n saw the disjointed bones move as if of their own accord. The She gathered herself, prepared for what would surely be a strike when he was first released from the prison of eternity. It came, and because he was confused and weak it was easily countered, and then she was holding him close and whispering to him. He ceased his struggles and listened. A soundless laugh was an expression of sheer delight from him. The She joined in, for she was no longer alone. An observer of the actions of her own body, Erin was on Murdoch Plough's yacht. The thing's method of reassembly of the available materials was not as messy as it had been in the first instance, when she'd felt the presence of Erin and Denton and lashed out. First the five breathing bodies were placed in a heap. This task was accomplished by Erin and Denton. In the process of moving the bodies all of their clothing was removed. Erin cringed at being forced to inflict the indignity on the victims, even if they were nothing more than breathing corpses. Denton had taken on a new role, for the other creature was there. The She no longer occupied both human bodies. Together the aliens melted the bio-mass into a red-tinged, pulsating glob held together by their joint force. Once again, with the original creature's attention focused elsewhere, Erin was a careful observer as the mass was separated. One bulk was larger. Slowly the two masses began to take form. He stood a full seven feet high. His form was that of an idealized man except for the wings, huge, graceful wings that folded neatly against his back. She was grace in motion, beauty incarnate. She was tall, slim, shapely. Her skin had the color and smoothness of old silk. Her wings, smaller than his, formed lovely lines along her shoulders and back. Her golden hair gleamed with a light of its own. Her eyes were the blue of a desert sky. Erin was alone. For the first time in an eternity she could feel, see, hear, smell with her own organs. There was constraint, for when she decided instantly to take advantage of their preoccupation and backed toward the air locks connecting the two ships with the idea of getting her saffer from the flexsuit, she ran into an unseen barrier and could not move further. «You are useful but not indispensable,» the alien said inside Erin's head. «You noticed me,» Erin said. An image flashed into her mind—the way Mop touched his nose so softly, so gently to the back of her leg to say, «Hey, Erin, I'm down here.» She felt shame and anger. She was not some lesser being. She would never again be guilty of trying to attract the alien's attention just to say, «Look, you bitch, I'm here.» If she ever again tried to attract her captor's attention it would be to deliver a message of much more import and effectiveness. Without forming words the creature gave orders. Erin and Denton left the Plough, went aboard Mother. Mop stuck his head out from under Erin's bed when she went to her cabin. With tears in her eyes, Erin knelt and said, «Come on, little buddy.» Mop leaped into her arms with a yelp of pure joy. He forgot his usual politeness, surged upward to lick her face. He squirmed in bliss as she tucked him in the crook of her arm and rubbed his chest and belly. Dent was standing over them. Mop wriggled free of Erin's grasp and leapt up onto Dent's leg and received a greeting from his second most favorite human. «And I was feeling sorry for him,» Erin said. «Here we are facing God knows what and instead of trying to think of something to do about it we're both petting a hairy little dog.» «Erin,» Denton said, and the sound of a human voice after months of silence was sweet, «what in hell is going on? Who and what are those things?» Erin rose. Mop leapt onto the bed and stood on his rear legs. After months of being ignored he hadn't had enough loving. «They're old,» Erin said. It was difficult to form thoughts about her. Erin had observed her in action, had seen her power, her easily aroused rage. «She's able to manipulate matter. I don't know how potent her ability to destroy is—» «I felt it and saw it in action,» Dent said. «She's one mean mother, and I'd guess that he's as bad.» Erin was forming a thought that frightened her. She tried to keep it from being born, lest the alien hear, or feel, or sense, or do whatever it was that she did to get inside Erin's head and take over. She said, «Look at this room. Isn't it a mess? Give me a hand to clean it up.» «This is no time—» She put her finger to her lips to indicate silence, tapped her temple with one finger. «The whole ship needs a cleaning,» she said. «Give me a hand with this spread.» Denton moved to the other side of the bed and helped her smooth the sheets and pull up the spread. She continued to chatter on inanely, but she made motions with her hands, motions that he understood. He nodded and looked toward the door. «I'm going out onto the bridge,» Erin said. «There's some picking up to do.» Denton held his breath. He stood in the door to Erin's quarters, Mop in his arms. Erin picked up papers and put them into the disposer, moving ever closer to the control panel. With one glance over her shoulder she jabbed her fingers toward the air lock controls to close the lock and separate Mother from Murdoch's Plough. Just before the tip of her finger touched the button she felt the fires of a sun burst inside of her. She screamed once before the agony overcame her and left her to sink limply to the deck. