had wanted to wave in a friendly way, even if it could at best have only wriggled a tentacle in return—

But as for the men who fought side by side with him—he hated them bitterly, loathed their faces, voices, physical mannerisms. The way this one chewed and that one spat. Their unchanging curses, cliches, and jokes. All unendurably magnified, as if his nose were being rubbed in offal. For they were part of the same miserable, lying, self-worshipping galactic swarm as himself.

He wondered if he had hated the men at the office on Altair Una in the same way—

Almost certainly. He recalled the long smoldering irritations over trifles that had seemed tremendous in the hours between the violin-moans of the time clock ... but then there had been the safety valves and shock absorbers that make life tolerable, and also the illusion of purpose.

But now there was nothing. And everybody knew it.

They had no right to joke about it and continue the pretense.

He was shaking with anger. To kill indiscriminately would at least demonstrate his feelings. To focus death on the backs of men charging with inane hysteria. To toss a nuclear fizz-bomb into a dugout where men sought secret escape in dreams and repeated like prayers their rationalizations about galactic empires. Dying at his hand, they might for a moment understand their own vicious hypocrisy.

From out ahead, one of death's little mechanisms spoke concisely, rapidly. It seemed like a bugle call that only he could hear.

Ruby moonlight slid suddenly across the grotesquely tortured ground. He raised his weapon and took aim. Its sound pleased him because it was like a soft groan of agony.

Then he realized he had fired at the abruptly-revealed shadow because it was that of the stocky soldier who had jibed and crawled away....

The moonlight blacked out as if a curtain had been drawn. His heart pounded. He ground his teeth and grinned. His feelings were fierce, but not yet determinate. He became aware of the smells of the ground and of the chemicals and metals; strong, sharp, interesting smells.

Then he found himself staring at a whitish patch that never got more than eight inches off the ground. Slowly it approached out of the darkness, like the inquisitive head of a huge ghost worm. It became a face with 

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