Fear that man

helmets shut and began relying solely on the air supply in the single tanks strapped on their left shoulder blades. There was no way of knowing if these creatures breathed an atmosphere similar to Hope Normal, and they were not about to be gassed by an outrush of foul air when they had cut through the plating.
        The laser came on, a blue beam so dark that it was almost black. Coro began slicing into the plate before him. The metal gave to the irresistible cold heat of the beam, and a circular patch fell away. It was half an inch thick, but it was not the entire hull. Beyond lay another layer. They went through twelve in all-like chewing through a Danish pastry-before they were looking through the hull onto a dimly lighted corridor wide as a street in Hope. They were looking out at deck level.
        “You first,” Coro said, providing a knee for Sam to stand on. “Then pull me up.”
        By the time they were both inside and breathing heavily, the atmosphere analyzer strapped to Coro’s wrist indicated APPROX. HOPE NORMAL.
        They took several steps into the corridor, about to take off the clumsy helmets, when their ears were assaulted with the teeming, multi-level rhythms of Racesong…
        Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam…
        Clutching at, clutching at, clutching at…
        Identity…
        Clutching identity in a swirling maelstrom.
        Sam, Sam… Sam…
        He felt buffeted by the harmonious winds, lifted and thrilled by the rhythms of the breezes of the overall song. In his ears, Racesong pulsed, and he could not fight the tiny, tinny vibrations that stirred his hammer, anvil, and stirrup, quivered them, befuddled them, used and yet denied them. It was not a song for him, not a song designed for men. Coruscating tones broke brilliantly against his mind, unaware that he was alien to them.
        Sam, Sam… Sam…
        The Racesong brought pictures that crashed like towering whitecaps against his mind, swirling backwater in his id, frothing his ego with stagnant foam. Between the impossible crests of the waves, the corridor of the extra-galactic ship was brought back to him in dimness, though he could not retain this picture of reality when the alien thought-song swept into his brain, waves like corundum wheels grinding away at his self-awareness. He could see Coro staggering against the wall, slumping down onto the floor, trying to hold the noises out with hands that merely conducted them.
        Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam…
        But after the moment of evanescence, came the waves:
        Raceship’s purpose is an immensity beyond the comprehension of any one slug; it is not a tidal current but, indeed, the tide itself. Continents drift before it, and whirlpools of its making suck up islands. Raceship… RACEship… RACESHIP… raceSHIP… Always moving, always growing as more and more sections are thrust outward from the present hull, always putting more and more distance between the outside and Ship’s Core. Protect Ship’s Core, always … Raceship in the Raceverse…
        Sam tried to raise his arms to shield his ears, useless but an instinctive necessity. Still, his arms raised and lowered jerkily like the arms of a puppet as the waves of chauvinistic propaganda swept him, leaving him in control of himself for only short moments at a time.
         Spoorships coasting outward on invisible but ever-present currents of space, following strange flows and investigating all the eddies of Raceverse. Spoorships with shrines in the Core rather than a real central being…
        Sam, Sam… Sam, Sam…
        Coro was on his stomach, writhing in pain, face contorted. Pain? Pain?
         Mother-forms, vomiting eggs from the rotting ruin of their sacrificial bodies, eggs round and smooth and gray, great clusters. All to support Raceship and to build outward to further insulate the Central Being in Ship’s Core and to fan the Spoorships that would carry the plan and desires of the Central Being into the unknown…
        Pain? Pain? What pain? There was an overwhelming hypnotic something that swept him with the melody-but no pain. Pain for Coro? Pain?
        Sam, Sam…
        Clutching at, clutching at identity…
        Id… Iden… I… Identi… Identity…
         Webs, hanging. Webs. Giving of self to the young in the webs. The young: wide-jawed. Wide jaws: bite into pulpy flesh, gnash and gush blood through horny gums. Blood Bloodbloodblood for Raceship. The blood of