around. There was no one in sight; the searchers were beating through the underbrush up ahead.

He moved on tiptoe back toward the village. And suddenly the thick corded arms of Lloyd Kramer shot around him from behind, pinioning him in an unbreakable grip. The knife dropped from his hands.

"All right!" Kramer called. "I've got him! Let's go back now."

Three men guarded him as he lay bound in one corner of the Colony Administration Building. Lloyd Kramer, Abel Lester and Mark Cameron, Lois' father. They had been facing him wordlessly for almost 15 minutes. None of them would answer his questions—not even when he asked Cameron whether Lois was all right.

Suddenly the door opened and a tall, ascetically thin man entered. Reese knew instantly from the cold set of his features and the fact that his eyes, unlike those of the zombies, burnt with a hard flame of intelligence, that this was Dr. Tersen.

"You can go," Tersen said.

The three guards nodded and left. Reese noticed that a tiny band of bright metal encircled Tersen's forehead.

The scientist looked down at Reese. "Are you a member of this colony?" he asked.

"Why should I tell you?"

"I repeat, James Reese: are you a member of this colony?"

"Yes," Reese said. "I've been away on a hunting trip the past month. Who the devil are you?"

"My name is John Tersen, formerly of Earth. You may have heard of me."

"I remember some sort of trial," Reese said. "You were accused of illegal experiments of some kind. You were banished from Earth."

"Ah, yes. Precisely." A film of pain crossed Tersen's lean features. "Exiled from my native world. That was six years ago—six years in which I've worked alone, on an uncharted planetoid, preparing. Colony Eight of Damballa represents my first laboratory experiment. After that, the other nine colonies—and then, Earth. I'll have repaid them for what they did to me!"

"Do you have this whole colony in your control?" Reese asked.

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