Prequel story to Why, (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Mid-December, 1989) and Examination, (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November, 1990) that wasn’t published as the editor had already bought two stories from me about this alien species

contact we ever had with an alien race, what's the big deal?" His strained laugh sounded hollow even to himself as he glanced over at the bulk of the pumpkin-seed shaped wreck a hundred yards away. He was still numb, considering what it might mean.

Literally blown in half by an air-to-missile of an Air-Force jet, the alien craft had spread the surrounding wreckage as it crashed. A myriad of protective-suit clad figures swarmed anonymously over the main sections of the wreckage, blank visors periodically casting suspicious glances his way. The craft was 'hot' radioactively. Not dangerously, but the dosage from continuous exposure was high enough to warrant protective clothing.

Not that Tim was worried about the radiation. Aside from the fact that he had had a vasectomy several years earlier, he was dying anyway. When the doctors had found the cancer on a routine check-up, they had proclaimed with long faces that he had at most six months to live.

Of course, that had been a year ago.

He did feel a little weaker, despite being in top shape, and he needed more sleep than before. And sometimes the pain from his gut would stab so deep that he would double up. But that passed soon enough and he would go on. He had refused the radiation and the chemo treatments once he found out that it would only let him live a little longer, and it would mean going bald and being sick half the time. He had decided that when it was time to die, he'd die. Until then, he wasn't going to worry about it.

So, he laughed at the radiation. Hell, maybe it would help, he thought wryly.

Barlow wasn't worrying about the radiation either, it seemed as he sealed the huge body bag that had been improvised. "What's the problem?", he echoed Tim's question finally, voice muffled from inside a isolation-suit mask. He wore a isolation-suit instead of a radiation suit. "I'll tell you. I just found out that this... creature," Barlow jerked his head down at the vague plastic-sheeted figure in front of him, "wasn't alone on the ship."

Tim eyed the strangely humped plastic on the ground nervously; images of the vaguely, very vaguely, centaur-like alien lingering in his mind. "What do you mean?"

"There was a cage in the back, in what must have been a cargo-hold."

"A cage?"

"A big cage. And it's empty. It looks like the crash sprung the lock partway, and it was torn open the rest of the way, from the inside."

Tim swallowed. "How big was the cage?"

"Big enough to hold a pair of Clydesdales in comfort."

Tim envisioned the huge draft horses and imagined the size cage Barlow was talking about. And what it might have housed. It was not a comforting thought. His eyes shot around the wreckage-littered ground, and the unusually warm spring day suddenly felt cold as he stood there. "Any tracks?" Barlow shook his head. "Any idea at all what we're looking for?" Again the negative shake, accompanied by an increasingly nervous look. Tim couldn't blame him. The idea of an unknown alien creature, a large, strong one, running around in the woods was not encouraging.

It was going to be a public relations nightmare.

All the sudden he was reminded of the myriad telephoto lenses focused on him from all around. Humanity's first contact with an alien species and it had been shown live on TV, filmed by a local traffic helicopter as the ship buzzed over Boulder and headed beyond.

The ship had been invisible to radar and the military had only noticed it by accident: an Air Force general from the Academy in Colorado Springs had been visiting in Boulder and had been watching the traffic report. Seeing the ship on TV had almost given him a heart attack and he had called local forces and Washington to scramble a response team. Then he had tried unsuccessfully to squash the news broadcast. But it was too late. What had been treated only half seriously by a local station thinking it was just a fancy Air Force plane or balloon, was suddenly taken very seriously and the word spread. And spread.

"Well, Mr. Myerson, I can't tell you or the president anything more," Barlow broke into Tim's musing with a shake of his head and then waved over four husky airmen who had been waiting. They approached nervously, and then lifted the shrouded figure of the alien onto a large litter, actually two litters strapped together, and staggered off with it to load it onto a waiting helicopter. "I'd love to see how the press officers are going to handle this, but I want to get our visitor into a lab and try to find out a little about him... or her, or it." With that, the older, balding doctor started to strip off his clean-suit gratefully, wiping off his sweaty face.

Myerson stopped him. "Is there a danger of infection?"

Barlow looked surprised for a moment and then smiled up at him. "This isn't to protect me. It's to keep me from contaminating it. I don't want to have to separate out too many of our bugs from whatever little beasties this thing has crawling around inside it. It's virtually certain that there is no danger to us. Alien germs are not likely to find our systems very hospitable."

"Oh." Tim felt a guilty relief.

"No, I think there's more danger from them," Barlow nodded in the direction of the waiting press, held back by a formidable array of soldiers. "But that's not my problem. "I'll contact you when I finish my examination so you can pass on my findings to the president." He finished stripping off his clean-suit and then, discarding it, followed the airmen onto the waiting helicopter whose rotors were already raising a swirling dust-cloud that both cooled and buffeted Tim as he pondered Barlow's discovery.

As the chopper disappeared in the distance, he tried to finger-comb his hair as he thought about what might be wandering around in the woods that started over to the north. It would have had to disappear there. The low pine forest extended over two high parallel ridges and then dropped down to open plain on the other side of the ridges, like the open ground where the ship had crashed. The underbrush and concealing trees would be a natural refuge to a wild animal. He pulled out his phone and called the command-post to alert them and initiate a containment ring. But it was a large forest. It covered several thousand acres, only a few small roads and vacation-houses disturbing its primal peace. Until now.

Tim was glad the vacation season hadn't started yet and that most houses were probably empty.

Reflections glinted from the road, from the prying lenses. Any lip-readers among you? he wondered idly as he considered what likely-sounding lies the press-officers would be passing out. No doubt to be ignored. He made another call to the command-post, warning them to be on the lookout for ambitious reporters trying to sneak in for a scoop. They might find more than they bargained for if they weren't careful.

Why am I assuming it's hostile? he wondered. Because it's big, was caged, and broke out, he decided. And it's probably pissed off!

* * *

Less than a mile away, a pair of featureless ebony eyes watched the swarming tiny creatures crawling around the remains of the flying cave that had brought the Communicator to this world. It was angry. Four massive feet flexed and gouged the moist earth, extending scimitar-like claws that easily snapped the thick surface roots of the sheltering trees.

The Communicator was in pain. Its lungs burned from the thin and freezing air. And it was disoriented; its third eye was crushed from the impact of the crash and it was unsettling to be one third blind.

Only a short time before, noise and violent shaking had twisted the small cave that had been its home until the opening had been cracked and let in nasty burning smells. The Communicator had been frightened at first. Finally the shaking had stopped and a harsh bluish light had flooded its home and the air had suddenly been hard to breathe and filled with sickening alien scents. And then the link to Control had been gone. The larger, flying cave that had housed its home was broken and the Controller was dead! Long-repressed instincts had overwhelmed it, overpowering rage taking control. Feelings kept in check for generations by the Controllers had surged up and the Communicator had reached for the restraining pieces of metal that remained and had ripped them open contemptuously.

Outside, it had nearly been overcome by the near-lethal air, thin and poisonous. Ancient adaptive abilities had restructured its lungs; a vestige of ancestral migrations to the equatorial mountains of its home world. The crest of feathery fronds that crowned its tiny head had also sampled repulsive molecules of burning matter in disgust.

