"We got to get those babies rounded up. Gow! Gow, you hear me? We got to get 'em back!"
Gow's voice came sullenly. "I hear you, boss." We slowed down. It was suddenly important to hear what more Gow had to say.
"Don't you get it?" he asked slowly. "Gertrude let 'em out. She wanted 'em—to help her. They know it. They ain't going back."
Somewhere behind us a plastic shack cracked open like an eggshell. Human cries were drowned in a whistling screech. Off to the right the Mercurian cave-cat began to laugh like a crazy woman.
Slow, patient, animal hate, walled around them, waiting. The feel and smell of hate in the brute tank. I could feel and smell it now, in Nahru, only it wasn't patient and waiting any more.
The time it had waited for was here. Gertrude had set it free.
Shannon said, very softly, "Mother o' God, what are we going to do?"
"Get back to the ship. Get back and get out of here!"
I jumped. It was Melak's voice, sounding hard and ugly. Light spilling out of a sagging door made a faint silhouette of him in the rain. He held a blaster in his hand.
Shannon snarled, "Take off with half my gang stranded here? You go to hell!"