Step by step the advance continued, slowing as it went. Insensitive as the Pyrrans were to psi pressure, even they were aware of the blast of hatred being continuously leveled at them. Jason, back in the ship, had a headache that slowly grew worse instead of better.
"Watch out!" Kerk shouted, staring at the screen with horror.
The cave was filled from wall to wall with pallid, eyeless animals. They poured from tiny side passages and seemed to literally emerge from the ground. Their front ranks dissolved in flame, but more kept pressing in. On the screen the watchers in the ship saw the cave spin dizzily as the operator fell. Pale bodies washed up and concealed the lens.
"Close ranks—flame–throwers and gas!" Kerk bellowed into the mike.
Less than half of the men were alive after that first attack. The survivors, protected by the flame–throwers, set off the gas grenades. Their sealed battle armor protected them while the section of cave filled with gas. Someone dug through the bodies of their attackers and found the pickup.
"Leave the bomb there and withdraw," Kerk ordered. "We’ve had enough losses already."
A different man stared out of the screen. The officer was dead. "Sorry, sir," he said, "but it will be just as easy to push ahead as back as long as the gas grenades hold out. We’re too close now to pull back."
"That’s an order," Kerk shouted, but the man was gone from the screen and the advance continued.
Jason’s fingers hurt where he had them clamped to the chair arm. He pulled them loose and massaged them. On the screen the black and white cave flowed steadily towards them. Minute after minute went by this way. Each time the animals attacked again, a few more gas grenades were used up.
"Something ahead—looks different," the panting voice cracked from the speaker. The narrow cave slowly opened out into a gigantic chamber, so large the roof and far walls were lost in the distance.
"What are those?" Kerk asked. "Get a searchlight over to the right there."
The picture on the screen was fuzzy and hard to see now, dimmed by the layers of rock in–between. Details couldn’t be made out clearly, but it was obvious this was something unusual.
"Never saw… anything quite like them before," the speaker said. "Look like big plants of some kind, ten meters tall at least—yet they’re moving. Those branches, tentacles or whatever they are, keep pointing towards us and I get the darkest feeling in my head…"
"Blast one, see what happens," Kerk said.
The gun fired and at the same instant an intensified wave of mental hatred rolled over the men, dropping them to the ground. They rolled in pain, blacked out and unable to think or fight the underground beasts that poured over them in renewed attack.
In the ship, far above, Jason felt the shock to his mind and wondered how the men below could have lived through it. The others in the control room had been hit by it as well. Kerk pounded on the frame of the screen and shouted to the unhearing men below.
"Pull back, come back…"
It was too late. The men only stirred slightly as the victorious Pyrran animals washed over them, clawing for the joints in their armor. Only one man moved, standing up and beating the creatures away with his bare hands. He stumbled a few feet and bent over the writhing mass below him. With a heave of his shoulders he pulled another man up. The man was dead but his shoulder pack was still strapped to his back. Bloody fingers fumbled at the pack, then both men were washed back under the wave of death.
"That was the bomb!" Kerk shouted to Meta. "If he didn’t change the setting, it’s still on ten–second minimum. Get out of here!"
* * * * *
Jason had just time to fall back on the acceleration couch before the rockets blasted. The pressure leaned on him and kept mounting. Vision blacked out but he didn’t lose consciousness. Air screamed across the hull, then the sound stopped as they left the atmosphere behind.
Just as Meta cut the power a glare of white light burst from the screens. They turned black instantly as the hull pickups burned out. She switched filters into place, then pressed the button that rotated new pickups into position.
Far below, in the boiling sea, a climbing cloud of mushroom–shaped flame filled the spot where the island had been seconds before. The three of them looked at it, silently and unmoving. Kerk recovered first.
