"Somebody was idiotic," I said. We were nearing the field and the lights were brightening. I could see men running from the barracks and the sheds. "We'll find out who it was. By God!" he said, lifting his voice. "When this is done, you'll see the fool's head torn from his shoulders!" Then the field lit up around us and the machine guns started to chatter. It must have been automatic, the banks of searchlights must have been triggered by our vanguard crossing electric eyes on the edge of the field. But the Marines, warned by my shot, were at their gun emplacements and ready. Several dozen Neanderthals died in that first couple of seconds before we all went to earth. I heard the choking screams and the thunk of bullets striking flesh. I dove to the ground. The air whined just over my head and I knew I hadn't hit dirt an instant too soon. I hoped that Bill Cuff, that magnificent target, had been chopped in half.... Cuff's grenaders got into action then. There was the crump-crump and the screeching as grenades tore holes in earth and sandbags and metal and men. A Neanderthal stood up just in front of me and peered forward against the lights' glare to check on the damage, and as I looked up at him I saw the entire top of his skull explode as a dozen slugs hit it. There were more grenades and then a tommygun opened up. I crawled forward. Only the powers that be know why there were only forty Marines on Odo Island. There should have been four hundred. I suppose they counted on the dead secrecy to guard it. That, and the assurance that no foreign power could get within fifty miles of the place. Who could have foreseen Neanderthals from a past age in crepe-soled shoes? The Marines took a fearful toll of the Old Companions before they were obliterated. Within four or five minutes they had been overpowered and smashed into the bloody earth; but no more than seventy Neanderthals stood over their bodies and looked toward the great wheel-shaped satellite. I was sick to see that Bill Cuff and Skagarach were among them. And Old One, the true primordial brute, was there, though his left arm hung useless and dripped gore. Then, before any of us could even speak, the sheds and barracks erupted more men: the eighty workers, hard strong men--and they too were armed. My hopes soared, even as the submachine guns began to talk in staccato bursts of ear-piercing sound. CHAPTER VIII The workers were inadequately armed. A few revolvers and little ammo. Lead pipes and with things that looked like weapons but were actually odds and ends of tools they'd snatched up when they'd heard the battle start. They were armed with guts, but it wasn't enough.