One by one the hundreds of thousands of minuscule tapes began to wind and thread. The orbital receivers rolled upward, registering a life form the memory banks identified as Human, Adult Male.

UTILI7.ATION OF LIFE FORM NECESSARY . . . PROTECTIVE OUTER COVERING MANDATORY FOR ASSIMILATION . . . SURVIVE . . . SURVIVE ...

"Get out, Marco," Verbanic said evenly, backing slowly away from the smoking crater at the center of the rubbish mound.

Gonzalez was crying. "Lew . . . Lew . . ."

"Get out. Now!" he commanded.

They were the last words Lew Verbanic spoke. In a fraction of a second, a metallic hand shot out of the hole and clutched Verbanic's ankle as he tried to run. He screamed as the bone in his leg pulverized to dust inside the flesh. Still screaming, he was spun in the air like a limp rag while the metallic creature rose from the crater in the mountain of trash.

13

Gonzalez watched the scene with horrified, immobile fascination, weeping. Strings of spittle dribbled through the gap left by his missing teeth and down his chin.

The thing holding Verbanic stepped onto the crest of the hill, looldng, in the deceptive light of the moon, like an ancient conquering knight. Verbanic remained in the thing's right hand, his leg twisted unnaturally at the ankle, his foot stationary as the rest of him looped again and again in the air. Verbanic's wails keened grotesquely in the night. Even at a distance, Gonzalez could see the bulging whites of his eyes, terrified and pleading for death.

Then the creature's left hand rose slowly upward to catch Verbanic by the neck. Lew's head snapped back with a force that sent a splash of blood arcing from his mouth to the ground. Then j he lay still, pulled taut between the creature's two arms, a trophy of war. \

Gonzalez stood rooted to the spot where he ; stood. The metallic thing threw Verbanic's body j on the ground, where it bounced down the : mound of rubble to lie sprawling on the earth below.