From the start it was really too late. Nelsen was as hardy and determined as any. He tried to get Nance to the 'copter. Less than halfway, she crumpled. With a savage effort of will he managed to drag her a few yards, before his legs refused to obey him, or support him. His blood carried a virus to his brain about as quickly as it would have carried a cobra's venom. _They_ probably could have made such protein-poisons, too; but they had never used them against men, no doubt because something that could spread and infect others was better. For a while, as the black, starshot night closed in, Nelsen knew, or remembered, nothing at all--unless the mental distortions were too horrible. Then he seemed to be in a pit of stinking, viscous fluid, alive with stringy unknowns that were boring into him... Unreachable in another universe was a town called Jarviston. He yelled till his wind was gone. He had a half-lucid moment in which he knew it was night, and understood that he had a raging fever. He was still clinging to Nance, who clung to him. So instinct still worked. He saw that they had blundered--its black bulk was visible against the stars. Phobos hadn't risen; Deimos, the farther moon, was too small to furnish appreciable light. Something touched him from behind, and he recoiled, pushing Nance back. He yanked the machete from his belt, and struck blindly... Oh, _no!_--you didn't get caught like this--not usually, he told himself. Not in their actual grip! They were too slow--you could always dodge! It was only when you were near something not properly disinfected that you got Syrtis Fever, which was the worst that could happen--wasn't it...? He heard an excited rhythm in the buzzing. Now he remembered his shoulder-lamp, fumbled to switch it on, failed, and stumbled a few steps with Nance toward the hill. Something caught his feet--then hers. Trying to get her free, he dropped his machete... Huth's voice spoke in his helmet-phone. "We hear you, Nelsen! Hold out... We'll be there in forty minutes..." Yeah--forty minutes. "It's--it's silly to be so scared, Frankie..." he heard Nance stammer almost apologetically. Dear Nance... Screaming, he kicked out again and again with his heavy boots, and got both her and himself loose. It wasn't any good. A shape loomed near them. A thing that must have sprung from _them_--someway. A huge, zombie form--the ugliest part of this night of anguish and distortion. But he was sure that it was real. The thing struck him in the stomach. Then there was a biting pain in his shoulder... There wasn't any more, just then. But this wasn't quite the end, either. The jangled impressions were like split threads of consciousness, misery-wracked and tenuous. They were widely separated. His brain seemed to crack into a million needle-pointed shards, that made no sense except to indicate the passage of time. A month? A century...?