Stepping carefully on pieces of metal or rocks, if possible, it had moved away from the wreckage. Memories from distant ancestors had surged up to warn of the dangers of being tracked. Across the empty field, towering alien trees had beckoned and the Communicator had heeded their call. It had stumbled a lot at first, feeling too light as it tried to keep its footing. But soon, it had learned to compensate, and as it had reached the concealing trees, it had been surprised by how easily the frail and slender plants had broken under the slightest pressure.

Safely concealed, it had settled down to watch the crash-site.

Hunched over and rumbling, it continued watching over the field. Its ropy feeding arms thrashed around to pull down and snap heavy nearby branches without even realizing it. It was cold, and automatically, it rerouted its blood supply to conserve heat.

Gradually the nasty biting smell of the creatures on the field grew stronger as more of them gathered. Before long, the evil smell was too much, and the Communicator turned to flee the stench, being careful to try to keep to rocky ground as much as possible. The wide massive feet, with their claws retracted, left surprisingly little trace, even though the Communicator weighed over twenty times as much as the tiny creatures it was leaving behind. Anger built as it sensed that those things were somehow responsible for destroying its cave. They would be killed, it decided as it entered a stream to try to break any scent trail it might leave. The freezing water was a shock to its system but it ignored it and tried to keep to the middle of the flow.

And moment by moment, its anger grew, unchained at last and welcome after a lifetime of being kept under strict control.

* * *

"What the hell do you think you can do that my men can't?" General Bryant glared up at Tim from his seat in the staff car. He had been understandably unhappy when Tim had told him about the unexpected visitor now probably roaming the woods. "It's liable to be dangerous, and my men won't have time to babysit a desk-jockey who's trying to play tracker and hero!"

"Desk-jockey my ass!" Tim snapped back, getting tired of Bryant's attitude. "I spent ten years in the marines before going civilian. And you never really leave the corps if you're any good. And I was."

"So why did you leave?"

Tim pulled up a pants leg and revealed his artificial right leg. "A mine, in Nicaragua."

Bryant was silent for a second as he studied Tim carefully. Tim let him. He was proud of his hard-muscled six foot one body. Finally Bryant nodded. "All right. You do look pretty fit," he admitted. "But we won't be responsible for you."

"I wouldn't expect it."

"Just out of curiosity. Isn't this a little beyond the call of duty for a Presidential advisor?"

"I'm not really a Presidential advisor. My post is a new one. Sort of a trouble-shooter. Technically I'm part of the Secret Service, but I report directly to the President. Think of me as a field man trained to handle unusual threats to the president." Tim was intentionally vague.

Bryant smiled cynically, a single gold cap twinkling. "When an alien gets shot down, I guess that qualifies as an unusual situation that could get dangerous."

"And not just for the President, either," Tim warned needlessly.

"No shit, why do you think we're here?" Bryant signalled his driver and rolled up the window as the olive-drab Ford pulled away in a cloud of dust. Then it slammed on the brakes and Bryant rolled the window down again and leaned out. "Just so we're clear on one thing. This situation has been mishandled, radically! We don't need to compound the error. We may have shot down a diplomatic mission and given ourselves a hell of a political black eye. My men have strict orders to go easy and to keep in mind what it might mean to our whole world if we bungle this any more. I will not live up to the media's image of the "evil insensitive military blowing away benevolent aliens"! I just want you to keep that in mind."

For a moment, Bryant's eyes met Tim's and Tim realized that he had been thinking just along those lines. "I'm sorry, General. I appreciate the delicacy of the situation, and I'm relieved that you do, too."

"Okay, just so we're clear on that." Bryant rolled up the window, and the dusty car shot off again.

Tim stood staring after them, feeling a lot better. As he had been eye to eye with the general, he had felt the other man's sincerity and concern. It was a gift, he knew. Periodically, Tim could sense just how other people felt, no matter how they were behaving. It had served him well, both in the military, and later, working as a trouble-shooter for the President.

* * *

The Communicator stopped suddenly as it burst into a small meadow. A tiny cave of dead wood was right in front of it. The thin and icy wind had been behind the Communicator and there had been no warning of the structure. The sensory fronds on the tiny head swiveled as it tried to scent the structure. Dimly it perceived that it was a "structure", such as the Controllers built to live in. But that was a difficult concept and it was easier to think of them as artificial caves.

This must be the home of one of the creatures who had destroyed the flying cave. A deep rumbling rolled out from the lung-openings around the base of its short, squat neck. The gaping mouth in the front of its muscled chest opened and closed rhythmically, revealing a fierce double row of teeth dripping with digestive juices from the glands inside the mouth.

The wind shifted slightly and a familiarly bitter scent was picked up by the chemical sensors on the Communicator's crest. But it was a weak trace. The wooden cave was empty. Suddenly the Communicator realized it was exhausted. The crash, the near-lethal air and the sudden overturning of everything ordered in its simple world, they were all too much. It just wanted to curl up somewhere, get warm and rest. It wasn't even hungry.

Yet.

* * *

"This isn't an animal we're tracking!" Wilcox's voice was shocked and Tim looked over to see the young Black lieutenant staring at him with surprise. "It kept to pieces of wreckage or to the rocks as much as possible leaving the crash site, and it's still doing it." They had finally found, and followed, strange flat depressions in the soil that they had decided had to be the footprints of some enormously heavy animal. More often, the track had been crushed rock or bent metal. It looked almost as if someone had strapped oval serving platters to their feet and walked on the ground. Provided that someone weighed a couple of tons.

As they followed the scattered and hard-to-find tracks towards the beckoning woods, they decided that their quarry was probably four-footed. Partly based on guesswork, but also because of Barlow's findings and the appearance of the dead pilot.

The squat shape and powerful muscles of the alien pilot suggested that the alien came from a heavy-gravity world and both the two-stage heart and multi-valved respiratory system had supported that idea. As had the general body structure. It was a squat quadruped, standing about four and a half feet high at the "shoulders" and with a somewhat horse-like body, except for the massive legs.

But there the resemblance had ended, because, to begin with, the alien had a pair of powerful-looking arms that extended forward from under the body, tipped with clumsy-looking three-fingered hands. That was what had made Tim think of a centaur, at first glance. But there were too many other peculiarities. Such as the fact that the front of the body also held a fair-sized mouth with startlingly human-looking teeth.

And the rest of the alien was equally bizarre.

A small football-shaped head rested on a short stubby neck that came up from the middle of the body. It was topped by two feathery sets of fringes which ran diagonally front to back. The fringes had decayed pretty extensively by the time Barlow had had a chance to examine them, but his guess had been that they served as nose and ears, by sensing air-movement and chemical particles in the air. In the dense atmosphere of a heavy-gravity world, that would make sense.

At the bottom of the head, three evenly-spaced, black and featureless eyes ringed it giving full circular vision. Tim marvelled at the thought of a brain capable of integrating that amount of information. A brain not kept in the head. Apparently the head only held sensory organs. The brain was protected by being in the belly, and the lungs opened to the base of the neck.

