Trace got the idea, disagreed with it, and put all his strength into a terrific sprint. He found himself bathed in orange radiance, as the distant Graken focused their helmet beams; just before the first green ray was fired, he saw a very low wall of bricks miraculously uncrumbled, jinked and made for it, dived over and landed on his chest with a scarce-felt smack of pain. The others followed him, and hugged dirt as the rayguns sliced the cold air harmlessly.

After a while the orange glow went away. Trace cautiously looked over the wall. He couldn't see anything but he had a feeling. They hadn't all gone into the ships, he knew that.

He was not quite unprepared, therefore, when the Graken came over the bricks on top of him.

It was probably the largest and heaviest of all those whom the band had seen. It fell on Trace like the side of a collapsing barn, and Trace felt all his breath leave his lungs in one excruciating wheeze. He fought to bring the muzzle of the raygun against it, but could not move his arm, which was pinned under the creature's knee. Only the soldier's left arm was free. He flailed a blow that landed solidly, but the alien only squalled, and chopped at his face with its clubbed pistol. Trace felt skin and flesh give way along his cheekbone, blood gush from the slice of the metal. He heaved up as heartily as he could, at the same time aiming another left jab for the brute's face. His knuckles took it square in the eye. It shrieked, reeled back on its knees, and Trace fought tigerishly and was free. He delivered his finest right cross to the throat, and the Graken writhed on the frozen earth. Then Slough and Bill were there—the fight had taken only seconds—and the magician in a frenzy of rage booted the green head with the toe of his heavy shoe. That was that.

Slough's voice said softly, "Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lurmen ademptium." He rolled the big head up to the dusky light, and the broad single eye gaped blankly. "Virgil said that about another Cyclops, luckily of a mythical breed. 'A horrible monster, misshapen, vast, whose only eye had been put out.'" He signed. "Trace, the only real work we had is done, for failure or success it's finished, and we can't do any more good here. Let us go back to the women. If so be it our plan succeeds, they'll need you to watch over them in the—ah, the post-war world, which may be a little wild for a time. And if we've lost our gamble, then you should be with your girl when the end comes. You can't do any good by fighting guerrilla-fashion down here."

"My girl?" asked Trace, who had 

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