“Now what?” Renard asked tensely.
“We wait,” Trelig whispered from his corner. “As long as necessary.”
Time passed. It wasn’t productive, nor comfortable; they were all tired. The tension, too, was having its effect, developing into a sense of numbing lethargy.
Renard was sitting down now, pistol only half-pointed forward, shaking his head. Vistaru, too, was relaxing.
“Why don’t they just come and get it over with?” he grumbled. “I figured they’d hit us as soon as the Bozog left.”
“There are a lot of devious minds there,” Trelig pointed out. “I’m sure that that was their first plan, but it will have been refined into something a lot more diabolical by now. This waiting is almost certainly part of it— designed to get us to let down our guard.”
“It’s working,” his wife grumped from the other corner. “I can hardly keep my eyes open.”
“Look who’s talking about devious minds,” Renard said wryly, looking over his shoulder at Trelig. “I’ve been told that nobody holds a candle to you in that department.”
“Stop that!” the Ghiskind ordered. “It will simply get us killed if we start in on one another. Why do their job for them?”
“Relax,” Faal the Dillian cautioned. “Remember, we outnumber them. Chang and her mate are no threat, they won’t even be in on it. That’s just three of them against seven of us.”
Renard suddenly stirred and jumped up, looking around.
“What is it?” several of them said at once.
He looked around, a slightly puzzled expression on his blue devil’s face. “I’m not sure,” he responded carefully. “Something funny. You know how aware I am of electrical things. I’d swear the lights flickered for a moment, then became brighter.”
They were all suddenly awake again, and tense, even though none of the others felt what he did.
Against the brightness of the lights, none had noticed a strange shape, faded almost to invisibility, flow under a room partition that was only two or three centimeters off the ground, and silently move along the baseboard toward the door until it reached the big male centaur, Makorix, standing pistol at the ready.
It flowed into the body of the Dillian, instantly striking at nerve centers, paralyzing movement. The Dillian brain was related to the human brain, and the Dillian central nervous system was a good compromise between human and horse. The Torshind had become familiar with equine movements while transporting Mavra and Joshi to Yugash; except in size Yulin’s Dasheen brain was very close to the Dillian brain. The Torshind had no trouble locating the correct spots.
Slowly the hand holding the pistol moved and readjusted. A thumb kicked the little control lever up two notches. The energy density would be greatly lowered, but still enough to paralyze; the beam would now be much wider.
The barrel moved ever so slightly away from the door toward the left of the room, where Renard, Vistaru, and Burodir sat waiting.
Suddenly Vistaru noticed the new targets. “Look out!” she screamed, and took off straight up.
Renard’s reflexes were tremendously fast; he kicked off on his powerful goatlike legs, soaring into the air as Makorix’s pistol fired.
The beam sprayed the room, and struck the Ghiskind and Burodir full on. It had no effect on the Yugash, but the great female frog gave a strangled croak and pitched forward.
Suddenly, the door exploded as a huge orange shape burst through it, followed quickly by a squat, humanlike powerfully built form, shooting wide scatter bursts.
Vistaru reached Makorix in an instant and knocked the pistol from his hand. The Dillian reached up for her with a snarl, and she obliged, stabbing him with her stinger.
The centaur gave a surprised cry, then collapsed in a heap.
Faal, hardly comprehending what was happening or why, swung her pistol at the orange shape and was gunned down almost immediately by Yulin.
Renard had lost his tast and had almost run straight up the wall in his escape from the initial shot; fully charged, he whirled and leaped for the orange shape, but the Yaxa saw him and spit a thick, brown fluid, catching him in midleap. It burned like fire when it hit and he plunged helplessly to the floor.
The Torshind left the unconscious body of the centaur and was headed for the Ghiskind when Trelig opened up. He was like a madman, capable of leaping ten meters or more. Coming to rest on any surface—even walls or ceiling—for an instant, he would fire. Suddenly he dropped directly onto the Yaxa.
The Ghiskind’s crystal form leaped now, crashing into them, jarring them away from each other.
Vistaru, flying about, was afraid to move close in for fear of hitting a friend. She looked anxiously about and screamed, “Where’s the damned Torshind?”
Wooley shouted something and Yulin ran out the door. Spitting and using fore-tentacles as whips, the Yaxa also retreated beyond the door, which banged back down noisily.
Vistaru looked around appalled. Both Dillians were either out cold or dead; Burodir was frozen stiff, Renard was unconscious and covered with sticky Yaxa stuff.
She looked at the two survivors with her. “Nothing to do but go get them before they try again!” she yelled.
“I agree,” yelled Trelig, slapping a new energizer into his pistol. “Let’s go!”
“Let me go out the door first!” the Ghiskind cautioned. “I’m harder to kill.”
There was no argument, and out it went, the other two following a second or so later when they heard no sound of struggle.
The hall was deserted, but there was a thin trail of a pale-green ichor leading toward the other room. One of them, probably the Yaxa from the nature of the stuff, had been hurt.
“Take it easy,” the Ghiskind cautioned. “No sense in playing their game all the way. We hurt one, yes, but they’re still a whole party and we’re down to three. It’s even now. If we go charging in there dead on, they’ll just wipe us out. Let’s think a minute.”
Although Mavra and Joshi knew the plan, they were helpless to do anything one way or the other. This was not their fight; they wanted only to survive it.
When Wooley and Yulin had come crashing back through the door, the horses knew that the plan had been only partially successful; there were some gashes in Wooley’s tentacles, too, which slowed the Yaxa a good deal, and a few nasty welts on Yulin’s back. The Torshind entered by other means and slid back into its crystal shell.
“Be ready,” the Yugash warned them. “The few remaining will come at us as soon as they can. It will be hours before they can count on any of their survivors, and they won’t wait that long.”
Wooley’s death’s head nodded. “If I were they, I’d be coming through that door right now. Check your weapons and be at the ready. Yulin! Dim the light so we can make sure the Ghiskind doesn’t pull our own trick on us! Mavra and Joshi, stay back and out of the way!”
They waited tensely for the counterattack, and they didn’t have long.
The door opened slowly, and they all trained their weapons on it, ready to fire as soon as the creature was visible.
It was the Ghiskind’s ptir, against which they had only the energy pistols, but they fired anyway.
Which played right into the Ghiskind’s hand.
The shots ignited a series of smoke and concussion grenades attached to the creature; these went off with a deafening roar that almost blew the door apart and filled the entire area with a dense, acrid yellow smoke.
Everyone was blinded, and Yulin started coughing. As he did so, something struck him hard on the back of the head and neck, knocking him down and rendering him semiconscious. His pistol skidded into the yellow fog.
The Ghiskind, its shell destroyed by the blasts, drifted across the room to the two horselike creatures it saw cowering helplessly against the far wall and entered the first one it encountered, taking control. Suddenly animated, Mavra made for the Torshind’s crystal shell and plowed right into it, sending it sprawling. The horse