Barlow had been ecstatic as he crowed about the "marvelous" adaptation to a heavy gravity world. And then he had cut Tim off, anxious to continue his autopsy. Tim had heard the amazement in the older man's voice and had smiled patiently. He knew the tone well. It was the same one his own six year old son used whenever Tim took him to the zoo or to the museum. The wonder and thrill of discovery were the same, regardless of how old the explorer was.

But suddenly he was wondering how dangerous the escaped "animal" might be. Was it even an animal they were chasing? The careful escape route planning seemed to argue against it. Maybe the "cage", was their version of a playroom? Maybe the "pilot" was a youngster, since it was around half the probable size of whatever they were tracking? He glanced back at the squad of heavily armed soldiers watching them curiously, trying not to show their nervousness. By now they had probably built up their quarry into some fierce dragon-like beast and he was worried about them being trigger-happy, even if they had been briefed by General Bryant.

"It went this way!" Wilcox grabbed Tim's arm, pointing to a mass of churned up earth and broken branches a few hundred feet off to the side, at the edge of the woods.

* * *

Janice Winter had come up to the cabin early to get it cleaned up and ready for the summer. Since she had only been teaching two classes her first semester at school, she had been able to get all her paper work finished pretty quickly. Her husband had grumbled in envy, but had agreed that it made sense for her to go up early. He had promised to watch the kids and to finish packing everything up. Not that that would be much trouble.

The packing was almost done - although she had brought a few essentials for herself - and as for the children: Billy had just turned eleven, and Cindy was a very grown-up eight-year old. Neither needed much watching, and she felt blessed whenever she thought about them. Since both Michael and her taught at the University, their kids had learned a lot of things early and were both quiet and studious children. She wished that she would have been able to bring them up with her, but that had been impossible. It had been hard. Billy had pleaded and Cindy had just turned big brown eyes on her mother without saying a word. That had been worse than Billy's begging! But neither of them were out of school just yet, and she wasn't about to give in.

She could understand it. The cabin had been an impulse purchase the year before, but they had all fallen in love with it immediately. There was a small lake nearby where Michael and Billy went fishing, even letting Cindy come along when she put her foot down - with mom's support. And the view from the front porch was a picture post-card of the Rocky Mountains, and Janice had spent hours painting them at different times of day, and under different weather conditions. As for Cindy, while the fishing was fun, she got bored by it after a while. But what fascinated her were the deer. They would come right up to the cabin. Cindy would hang out the side window for hours watching them, naming them and making up stories about them.

Soon they would be here. Janice had been here a week, now, and had cleaned out the cabin thoroughly - mentally grousing a little that Mike really should have been here to help. But then she had relented. It would be worth it when they came up here today. She brushed her hair back and retied the bow that held it in a pony-tail and surveyed the results from where she stood resting a moment on the slope flanking the cabin. She had been gathering kindling, and had put down the heavy loaded bag to take a breather.

* * *

The wind shifted again and this time the reek was stronger. The tiny head swiveled and the Communicator found itself confronting one of the repulsive native creatures up close...

* * *

Suddenly Janice realized what she was looking at.

At first it hadn't registered. It was too alien. The enormous six foot high green creature was standing motionless on four legs about thirty feet from the front-porch, its tiny head leaning towards the cabin. Except for the head, the body seemed vaguely tiger-like, with elephantine legs ending in wide, flat pads. The only motion was from the fringes of moth antenna-like growths that crowned its tiny head. Then it sensed her. The tiny head swiveled and she saw the black eyes staring at her. Then the massive body shifted in a surprisingly graceful twist and she saw the mouth. Wide and gaping with double rows of glistening teeth, dripping saliva.

She screamed.

The thing leaped towards her, arms she hadn't seen unfolding from under the mouth and reaching for her. She turned to run and tripped over the bag of kindling, falling hard onto the rocky ground. She scrabbled desperately to get up, uselessly grabbing a fallen branch and twisting to see the creature standing over her, close enough to touch. A rank smell washed over her as gaping claws grabbed for her. Saliva dripped onto her skin and she screamed again as the acid fluid burned her skin, teeth closing and opening only inches from her arm. She stabbed futilely with the branch, seeing it snap without so much as scratching the armor-like green skin of the creature. Then the claws grabbed her, ripping into her flesh like metal pincers of a robot. One claw snapped her right arm close to the shoulder and the pain almost made her lose consciousness.

Moments later the other claw grabbed her by the neck and her last screams bubbled to a halt as the neck was ground to a pulp by foot-long pincer-like claws. Her limp body was then pulled towards the gaping mouth. But it was too big. Momentarily she was dropped, and then the massive claws dropped again to literally tear her body in half.

The torso was then picked up and shoved into the waiting mouth, teeth closing relentlessly on what had only moments before been a beautiful and vibrant woman fighting for her life...

* * *

The Communicator spit the fragment out in disgust. The nauseating smell was nothing compared to the unbelievably rank taste of the fragile flesh. For a moment, long repressed instincts had ruled it and overpowered the knowledge that if these beings smelled so bad, they would probably not be good eating, either.

It turned and trotted to the stream, kneeling to rinse its mouth out with the freezing liquid, feeling the alien blood washed free. Weak, the Communicator rose and turned to view the scene behind it. The tiny crumpled form lay still on the earth, and turning its sensors away to try to block the nasty smell, Communicator approached the bloody fragments.

Artificial material covered much of the broken body and Communicator realized that these beings were intelligent. One of the ones responsible for destroying its home.

Anger bubbling up again, it turned briefly in the direction of the crash-site. The beings were following, it seemed. Well, let them. They would meet the same fate. Emotions boiling, it made its way carefully in the opposite direction, leaving the corpse and following creatures behind.

* * *

"What do you mean you lost it?" Wilcox was screaming at the private who had been leading them up the first of two ridges that ran east-west for about twenty miles.

Up to that point, the creature's trail had been fairly clear since it crushed a fair bit of undergrowth and some smaller trees as it pushed through the woods. But here, on higher ground, the trees had thinned out and the trail had been harder to follow. One of the privates had volunteered to help track since his eyes were very good and he seemed to be able to predict where the alien was heading. But now even he was lost and Tim felt a familiar stabbing pain in his gut. This time it wasn't his cancer.

The private shrugged. "I scouted around, and I can't seem to pick up its trail. The ground's real rocky around here and it took advantage of it. I'm sorry, sir."

Wilcox simmered down. "No, I'm sorry. We'll just have to lay out a wider sweep." He started to turn to Tim when the sound of a racing motor reached them. Tearing up the access road towards them was a mid-sized four-wheel drive convertible truck with its top down. A man and two children were in it. As it approached, Tim could see that the children were huddled together, crying and that the man was as white as a sheet, barely in control of the car.

It skidded to a stop, slewed across the road and the lanky man unfolded himself and got out to stagger towards them. "Please, you've got to help. My wife's just been killed! Something just tore her apart, I don't know if it was a bear or what but it literally tore her in half..." he reached down to grab at Wilcox spastically. "You've got to help me! My god! The children saw what it did. I pulled them away before they saw too much, but they know what happened and they saw enough and--" Abruptly he collapsed to the ground, still clinging to Wilcox, pulling the shocked lieutenant to his knees.

