Warning, Ihelos! There is an Earthman among you at work as a spy for Thrayx! I am a captive.
Over and over, the same words, the same thought images which they formed; of Cain, of this hell-planetoid itself.
The orange glow pulsated as though itself alive with the desperation of her signal. And she heard the guard barely in time.
A howl of rage bellowed from him as she turned, twisted frantically just outside his grasp, darted headlong through the door.
And she was quicker than those outside; she was beyond them, running, the breath sobbing in her throat.
Away from the blood-soaked thing she'd left crumpled in death behind her, and toward the jungle's edge. Toward some new horror, perhaps, and toward a freedom that would be short-lived at best. For she had killed Bruhlla, and she knew they would not stop now until she had been run to earth.
he three men watched as the six ships landed in the jungle clearing; emptied of the selected Thrayxite women who would in little more than a day's time re-enter them, the breeders' seed within their bodies, for the journey back to the mother planet.
It had been the same the day before, and the day before that, and in the distance, they had watched similar craft descend toward other of the many colonies with which the lush planetoid was dotted.