"Give them up, Baemae! Give them up or die!" Craig said, "It doesn't matter, Narla. Not really. I've fought and I've lost, and a man has to play the cards fate deals him. But there's no reason for the others, the Baemae, to die with me. Not if there's even the slimmest chance for them to live if I surrender. As for you, your father wants you back, that's all. He'll never harm you." She was still sobbing as he lifted her onto the saucer.... CHAPTER VIII The Central Tower of Torneulan, the Tower of Zenaor. Hard-faced guards. Echoing passageways. The bleak metal and leather of Zenaor's private chambers. And Zenaor. The Lord Zenaor, high chief of all Kukzubas barons. The lean face was set in cruel lines now, the jet eyes narrowed to black diamonds beneath their heavy brows. "So, alien...." His voice rasped, thick with menace. "At last you come to me, begging for mercy--" "Mercy? From you?" Craig Nesom shrugged in spite of the guards' restraining hands, the shackles. "No, Zenaor. I beg nothing of you, neither life nor lenience. The things I've done I'd do again. I've given up only to stop this senseless slaughter." "An altruistic gesture, alien," Zenaor chuckled. "But a trifle late." He rose as he spoke and stepped to a paneled wall behind his seat. A carved section slid back at his touch, revealing a bleak, compact laboratory chamber. A transparent, closet-sized cubicle stood on a stand in the compartment's center ... a cubicle whose every inch and crack and crevice seethed and eddied with the swirling grey slime of ourobos. In spite of himself, Craig Nesom stiffened; caught the whisper of Narla's quick-drawn breath. Zenaor pivoted, still chuckling. "You see, alien? Here we have ourobos!" Craig nodded slowly. "And what is the ourobos?" Zenaor was gloating now, caught up in the excitement of his own revelation. "It is what your science would term a thallophyte, Earthman--a semi-intelligent thallophyte, a sort of deadly, highly-mobile fungus for which no specific weapon has been discovered!" "A fungus--!" "Yes, alien! That's why no weapon prevails against it! Blast it, even with fire, and still asexual spores fly out, each to form the nucleus for another of its kind, a new ourobos!" Craig's lips were dry. His voice shook. "Then--this planet, Lysor--" "Lysor is doomed, you mean?" Triumph rang in the chief barons' voice. "Indeed it is, alien! Now that I've brought the ourobos from Xumar, nothing can stop them! Your sacrifice is wasted! There's barely enough tanagree oil to treat a handful of our barons!" Craig choked. "No, Zenaor! Not even you could doom a whole race--" But Zenaor still was speaking: "This is my answer to the free Baemae, Earthman! They wanted Lysor--they shall have it! As for the rest of us--my friends among the Kukzubas, a few loyal serfmen--I have ships already ramped to take us off to Odak, third planet of our system." Craig stood numb, unable to move or speak.