MECH - By B. V. Larson Page 0,39

gray reptilian skin. There was no visible hair, horns or claws except for the blades of hard black material that sheathed the feet. It had run Dev through with one of these machete-like blades. The creature stood at least seven feet high on long powerful hind legs. Two short, wiry forelimbs each ended in three opposing fingers that had a sinuous, rubbery look to them. It had no head, but rather from the top of its torso sprouted several ropy-looking stalks and a cluster of mandibles above an open maw for eating. The stalks floated about and appeared to direct themselves in unison. Their behavior immediately suggested that the bulbs terminating the stalks were eyes or at least that they were sensory organs of some kind.

Rolf swung his wrecking bar for the creature’s head-area, or at least for the spot where the waving stalks sprouted. The creature danced away and disappeared into the trees.

Snatching up his shotgun, Rolf took a moment to check on his brother.

Still hugging the rough black bark, pressing his cheek against it, Dev was dying. He choked on blood, then stopped breathing altogether. The light of Gopus glinted in his dead eyes.

Too scared to feel grief, Rolf snatched up Dev’s shotgun. He began to run for the house. Something came up behind him, and then it paced him, running through the trees to his right. Then it vanished again, and appeared over to the left. With sudden clarity of thought, he realized it was playing with him, that it had been simply probing—testing for reaction the whole time.

He fired a wild blast at the dark shape, hoping for luck. He got it. The creature was bowled off its odd feet. It rolled through the wet grass that carpeted the orchard. Showing a horrible vitality, it sprang back up again, like a tumbler at the end of a run.

Rolf stopped and tried to take advantage of his lucky shot. He fired again, but this time he missed. Black dirt and grass fountained behind the creature. It charged him. Even as he heard the click of the next shell being automatically spring-loaded into the firing chamber, he realized he would never get off another shot. Perhaps if he hadn’t smoked the second pipeful of swamp-reed, or if he had been less surprised, he wouldn’t have missed so badly. But he had and now the thing was on him.

The thing snatched the shotgun from his grasp as effortlessly as Rolf himself had snatched a jax-goad from Jimmy’s hands earlier that very day. In almost the same fluid motion, the thing made a flying kick for his head. The bladed foot swept up, caught Rolf under the chin, and cleanly decapitated him. His head and body fell in separate directions.

Showing its lack of familiarity with the human anatomy, the killbeast pointed the shotgun at the headless corpse, found the trigger with its odd rubbery fingers, and fired several times in rapid succession.

* * *

Jimmy, hearing the shots in the orchard, reached the house at a dead run. He entered the backdoor and was swept up in the welcoming arms of his mother.

“Sarah! Bili! There’s some kinda monster out there!” he sobbed into his mother’s dress. “It killed the jaxes!”

Sarah and Bili exchanged terrified glances. Sarah wrapped her arms around her Bili’s neck and shoulders, squeezing him tight.

“You two know what he’s on about, don’t you?” demanded Sasha Herkart. Her eyes squinted with suspicion; her otherwise comely face went taunt with dark lines. “You know about this. You came out of the forest like something was chasing you. Now you’ve brought it here!”

Outside, there was a renewed screaming from the jaxes milling about the yard. Something was among them, something was killing them. Sarah listened but there were no human sounds. There were no more shots, no more shouts, and the men didn’t come back.

“Where’s the cellar?” Sarah asked, heading for the kitchen. On the way past the home public-net terminal, she pressed the emergency call button three times and kept going. The woman followed, not seeming to hear the question.

“My man is out there fighting that thing. You should be out there. Those jaxes are all we have,” her voice wavered and she was trembling.

Sarah found the door to the cellar and she took Bili down the steps with her. Sasha and Jimmy stood at the top of the steps, uncertain. Jimmy rubbed at the spacer’s watch that Bili had given him as a present. His eyes were big and