It was decelerating rapidly. At ten thousand miles, Carter cut in the automatic pilot and climbed into his ejection suit. Still the ship plunged downward. Five thousand miles. Two thousand.
At sixty thousand feet, Carter pressed the emergency ejection stud, and a giant cybernetic hand shoved him gently but firmly through the gaping hatch of his ship. He was swept away, off to one side, and drifted slowly the long distance to the ground.
The bombardment of thought from the Khethlani became almost unbearable. The alien creature knew now that it was doomed.
"Go ahead," Carter yelled derisively. "Hypnotize my spaceship! Make it turn around!"
He was still twenty thousand feet from the ground when a bright flare of energy squirted forth as his ship roared into the building that housed the Khethlani.
There was just a smoking pit in the ground when Carter got there. Everything had been totally destroyed by the crash.
And for the first time since his landing, Carter no longer felt the itching in his mind. The Khethlani was dead.
He turned and saw a man approaching, dazed and smoke-blackened. It was Gendron.
"Who are you?" Gendron asked uncertainly. "Where are my men? My ship?"