Tim went over to the truck and after one look at the children, grabbed his phone and called the command post on a priority number. Speaking in clipped tones, he ordered a Medi-Vac chopper with both a kiddie-psych doc and a regular psych specialist to be sent out stat. At first, the spluttering confusion on the other end pissed him off and he threatened to call the president. That got a different response and he was promised immediate action.

The kids sat unseeing through the exchange, holding onto each other, slowly shivering. The little blond girl kept muttering softly "Mommy? Why isn't mommy moving? Mommy is..." then she would stop and start all over again, refusing to finish the sentence. And each time she would reach the end of the unfinished sentence, the brown-haired boy would whimper and close his eyes, clutching his sister tighter. Tim could "feel" total shock and terror radiating from the kids almost physically and he turned away, unsure of what to do or say.

As for their father, he was standing again, towering over the two privates who were partly supporting him. Wilcox saw Tim and waved him over. "You'd better hear this, sir." He turned to Winter. "Please, can you start over?"

Winters nodded. Some of his color had returned and he pulled free of the supporting men and made his way to a nearby boulder and sat down. "Yes." He took a deep breath, and began.

"My name is Mike Winters, and we vacation up here now since we bought a cabin here last year," he pointed vaguely towards the next ridge, "and she went up early to clean it up and get it ready since she finished her semester early. She teaches English..." His face crumpled. "Taught English..." Tim reached down to clasp Winters' shoulder, feeling a sudden jolt of helpless lost confusion as his hand touched the grieving man.

After a moment, Winters continued, with a grateful look up at Tim. "Anyway. I brought the kids up here now since they were done with school and I was finished with all my grading and we were all ready to disappear from civilization for a few weeks. But when I got up here, I couldn't find Janice. At first. Then I spotted the flies! And I found her. What was left of her." His teeth began chattering and he curled in on himself as he sat on the rock, voice suddenly hollow in disbelief.

"I found the bottom half of her first. I recognized her jeans... the little flower she had cross-stitched and then sewn onto the back pocket," a sudden gasping intake of breath, "and then I found the rest. At least I think I did. It was all chewed up." He curled in on himself, the last words a hoarse whisper.

"Where is the cabin!" Wilcox asked. Winters didn't answer and after a moment Wilcox reached down and shook him. "Where is the cabin!"

Tim pulled the lieutenant away, and kneeled in front of Winters. "Please Mike. We have to find her, and find whatever did this to her and stop it before it does it again. Where is your cabin?"

Winters raised his face from his hands a moment, face gaunt and wet. "Stay on the access road down the side of this ridge and up on the next one. Near the top you'll pass an old mine shaft entrance, after that, its the fourth cross-road on the right. Just go in about a quarter mile. You'll see Janice's car... a red '85 Mustang... It was an anniversary present..." He broke off, a sudden flood of helpless sobs shaking his body and cutting off his speech.

Tim kneeled down and without knowing why, held the man in an embrace much as he would have held a child. The pain was suddenly washing over him with incredible force and he could almost see the torn and battered flesh that had been Janice Winters. No wonder the man is a basket case!, he thought. After a minute, he felt the pain easing. Because it's shared?, he wondered, and he let Winters go, rocking back on his heels.

"It's something we're never prepared to see," Tim began. "To see a human being killed violently. Especially when we don't know how, or why." And it was, he knew, remembering the splayed and shattered bodies of his brothers-in-arms when a renegade rebel squad had ambushed their unit while on secret maneuvers. "Don't feel embarrassed by your reaction." Tim had sensed that, too, when he had held Winters.

Winters looked relieved, and a bit more in control as Tim rose and went over to the children, his heart aching. The little girl was only a little older than his own son and she had been forced to see her mother lying there, ripped apart.

He tried reaching the children as he had reached their father, but for some reason, he couldn't seem to make the connection, even though he could feel some of their pain.

Closing his eyes, he concentrated on trying to reach the kids. He wasn't sure what to do, but just tried to imagine yelling, mentally.

* * *

Several miles away now, a hulking shape froze. A Controller! The Communicator was torn. Its own Controller was dead, it had seen the body, but somewhere another Controller was nearby. Weak and untrained, but it had sensed the familiar mental demand. Should it respond? For a long time, the heavy figure stood undecided. Mentally it was light-years beyond its ancestors, the result of careful breeding and genetic manipulation, but it was still not very good at advanced reasoning. But it was good enough to know that it had been used. It, and others of its kind, were kept in comfort and protected, but as useful tools. They existed to act as amplifiers for the Controllers' extrasensory talents. Boosters to allow the Controllers to speak to each other over great distances and to see things that even mechanical eyes could not distinguish. But the Communicators were prisoners.

The lonely escapee on the alien world wrestled with the alien concepts just barely understandable to it, but this particular Communicator was advanced, for its species. And it was strange, how much easier it seemed to be to think like this, freed from the Controllers' influences.

It decided. It did not want to be a pampered prisoner! It had tasted freedom and ancient instincts gave strength to that decision and it turned its back on the faint mental signal that had shocked it. Moving even more carefully now, it made its way through the fragile trees.

* * *

Tim stood by the children, suddenly confused and short of breath. For a moment, he had felt curiously disassociated. A faint lingering impression of surrounding trees and a bitter taste teased his mind and he shook his head.

Wilcox was watching him, dark brown face curious, and concerned. "What's up?"

Tim shrugged. "It must have been something I ate."

"Well, don't go out on me now. I think we know what killed Mrs. Winters, and I don't think it's friendly!"

"No... I guess not," Tim agreed reluctantly.

"Well let's get up to the cabin and see if we can find that thing--"

"You go ahead. But when you turn off for the cabin, I'd like to continue on and check something else out." He cut Wilcox off, and locked his eyes on a ridge several degrees west of where the cabin was. It was there! He wasn't sure how he knew, but he did. He had suddenly had another dizzying mental double-image. It was heading down the other side of the second ridge.

Wilcox looked suspiciously at him a second, and then nodded. "Okay, but take Rodriques with you," he nodded towards a slight Hispanic man sitting by Winters' truck.

Tim took one look at Rodriques and felt better. The small man looked extremely unimpressive, at first, until you saw the tightly corded muscles and deceptively half-lidded eyes that continuously monitored everything and everyone. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me. I just want you back in one piece so General Bryant doesn't chew me out. Now split for a minute."

Tim walked away and watched Wilcox talking to Rodriques, handing him a small radio. No doubt the lieutenant was giving explicit instructions to call immediately if it looked like Tim was getting close to the alien creature. He smiled. As if there would be time. He was sure Wilcox was just humoring him, but at the same time he appreciated that Wilcox was sending one of his best men with him, just in case.

* * *

On the other side of the second ridge, another squad was also scouring the area for any signs of a "large, wild animal". One of several that made up a ring of units Bryant had dispatched at Tim Myerson's suggestion. But the vague description of their possible quarry, the dead quiet, and the beautiful day all conspired to make everyone a little less than alert. They were instructed to stay just below the ridge where they could spot anything coming out of the woods. Choppers with infra-red sensors swept the woods and other units were deployed further up and down the length of the ridge. It was easy to feel secure.

Lieutenant John Strang was in charge of this particular squad and while he was a good soldier, he didn't believe what had been in General Bryant's orders. An alien creature for chrissakes!

