obvious this was something unusual.

"Never saw ... anything quite like them before," the speaker said. "Look
like big plants of some kind, ten meters tall at least--yet they're
moving. Those branches, tentacles or whatever they are, keep pointing
towards us and I get the darkest feeling in my head ..."

"Blast one, see what happens," Kerk said.

The gun fired and at the same instant an intensified wave of mental
hatred rolled over the men, dropping them to the ground. They rolled in
pain, blacked out and unable to think or fight the underground beasts
that poured over them in renewed attack.

In the ship, far above, Jason felt the shock to his mind and wondered
how the men below could have lived through it. The others in the control
room had been hit by it as well. Kerk pounded on the frame of the screen
and shouted to the unhearing men below.

"Pull back, come back ..."

It was too late. The men only stirred slightly as the victorious Pyrran
animals washed over them, clawing for the joints in their armor. Only
one man moved, standing up and beating the creatures away with his bare
hands. He stumbled a few feet and bent over the writhing mass below him.
With a heave of his shoulders he pulled another man up. The man was dead
but his shoulder pack was still strapped to his back. Bloody fingers
fumbled at the pack, then both men were washed back under the wave of
death.

"That was the bomb!" Kerk shouted to Meta. "If he didn't change the
setting, it's still on ten-second minimum. Get out of here!"

* * * * *

Jason had just time to fall back on the acceleration couch before the
rockets blasted. The pressure leaned on him and kept mounting. Vision
blacked out but he didn't lose consciousness. Air screamed across the
hull, then the sound stopped as they left the atmosphere behind.

Just as Meta cut the power a glare of white light burst from the
screens. They turned black instantly as the hull pickups burned out. She
switched filters into place, then pressed the button that rotated new
pickups into position.

Far below, in the boiling sea, a climbing cloud of mushroom-shaped flame
filled the spot where the island had been seconds before. The three of
them looked at it, silently and unmoving. Kerk recovered first.

"Head for home, Meta, and get operations on the screen. Twenty-five men
dead, but they did their job. They knocked out those beasts--whatever
they were--and ended the