Then she became aware of the time, and realized that she had missed her period of yoga-TP concentration on the precious burden she was carrying inside her. As if in protest, the baby kicked vigorously, twice. Lynne closed her eyes and sent a message to the unborn tot--_Easy, infant, mummy’s right here_. There was no time for rest now. She had to try to make some sense out of Joanna’s records. She began to make sense out of the problem after a while. But it was an understanding that deepened, rather than relieved her growing concern and mounting fear. Fear of the zombies had never fully left her since her first ghastly encounter with them in Nightmare Tower, when it had seemed to her that her mind must forever stand alone against the ghastly phantoms of an alien world. Until the previous February Patagonia Station had been little more than a blueprint addition to the rapidly spreading green acres of Woomera Station. In the fenced-in, relatively small grazing areas of the parent station there had been plenty of negative electricity protection against zombie inroads. And similar fences had been erected around every important official installation on Mars. But the zombie threat was ancient history, and the broad new pastures of Patagonia Station had been planned to enable the specially bred Red Planet cattle to roam free--as they had done in the early days of the American Southwest, the Argentina pampas and the tse fly-freed plateau of Central Africa. The results of this mistake could be ticked off almost by the calendar. The zombies had moved in and were feeding on the vast electrical discharges of the mysterious E-entity that provided the power--through human-inspired irritation--to create the storms and moisture that made the expanded station possible. Taking possession of the empty bovine minds, they were beginning to play their monstrous games as their new-fed strength waxed. “_Crehut!_ Look at those _ferkab_ devils now!” Joanna had risen and was staring in horror at a vidarscreen on which was projected a fairly wide expanse of New Patagonia Station. “Come _on_!” she cried. Lynne paused for an incredulous moment to study the screen. It showed level acres, bright with tough, waving grass, each green stretch dotted with gray, long-haired cattle. The normally stupid and independent beasts were clustering together in a strange way, forming distinct group shapes, almost as if in response to some alien military command. Even as she watched she saw the leader--a large long-horned steer--deliberately lower his head and savagely attack an animal that had managed to get in his way. She caught a glimpse of blood dripping from its torn flanks and spreading like a sun-reddened shadow over the emerald-green grass. “I’m _coming!_” she said grimly in response to another plea from Joanna. VI