"All right," the Varan told the girl, his voice edged with impatience. "You're needed elsewhere, Jina."
She disappeared silently into the cavern of Starstone Chamber. Atel slid the door back and cocked his head, a grotesque silhouette against the faintly hazed oval opening. After a moment, Andreson heard the sound too: a weird, intermittent buzzing noise. It set his teeth on edge, and sent little waves of sheer hatred coursing through his body. The stocky Varan drew him out onto the platform and pointed upward.
"Borers," he grunted. "You can see one from here."
It was quite high, about half-way between the summit of the tower and the surface of the rock sky, and moving very slowly. It reminded Andreson of a legless centipede—a long, joined cylinder, with the same stony, red-veined texture that the great bowl presented. In the feeble light he thought he saw small openings appearing and vanishing: the space-beasts, moving about inside their mechanism! The brief glimpse was somehow the most horrible thing he had ever seen. He could distinguish at least two other tones in the gruesome buzzing, and he knew that the borer was not alone above the city.
"They've learned that hollow things are deadly—learned from us," Atel spat out bitterly. "See the column of light inching out from the borer's nose? They are disintegrating a tunnel for their vacuum torpedoes. It's a slow-motion kind of warfare—but when one side wins constantly, it can't last forever. Feel the radiation?"
Andreson discovered that he was scratching. His skin felt as if he had a mild sunburn. "The boring mechanism?" he suggested.
"Right," Atel admitted, his tone grudging. "Matter-against-matter generates radiant heat. Space-against-space generates X-rays and worse. Deadly stuff! If our gunners can only—"
Andreson never heard the end of the sentence. Without the slightest warning he was again sprawling through the hot dark air—
Alone!