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a Girillian creature when it knocked him over. Massive hooves pressed him into the metal deck. Agony
washed through him but to lose consciousness now was to die. As he tried to lever himself upright, a
Girillian carnivore ran over him. It was smaller than the first animal, but its feet were studded with
talons. Rualf collapsed, screaming, to the floor. Thick smoke filled his lungs.
As Rualf lay quivering, limbs splayed, bleeding and coughing, battered and bruised, apparition after
apparition burst from the smoke and flames. The biggest were deep within the hold, as if herding the
rest. He sprawled, helpless, as creature after creature stomped and slashed him, each encounter inflicting
new anguish.
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The last thing Rualf ever saw was the huge flat foot of a swampbeast descending upon the center of his
torso, directly over his sensor stalks.
* * *
The commandos flinched as a six-legged creature leapt from the open airlock. Only that moment of
surprised nonrecognition saved the animal. "Hold your fire!" yelled Kyle. As Swelk's simulated voice
reverberated from starship and hangars, he searched for and found on the computer what he hoped was
its microphone. He covered the aperture with his thumb. "Hold your fire!" Muffled, the repetition went
untranslated. He'd seen such a creature before in a hologram projected by this very computer. "It's a
zoo animal. There may be more."
Animal after animal appeared out of the smoke and flames. They retreated in confusion from burning
ship and human building, lost and confused, huddling together. If the Girillian menagerie included
predator and prey and Kyle was almost certain from Swelk's tales that it did the xenobeasts were too
overwhelmed to care. He'd never quite believed the stories of terrestrial predators and prey fleeing
peacefully side by side from forest fires now all skepticism vanished. "Call the National Zoo. We need
gamekeepers, pronto."
"Swampbeasts. They're beautiful." Darlene's voice was quietly awestruck. She pointed, quite
unnecessarily, at two magnificent, web-footed animals that stood about eight feet tall. They were the last
to emerge from the airlock now impenetrably thick with smoke.
She gently took Swelk's computer from Kyle's hand. Walking slowly toward the knot of shivering
animals, she crooned, "Smelly. Stinky. Smelly. Stinky." The computer repeated something after her,
softly. The swampbeasts pushed forward. Bowing their heads, they approached cautiously, eyes wide
and staring. They brushed their enormous heads against Darlene's outstretched hand, then settled to their
knees beside her.
Swelk's computer did not translate "humph," but that was okay. They understood what it meant.
* * *
Swelk coughed and spat, splattering a smoke-blackened clot of blood against the bulkhead. The clot
sizzled. Despite the fire-suppressant sprays, fire was everywhere. Her skin was blistered. Her extremities
had been so repeatedly scorched that she no longer felt them.
The initial fireball had burst through the open hold where Rualf and his troupe had been working, killing
everyone. She had no idea why the hatch to the ship's interior, never unlocked when she was aboard, was
now wide open. The ship's corridors had channeled the fire and blast, catching most of the crew at their
posts. The draft from the second airlock had deflected the fireball from parts of the ship, sparing the
bridge from the worst of it.
And saving her Girillian friends.
She had explored the Consensus from end to end, and there were no survivors. She omitted Grelben
from her tally. He would surely refuse to leave the ship. Captain's prerogative. Captain's curse. Captain's
penance, too, she considered, still unable to wish upon him, or anyone, death in this manner.
She had been lost repeatedly in the smoke, been saved more than once by providential discoveries of
emergency respirators. Their capacity was limited, and she'd left a trail of empties behind her on her
trek. She finally found her way to the hatch that led to the zoo hold and safety.
The entrance was shut and inoperative.
Frantically, she tore open the access panel to get at the manual override. The crank stuck after a quarter
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turn. Crying in frustration, she tugged and tugged. It would not budge.
The corridor grew ever hotter. Gagging, Swelk limped to the cargo hold where the fire had begun. The
flames there remained impenetrable to vision, let alone passage. She could not get off the ship. She
turned inward, stumbled to the bridge, feeling herself roasting.
"I did not expect to see you again." The captain was slumped across his command seat, his limbs and
sensor stalks limp. A command console behind him flashed insistently.
Swelk could not see the console the flashing was an alarm of some kind, she assumed but its light
pulsed luridly through the thick, billowing smoke. "No Krul should die alone."
Grelben winced at her words. "You are a better Krul than I give you credit for." When she did not
comment, he added, "You are a better Krul than many of us.
"Let me show you something. Look closely; the outside sensors burn off in seconds when I expose
them." A gagging fit interrupted whatever explanation he was trying to make. He gestured at a flat
display. "Section . . . three . . . two . . . two . . . camera . . . on."
Swelk peered through swirling smoke into the little display, flat like a human television. A sense of
warmth, totally unrelated to the fires ravaging the starship, suffused her. The Girillian animals, her
friends, were wandering on the airfield. There was no mistaking the two who were settled calmly beside
Darlene: Smelly and Stinky. As the swampbeasts extended their long necks to be touched, the image
dissolved into a blizzard of static.
"Sorry, Swelk. That's my last outside sensor."
They sat together in companionable silence until consciousness faded from them.
* * *
Except for smoke and hungry flames, all that moved on the bridge of the Consensus was the text still
blinking on the command console.
Clean Slate acknowledged.
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Framed
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- Chapter 30
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- Chapter 30
THE LAND OF DARKNESS
CHAPTER 30
The garments and skin colors varied with the architectural backdrops, but the scenes were otherwise
depressingly alike. Seething seas of humanity: fists shaking, faces contorted in anger, mouths agape in
angry chanting. Desecrated flags usually American, with a scattering of Russian. Hand-lettered
signs always in English denouncing the two great nuclear powers. Uncle Sam in effigy, hung or
aflame or trampled underfoot.
Why isn't anything Russian ever hung in effigy? wondered Harold Robeson. An effigy bear, maybe?
Hal, isn't there something more productive you could be thinking about?
There was a hesitant tap. His secretary was befuddled by his blowing off a long-scheduled confab with a
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