Alan Dean Foster Humanx 1 M

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reconcentrated, magnified and remagnified, shuttled and focused and jimmied
around through a farrago of organic lenses, intricate enough to put the human
eye to shame.
From the two nearest floaters beams of immensely concentrated sunlight struck
the station. By and large the walls of the outpost were honeycomb aluminum and
not duralloy. Where the angry sunlight struck, it melted away, to bum what lay
within.
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Hansen fled the dome. So did Cohoma and Logan and most of the other personnel.
Cargo stayed with his crews, cursing their inaccuracy and ineffectiveness.
He did not realize that the gas sacs of the floaters were compartmentalized,
did not recognize the speed with which they were replaced, with which fresh
gas was generated in the newly rewalled cells. He failed to recognize the
futility of the laser rifles, which could bring down a shuttle or major
aircraft; failed to even as the ultraintensified light projected by the third
floater struck the dome, melted away the tough polyplexalloy, melted away the
rifles themselves, melted or ignited chairs, consoles, flooring, and
instrumentation. He re-
alized the failure, however, just as he and the last rifle crew were
carbonized.
The angry floaters remained for half an hour, drift-
ing back and forth across the station. They continued
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playing energy into the ruins long after the last flicker of desperate red
rose from the smoking wreckage.
Eventually they tired, whatever they possessed for minds finally sated.
Leaving the station pockmarked with gaps and scorched slashes, fires consuming
its innards, they drifted off to the south whence they had come.
"Now, let us finish it," rumbled Losting.
"There may be some left," Bom argued. "Let us wait until the flames have
finished their work and the sun has begun its dying."
As happened now and again, the night-rain began before evening that day. It
was still light enough to see as they entered the ravaged hulk of the station,
water dripping around them. Droplets sizzled and hissed where they struck the
still superheated metal.
In places the corridor walls had run like butter under the floaters' assault.
Recooled metal leaped and plunged.
The hunters entered the outside corridor with snuf-
flers loaded and ready, though neither expected to find anything alive within
the smoking structure.
"Even necessary death is unpleasant," Bom observed solemnly, sniffing the
penetrating odor of carbonized flesh. "This is not a place to linger long."
Losting agreed, pointing down the curving pathway.
"I will take this half and meet you on the other side.
The sooner we conclude this and start Home, the better I'll feel." Bom nodded
agreement and started off in the opposite direction.
The big hunter waited until his companion was out of sight before following
Geeliwan. He did not en-
counter many corpses. Most had either been buried beneath rubble and slag, or
else burned beyond rec-
ognition.
Losting considered the annihilation wrought by the floaters. Once he had
watched while a curious one prodded with a tree-thick tentacle at a sleeping
hunter, only to leave the dreamer in peace and proceed ami-
ably on its way. He had also seen one of the normally gentle scavengers have a
tentacle bitten in half by a startled diverdaunt. The floater had proceeded to
tear the carnivore's tree apart and reduce its upper trunk
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to splinters before trapping and roasting its attacker.
He wished there had been another way. They were passing through the far end of
what had been the big skimmer hangar. The swift exploratory disks it had
housed were hardly recognizable now. Most had
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-%20Midworld.txt their transparent domes crushed in, their hulls re-
duced to slick lumps of fused alloy. One uptilted fuse-
lage held the melted remains of two giants still in the small circular
cockpit, their bones welded whitely to the metal. Had the surviving giants not
pressed the fight as long as they had, the floaters probably would have grown
bored and eventually drifted off to their nesting grounds in the south.
Instead, these bulky, panicked assassins had fought to the last, their weap-
ons of red light pathetically useless against the nerv-
ous systems of the translucent Photoids.
Geeliwan suddenly growled and leaped ahead. The furcot had smelled the
smell too late. It had been masked by the miasma of the burning station. The
light caught him above the eyes in midjump. He fell to the floor, a silent,
crumpled heap.
Losting had the snuffler up and was firing before the furcot fell. There was
the distinctive soft phut of the tank seed bursting. In the near dark, someone
screamed. Then it was quiet.
From behind a twisted, bent section of floor an un-
steady figure rose Logan. Swaying, she dropped her pistol and reached down
with both hands to pull the jacari thorn from her right breast. A tiny blot of
red appeared, staining her tunic. She stared at it dumbly.
Losting had reloaded when the second beam caught him in the side, ripped
through skin, bone, nerves, and organs. Usually the shock of such extensive,
abrupt destruction was enough to kill instantly. Lost-
ing, however, was not a normal man. He dropped to his knees, then toppled onto
his left side. Still alive, he clutched with both hands at his side. The
snuffler clattered to the damp metal floor.
Logan staggered forward a couple of steps and tried to say something to the
hunched-up figure on the floor. Her mouth worked but nothing came out.
Then her eyes glazed over as the potent nerve poison
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took hold, and she fell like a tree. She lay there un-
moving, a broken toy doll, one arm bent grotesquely under her.
From a black tunnel nearby two figures rose cau-
tiously. Cohoma walked to the still form of Logan and knelt beside her. Hansen
continued past with barely a glance at her, toward Losting. Behind him,
finding neither pulse nor heartbeat, the scout pilot muttered bitterly, "He's
got you there, Kimi."
The station chief kept his pistol trained on Losting as he approached. In the
hollowness of the death-
filled corridor, the hunter's breathing sounded loud.
Hansen had lost much of his clothing and all of his bureaucratic demeanor. He
was panting heavily. Kinky gray hair formed a mat over the bulge of his
stomach.
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