_Stay out, you ugly devils_, Tremaine thought. _Go back, retreat, give up...._ Now the blue glow built in a flickering arc across the Niss machine. The technicians stood, staring across the narrow gap, tiny red eyes glittering in the narrow alien faces. Tremaine squinted against the brilliant white light from the high-vaulted Niss Command Center. The last suggestion of the sloping surface of the limestone wall was gone. Tremaine felt a draft stir; dust whirled up, clouded the air. There was an odor of iodine. _Back_, Tremaine thought. _Stay back...._ There was a restless stir among the waiting rank of Niss. Tremaine heard the dry shuffle of horny feet against the floor, the whine of the harmonic generator. His eyes burned. As a hot gust swept around him he choked and coughed. _NO!_ he thought, hurling negation like a weightless bomb. _FAIL! RETREAT!_ * * * * * Now the Niss moved, readying a wheeled machine, rolling it into place. Tremaine coughed rackingly, fought to draw a breath, blinking back blindness. A deep thrumming started up; grit particles stung his cheek, the backs of his hands. The Niss worked rapidly, their throat gills visibly dilated now in the unaccustomed flood of oxygen.... _Our oxygen_, Tremaine thought. _The looting has started already, and I've failed, and the people of Earth will choke and die...._ From what seemed an immense distance, a roll of thunder trembled at the brink of audibility, swelling. The black-clad Niss on the alien machine half rose, erecting a black-scaled crest, exulting. Then, shockingly, his eyes fixed on Tremaine's, his trap-like mouth gaped, exposing a tongue like a scarlet snake, a cavernous pink throat set with a row of needle-like snow-white teeth. The tongue flicked out, a gesture of utter contempt. And suddenly Tremaine was cold with deadly rage. _We have a treatment for snakes in this world_, he thought with savage intensity. _We crush 'em under our heels...._ He pictured a writhing rattler, broken-backed, a club descending; a darting red coral snake, its venom ready, slashed in the blades of a power mower; a cottonmouth, smashed into red ruin by a shotgun blast.... _BACK, SNAKE_, he thought. _DIE! DIE!_ The thunder faded. And atop the Niss Generator, the black-clad Niss snapped his mouth shut, crouched. "DIE!" Tremaine shouted. "Die!" The Niss seemed to shrink in on himself, shivering. His crest went flaccid, twitched twice. The red eyes winked out and the Niss toppled from the machine. Tremaine coughed, gripped the handles, turned his eyes to a gray-uniformed Niss who scrambled up to replace the operator. _I SAID DIE, SNAKE!_ The Niss faltered, tumbled back among his fellows, who darted about now like ants in a broached anthill. One turned red eyes on Tremaine, then scrambled for the red cut-out switch. _NO, YOU DON'T_, Tremaine thought. _IT'S NOT THAT EASY, SNAKE. DIE!_