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The electro-gravitational field aboard the Mother Lode was so powerful that Erin's ash blonde hair formed a huge, fair-colored, three-dimensional halo around her head as she bent over the controls in the room where the beings had built the electronic thing that, for lack of a name supplied by them, Erin had come to think of as the Amplifier. They, in all of their grace and beauty, stood motionless, hand in hand, their lovely faces blank of all expression, their entire force directed into the fields of power bursting outward from the two ships that were locked side to side. The military strength blink generators of both vessels contributed their eerie powers to the Amplifier. Erin's semiautonomy made it possible for her to try to analyze what was happening. The vastly complicated electronic construction that had been assembled by her hands, and by Dent's hands, produced no force of its own. However, the fields of power, will, force—choose a word—that came from the aliens, combined with the power of the blink generators, caused things to happen in the belt. The distances involved were measured in astronomical units. One astronomical unit equaled the average radius of the orbit of New Earth around the sun. Two astronomical units away from the Mother Lode, on the other side of the sun far removed from New Earth, the asteroids in the belt became agitated. Some slowed. Others increased their speed. Orbital stability was no more. Masses of rocks smashed together and rebounded only to be drawn into a chaos of new collisions. Erin could only guess at the intensity of the immense surges of power flowing outward from the Amplifier, but the effect was awesome. Asteroids were accelerated to a significant fraction of the speed of light to crunch into the growing mass with cosmic force. The darkness of space was brightened by the flares of impact. In an incredibly short time the entire belt was in frantic motion, asteroids flashing past the position of the two ships to their rendezvous with the accumulating mass that was beginning to take on a roughly globular shape even with perhaps no more than ten percent of the debris in the belt congregated. It was tiring work. Sweat poured down into Erin's eyes. Mop, seated on the control console, was uneasy, for the powerful field made him look quite odd, with all of his blond-brown, silky hair standing up straight. Even the beings tired, and the strain on the two blink generators drained them quickly so that recharging was necessary. «My God, they are beautiful,» Denton said, as he lifted his head to gaze at them. They were still side by side, hand in hand, larger than life. Their magnificent, graceful wings were partly open to show the gossamer film that connected the sweeping curves of the bones. A smile came to Erin's face, for they were wonderful. Her eyes stung with tears engendered by sheer beauty, but then her reason returned and she wiped away the telltale moisture while making a genuine effort to rekindle the hate she felt for the thing that held her prisoner in her own body. Ah, but it was difficult to hate, for the being's face glowed with her loveliness, and her stance was so proud, so proud. Erin jerked her eyes away. The strong field of power was fading. Her scalp tingled as her hair fell into place. She turned to Denton. «So now we know,» she said. He nodded, knowing that she was talking about the purpose of the Amplifier. On the opposite side of the orbital ring a moon-sized body swam in the darkness. «Poses some questions, doesn't it?» Denton asked. She nodded, glanced toward them. «I think we can go now.» She rose, picked up the Mop, who flung himself into position in the crook of her arm to have his chest rubbed. She nodded to them. They took no notice. Dent followed her out of the room. No overt permission had been given. They were above the ordinary little matter of day to day existence for the humans, but they had recognized the necessity for mere men to eat, rest, and perform bodily functions, all of which Dent and Erin did in the next hour. Erin had a shower and let the fragrant, dry wind evaporate the moisture from her skin. Dent was already in bed when she came out. His eyes were closed. She knew how he felt, for her limbs were leaden. They had not been overly generous in allowing sleep time. She eased into bed so as not to wake him. He sighed in his sleep, turned, put one arm around her. It was the first time since he had opened the door to the gym only to vaporize into a red mist that he had touched her. Reminded of what she had found with Dent, and then had lost, she wept quietly. She awoke with a sense of pleasure that became, as she swam up from deepest sleep, Dent's caress. She moaned in protest, but, after all, was she so tired? Her body said no as his lips found hers demandingly. She moaned again, but in a different tone. His hands were exploring her. «Ouch,» she said, wincing away from him. «You thought he was beautiful,» Dent said. «What?» The alien was the last thing she wanted to think about at that moment. Once before she had thought that she was in