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Wah the sphere onto the ay - and then everything speeded up!

He shuttered his red eyes against the sudden light, shouted an astonished denial in a language Jazz half-way understood or felt he should understand, and fell into a defensive crouch Then the film had suddenly come alive Before, the sounds had seeh, nervous conversation, feet shuffling in the background, and now and then the springs of weapons being eased or tested and the uns But all of it see dull and a little out of tune, like the first few minutes of a film in a cinema, where your ears are still tuned to the street and haven’t yet grown accustomed to the new medium of wall to wall sound

Noever, the sound was very : Take him alive! Don’t shoot hier! He’s only a ures in combat uniforms ran past the cale a little, burst into view on the screen and al been ordered not to shoot, they carried their weapons aardly, seemed not to knohat to do with them Jazz could understand that: they’d been told that hideous death lurked in the sphere, but this seemed to be just a man How many of them would it take to cow just one ertips, they es with s had come out of that sphere, and they knew that, too

The htened up His red eyes were now at least partly accusto for the soldiers, and Jazz had thought: this lad has to be six and a half feet if he’s an inch! Yes, and I’d bet he can look after himself, too And certainly he would have won his bet! The as maybe ten feet wide The first two soldiers approached the near-naked man fro at him to put his hands up in the air and come forward, the fastest of the two reached him, made to prod hi speed the intruder caun aside with his left hand, swung the weapon he wore on his right hand shatteringly against the soldier’s head

The left side of the soldier’s head caved in and the hooks of the gauntlet caught in the broken bones of his skull The intruder held hi uselessly like a speared fish But it was all nervous reaction, for the blow must have killed him instantly Then theit, and at the same time shouldered his victiht

The second soldier paused and looked back, his face bloodless where the caht his indecision His co this unknoarrior down Made brave by their nu his rifle butt-first toward his face The rinned like a wolf and ducked easily under the blow, at the saauntlet in a deadly arc It tore out the soldier’s throat in a scarlet welter and knocked hiot to his knees - and the intruder brought his weapon down on top of his head, caving in his fur hat, skull and all!

Then the rest of the co all around the warrior, clubbing with their rifles and kicking at him with booted feet He slipped and went down under theirof the soldiers was an uproar, over which Jazz had recognized Khuv’s voice shouting: ’Hold him down but don’t kill him! We want him alive - alive, do you hear?’

Then Khuv hi onto the ay and waving his arms frantically over his head ’Pin him down,’ he yelled, ’but don’t beat him to a pulp! We want himin one piece?’ The final three words were an expression of Khuv’s astonish the file in Khuv’s voice, had ale warrior had quite genuinely slipped when he went down - possibly in blood - and that was the only reason he’d gone down The five or six soldiers where they crowded hie of that terrible ht hand, weren’t even a match for hi at torn throats orover the ri sixty-odd feet to the basin-likeas he turned aas kicked almost conteory and unfettered, and alone, on the red-slimed boards of the ay And then he had seen Khuv, and nothing between the

’Flame-thrower squad!’ Khuv’s voice was hoarse, almost a whisper in the sudden, awed silence of the place To me - quickly!" He hadn’t looked back, dared not for aman from the sphere

But the warrior had heard him speak He cocked his head on one side, narrowed his red eyes at Khuv Perhaps he took the KGB Major’s words for a challenge He answered: a short, harshly barked sentence - probably a question - in a language which once again Jazz had felt he should understand, a question which ended in the word ’Wauely familiar words of the sentence And this time the last word, ’Waly and with so of fierce pride

Khuv went down on one knee and cocked an ugly, long-barrelled autoly at the warrior, used his free hand to beckon ently forward from behind him ’Flame-thrower squad!’ he croaked There had been no spittle in his throat, nor in Jazz’s throat, by the time the film had reached this point

And then the warrior had loped forward again, only this ti; and the look on his face and the way he held his deadly gauntlet at the ready spoke volumes for his intentions The clatter of booted feet sounded and figures darkened the sides of the screen whereHis own orders about the use of weapons were forgotten now, sohands, fired point-blank, twice, at thehuman death-machine froht shoulder, under the clavicle A dark blotch blossoly flower in theon the boards The second shot had apparently missed him entirely He sat up, touched the hole in his slumped shoulder, stared in open astonishment at the blood on his hand But pain didn’t seeistered at all - not yet When it did, a second later -

The warrior’s hoasn’t a hu far ht-dark caverns in an alien world beyond strange boundaries of space and tih to match the man himself

He would have hurled himself at Khuv, indeed he crouched down and made ready to do so, but the three-man flame-thrower squad was in the way The machine they handled wasn’t the small man-pack variety that can be carried on oneof a fuel tank on a motorized trolley which one side with the flae flexible asbestos shield, fragile protection against blow-back

