Fear that man

pulsated against the warm walls of the growth room, their pink skins glistening with moisture in the mist-laden air.
        

    X
        
        “Just as I thought,” Coro said. “They wouldn’t destroy those.”
        Beyond the safety fence was the vast expanse of concrete that was Chaplin-Alpha’s spaceport, and the tall, phallic starships, mute dragons making silent testimony to the greatness of the race that had built the city of Chaplin- Alpha.
        The city that was now in ashes, Sam reminded himself. The city behind the rolling green hills. The rolling green hills that belied the horror the other-dimensional God and its slug-forms had wrought.
        The aliens had left the starships untouched. In fact, some of the ships sported crews of slug-forms clinging like fleas on a dog’s back. There were four slugs to each crew, and they seemed to be painting the hulls black to match the Raceship. These vessels would not be large enough to serve as Spoorships, but they would do the slugs well for survey craft-and possibly as battleships against the race that had made them.
        Coro settled the floater behind the fence, into the shadows and the grass, cut all power and unstrapped himself. “We just have to go get one.”
        “How?” Lotus asked.
        “We have dart guns. If we have just a little bit of luck besides, we’ll have it made.”
        “Without the luck?” Crazy asked.
        “It’s been a pleasant association,” Coro said, smiling another of his non-smiles.
        Minutes later they stood before the fence, each carrying a rifle armed with a clip of forty drug darts. The darkness would only shield them for half a dozen feet beyond the fence. Then, once onto the concrete runway, they would be held in the glare of the triple polyarcs, small, clear targets on the sea of smooth, featureless grayness that offered no place for concealment.
        “Now comes an unpleasant choice,” Coro said, hunkering down and staring through the chainlink.
        “What?” Sam asked, getting down next to him.
        “Do we take the nearest ship-which has a four-slug crew working on it? Or do we go to the next ship-which has no crew, but which is three times as far from us?”
        “I don’t like the slugs,” Crazy grumbled, shaking his massive head, hair twirling madly for a moment.
        “Neither do I,” Sam said. “But we risk three times as much by going to the more distant ship. I opt for the closest vessel and the use of the drug darts.”
        “Agreed,” Coro said. Then: “Agreed?”
        It was, and swiftly. With a hand-laser torch like the one they had used to cut through the hull of the Raceship, they began work on the links of the safety fence. Within minutes they were through, hugging the shadows on the other side where they were thin and shallow. Ahead lay the runway, too bright for comfort. If there were only some cover, some little thing between here and the ship, some stopping point to catch breath. But there wasn’t.
        “Together,” Coro said. “Run as fast as you can to the bottom of the ship, then stay with it like it was a lover, ‘cause it offers at least a little bit of shade. From there, we can pick off the painting crew on the mobile scaffolding and use it to get to the portal. Ready? Move!”
        Sam’s lungs pounded as he raced across the concrete, gray swimming about him almost as if the deck were liquid, night air biting his cheeks and making them red. He wished he could move as fast as Lotus, but then she seemed to be just skimming the ground, flying more than she was running. He felt so small and so easily seen, naked on an endless plain of nightmare lights. But he couldn’t let himself think about that-or about one of the aliens’ beams picking him out and charring him into a smoldering, writhing mass of human flesh, spouting blood from ears and nose, eyes red with burst vessels. Those were not scenes to be imagined. Only run. Run, run, run until your chest is bursting and your legs are throbbing like footless stumps. Run, run…
        But by expecting the worst, he felt spiritually exulted when they arrived at the bottom of the starship unharmed and apparently unnoticed. They stood, still together, with their backs pressed against the cold, cold metal of the hull, sweat on their backs seeming to turn to ice. Breaths pounded in and out of four sets of lungs. Four hearts thumped too fast.
        “Carefully again,” Coro said