Fear that man

transpiring in the streets beyond, denied the death and pain Buronto had perpetrated in their midst only moments before.
        The ship was where they had left it, almost invisible, half submerged in a large pond, the other half well-hidden by thick masses of Spanish moss strung from the trees like beards. They slopped through the water, activated the portal, and entered the last free ship on Hope.
        
        “Now do you understand?” Sam asked, staring the giant down.
        The lights on the control console flashed, pulsated, flooded the room with weird currents of color. Coro sat bent over the monitoring devices, occasionally rubbing a hand across dry lips. The time had come. Almost. Very near. Blessed be the time. Frightening too. Lotus sat beside Coro, a hand on his arm, pointing now and then to different dials and scopes.
        “I understand,” Buronto growled.
        “No indiscriminate killing. We have to sneak in. If we’re confronted with the choice of killing a guard or sneaking past him-we sneak.”
        “I don’t like it.”
        “You wouldn’t.”
        “Or you either?” Buronto said, laughing slyly.
        “It’s a matter of necessity,” Sam said wearily. They had been through it ten times now. He could think of no blunter, more forceful manner of putting it. “If you start killing everything that moves, the Central Being will have us pegged and dead before we’re anywhere near It. It’ll blow your head off the first moment It knows you’re in Raceship. It’ll win, Buronto. And you’ll be real dead.”
        “Okay, okay. I got it well enough. Play it pansy. Gentility is the byword. No rough stuff until we bump off the big boy. But then, mister, I am going to have myself a lot of fun with the slugs.”
        “And you’ll have earned it.”
        “You too, huh?”
        “Yeah.”
        “And you’ll be twice as bloody about it, I’ll bet.”
        “Most likely,” Sam said, leering false-heartedly. “Twice as bloody.” He wondered how he would handle Buronto after the mission was completed-if it was completed. It was going to be a tight situation. A kill-crazy giant running amok with a laser rifle. How could he control him? If he refused to kill after the Central Being was disposed of, then Buronto would realize his masochism was a front, a trick. What would the giant’s reaction be to that? Or, rather, not what would it be-but how fast would it come? Well, that was a problem he would have to think about later. Later, when he was driven to the wall.
        “They seem settled for the duration, Sam,” Coro said, turning from the controls. “Raceship hasn’t moved since we’ve been monitoring it. But the battle is raging beyond belief. Millions of people have died. I wish we hadn’t waited for dark.”
        “But it is dark now,” Sam answered, standing, stretching. “And we have a much better chance with darkness as a cover.”
        Buronto went to get their weapons and a laser hand-torch.
        “Look, Sam,” Coro said, moving close and whispering. “He frightens me. And-”
        “Me too.”
        Coro hesitated. “Yeah. I see. He may be hideous, but he’s the best-looking chance we have. But do you really think he can kill this Central Being that easily?”
        “No.”
        “No?”
        “Our God was weak and easy to dispatch because Breadloaf’s Shield had drained Him of His strength over the centuries. This God has not been drained.”
        “Then why the devil-”
        “He doesn’t have to kill God,” Sam said, pulling the black hood of the nightsuit over his head.
        “What? I don’t understand this at all.”
        “Oh, he may kill God. He just might. But it isn’t necessary. If we can get him in there and let God kill him, I think-”
        But Buronto had returned with a rifle for each of them and a cutting torch. “Let’s go,” he said.
        The two of them stepped quietly through the portal into the black blanket of night…

----

    XV
        
         Raceship had settled in the vast wild game reserve that stretched forty-seven miles on a side behind the Congressional Archives. It took a great deal of space to park a boat that big, and as he and Buronto stood among the still forms of oak trees looking at the vessel, Sam wondered how many animals had been crushed by its descent. And how many tourists.
        “They came in that?” Buronto asked.
        Sam grinned. It was a difficult thing