Arrin with them, a prisoner. "Out," said Sawyer thickly, his voice a hoarse croak. "Get out, fast--" Arrin's voice cracked like a silver whiplash. "Yes, run. Because they're making you, because their minds are too much for you! Run, and let them have the Citadel, and when their fleet comes, let them have the Earth!" That stopped them. The horror they felt at that thought surged up so strong that the frantic compulsion to flee lessened a little. But behind them, somewhere back in the corridors, they would be following.... 

Arrin raged and mocked them. "_We_ saved you from the Ei two generations ago, when Ei ships had smashed your defenses and they were ready to move in. We moved in first, we've held them back, but now you've let them in! So run!" 

"Good God!" said Sawyer, his face stricken. "Then it was all true, what you told us about the Ei. It was true all the time!" 

Price did not, like the other Earthmen, have a lifetime's thinking to revise. He grabbed Arrin's shoulders. "Can we face them?" he cried. "Can we kill them?" "They can be killed," Arrin said. "Their minds can hold many--but not an unlimited number. If we all rush them, many of us, there is a chance...." Price yelled down the corridors, "What are you running from? There's only two of them. We're going back! We're going to pull them down!"The tribesmen, their first horror a little abated, by sheer reaction from shame of their own terror, exploded into sudden rage.

"There's only two of them--come on!"

And then of a sudden they were all of them running back down the corridors, jostling, crowding, screaming, Price with Arrin beside him, with old Sweetbriar ahead, with Sawyer shouting in hoarse anger. A mob, not an army, a mob urged forward by its own horror.

Around the corner, and into the corridor where the two black shapes came gliding fast. And it was like walking into night and death, into bitter black winds and the stabbing of cruel swords, as the might of alien minds blasted at them.

Tribesmen screamed and fell, clawing at their own heads. The mass behind forced over them, forced the reeling first wave right into the unimaginable shapes.

"Pull them down!"

Price was in the screeching fore-front now and he closed his eyes and struck with his knife at the cloudy darkness of a cowl.

A cold like that of outer 

 Prev. P 53/58 next