Needless to say, his attitude was picked up by his men who were treating the whole thing as a combination of a forced march and a picnic. Except that they were getting tired. Until the word spread through the ranks about Wilcox's unit finding Winters' wife! Suddenly a different attitude came over the men.

Strang wished he had turned down the assignment. He had taken it because he was a born skeptic and had been bored with base duty. A walk in the woods would be just the thing to stretch the legs and unwind a bit. He hadn't counted on this!

The quiet base didn't look so bad anymore. He glanced at his watch; 1630 hours. He would have been heading for the Officer's club right about now, probably to join up with Marcus and Hodges and settle down for a quiet drink and maybe a friendly game of poker before heading home. The boring routine seemed very inviting, now.

Behind him, his sergeant, Paul Epstein, was just smirking quietly as he heard the news. He was sorry about Mrs. Winter, sure, but here was confirmation that there was something out here. He had been hoping for it. A science fiction buff from early on, he had been close to creaming his pants when he found out he was being sent out to the crash-site of an alien space ship! But then he had never even been able to get close, and had been sent on the other side of the county to search the woods for some escaped animal that probably didn't even exist. He had been royally pissed.

Until the word had come that it was no illusion that they were chasing. It was real. And it was a nasty mother!

His hand crept down to his ammo belt and fondled it. Combat sci. fi. was his taste. Haldeman, Dickson and others. Battles on distant worlds against other people or vicious aliens with amazing weapons. Even the old Doc Smith's, they were great, too. Monumental scale battles. And Campbell. The only problem with the early stuff was that it was too neat and clean.

But thing they were after now, that was different. And it was heading their way. He couldn't wait.

He felt ashamed of the other soldiers trailing behind him, casting nervous looks all around, whispering anxiously as they held their weapons ready. For most of them, their first real hint of action. Soldiers! Babies, is what they were.

* * *

The trees were thicker again as the Communicator descended from where it had made its kill and it was unable to move as silently as before. It knew it was leaving trail. Well, if the followers found it, they would be dealt with. They were not very dangerous. Its sensors quivered restlessly. In this thin atmosphere, it didn't smell the creatures until they were fairly close and the wind came in the right direction. But now it realized that there was a large group of them nearby. Mixed in with their smell, were other odors. Oiled metal and something else. An acrid smell it couldn't place.

It came out of the woods suddenly and found itself facing several of the tiny aliens, carrying small black sticks. As they spotted the Communicator, they raised the sticks and pointed them in its direction. Small puffs of smoke came out of the ends of the sticks followed by loud bangs and then hot projectiles hit the Communicator in several places. Surprisingly, it felt pain. The tiny metal pieces hurt! No serious damage was done, but it was a new sensation to be attacked. Dim memories from dozens of generations earlier surged forward and the Communicator rushed towards the creatures and counterattacked.

* * *

Strang stood paralyzed as the thing erupted out of the woods. Crushing aside smaller trees as easily as a bulldozer it came towards them, gaping jaws dripping and snapping claw-like hands extended. Hands easily two or more feet across with three vicious claws that were snapping, reaching for them.

Epstein shoved him to the ground and cracked out orders. "Jackson, Saunders and Jones, circle right to flank it, Packo, Woods and Waters, to the left. The rest of you drop your asses and lay a suppressing fire, dammit. What do you want? An invitation? Shit, move!"

Galvanized, the others scattered and erratically began firing. Epstein calmly took careful aim and laid down fire aiming for the tiny head, figuring the body was heavily armored, but the damn thing was small and it kept waving side to side. He saw a number of bullets strike home on the barrel-like body but the thing just ignored them, didn't even break stride. It reached the right flank first and trampled Jackson and Jones under elephant-like feet and with one arm, reached out to literally rip Saunders head off with a single hooking slash, spraying blood everywhere.

He heard someone throwing up next to him and a soft whispered "sweet Jesus save us!". He turned for a second and snapped out, "God helps those who help themselves! Didja ever hear that? Now stop puking and kill that mother-fucker!" He rolled away even as he said it and pulled a grenade from his belt and yanked the pin with his teeth. The three soldiers on the right were already dead, so he threw the greande in a high arcing lob, trying to pop it into the thing's mouth.

He missed and it rolled under the wide belly, a crumpling bang and a flash of fire bursting out under the creature, which staggered and paused a moment. For several seconds it stood motionless, and then a keening wail broke out and it jumped towards them with shocking speed. The two arms swung in a nightmarish wind-milling, claws extended and slashing mercilessly. It plowed through the center troops first, passing so close to Epstein that he could smell its rank stench as it almost stepped on him. He ducked down and found himself lying on Strang's body, its chest ripped open and splayed ribs sticking out haphazardly. Sightless eyes seemed to ask 'why?'.

Epstein had lost his other grenades, torn free when he had rolled away from the creature and he had only his pistol left. He scrabbled frantically through the low bushes trying to find the grenades, but found nothing. The firing broke off and he heard strangled screams, choked off or fading. Eyes burning from the heavy haze of cordite, and afraid for the first time in his life, he stayed on the ground, trying to hear, or smell, where the creature might be.

After a few minutes, he heard fading, splintering sounds from the woods and raised his head to view the carnage. He called out, fruitlessly. No one answered. There had been fifteen men in the patrol, and now it looked like he was the only one left. Numb, he got to his feet and tried to find them all. One by one he came across a crushed or torn up body and mentally checked off the roll. It wasn't long before he had accounted for everyone except Packo.

Then he heard the soft moan and turned. Curled up in a bush away from the rest of the carnage, he found Packo. He knelt down and tried to rouse the young soldier but his hand was shoved away.

"Get the fuck away from me! I want a medic!" He curled tighter and Epstein caught a glimpse of intestine spilling out on the ground as Packo curled in on himself. He turned and ran over to Strang's body and turned it over, trying to find the radio. It wasn't there and he hunted through the grass and bushes again. Finally he found it and called in an S.O.S., and explaining to a shocked command post what had happened. As he signed off, he wondered where the hell the choppers had been and how come they hadn't spotted the thing. Unless it wasn't warm enough to register?

* * *

"Get up!" An iron hand was shaking him and Tim suddenly roused to find himself lying on the ground, Rodriques standing over him and shaking him violently. "What the hell is wrong with you? All of a sudden you doubled up and screamed and then fell to the ground and kept mumbling something I couldn't understand."

Tim was completely disoriented. He had a vague memory of a blinding flash of pain and then feeling rage and surprise mingled together. A feeling of hitting, hurting and then running, freezing cold and in pain, choking and trying to catch his breath. He knew it would sound stupid to Rodriques and didn't even try to explain. He knew what the corporal would think about it.

Earlier, he had told Rodriques about his cancer, as they made their way down from the turnoff to Winters' cabin, heading for where he had felt they would find the creature. To kill time, they had traded small talk and somehow the subject of Tim's cancer had come up. It had started with the artificial leg and the mine in Nicaragua, he thought, and had led on from there. And he had the feeling Rodriques was simply chalking up his sudden pain to the cancer. But Tim had never felt anything like this before and he knew that wasn't the source. He thought he knew what it might be.

