The Niss collapsed. Tremaine drew a rasping breath, blinked back tears of pain, took in a group of Niss in a glance. _Die!_ * * * * * They fell. The others turned to flee then, but like a scythe Tremaine's mind cut them down, left them in windrows. Hate walked naked among the Niss and left none living. _Now the machines._ Tremaine thought. He fixed his eyes on the harmonic generator. It melted into slag. Behind it, the high panels set with jewel-like lights blackened, crumpled into wreckage. Suddenly the air was clean again. Tremaine breathed deep. Before him the surface of the rock swam into view. _NO!_ Tremaine thought thunderously. _HOLD THAT APERTURE OPEN!_ The rock-face shimmered, faded. Tremaine looked into the white-lit room, at the blackened walls, the huddled dead. _No pity_, he thought. _You would have sunk those white teeth into soft human throats, sleeping in the dark ... as you've done on a hundred worlds. You're a cancer in the cosmos. And I have the cure._ _WALLS_, he thought, _COLLAPSE!_ The roof before him sagged, fell in. Debris rained down from above, the walls tottered, went down. A cloud of roiled dust swirled, cleared to show a sky blazing with stars. _Dust, stay clear_, Tremaine thought. _I want good air to breathe for the work ahead._ He looked out across a landscape of rock, ghostly white in the starlight. _LET THE ROCKS MELT AND FLOW LIKE WATER!_ An upreared slab glowed, slumped, ran off in yellow rivulets that were lost in the radiance of the crust as it bubbled, belching released gasses. A wave of heat struck Tremaine. _Let it be cool here_, he thought. _Now, Niss world...._ "No!" Bram's voice shouted. "Stop, stop!" Tremaine hesitated. He stared at the vista of volcanic fury before him. _I could destroy it all_, he thought. _And the stars in the Niss sky...._ "Great is the power of your hate, man of Earth," Bram cried. "But curb it now, before you destroy us all!" "Why?" Tremaine shouted. "I can wipe out the Niss and their whole diseased universe with them, with a thought!" "Master yourself," Bram said hoarsely. "Your rage destroys you! One of the suns you see in the Niss sky is your Sol!" * * * * * "Sol?" Tremaine said. "Then it's the Sol of a thousand years ago. Light takes time to cross a galaxy. And the earth is still here ... so it wasn't destroyed!" "Wise are you," Bram said. "Your race is a wonder in the Cosmos, and deadly is your hate. But you know nothing of the forces you unloose now. Past time is as mutable as the steel and rock you melted but now." "Listen to him, James," Miss Carroll pleaded. "Please listen." Tremaine twisted to look at her, still holding the twin grips. She looked back steadily, her head held high. Beside her, Bram's eyes were sunken deep in his lined face.