They could see the glowing lines of the triple beam, converging toward it.
The multitudinous planets of the swarm stood motionless in the pale green void.
They neither rotated nor changed position.
Giles Habibula wiped sweat from his yellow brow with the back of his hand.
“Ah, me!” he moaned.
“A fearful world to die in!
Upon one journey of forlorn hope, old Giles carried a bottle of wine through the mortal hardship of a continent larger than the precious Earth.
But then he fought enemies he could understand.
He never felt such need of the bright strength of wine.”
He fumbled in the packs on the sledges, and found a bottle of some rare vintage from the asteroid.
Watching with a jealous eye, he offered it to each of the others in turn, and at last drained it gratefully.
Even Jay Kalam was worn to confessing despondency.
“It’s true,” he agreed bleakly, “that things were never quite so bad for us, not even on the Runaway Star.
Though the things we fought then were able scientists and terrible foes, they were still defeated refugees from their own environment.
“But the Cometeers have conquered theirs.
The creatures of the Runaway Star were things that we could sometimes kill, but the Cometeers aren’t flesh.”
His thin lips set.
“I doubt very much that any weapon men ever made could destroy one of them.”
Startled, Hal Samdu peered at him.
“Not even Aladoree’s?”
He shook his head. “AKKA will destroy anything material—but I’m not certain that the Cometeers are material at all.”
“Ah, so, Jay,” croaked Giles Habibula.
“Our plight is desperate.
In seeking to balk the Cometeers and destroy Stephen Oreo, we are no more than five ants making war on all the System—”
His voice wheezed into silence.
His dull eyes, staring into the green sky, seemed to film.
The breath went out of him.
“A good thing!” he gasped. “A good thing we drank the wine.”
Bob Star saw a distant object, skimming swiftly toward them through the green.
It came from the direction of the Halcyon Bird.
Jay Kalam caught at Giles Habibula’s arm, as he started away.
“Don’t run,” he said. “There’s nowhere to go.
If we crouch down, perhaps they won’t see us.”
Bob Star was huddled beside Kay Nymidee.
He caught her hand, and it closed upon his with a desperate pressure.
Her face was drawn, white with strain.
Her pale lips quivered.
Overwhelming terror shuddered in her eyes.
Pity for her stabbed him like a blade.
A nerve-severing sound tore him away from the girl. He jumped, startled, terrified.
For a moment he could not identify the sound.
Then he knew that it had been Giles Habibula’s scream.
Now the old man was trembling, sinking slowly backward upon his knees.
His moon face was yellow-gray, contorted with dread.
His small round eyes were fixed, glazed, bulging.
“What is it, Giles?”
“Mortal me!” the old man sobbed.
“It’s the fearful thing—or another like it—that ate Mark Lardo!”
Bob Star looked up then, and found the object he had glimpsed a moment ago in the far distance, now already upon them.
For the first time, his horror-filmed eyes rested upon one of the Cometeers.