[XI]
Jake, Ed, and Cal were part of that hell. Each carried a smoking weapon in his hands. A body lay on the floor. Somewhere in one of the small rooms a woman was screaming. In the middle of the room stood the man who was obviously in charge of the situation. At the sight of this man, Kurt Zen felt his breath draw into his body so heavily that it whistled through his nostrils.
Cuso's lieutenant!
The others in the room were the Asians who had been with the lieutenant the night before.
"I should have slit their throats while they were asleep and in my power last night," Zen raged.
The only sound in the passage was that of West breathing heavily, like a man who had run a marathon and had lost. No, there were two men! Additional shock came up in Kurt Zen when he realized he was the second man. He seized the craggy man by the shoulder.
"West! They can't have that super radar. If we lose that, we have lost the war."
The craggy man did not move.
Anguish grew in Zen's voice. "If we lose this one, it will be the first war we have ever lost. And the last one. Nothing will remain to come after us except death and desolation."
"I know," West said. "The race soul will have to start over, in the swamps and on the mud flats, trying to rebuild the race with tools long since worn out and out of place in time." Again the tones of a bell were in his voice. But now the bell was tolling the death of a people, wailing that the glory that once had been was truly gone, wailing that the brave world that some men had tried to build was going into ashes and into doom.