Cold tentacles whipped against his face and her teeth closed together beside his cheek with a vicious snap and gust of hot breath. She rebounded and held the thing on the ground between her paws as she tore at it; gagging a little, whining and snarling in fury and triumph. He squatted beside her and laid his hand on her, speaking to her soothingly. She calmed a little, though her chest still pounded with the beating of her heart, and he saw the thing she had killed. It was dead and slowly becoming visible as it changed to a color like pale milk. It resembled a huge, hairless spider. It was a parasite; a highly intelligent parasite that could take over the mind of its host as well as the body. The parasites had had only the forest monsters as hosts, before, but with the coming of the humans they had the opportunity for hosts of a far higher order. They possessed a means of locomotion but apparently it was limited in its duration or else they would not have needed to control the leaders of the monster bands and stage the attack that would carry them to the guard lines. The dog, with the acute sixth sense of some animals, could sense the hostile alienness of the things. She could see them--apparently the vision range of dogs went a little farther beyond that of humans. So also would that of cats but the kitten had had no chance to show by its actions what it had seen. The dog had hated the changed men because they were alien things, no longer human. The thing that had been Bellam had used the knowledge stored in Bellam's mind to claim there was rabies in the camp and thereby enlist the support of the humans in killing their only means of detecting the parasites. * * * * * There was a pounding of feet beyond the ship as the zombies came. On the slope above him Curry was striding toward him, his bodyguards flanking him and the moonlight bright on his face. He stood with the dog beside him and watched them come to kill him. Only he and the dog knew of the parasites; if they were killed the way would be open for the parasites to infiltrate the camp. In the end the new world would hold only the walking dead, down to the last Outlander child. "Curry," he called. He did not have to speak loudly in the still night air for Curry to hear him but Curry came on, his face hard, arrogant metal in the moonlight. "Give me one minute, Curry, to tell you what I found." Curry's reply was the order to his men. "The dog is with him. Kill them both." His blaster swung up as he spoke. Thane dropped, firing as he went down. Curry's arrogant face dissolved into nothing and his blaster flamed aimlessly into the ground at his feet. The blaster of the swiftest guard sent its beam hissing like a snake over Thane's head, then he went down as Curry had done, the other guard falling beside him with his first and only shot licking off into the moonlight.