spawn of the Kaidor Sun rose to spread bestiality while he stood helplessly by.

"Aram," Deve spoke to him gently amid the rising symphony of destruction. "We have to get clear, Aram. Remember what Kant Mikal said ... and we are all that's left now."

"The Fleet...."

"The Fleet will return to Terminus. We can't stop them," Deve said with finality.

Aram knew it was true. Mindless to the last, the bureaucracy would stick to its directives and general orders. The Fleet would return ... to oblivion.

They mounted the air-sled and slanted up into the tortured air of the dying planet. A huge starship with the golden Spaceship and Sun blazon came hurtling down out of the sky like a fiery brand, a smaller ship bearing Santane's Trident and Flame imbedded in its flank. The two ships dissolved into a ball of greasy fire as they smashed into the crowded buildings of shattered Astrel.

More and more nitrogen fission bombs were falling now as the air-sled streaked across the flaming sky toward the ravine that hid the Serpent. The very soil of the planet seemed to dance in a hellish carnival of destruction. Glancing back, Aram saw the towering skylon come plunging down in torrents of rubble and human flesh. He knew with finality that he was witnessing the end of everything he had known—the chaotic collapse of a culture that had spawned its own nemesis. Man—diving from the pinnacle of stellar dominion to the depths of nothingness ... because he had tolerated tyranny.

Jerrold shook his head to clear away the sudden pain that stabbed across his temples. One thought grew in his mind with increasing clarity. He and Deve must somehow survive. Perhaps other men and women would come through the end in remote worlds, but there was no way of being certain. He had to be sure ... he had to know that the end would not come for all the race. He, a man, and Deve, a woman, could still carry out the mercifully dead Kant Mikal's injunction. In those fleeting moments above the writhing, doomed surface of Kaidor V, survival became an obsession with Aram Jerrold.

The Serpent awaited them where they had left it, and they hurried through the valve, feeling the tremblors of the fifth planet's death agonies.

Aram drove the ship upward, seeking the safety of space and their haven. Both knew where they were going, though neither had put it into words.

At a 

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