natives had fled. In minutes they would be trampling the fleeing enemy. Then the earth erupted....

Jord had only one leg still functioning when he regained consciousness. One leg and perhaps eight of his optics. His audio was dead and there was something wrong with his respirator. He had to fight to keep down the panic.

A warrior who had been trapped inside his machine once told him what it was like inside a Galbth II when you couldn't move, or help yourself. If you but closed your eyes you imagined yourself inside a shell, and that shell inside a larger shell, and that inside a still larger shell until, after a hundred shells, you could imagine your machine, still true to your form, lying helpless and twisted on the ground.

There was no way you could get out of your machine without the help of the mechanics. Even if there were it was impossible to exist on the surface. You had to lie where you fell. Or, if possible, make your way back as best you could to your lock. He tried moving. His good leg sawed the air like a giant flail. There was some motion in his chest, but that was all. He erected all the optics he could control and found himself lying on his stomach, dismembered. About twenty yards to the right he saw the other leg of his machine lying across a warrior who seemed to have no motion at all. As far as he could see, no one had escaped. Warriors and parts of warriors were strewn all about him. He swiveled his optics in anxiety. If he were to be rescued, it must be soon. Already the air was foul and he was having trouble focusing his optics.

He wanted to get out of the machine. He never wanted anything as much as he wanted this. The smell of metal and the taste of metal strangled him. He wanted to get out. Worse than he wanted faces, worse than he wanted identity, worse than he wanted to be able to live on the surface. He could feel all the weight of the machine on his body. The vocalizer was still on and he moaned into the dirt. He tried to raise his optics again, but the power had somehow failed. Many-faced, congealing darkness drew near. He rushed into it.

The Genocide Squad was the first to go into the crater. The last warrior had ceased moving. Later the salvagers would come to collect the precious metals. They drilled Jord's machine open but, luckily, by this time he was dead. "Which one next?" he asked, clambering awkwardly from the hole in the machine's back. He was a native and, except for certain functional differences in his construction, was little distinguished from other natives. But normalcy is 

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