feeling ... things?" Her voice was also shaky.

"I'll say! Not just a matter of feeling it, either. For example, a
couple of old friends are walking towards me at the moment. Dead ones,
as it happens."

"Ugh!" she said faintly. "Hurry up!"

Dasinger shoved the needle's plunger a quarter of the way down on the
kwil solution, pulled the needle out of his arm. He stood still for some
seconds, filled his lungs with the cool night air, let it out in a long
sigh.

"That did it!" he announced, his voice steadying again. "The stuff works
fast. A quarter shot...."

"Why did you wait so long?"

"It wasn't too bad till just now. Then suddenly ... that generator can't
be putting out evenly! Anyway, it hit me like a rock. I doubt you'd be
interested in details."

"I wouldn't," Duomart agreed. "I'm crawly enough as it is up here. I
wish we were through with this!"

"With just a little luck we should be off the planet in an hour."

By the time he could hear the lapping of the lake water on the wind, he
was aware of the growing pulse of Hovig's generator ahead of him, alive
and malignant in the night. Then the Fleet scout came into the glasses,
a squat, dark ship, its base concealed in the growth that had sprung up
around it after it piled up on the slope. Dasinger moved past the scout,
pushing through bushy aromatic shrubbery which thickened as he neared
the water. He felt physically sick and sluggish now, was aware, too, of
an increasing reluctance to go on. He would need more of the drug
before attempting to enter the Antares.

To the west, the sky was partly clear, and presently he saw the wreck of
the Dosey Asteroids raider loom up over the edge of the lake arm,
blotting out a section of stars. Still beyond the field of the glasses,
it looked like an armored water animal about to crawl up on the slopes.
Dasinger approached slowly, in foggy unwillingness, emerged from the
bushes into open ground, and saw a broad ramp furred with a thick coat
of moldlike growth rise steeply towards an open lock in the upper part
of the Antares. The pulse of the generator might have been the beating
of the maimed ship's heart, angry and threatening. It seemed to be
growing stronger. And had something moved in the lock? Dasinger stood,
senses swimming sickly, dreaming that something huge rose slowly,
towered over him like a giant wave, leaned forwards....

* * * * *

"Still all right?" Duomart inquired.