The eyestalk whipped back, quivering and pulsing. Then, in an instant, recovering, the creature spilled forward in a rush. But already Boone was twisting, scrambling, clawing his way along the ground. Then there was a rock beneath his hands, big as a man's head. In spite of his weakness he clutched it, swung it up. The monster swept down upon him as he pivoted. Boone hurled the rock. It struck at the base of the weird thing's eyestalk. With a snapping sound, the orb's stem broke. Twitching, writhing, the body halted. Then, as with the giant arm, the other monsters, the creature's whole structure began to shrivel and ooze away in slime. Panting, shaking, Boone slumped back to the ground, his brain a cauldron bubbling with inchoate thoughts. Like a mosaic, then, the pieces fell into place. This whole void-area--and this area only--seemed to crawl with mad phantasms ... lunatic life-forms like none that Man had ever seen before. Out of nowhere, they materialized aboard the Cartel's sphere-ships. Here, on Hyperion; Titan, too. Those were the facts. Now, suddenly, they took on form and pattern. For in his delirium, Boone knew he'd had nightmares of this specific slime-drenched horror. Awakening, his fever gone, he'd faced the hideous thing on reality's plane. And the Helgae could play strange tricks with human minds.... The Helgae--they were the correlating factor! The Cartel had come and raped their silent cities for the sake of mekronal and chandak. So lacking the power of discourse, words to protest, they'd struck back in their own dark way. Somehow, they'd reached into men's deep subconscious and dredged up monsters--the paranoid delusions of fevered brains. Then, as the mediums of another day had claimed to give spirits ectoplasmic body, so now the Helgae materialized nightmares into life! What armor could turn aside such a weapon? Yet beyond it lay the threat of Titan fever. For that, too, could be a blow struck by the Helgae--the main attack, designed to cripple the mass-mind of the whole, far-flung human race! Boone shuddered. Yet strength rose in him, not despair. For with knowledge, the fears he'd felt of the unknown vanished. He looked about in the growing light with new, fresh eyes. The landscape had changed from that which he last remembered. This ground lay in altogether different contours. Frowning, he turned. Now, with a shock, he found himself staring out on a familiar scene: the arcs and domes and bubbles of the self-same sprawling Helgae city where he and Eileen had lain entombed. ... Where Eileen still might lie. It was a thought to make his belly churn, his heart pound, wrenching cruelly at every atom of his being. He sagged, gripped his head between his hands. * * * * * The sleeve of his shirt fell across his face, ripped wide. Incredulously, he discovered that everything he wore hung in rags and tatters. Even his shoes were slashed and mud-caked.