And then he was sure.

Rodriques told him of the radio call he had picked up from somebody named Epstein in one of the other patrols, and he was appalled as he listened to the calm news that thirteen men were dead and one critically injured. And that a grenade had only hurt the creature, not stopped it. A grenade that had gone off about the same time that Tim had doubled up in pain. They had heard the firing and explosion and had tried to find out what it was. But no one had responded to any calls.

It finally hit home what was happening. Somehow, he was in contact with the alien. He didn't understand how, but it had something to do with his occasional ability to sense the emotions of others. Somehow, that provided a link between him and the creature they were after.

He got up off the ground and brushed himself off. "Call Wilcox and tell him to get his ass down here if he wants a shot at the creature. And for God's sake tell him to bring some heavier firepower than what we're carrying. The grenade hurt it, don't ask me how I know, but it's wounded, and it knows it. I don't think it's a mortal wound, but it's in pain, and it's angry!"

Rodriques looked confused and started to question him but something in Tim's expression stopped him and he pulled out the radio and put in the call to Wilcox. Putting away the radio he sighed. "Okay, Tim. We've talked a bit and I think I've learned a little about you, so I won't call for the medic to have you locked up, but be straight with me, man."

Tim nodded. "Okay..." and from the beginning he explained about his talent, admitting it was erratic at best, but accurate when he had a "feeling". Then he told the other about his brief flashes of contact with the alien.

Surprisingly, Rodriques didn't question him, but just nodded. "My grandmother, she had the sight." He looked down the hillside thoughtfully. "Then maybe you can trick it, call it to us somehow. No?"

Tim nodded. "That's what I figured. I don't know if it will come, but I can try. But first we have to set up a trap."

* * *

The Communicator was in great pain from several sources. For one thing, something inside it had been damaged by the exploding rock. And it was getting harder and harder to use the poisonous air. Also, the constant freezing temperature, and numbing hunger, were aggravating things. It had not eaten for a long time now, but every time it would sense a small animal it would be repulsed by the smell. It had caught a little furry creature with long ears, desperate for nourishment but it had no sooner begun chewing it than the taste had almost made the Communicator vomit. It had spit out the mangled body in disgust. None of the vegetation was digestible, either.

When it could no longer smell the stench of the battle, the Communicator stopped and collapsed to the ground. Its feeding arms snatched up earth and bushes and piled everything on top of itself in an attempt to conserve heat. It had long ago restricted blood flow to its skin, unaware that that had made it invisible to the noisy flying things that periodically roared overhead as if searching for something. But it was still freezing.

It remembered the flash of the Controller's thought that it had sensed during the battle before, when the exploding rock had hurt it. Perhaps it should find the Controller and surrender itself? That would be better than being hunted by these creatures. At least then it would be able to go home.

* * *

Less than a mile away, Epstein led the paramedics over to where Packo lay and then ran back to the chopper and rearmed himself.

"If grenades is what it takes, then grenades is what you get!" He broke open a case and loaded a satchel full. Slinging it on his back he started to climb out, but then stopped and reached in to grab a flare gun clipped to the pilot's door. "I'll distract your ass a bit with this!" He also grabbed several shells and then headed out, a dark look, and a brandished .45, stopping the protest from the sergeant who was in charge of the weapons. The pilot ignored it all. His sympathies were with Epstein.

Overhead he saw the other Army choppers approach and heard their call crackling on the radio, telling him to stay there for debriefing. He threw a finger up in the air and turned to run in the direction the creature had disappeared, the heavily loaded knapsack slapping rhythmically against his back with every step.

* * *

A couple of miles in the opposite direction, Wilcox was suddenly startled to hear a familiar engine-roar as Winters' truck came barrelling along the road and skidded to a stop not two feet away from him.

"You know where it is!" It was an accusation. The grieving husband had been replaced by a vengeful figure, dusty and sweaty from a high-speed drive on treacherous roads. "And I'm going with you!" Wilcox stared at him helplessly for a minute. He couldn't spare the man-power to watch the man, and he figured Winters had a right, considering what had happened. A bad judgement perhaps, but to hell with it!

"All right, but stay out of our way and do what you're told; or you're getting tied up and left at the side of the road!" He glared at Winters meaningfully and was relieved to see the man nod agreement.

He had called to Command for back up and some heavier fire-power, but he didn't want to wait until they got here. He didn't know what Rodriques and Myerson had found, but his normally reserved corporal had sounded pretty firm on them needing help soon. He turned and waved sharply to the rest of the patrol. "Come on, move it! Double time!" Then he headed for Rodriques' location, pushing through the underbrush. The truck was left standing, skewed across the road where Winters had stopped.

* * *

"What are you doing?" Rodriques followed Myerson along the almost invisible deer trail.

"There," Tim pointed down slope at a clearing. It will have to come through there if we call it from up here. We'll have a clear shot from here, and it won't be able to see us. The sun is setting now and it will be behind us. And the wind is towards us, at least right now so it won't smell us. Hopefully."

Rodriques smiled. "Not bad."

"Marines, ten years. Remember?"

"Ouch. Sorry."

"'Sal right." Tim grinned. Call Wilcox and let him know we've got the perfect ambush spot."

"Roger." Rodriques got on the radio.

* * *

"Shit!" Epstein picked himself up from where he had tripped and picked up the knapsack that had fallen off, strap broken as it snagged on a low-hanging branch. Suddenly he caught a whiff of a familiar odor and the hair on the back of his neck rose. He glanced around anxiously, but there was nothing in sight. The queasy light-headedness that he had felt for the first time earlier, came back. It was not a feeling he liked. This didn't happen to the heroes in the books!

He heard a rustling behind him and spun to confront, nothing. Piles of leaves and branches, scattered dirt, almost as if something had been buried.

The pile moved.

Slowly it rose, spilling dirt and debris and gradually revealing dull green skin. An unearthly head with glittering and blank emotionless eyes faced him. A slow hissing came from the base of the neck and he saw ragged flaps shifting as the thing breathed. In front of it, the wide jaws gaped and Epstein realized that he had not been scared before. Now, he was terrified! An icy panic rooted him and blanked his mind of any thoughts other than of those glittering and dripping teeth as the sour stench of rotting flesh and bitter alien juices washed over him.

This is what Strang must have felt. He giggled to himself, totally helpless to move.

The thing was fully up now and towered over him, almost eight feet high at the shoulder. An isolated logical corner of his mind saw the powerful arms rise from under the chest and reach for him, three-fingered hands opening and extending vicious hooked claws. For a moment, they hesitated, almost like the thing was about to change its mind. But then with a blinding speed that shocked him, they snapped out and with one contemptuous slash ripped off Epstein's head.

For a moment, the body remained standing. the head rolling down the hill, as blood spurted from severed arteries in the neck. Then the body crumpled to the ground with a spastic shiver.

The creature stood over the body for several minutes and then shook itself and turned, heading clumsily up the hill.

* * *

About a half-mile west and slightly up-slope, Wilcox had finished positioning his men and gave Myerson the nod.

