laughed, a sharp, harsh bark. "Joan, hell! That was my own mind, condemning me!"

His gaze went back to Bjarnsson's body, rolling slightly with the motion of the ship. It boiled down to that. Murder. His careless, selfish murder of Bjarnsson. The murder of countless civilians. War, bitter, brutal, desperate.

Fallon drew a long, shuddering breath. His head dropped forward in his helmet, and his slanting wolf's eyes were closed. Then he turned and sat down at the controls.

The single forward 'scope field gave him vision enough to steer. Anything might attack from the sides or the stern—another beast grown incredibly huge, but not yet a lung breather.

Alone, he probably wouldn't succeed. He wouldn't live to know whether he had or not. His gloved hands clenched over the levers that would change the course, send him away to safety.

Savagely he forced his hands away. He gripped the wheel. Time slid by him, black and silent as the water outside. And then....

Something moved in the dark behind him.

Slowly, slowly, Fallon rose and turned. The veins of his lean face were like knotted cords. The hard steel of the hull held him, tight and close, smothering.

Blurred, faint movement. The soft scrape of metal against metal. He had been so sure Bjarnsson was dead. He'd been dazed and sick, he hadn't looked closely. But he'd been sure. Bjarnsson, lying so still, with his suit ripped open.

His suit ripped open. Volcanic rays would be seeping into his flesh. Rays of change—perhaps they even brought the dead to life.

There was a grating clang, and suddenly Fallon screamed, a short choked sound that hurt his throat.

Bjarnsson's face looked at him. Bjarnsson's face, with every gaunt bone, every vein and muscle and convolution of the brain traced in lines of cold white fire.

The shrouding leaden suit slipped from wide, stooped shoulders. The heart beat in pulses of flame within the glowing cage of the ribs. The coil and flow of muscles in arm and thigh was a living, beautiful rhythm of light.

"Fallon," said Einar Bjarnsson. "Turn back."

The remembered voice, coming from that glowing, pulsing throat, was the 

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