More and more nitrogen fission bombs were falling now as the air-sled streaked across the flaming sky toward the ravine that hid the Serpent. The very soil of the planet seemed to dance in a hellish carnival of destruction. Glancing back, Aram saw the towering skylon come plunging down in torrents of rubble and human flesh. He knew with finality that he was witnessing the end of everything he had known--the chaotic collapse of a culture that had spawned its own nemesis. Man--diving from the pinnacle of stellar dominion to the depths of nothingness ... because he had tolerated tyranny. Jerrold shook his head to clear away the sudden pain that stabbed across his temples. One thought grew in his mind with increasing clarity. He and Deve must somehow survive. Perhaps other men and women would come through the end in remote worlds, but there was no way of being certain. He had to be sure ... he had to know that the end would not come for all the race. He, a man, and Deve, a woman, could still carry out the mercifully dead Kant Mikal's injunction. In those fleeting moments above the writhing, doomed surface of Kaidor V, survival became an obsession with Aram Jerrold. The Serpent awaited them where they had left it, and they hurried through the valve, feeling the tremblors of the fifth planet's death agonies. Aram drove the ship upward, seeking the safety of space and their haven. Both knew where they were going, though neither had put it into words. At a distance of five diameters from the globe of Kaidor V, Aram paused to see the death of a world. Like a savage animal, the Fleet continued to worry the trembling planet with a vicious hail of bombs. The pair in the Serpent could see bright internal fires as the crust of the world split under the hideous attack. Like a stricken thing, Kaidor V seemed to totter on its axis. Great chunks of rock were blown clear by the pressure of expanding inner fires. For hours, the death agonies of the planet continued, until finally, like a bursting bubble, the globe expanded. Huge slashes appeared from pole to pole. The ice caps vanished into twin clouds of superheated steam. Fragments peeled off as gravitational balances were disturbed. Globules of molten lava fanned out, like strings of beads. Kaidor V trembled with a cosmic delirium--great prominences of atomic fire leaping far into space. And then, quite suddenly, it was over. With its heart ripped out by the violent fission of its inner substance, the hollow shell collapsed into a swirling, nebulous cloud of cosmic rubble, rapidly spreading out into a belt of tiny planetoids spanning the place where once a mighty world circled the parent star.... * * * * * The Serpent settled softly into a wooded glade and grew still. Within, Aram Jerrold fought the wracking pains in his head, screaming aloud with the agony of it. Deve lay unconscious on the steel deck, moaning softly.