I’d only met up with them on a few occasions. Each time, they’d been formidable, but they hadn’t seemed unbeatable.

  Perhaps, I thought, my impressions were due to special circumstances. I’d only met the invaders out here, freezing and starving to death on an isolated rock. Perhaps on a world that was warmer and full of life they’d be much more numerous and powerful.

  “Is it really a good idea to land?” I asked Varrick. “They will be much more active in the daylight.”

  “Of course it isn’t a good idea—but it is better than the alternative. If we wait for months, the world we’re intending to help might already be lost. Therefore, we must take the risk.”

  I turned back to my controls, easing the ship down onto a snowy ridge of frozen methane. Outside, the snows swirled up, landed on the hot ship and melted. The trickling liquid quickly froze once again, however.

  “A good thing there’s not much oxygen on this rock,” Varrick said, gazing out the viewports. “Methane is highly flammable. You’d have blown up the first time you landed.”

  “Good thing,” I agreed, and I unbuckled my harness.

  Jort was in the hold and suited up for action. He had a spacer suit, a shredder in both hands, and a twitchy finger on the trigger.

  “Watch where you point that thing, Jort.”

  “Who will be going out, Captain? To the bunker, I mean.”

  “You or I at least, to lead the others to the spot. Who do you suggest should go?”

  Jort looked uncertain. He bared his teeth with the effort thinking caused him. “I’m torn. We could take our passengers—but any or all of them are likely to steal from us in the future. On the other hand, if we leave them here they might take the ship and leave us stranded!”

  I glanced at him in mild concern. “I hadn’t considered such disastrous scenarios.”

  “Why not? You must do this. You are our captain!”

  “Yes… all right, here’s the deal. You watch the ship. I’ll take Huan—he seems like a good fighter.”

  “What about the load?”

  “The model-Ds will take care of that. They can pull a cargo sled better than any of us.”

  “Not better than me…” he muttered. “Also, you must take someone you can trust. Huan might kill you.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. He’s wanted to arrest me since the beginning, not murder me.”

  “Just the same, if he comes back without you—I’m going to blow him back down that ramp and out the door!”

  “Fair enough.”

  Huan followed me a few minutes later, and we walked down the ramp. Behind us, a half-dozen model-D robots shuffled along. They pulled two cargo sleds. I’d paid for some upgrades since the last time I’d ventured here. With more bots and an extra sled, we’d be able to empty the armory quickly—hopefully before anything unpleasant noticed us.

  We keyed our radios down to their lowest settings. Huan proved not to be overly talkative in any case.

  As soon as we’d walked up the first shark-toothed ridge and were out of sight of the ship, I handed him a second shredder. I’d placed it under a tarp on the cargo sled. For myself, I carried my personal Sardez rifle.

  Huan examined the shredder I’d given him with interest.

  “This is a deadly instrument? It appears inadequate.”

  “It can kill a shrade or a culus. I’ve used them to that effect.”

  “Then you were fortunate. There are other, larger forms that couldn’t be brought down with a spray of slugs from this weapon.”

  Deciding not to argue about things I’d never seen before, I marched through knee-high snow. Soon, we had topped the ridge and made it down into the crater beyond. Here, a large series of chasms made the going treacherous. The snows covered them up in spots, making it very dangerous. You could fall into a deep hole and disappear. We’d lost a model-D right here a year ago, in fact.

  “Something moves,” Huan said. He stopped and stood stock-still. For once, his odd eyes were no longer roving. They’d locked onto something in the distance.

  I stood beside him and peered into the bluish gloom that passed for sunlight out here in deep space. “Where…? Oh…”

  I saw it. My blood cooled in my veins, because I’d never seen anything like this before. It wasn’t a culus or a shrade. It was bigger. I had the impression of a table-shaped creature. It was almost like a model-D bot, but with a flat back.

  “It looks like a walking table…”

  “That’s an accurate description of its appearance and its function.”

