Running like a child, running like an idiot, arms waving, mouth laughing, throat shouting—

Thank you, oh Thank you God....

He was within twenty yards of the craft when its outer lock opened. Fifteen when the uniformed figure who stepped out caught sight and sound of him, ten when the rifle was aimed at him, five before he could comprehend the mindless meaning of it—

But we are the only two human beings left! his brain whimpered....

All of the Enemy must die! a remembering part of his mind intoned.... But someone had trained the Enemy, too.

The scarlet insigne emblazoned on the streamlined metal shell seemed on fire in the filtered Venusian sunlight.

Thorn's plunging hands grabbed the muzzle of the weapon even as it fired, wrenched it aside without feeling the hurt where his left earlobe had been.

"Great God, you imbecile—"

Twisting the weapon, struggling, trigger-finger constricting to fire again, a final, sudden twist, the finger wrenched against the trigger even as the butt was swinging upward, the muzzle swinging down....

The muffled explosion.

The gaping, oozing hole in the Enemy's breast.

Joshua Thorn looked down at the crumpled figure, watched as the slow-moving shadow of a cloud eddied across it.

He tried to sob, for he could not pray again.

He turned. Back toward Vanguard-I. If only he could cry.

Behind him, the Enemy lay dead. All, now, all of the Enemy ... was dead.

Her body would soon be turning cold.

 Prev. P 16/16