Tim felt foolish. Wilcox had not been as easy to persuade as Rodriques, though he had finally convinced the lieutenant, with Rodriques' help and unexpected support from the surprise member of Wilcox's party: Winters. Winters told Wilcox how he had felt a strange connection to Tim back when he had first burst in on the patrol. But it was a reluctant belief, and Wilcox had hedged his bets by sending out scouts and calling in more surveillance choppers.

"I don't know why the hell not one chopper has been able to spot this thing." Rodriques expressed a frustration that they all felt. Half a dozen helicopters with infra-red sensors had been criss-crossing the ridges and not one of them had found any trace of the beast they were after.

"Probably because it's conserving heat," Tim cut in. They all stared at him. "It's cold." He tried to explain the impressions he had felt. "Every time I've had a flash from this thing, I have felt cold, freezing. And choking. We already know it's from a higher gravity world than Earth, which means a denser atmosphere. It must be a warmer planet, too. If it has any control over its body, or even if it's an autonomous response, it might be cutting off blood circulation to the skin, and if it's as thick-skinned as it seems to be, that might mean that it's not radiating any heat that we can pick up."

Wilcox and Rodriques looked at each other sheepishly.

"Makes sense," Wilcox shook his head. He called up to the helicopters, telling the surveillance teams to boost their sensitivity as much as possible and to go lower. Then he turned back to Tim. "Well, come on, if you can call it... do it."

Tim flushed and walked away from them, staring down-hill. In his mind he called up the flashes of feeling he had from the creature before, trying to reach it, to draw it close. He didn't know exactly what to do, but just tried to picture himself in its body, thinking its thoughts. I'm cold, I'm hungry, I'm angry..." he had felt that, too. I am hurting...

Over and over, his eyes closing so tightly in concentration that tears were forced out from under his clamped lids. Come here dammit! I'm here, come and get me!

* * *

The Controller! It was here. The Communicator stopped. The snare was weak and undisciplined. Maybe the Controller was wounded? No, it was dying, the Communicator realized. The self-awareness was unmistakable. It made up its mind. It wanted no more of freedom. What it wanted now was food, a warm cave and the security of a Controller watching out for its needs. It located the signal and headed towards it, sending out its answer. At least it could die at home.

* * *

He was almost ready to give up when he was literally thrown from his feet by the force of the response. Vaguely he felt the others reach for him, talking to him but he brushed them off angrily, trying to make sense of the sudden flood of images that threatened to overwhelm him.

...pain... cold... hunger, stabbing, raging hunger, confusion and even an element of fear. And over it all, a feeling of relief. It was coming home.

Tim forced himself to break free and looked over at Wilcox from where he lay on the ground. "Were any of the bodies eaten?" Too late he realized Winters was there, too and he saw the man blanch. "I'm sorry Mike!" Then back to Wilcox, "well?"

The lieutenant radioed for confirmation and then shook his head. "No, just cut up or crushed. Why?"

"Because the thing is starving. If it hasn't eaten us it must mean that we don't provide any nourishment." He realized that he sounded callous, but there wasn't time to be delicate. "Even if we taste bad, as hungry as that thing is, it would have made itself eat, if it would have done any good. It's dying! The air's too thin, it's starving, freezing and it's hurt--"

"You want us to save it?" Wilcox stared at him.

"No, I mean..." All of a sudden he was confused. The thing was still there with him. Now that he had intentionally opened contact, the thing was sending to him and he was confused. This wasn't just an animal. It wasn't a fully intelligent being, either, but it was as smart as a retarded human. Did they have the right to kill it? It had only been defending itself... well, maybe overreacting, but it didn't know any better. It had been shot down and hunted... could he blame it for fighting back?

"Myerson! Snap out of it... ah hell," Wilcox growled, turning. "Rodriques, take him and Winters to the back. And you," he spun back to glare at Tim, "that thing better be heading this way mister!"

* * *

A trap! The Communicator stopped. The Controller wasn't a Controller. Suddenly it was confused. It reached for the mind that had contacted and finally realized that it was an alien... one of the creatures who were hunting it! And in the thing's dim thoughts, it "saw" the other creatures lurking in the bushes uphill. Anger bubbled up in it, restoring some of the Communicator's fading strength.

It also "saw" that the noisy flying things that were flying overhead more and more often were also full of creatures hunting it. But for some reason they were unable to see it.

Slowly an idea formed.

The Communicator was still not very bright, but centuries of breeding had raised its intelligence far above its wild cousins. And now, away from the restraining control of its masters, it was capable of some basic abstract thought. Hunting instincts of long-gone ancestors combined with that unleashed intelligence and it planned its attack.

It circled around slowly, taking advantage of the noise of the flying things to mask its progress. Occasionally it uprooted smaller trees slowly to avoid risking a loud splintering of breaking wood as it pushed its way through the trees. It took longer this way, but soon enough it had come around, uphill and downwind of the waiting creatures.

And it found itself staring at three of the creatures, one of which was the false Controller.

For the first time, a glimmer of curiosity was raised as it struggled with strange new concepts. The creature was a Controller, but was not. Did that mean that there were Communicators here? And why were all the other creatures mental blanks? The Communicator sensed no mental activity from them at all. But if one of these creatures was a Controller, what did it control? And the others: did they communicate in some alien way that the Communicator could not sense?

It tried to probe deeper.

* * *

"Hey man, what's wrong?" Rodriques stared at Tim who had suddenly gone rigid and rolled off the log where he had been sitting. Tim's face was white and he whimpered to himself.

"Get down!" Rodriques shoved Winters to the ground next to Tim and dropped himself, eyes scanning the woods around them as he put in a quick radio call to Wilcox.

Then he spotted it at the same time as Winters. A huge creature with fangs and claws that sat staring at them. Slowly he pulled back the safety on his M-16 while Winters watched, eyes burning and right fore-finger curling in sympathy as if caressing an imaginary trigger.

Beside them Tim reached up spastically and grabbed Rodriques' sleeve. "No!" It was a ragged croak. "It's trying to talk to me."

The others stared.

Tim's mind burned feverishly. He felt like someone had been stirring his brain with a cattle-prod. Alien thoughts had pushed in. Slow, simple thoughts, but with an incredible power. He started to realize what he was dealing with as he glimpsed images from the alien mind.

A symbiont! No, not quite. The dead pilot on the alien ship didn't need the escaped... being to survive, but it used it to boost its own abilities...

"...and the aliens use these things like living amplifiers for their own extrasensory powers. They use telepathy to communicate, but are pretty weak by themselves. But linked mentally to one of these... communicators," Tim used the closest term he could think of, "they are much stronger, able to communicate over long distances. This thing isn't terribly smart, but as near as I can guess, it lets them talk to each other over thousands of miles, and it lets them survey a planet from orbit without having to leave the ship or use any remote cameras or anything."

"Are there more of these things around, in orbit? The pilots, I mean--" Rodriques looked worried.

"Watching us now?" The sergeant nodded. "No, they dropped the ship we shot down in orbit and then went away to wait for a signal that they could return."

"That makes sense. From the pictures I saw, I couldn't imagine that that ship was an interstellar one." Tim could see that the teacher in Winters was breaking free as he cut in. "So where did the rest of the aliens go?"