  “What does it have on its back?” I asked in a harsh whisper.

  “A crate. I imagine it’s full of weapons.”

  My mind reset itself. Some alien was stealing our weapons? “We’ve got to stop that thing!”

  I began running toward it, but a fast, strong hand reached out and caught me by the shoulder. Huan spun me around.

  “Use your rifle,” he said. “There might be others. They like to bait traps this way.”

  Nodding, I figured he could be right. I dropped to one knee and sighted. I’d already loaded the rifle with a medium range kill-shot. I took care, as I didn’t want to miss.

  The rifle jumped in my hands. There was no atmosphere on this planetoid, so it didn’t crack or boom. Instead, it kicked. It kicked hard.

  I was thrown back into the snows. It was one of the hazards of the low gravity. A kick that should have done no more than rock my shoulder had nearly caused me to do a backward summersault in the snow.

  I climbed back to my feet, cursing. “I should have set myself.”

  “Immaterial—the shot struck home. You have good aim.”

  “Sardez weapons are the best.”

  The creature I’d shot wasn’t dead, but it had slumped down. It flopped and kicked. The loaded crate it had carried on its back rolled away.

  “What is that thing?” I demanded. “It should be dead.”

  “It’s called a trach,” Huan said. “A servant of the invaders. A working beast. They’re the only form that’s not dangerous—but they’re still hard to kill.”

  “Shouldn’t we go and retrieve the crate?”

  Huan wasn’t looking at me or the trach. He was eyeing the horizon with both his odd eyes. “I think we should retreat to the ship. There might still be time.”

  “What?”

  That’s when I saw something running up behind Huan. I lifted my rifle again, braced myself, and fired.

  I missed—or at least I thought I did. The creature came forward, faster than ever. It lifted from the ground in a bounding run.

  The trach had been a trap. It had been a distraction, just as Huan had suggested. This attack was coming from the shadowy cliffs directly opposite the trach’s slow, trudging path.

  Huan began to release measured bursts with his shredder. A few of the slugs caught the beast—whatever it was—but they didn’t put it down. The attacker began to hop and lurch, moving in an uneven, weaving pattern. It was dodging us, I realized, racing closer and hoping we would miss. I got the feeling that if it managed to reach us—well, it would be bad.

  Taking careful aim, I fired the Sardez again. It rocked me back on my heels, and I stumbled, but I kept on my feet.

  The attacking creature, however, wasn’t so lucky. I’d hit him squarely. He went down, thrashing wildly. Dark liquids steamed in the snow.

  “Got him!”

  “Let’s run.”

  Without waiting for me, Huan began racing back the way we’d come. I looked around at the cargo sleds, and my precious model-Ds. “We can’t just take off and leave our gear.”

  But I was talking to Huan’s back.

  There was a moment of hesitation for me. It didn’t last long, but I felt I had to take stock of things.

  It occurred to me that as of this moment, the aliens appeared to be beaten. Still, Huan was running for his life.

  He’d predicted the first attack, and he’d been right. He knew this enemy better than I did…

  In short, I began to run. Not all-out at first, but I was churning up snow. I paused only long enough to give our androids the auto-return order. They could find their own way back if they had to.

  Once I’d done this, I glanced off to my right, to where that strange, long-legged humanoid had fallen.

  My heart almost stopped. It wasn’t there. A moment ago, it had been thrashing in the snow, but now—

  Swinging my head wildly to the left and right, I picked up the pace. Huan had stopped to wait for me at the crater’s edge. He was standing with his shredder aimed in my direction.

  Suddenly, I caught on. He’d set me up. He was right there, aiming his gun at me. He was going to blow me down with a shower of slugs while I was distracted and looking for phantoms.

  I veered to the left, and it was then that he fired. A rippling blaze of full-auto gunfire lit up the snowy fields. I couldn’t hear the shots, but I was sure I would feel them when they began to slam into me.

