What armor could turn aside such a weapon?
Yet beyond it lay the threat of Titan fever. For that, too, could be a blow struck by the Helgae—the main attack, designed to cripple the mass-mind of the whole, far-flung human race!
Boone shuddered.
Yet strength rose in him, not despair. For with knowledge, the fears he'd felt of the unknown vanished. He looked about in the growing light with new, fresh eyes.
The landscape had changed from that which he last remembered. This ground lay in altogether different contours.
Frowning, he turned.
Now, with a shock, he found himself staring out on a familiar scene: the arcs and domes and bubbles of the self-same sprawling Helgae city where he and Eileen had lain entombed.
... Where Eileen still might lie.
It was a thought to make his belly churn, his heart pound, wrenching cruelly at every atom of his being. He sagged, gripped his head between his hands.