Tim shrugged. "Who knows. As far as this thing knows, they went "away". That could mean to the edge of the system, or just hiding behind the Moon. Who knows. The point is, they won't come back unless they get a call--"

"From the alien we shot down!" Rodriques finished with a frown.

"We made a good impression for humanity, here. Didn't we." Tim was bitter.

Suddenly they were interrupted as Wilcox burst out of the woods behind them yelling "Shit! Down!" as he spotted the alien and called for the rest of the patrol.

Tim held up his hand and yelled for them to stop but it was too late. A wall of lead erupted from the oncoming patrol as they came into the clearing where Rodriques had taken Tim and Winters.

The alien only shivered slightly as the metal shower hit it but Tim screamed as his mental link to it relayed the impact. Rodriques bellowed to Wilcox to stop but was drowned out by the automatic firing.

Then the alien moved.

Only Tim felt the effort it took to attack. Not just the physical strain because the alien was hurt, badly. But the mental shifting of gears was confusing it. One moment it had been communicating, making a supreme effort to think independently and understand, something totally alien to it, and then it was suddenly the target of another vicious attack.

It regressed. The primitive rages of its ancestors welled up again and it launched itself at Wilcox's men.

"Stop!" Tim leaned forward and screamed uselessly at the oncoming living juggernaut. But at the same time, his mind was screaming the same command. Driven by his urgency, the command to stop, the image of the alien halting and retreating, was beating at the alien's mind. He felt the connection and clumsily tried to reinforce the command.

Tim realized that the thing had been confused by his empathic talent and had thought he was a controller. Well, it was time to exploit that confusion.

He got all the way to his feet and shouted to Wilcox. "Stop firing God damn it!"

"Get down you fool!" Wilcox screamed back, holding up a hand to halt the attack momentarily since Tim was close to the line of fire.

"No. Look!" He pointed to the alien which had stopped, standing frozen in place, wavering slightly as if confused.

* * *

The Communicator stopped suddenly as the mental command slammed into its mind. It was still weak compared to the power of his old Controller, but there was still a lot of raw, untrained strength to the order and a lifetime of conditioning and training took hold.

The false Controller approached. It was so small. Weak-looking and repulsive. And its suffocating stench was almost overpowering at this range. The sensitive fringes on the Communicator's head curled up and turned away, to avoid having to sample the air around the native.

As the tiny figure approached, tentative tendrils of thought crept out and insinuated themselves into the Communicator's mind.

* * *

Wilcox stared, eyes flicking back and forth between the quivering bulk of the creature and Tim's strained face. The rest of the patrol, including Rodriques, were standing, wide-eyed, doing the same. They were almost afraid to believe what they were seeing. And Winters' eyes were fixed on the alien, his jaw clenched and lips compressed into a thin, bloodless line.

Suddenly Wilcox laughed shakily. "All right, Tim, you've got him. Now what do you intend to do with him?"

"I don't know!" Tim's voice was ragged. "I'm holding it. It's not sure what to do. It knows I'm not a real Controller, but it's so used to being mentally commanded that it's almost instinct by now to obey. But I don't know if I can keep it under control." He started to walk towards the towering creature, hearing shocked gasps behind him, but he couldn't help it. The bizarre figure was hypnotically fascinating.

He could feel the alien mind twisting away from their mental link. It was strange: he would never have been able to sense or control the alien creature's thoughts so clearly by himself, but using the amplifying talent was so ingrained that without even realizing it, the alien was helping Tim to control itself. It would have been easy for it to escape control: just stop helping him. But fortunately that hadn't occurred to the creature and Tim tried desperately not to let the idea enter his mind. Ever try 'not' to think of the word hippopotamus? he thought to himself wryly, remembering the childhood challenge game.

But what do I do? He stared up at the wide jaws that never seemed to fully close, glistening fangs moist and frightening. The mouth was about level with his chest and looked large enough to take his upper body in a single bite! The tiny head was leaning all the way forward and the undamaged ebony eyes inspected Tom as he came within reach.

One part of his mind compared it to the dead alien pilot, and he marveled over the similarity. It was like comparing a gorilla to a human. Except that this primitive cousin to the pilot was definitely a carnivore.

Behind him he heard a faint scuffle but he ignored it.

Yes, what do I do? And what would we do to it if we capture it? Images flashed unbidden through his mind.

* * *

The Communicator felt the Controller's hold waver as a new set of images flashed from the alien mind to its own. They were images of being trapped in a large metal cage, untold numbers of these creatures marching past and staring at it. No hunting farm for when its Controller was not on assignment, no breeding allotment and no acid baths. Just a life of being on display, caged like an animal.

Freed from the hold of the Controller's dominance, its thoughts were much clearer and coherent than it had ever dreamed was possible, and in one way it was exhilarating. But now it wished for more of the sheltered dullness of its life before it had crashed on this place. The damage it had suffered from the exploding rock and flying metal pieces, the lack of food, the freezing air and deadly air; all these things were suddenly combining and the Communicator felt suddenly tired and it just wanted to lie down and die. Its legs shivered.

* * *

Suddenly he heard Rodriques shouting a warning and Tim was grabbed by the arm and dragged to the side as Winters crashed into him, throwing something past him at the alien. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rodriques on the ground, struggling to get up, a trickle of blood running down his forehead from a nasty-looking gash. Then the world tumbled around Tim as a loud explosion sounded nearby and its concussion threw him to the ground. He saw the alien wreathed in flame and smoke and toppling to the side with an unearthly keening and in his mind he felt an unbearable crash of pain that blotted out everything.

An unknown period of time later, he regained consciousness to find a medic cleaning a couple of small cuts, "from rock fragments", the medic explained.

"The alien--" he started to ask.

"Dead." He looked over to the side to see Rodriques lying next to him on another stretcher. "Winters got me with a rock, and grabbed a couple of grenades off my belt, pulled both pins and threw them under it and grabbed you to get you away from the explosion."

Tim's mind quested, but there was no response. Amazingly, he could sense a dim flow of thoughts from Rodriques' mind, though, and an almost imperceptible, intermingled flow from other minds nearby. Somehow, the contact with the Communicator had strengthened his own borderline extrasensory powers. He thought he could pick out Wilcox's precise controlled thoughts and ventured a guess without looking.

"I guess you're happy now, Lieutenant?" He sensed the shocked surprise and then a moment of genuine concern, over the general sense of satisfaction.

"I'm sorry it had to die, but at least we're safe." Wilcox acknowledged after a moment.

"Yes. Safe from an encounter that could have moved us ahead by hundreds of years and saved the world a lot of suffering!" Tim still held an image in his mind from the Communicator, an image of the alien mother-ship of the Controllers taking the Centaurs far away. It would probably be a long time before they would return to try again to contact humanity, hoping to find a more mature race. He looked across the small clearing to the crumpled dark-green hulk of the dead being that he had shared minds with briefly. Strangely, he was more curious about where the Communicators would be whenever the Centaurs returned. How much more they might grow by then. Would the Centaurs realize their developing intelligence?

Then reaction set in and he lay back and closed his eyes, unable to stop a burning trickle of tears. "I'm sorry," he whispered. Both to the body on the ground and to the dead pilot lying, probably in pieces by now, in some laboratory somewhere. "We're still not quite ready."

- end-