  Miraculously, I wasn’t touched. I raised my Sardez, putting it to my shoulder—

  But Huan was still firing. He was aiming where I’d been standing a moment earlier.

  Turning back, I saw it. That dark bounding shape was still moving, almost on top of me. It must have hidden then charged again when my attention had shifted away.

  I’d never been so close before to this new kind of monster. It was humanoid, but certainly not a human. The ovoid torso was headless, with long limbs covered in chitinous material. The central thorax was a mottled gray-brown.

  Swinging my Sardez into line, I had to fire from the hip. It was already too close, moving too fast—

  The gun kicked in my hands. I was again knocked back onto my butt. I hadn’t braced myself. That was a rookie mistake that might’ve cost me my life if I’d missed.

  But I hadn’t missed. The alien was down again, leaking more dark fluids and kicking savagely at nothing on the ground. It had blade-like feet that sent up clumps of snow.

  “Come,” Huan said. “We must flee.”

  I didn’t question him this time. I didn’t say a damned thing.

  I just started running for the ship—running for my life.

  Chapter Nineteen

  We crossed the crater wall and raced for the ship. I was puffing with exertion and fright. Something about that alien... it was freaky. It had placed a visceral fear into my human mind. It was so predatory, so alien and so wrong somehow.

  I think my primitive mind objected to the fact I was being hunted intelligently. That’s not something humans are accustomed to when we encounter nonhumans. Now and then, a man like myself might encounter a predator in the wilderness of a colony planet, but I’d never met up with anything that was so smart, fast and determined.

  Tossing glances over my shoulder every few seconds, I half-slid down the rocky hill to our spaceship. The ramp was still down, and that fact made me grunt with displeasure. Had I really been so thoughtless as to leave the ship open like this?

  “Captain?” Sosa’s voice crackled in my ear. “You’re returning without the sleds? So soon?”

  “There’s something after us, Sosa. If we’re taken down before we reach the ship, retract the ramp and close all the hatches.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, you do. Just do it.”

  The radio crackled for a moment. “I have you on visual. You’re only two hundred meters out. You’ll make it.”

  I was glad she was confident, but I wasn’t. That thing—it had moved so fast. In comparison, Huan and I were slogging through deepening snows, trying to follow the tracks we laid down the first time. The last few hundred meters seemed to take an eternity. We were both becoming tired and puffing with exertion.

  I noticed that Huan wasn’t quite keeping up with me. He’d lagged behind. Suddenly, I remembered his state of health was far from perfect. I’d had to jolt him back to life just the day before. Perhaps he had deep, internal injuries.

  “Put your arm over my shoulder,” I said. “Your real arm.”

  Huan hesitated, but he did it. I half lifted him, and we moved faster. He was running out of stamina.

  Fortunately, he didn’t weigh much on this planetoid. Neither did my rifle. The extra weight almost helped me get my feet under me and grip the ground firmly. Traveling in low gravity could be surprisingly taxing. It was kind of like trying to run in chest-deep water. Your feet slid out from under you. Working in low gravity was generally harder than it looked, as you couldn’t easily brace yourself. It felt as if there was nothing much to push against.

  My spacer’s skills didn’t fail me today, however. I kept going, eating up ground and plowing aside the snow when I broke through the crust with my churning boots.

  After I reached the halfway point, I stopped looking over my shoulder. I figured that if the alien was gaining on us, it would catch us even faster if I kept turning around.

  “Captain!” Sosa said, speaking loudly in my headset. “I see something behind you. A dark shape just came over the ridge. Is that a man?”

  “Send Jort below to work the anti-personnel turret. Blast the alien following us if you get a chance.”

  For perhaps the next ten seconds, all I could hear was my own puffing and coughing. The ramp was close now. Just fifty steps away.

  Then a figure appeared at the bottom of the ramp. For a bleary second I thought it was another killer alien—but no, the shoulders were huge, and this thing had a head. As I watched, it raised a long rifle.