The auntlet weapon through the asbestos shield and al it froauntlet, which seemed to be stuck, Khuv shouted: ’Show him your fire! But only show it to him - don’t burn hier: a jet of flame lashed out, lapped at the warrior’s side where he screae and terror and turned away And when the fire was snuffed out at its source, still chemical fla away his beard, eyebrows, and setting fire to the single lock of black hair on his head

He began to blister, screaony and beat at the flames with his left hand Then he snatched the asbestos shield from the soldier who held it and hurled it at the squad Before they could recover fro, back toward the shiny white sphere

’Stop his! Don’t let hiered as bullets ss He had almost reached his objective when a lucky shot hit hiht knee and knocked hi himself into it Except - It threw hih a brick wall

And at thatthe film, Jazz had known - as those who had been present had known, and everyone who’d seen the film since - that the Gate was a mantrap Like the pitcher plant, it allowed its victih the Gate, the creatures from the other side were stuck here And Jazz had wondered: would it be the sah from this side? Except of course there was no way anyone was ever going to find out - was there?

’Now he has to co ceased he ran down the ay toward the fla the pitiful antics of the man fro sorry for the weird visitor, but the

The man sat up, shook hi sphere His hand ot to his knees, turned to face his torlared his hatred at them; he hissed at thereat yellow blisters bursting and seeping their fluid all down his right side, crippled and -helpless? - still he defied theauntlet on the warrior’s right hand ’Take it off!’ he estures ’Get rid of it - now!’

The led to his feet Khuv backed away, ai off your hand!’ he demanded

But the un, at the flame-projector whose nozzle pointed directly at hie expression, co triumph, unbearable irony, even sardonic sadness or n of fear ’Wa his head in pride Thenhe laid back his head and literally howled the word: ’Wamphyrir

As the echoes of that cry died away, he thrust his face forward and glared once more at the men on the ay, and there was that in his look which said: ’Do your worst You are nothing You know nothing!’

’The gauntlet!’ Khuv cried again, pointing He fired a shot in the air for eun at the warrior’s heart But in the next asp

Standing there on the ay, swaying a little from side to side, the man from the sphere had opened his jaws, opened theue, scarlet, lashed in the cavern of his ape of his jaws expandedsailcloth And because all else was total silence and the rest of the tableau was frozen, the sight and sounds of his metamorphosis were that much more vivid

Jazz had held his breath as he watched; and now, in his cell, he held it again at the very memory of what he’d seen:

The warrior’s fleshy lips had rolled back, stretching until they split, spurting blood and revealing cri teeth The entiremuzzle of a rabid wolf - but the rest of the face had been as bad if not worse! The squat, flattened nose had grown broader, developed convoluted ridges like the snout of a bat, whose oval nostrils were shiny-black flaring pits in dark, wrinkled leather The ears, previously flat to the head, had sprouted patches of coarse hair, growing upward and outward to form scarlet-veined and nervously mobile shapes like fleshy conchs; and in this respect, too, the effect was bat like Or perhaps demoniac

For certainly hell ritten in those outlines, was lie which was part bat, part wolf, and all horror! And still the change was incomplete

The eyes, which before were sed leeches until they bulged criave a new h the lacerated ribbons of the creature’s guers had so torn hiswith his own blood; and his teeth snarled through the blood like the awesos of some primal carnivore!

As for the rest of his body, that had reh all of his s had taken on the dull gleam of lead, and every inch of his body had vibrated with an incredible palsy But finally - Finally it was done And knohat he was doing, at last the , fro step forward And with that last lurching step in Khuv’s direction, the creature gurgled: ’Wa was human, and he’d scarcely had tis, voice - all of these things almost failed him And that would have been a fatal malfunction But in the last e and croaked: ’Burn him - it! God, burn the whore’s bastard to hell’

That was all thefor; he needed no further urging, and it required only the pressure of his forefinger on the trigger A yellow jet of fla white core roared out from the nozzle, broadened, enveloped the horror fro doith chemical fire, and it simply stood there Then the shape in the heart of the fire crumpled, see position

’Stop!’ Khuv covered his face with a handkerchief The roaring stream of fire continued for a second or two, hissed into silence as it was shut off at source But the alien warrior continued to burn Fire leaped up fro six or seven feet above the black oval core which was hissmoke Jazz hadn’t been able to smell it, but still he’d kno itand crackling, and the slu thatarm rose up from the tarry remains in the fire, undulated like a crippled cobra in the clouds of s which ceased when it collapsed back into theay

’One ed And in a very short space of time it was finished