knew it slipping sideways, tumbling end over end.

Miko surged ahead in frenzied haste and sent an intercept projection which tripped her, just as enemy laser fire would have ripped off her head. Usk stared, chittering in bewilderment as the magic gun drifted through the air, and its invisible wielder ducked back toward the amalgamators, the place where Usk now skulked, grateful for the diversion.

With his astral will, Miko dragged Star back to cover, while a host of locusts swarmed in, with Zikri hounding their heels.

Miko threw her behind a mound of withered locust bodies out of sight. Then he focussed on killing anything that moved.

He glided by a statue of a Zikri strangling an upended locust. His hope was to lead the locusts and Zikri away from her, so he slid by the tank containing Laren and the monstrous starfish. Locusts with tiny teeth clacked closer, long hind legs bounding over corpses with lumo-sticks clutched in pincered claws.

Crash! A flash of crimson flared in his astral sight. A locust laser blast shattered the wall of glass near him, sending a spray of putrid-smelling liquid over his astral body.

Bzt. His body crackled back to existence. He gasped with the shock of tumbling back into his body. He wiped his faceplate of the foul liquid. His still-glowing eyes peered intensely through the glass.

Star was coming out her daze and she saw Miko stagger, slipping in the wash of slimy liquid at his feet. “You!” she croaked insanely. “What the hell are you?”

He tossed away the stunner, fouled by the locust slime.

She swayed back in horror just as the nightmarish shape of the starfish thing rose to life, freed from its prison. It loomed like a giant mushroom on crab’s legs fresh from the depths of a dark ocean trench. The starfish towered over all, dripping reeking fluid. Up it vaulted on four extensible legs, collapsing its body upon three of the closest locusts. The creature, fresh out of its amniotic fluid, was driven by its first real need to feed. Down it squashed itself on other hapless victims, working its rubbery, flexible appendages with grisly efficiency.

Screams and chirrups rang out as it squeezed shell and flesh up into a widening, funnel-like sucker tentacle right through to its central node or brain—the transparent sac that bobbed so hideously. The globule was quite possibly a brain where the squirming locusts, now enveloped by slime, clawed their way uselessly in their death throes. Laser fire raked the thing’s hide, but it emitted a low-pitched drone and scuttled after the offending locusts.

A dozen chittering Zikri and a score of locusts swarmed the hall. The timeless enemies fired and hewed at each other without restraint.

The Zikri wore no suits. No trouble did they have contending with the foreign air. Quite possibly they were the deadlier threat since they were not compelled to keep survivors for their tanks.

Laren lay sprawled grotesquely on his side, dripping slime. He gasped for air, reaching for the helmet that the starfish had unlatched. A tentacle whipped suddenly around him and dragged him away, into the midst of the Zikri invaders.

Miko heaved. It was impossible to fight all these foes and save his companions. Doom hovered like a black cloud over him, and a helpless rage enveloped his heart.

Backed into a corner between tank and statue, Star crouched, wild-eyed. A locust zipped in faster than a scorpion, its pincer wrenching the blaster out of her grasp. She kicked it but another locust sent her flying.

Miko rushed in and opened a fusillade of fire into the back of its neck, shearing crown from torso. The headless body flopped to its knees while the other he struck hard with the butt of his weapon and gunned it down when it sank in a heap.

Star lay immobile, limp as a fish.

A new horror emerged into this arena of death: a familiar, flesh-polyped form gliding out of the murk and standing dripping before Miko like a thing from an unremembered dream. Miko spun about, nearly scorching the figure’s hide. But the polyped creature moved faster than a snake, and slapped the quivering weapon out of his grasp.

A dozen fatalistic thoughts flashed through Miko’s brain. It must have been she who had blasted the attacking locust craft out of the sky and followed them here. Audra! Of course. Why should he be surprised?

The Zikri wrapped tentacles around his forearms, drawing him in like a fisherman’s catch of the day. A third she looped around his back, almost in a loving embrace.

Miko, disarmed of his weapon, gave an anguished cry. Perhaps it was Audra’s slimy fluids, or the inhibiting influence of the locusts’ witch water that prevented him from blinking out. Just when he needed his ghost-like invisibility, it refused to indulge him.

Star struggled to her feet, her mouth working in horror at the obscene embrace she was witnessing. She lunged forward, weapon raised.

Audra chittered a rapid jabber of confused sounds and slapped Star away as she came stumbling in. Star fell stunned in a dazed heap.

Where was Usk? Miko thought savagely.

Audra curled another lascivious tentacle around Miko’s throat and reeled him in closer, their faces inches apart. So great was her lust for him and obsessive need to reunite, that she seemed oblivious to the mayhem and laser fire all around her. Miko’s heart beat with the absolute horror and memory of a hundred grisly couplings. Struggle was futile against this muscled monster. Her chitter was as wild and wanton as any he had heard in the cockpit of Sitty II so long ago as she now popped open his helmet and sent a probing tentacle down his front toward his groin. She latched on to his clammy flesh and straining limbs. Cold, biting vapours bit his skin. Was she about to kill him? As he gasped for air, he could see the

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