ll make it,” Sam snapped. He has to, he thought. He’s our only chance. And, dreams of Hope, how low have we gone and how desperate our situation when our only hope is a madman, a masochist, a vicious killer! He stared grimly at the destruction. His stomach was beyond vomiting now. The destruction was too great, the killing too overwhelmingly horrible to affect him. It was a dream, an unreality of ghastly proportions but an unreality just the same. That was the only way his mind could accept what he was seeing.

Further down the street, a woman burst into flames, her hair a wild torch…

A child fell, went under trampling feet that bruised, cut, killed unknowingly in blind panic…

Buronto was holding a beam on the guidance module of the second magno-sled. Suddenly there was a curling of black smoke seeping from the underslung bubble, and the sled began hobbling out of control. The slugs on it wrestled against it, found it was a losing battle. The sled started a climb, then choked off and plunged into the wall of another building, pushing fire and debris ahead of it. There were screams from the men and women inside the building. Fire gushed up through the ten floors of the place, singeing away the screams.

Mounting the sled, Buronto fiddled, determining the method of operation, raised the vehicle and turned toward the Inferno.

“Get back!” Sam shouted as the giant guided the sled on a collision course with the doorway.

There was a pregnant pause while the alien craft accelerated, then a birth of ear-shattering noise as wood disjointed from plastiglued sockets and the wall around the door shattered and fell inward.

“Get on!” Buronto was shouting. “Get on! Hold fast!”

They boarded, held tightly to the small railing; Buronto gunned the machine, tore through a plastiglass window at the rear of the building, the front of the sled shattering it before them. The shards, sharp and dangerous, showered into the air just as they passed through, fell back after they had passed and were speeding silently down the alleyway, ten feet above the ground.

Buronto clutched the rifle in one hand as if it were a tiny pistol — or a toy from some more violent time. With the other hand, he steered the sled. “Where to?” he called over his shoulder.

“We have the starship hidden,” Sam said. “We figured they would take over the spaceport, so we landed in the Five Mile Park. They shouldn’t bother with that.”

At the end of the alley, another sled and four slugs appeared. They seemed not to notice, for the moment, that these were humans and not other slugs. They came fluttering down the narrow passage, swiftly closing the blocks between them. Buronto raised the rifle, fired straight-on at the pilot of the other sled. The alien was flung apart like a doll, tossed from the sled in pieces. One of the others went for the controls, but the sled bucked before it could reach them, went out of control. It slammed back and forth from wall to wall, still advancing. One of the slugs — at a moment of extreme tilt — slid over the edge, grabbed the railing with pseudopods to pull itself back aboard. The sled swung into a wall again, crushing it, severing it in half and dragging it another fifty feet, leaving an orange smear along the building blocks.

“We’re going to crash!” Lotus shouted, throwing her small hands over her eyes — but peeking through her slender fingers.

Buronto pulled on the stick, lifted the sled. They grabbed and fought the sharp upward slant. The out-of- control craft careened toward them. Buronto took the sled even higher, pushing the drive into whining protest. But the other craft started climbing too. And there was just not any room in which to dive.

XIII

The Central Being was overwhelmed by Hope. Hope the planet; Hope the city. The other planet — what had it been? — Chaplin, yes, was interesting. But here — the architecture, the parks, the ports. It was so — the Central Being reluctantly admitted — beautiful. But the forces of evil were often beautiful, often overwhelming. But only gaudiness, never any depth. The Central Being willed Itself to forget the surface shimmering and glittering and to concentrate on other things. Such as the success of the raiding parties and destruction teams. The purpose of the raiding parties was to kill in their assigned areas and leave buildings and other artifacts intact as much as possible so that later historical teams could photograph and catalog the culture. The destruction teams, on the other hand, were concerned with nothing but death. Kill, burn, ruin, crush, obliterate. Both were doing well in their respective areas. In fact, the entire blasphemous race should be wiped from the slate of existence in another month. This world would be bare in another twelve hours. Then on to smaller colony worlds. The easy marks…

XIV

Sam gritted his teeth, fought against closing his eyes. His ears, already booming with noise, anticipated the crash. No, that was blood rushing. His own blood. Fear blood. The alien sled climbed almost equal with theirs. The