Besan Wur shouted, terror-stricken, as an avalanche of huge green-crested saurians surged toward them through the disintegrating sides of the tubeway. He tasted the salt of bitten lips.
The giant double tires smoked as Nard Rost, the gray-haired Garro at the controls, spun the wheel tightly about and sent it hurtling back along the way they had come.
"That was—close!" Besan's voice was shrill. His fingers were biting into the back of his seat as he peered backward at the hissing horde of denars.
"Ras Thib—Walof Jemar—all the others!"
Nard Rost nodded grave assent. At least twelve of the wheels had been swallowed up by that churning death from the open plains.
"There isn't any chance they could have survived," Besan said numbly. "The wheels are flattened and broken already."
Besan gasped and his hand went to his throat. For by now the acrid musty scent of the older Garro pervaded the narrow drum of a cabin. That scent was the natural protection of the men of Saaar; only a mindless stampeding herd of denars, or other men, would brave contact with his kind.
Besan Wur's eyes leaked moisture. He nudged the valve that released the countering fumes of the tank under his left armpit. Unlike the older man he was not immune to the product of Garro scent glands.
He was an Earthman, one of a hundred-odd Terrans living secretly among the Garros on forbidden Saaar. His dark hair was artfully dyed blonde along the central stripe, and his oversize ears and the flaring tip of his nose were the result of surgery in his youth. Even his red blood was rendered purple by regular injections of an innocuous fluid.