nce Codiss were fierce souls.

They'd stand by the heli and look out over Syrtis, their gloved fingers
entwined. If they couldn't kiss, here, through their helmets, that was
merely comic pathos--another thing to laugh and be happy over.

"Our wind-blown hill," Nance chuckled on that last evening. "Looking
down over a culture, a history--maybe arguments, lawsuits, jokes,
parties; gossip too, for all we know--disguised as a huge briar patch
that makes funny noises."

"Shut up--I love you," Nelsen gruffed.

"Shut up yourself--it's you I love," she answered.

The little sun was half sunk behind the Horizon. The 'copter was only a
hundred feet away, along the hillcrest. That was when it happened. Two
dull, plopping sounds came almost together.

If a thinking animal can use the pressure of a confined gas to propel
small missiles, is there any reason why other intelligences can't do the
same? From two bottle-like pods the clusters of darts--or long, sharp
thorns--were shot. Only a few of them struck their targets. Fewer,
still, found puncturable areas and struck through silicone rubber and
fine steelwire cloth into flesh. Penetration was not deep, but deep
enough.

Nance screamed. Nelsen wasn't at all sure that he didn't scream himself
as the first anguish dizzied and half blinded him.

From the start it was really too late. Nelsen was as hardy and
determined as any. He tried to get Nance to the 'copter. Less than
halfway, she crumpled. With a savage effort of will he managed to drag
her a few yards, before his legs refused to obey him, or support him.

His blood carried a virus to his brain about as quickly as it would have
carried a cobra's venom. _They_ probably could have made such
protein-poisons, too; but they had never used them against men, no doubt
because something that could spread and infect others was better.

For a while, as the black, starshot night closed in, Nelsen knew, or
remembered, nothing at all--unless the mental distortions were too
horrible. Then he seemed to be in a pit of stinking, viscous fluid,
alive with stringy unknowns that were boring into him... Unreachable in
another universe was a town called Jarviston. He yelled till his wind
was gone.

He had a half-lucid moment in which he knew it was night, and understood
that he had a raging fever. He was still clinging to Nance, who clung to
him. So instinct still worked. He saw that they had blundered--its black
bulk was visible against t