  Jort fired at something past Huan and I. Part of me wanted to stop and engage the alien, but a bigger, more primitive part of me wanted to keep running for safety. Now that I could see that ramp, I wanted to be on it, to race up into the safety of the ship.

  Following my instinct, I kept running. Jort fired a second time, then a third. Then he lifted his rifle, aiming the muzzle high.

  “It’s gone,” he said. “I didn’t see where it went. Maybe it fell down into one of those big holes.”

  “Maybe.”

  Breathing hard, barely able to speak, I turned and scanned the rim of the crater behind us. There was nothing moving.

  Turning back to the ship, I examined the ground for odd prints, but I saw none. The ship had landed in a frozen dish of ice. Really, it was melted snow that had refrozen.

  Huan was looking everywhere at once, too. I let go of him, and we climbed together up the ramp. Jort followed us, shaking his head.

  “What was that out there?” he asked. “It looked like a man with long legs and no head.”

  “That’s an accurate description,” Huan said. “It was a killbeast. At least, that’s what they call them in the Chain colonies. You can call it whatever you wish.”

  We hit the ramp actuator, and it retracted. We aimed weapons down into the blinding snow outside until the ramp was up and the hatch was firmly secured.

  I removed my helmet and my breath puffed out in white blasts. Oxygen flooded the hold, and my breathing became easier.

  “Check everything in here,” I told Jort. “Look for any sign of entry. That ramp was down and unguarded for a long time.”

  Jort’s eyes registered alarm. He nodded and hastened to do as I’d told him.

  Huan, on the other hand, was watching me.

  “You haven’t seen that type before?” he asked.

  “No. I’ve only encountered one culus—the flat, flying types with a single pumping leg. I’ve seen two shrades as well, I think. Snake-like things that love to crush a man’s ribs.”

  Huan nodded. “You’ve survived a surprising number of encounters. Most humans don’t live to meet their second alien. You’re either lucky, or very skilled.”

  “It’s a little of both.”

  We headed to the upper decks and got warmed up. Sinking into a cushioned seat was a great relief. Thinking about the alien, I shuddered for a half-second.

  “Are you suffering a malfunction?” Huan asked me. One of his damned eyes was always fixated on me, it seemed.

  “Just a little chilled,” I lied smoothly. “It was cold out there.”

  “The ambient temperature inside a spacer suit while undergoing exertion would seem to preclude—”

  “Look, do you think there’s any way one of those things could break in here?”

  “I don’t know. But if the ramp was left down, they wouldn’t have to break in.”

  I nodded. “All right. We’ll search the ship—no, I’ve got a better idea. Our freeloading passengers will do it. I’m going to get myself a drink.”

  “You’re dehydrated? That would seem odd, given that—”

  I slammed the door in his face and tracked down Trask, Dernel and Varrick. Then I poured a shot of whiskey as I spoke to them. I told my lazy passengers there might be a killer alien aboard, and I got them up to look for it.

  They grumbled. Only Varrick seemed keen for the work.

  Morwyn found me just as I was reaching for the bottle, planning on a refill.

  She watched my hands closely as I poured. “You’ll spill it. Allow me.”

  She poured my drink, and I let her. After I drank that one, I felt better. I smiled at her.

  “I guess I’m out of shape.”

  “No. You are in excellent physical condition.”

  “Well then, perhaps I’m still cold from—”

  “What was it out there? What were you running from?”

  With a sigh, I brought up some suit-cam video files and flicked them from my suit to the table we were leaning on. The vids played under our elbows, turning the dark, beer-stained countertop into a screen.

  Morwyn watched the vicious alien pursue us. She gasped and shifted in her seat now and then. “It almost caught you. So fast… so vigorous! How many times did you and Huan shoot it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think it even felt the slugs from the shredder. It was only impressed by my Sardez—for a while, anyway.”

  “I can’t believe how it kept bouncing back up after direct hits. What kind of animal can do that?”

  “It’s not an animal—not really. It thinks. It was stalking us all along. Trying to trick us.”