As she vanished from their sight the spacemen turned the unleashed fury of their very souls upon the Martians. How long Alayna could live within that horror hanging in the air above them, they did not know, but they knew the thing would vanish only with the last of the Martians.
With wild cries they leaped upon the seated creatures stabbing, burning, slashing a frenzy of killing and slaughter.
As for Roal, his own fury congealed into a single bright purpose beside which all else dimmed into insignificance. He selected a path from the outer circle to the center of the assembly and slowly blasted his way forward. A thousand ghastly mental creations of the Martians now beset them. Great lizards slashing with fanged teeth, enormous slugs that dropped from above and encased them in suffocating slime.
But Roal gradually found himself in possession of a defense against them. He observed that if he gave way to fright and fear at their presence they were able to attack him. But those that came up without his awareness produced no effect until he saw them and let a moment's anxiety sweep over him. Then he felt the pain of their stabs. That was what had happened on the balcony.
"Shorty," he called to the patrol pilot who was fighting beside him. "It's only your imagination. Don't believe in the thing and it can't hurt you!"
Shorty was down on his back slashing vainly to get from under an enormous blob of living slime that was sucking the life from him. Shorty's own fear gave the thing life.
"Shorty. It's gone. There's only a blanket over your head."
For an instant, Shorty appeared, "Yeah?" Then the thing came back as his imagination powered it again.