love—with Jack Burnish aboard Rimfire— but after that first night in Denton Gale's arm she had realized that she had never known the meaning of love until she was alone with Dent near the core of the galaxy. «His magnificent body,» Dent said. «You liked it.» «Hey, Dent—» «No need to be coy. Tell me what you would like for him to do to you.» «Get out of here,» she said, pushing on his shoulders. His hands became cruel clamps bearing down on her shoulders. «You're hurting me, Dent.» «Then do as I tell you.» «I don't understand,» she said, trying to push him away. «You wanted him.» «Dent?» She lifted her head, looked into his eyes, felt her blood surge in fear, for in Dent's face was the slackness that she had come to associate with control by one of them. She knew, then, that the alien was there, that he'd pushed Dent back into the prison recess somewhere, that Dent was helpless, perhaps looking on to see him with his hand touching Erin's soft breast. «Yes, I am Dent. But you wanted him. Tell me.» She started a prayer in her secret mind and felt a sheet of pain as he punished her. His hand twisted and she screamed in sudden agony. «Tell me,» he said. «Yes, it is true,» she whispered, for, although he had done no visible damage, the twist of his iron fingers had sent a lance of pain throughout her entire body. «I wanted him. I thought he was beautiful.» He became gentle, but when she fell silent he hurt her in a very intimate area, a hurt that caused her to shudder and jerk in anguish until he stopped long enough for her to continue. She struggled for words to speak of his beauty. She became incoherent, for he was using her and although it was Denton's familiar, beloved body, she knew revulsion, felt that ultimate insult that only a woman can know when she is taken against her will. She found that she could keep him from administering pain by saying, «Yes, yes, yes,» by moaning as if she were in ecstasy, by doing something she had never done before, pretending to enjoy being used. When she thought it was over, it had just begun. «He found that to be quite unsatisfactory,» he said. «We must try again.» And this time she felt him entering into her mind as well as her body, so that he saw her revulsion and punished her. He knew how to find the most sensitive spots on her body, and he used the strength of Denton Gale's hands and fingers, combined with shocking force, heat, and lances of pure pain that originated in his own mind. And that mind became open to her, for the pain he gave her stimulated him and urged him on to strenuous moves. It seemed to excite him to force her to look into his mind and be driven to the brink of insanity by the cesspool of cruelty she saw there, evil so bottomless, so infinite that she could absorb only a fraction of his affliction before loathing and terror caused her mind to go blank to all but the hurt he was giving her. Surely; she thought, I will die. But she did not. She lay on the bed beside the exhausted body of Denton with her limbs trembling, her breath coming in short, frantic gasps. She was afraid to move, afraid that he would return, or that movement would bring back the excruciating agony that he had inflicted. She closed her eyes and lay very, very still. «Erin?» She tensed, jerked away from Dent's hand. «Erin, it's me.» She opened her eyes. Dent was weeping. «Don't,» she said. «He made sure that I was aware.» «Damn him.» «Oh, God—» He clasped her to him and his strong, young body shuddered with his sobs. «Don't, Dent. Please don't.» «I couldn't do a thing. Nothing. I could only watch, and hear you begging him to—» «Do you still think they're beautiful?» It worked. His sobs halted. He sniffed. «The thing is, I don't know what to do.» «I don't either,» she said. «We can't fight them. They're too powerful.» «And they are weakened by having lost their own world.» «Did you understand that from him?» «Yes.» «And what they're doing is recreating their world?» «Yes.» «Will they do it in seven days?» she asked, then clutched at Denton's hand. «Believe me, I'm not trying to be sacrilegious, not now.» «I know. But this wasn't heaven that was destroyed, Erin.» «If it was, then the preachers have been telling us lies all of our lives,» she agreed, shuddering as she remembered the enjoyment that he got from her pain and from her screams for mercy. «If they're angels—» «No,» she said. «They're not. They may look like the angels that the craftsmen make on Delos, and like some of the illustrations from that old Bible, but there is nothing divine about them.» «Do you remember my telling you about my dream, where the world was about to be destroyed and the people were flying around trying to think of a way to escape the cataclysm?» «Yes. The people in your dream were like them?» «Yes and no. Alike in form, but not in malevolence.» He cradled her in his arms, kissed her cheek. «There was something I didn't tell you about that dream, because, quite frankly, it scared the hell out of me. It seemed so real. After I saw the people with wings flying around in panic and it was all over, I woke up and then I heard a voice say, 'Leave them to their rest and go from here.' « «Now you tell me,» she said. «I should have told you,» he said. «But would it have made any difference?» She snuggled close, fighting the revulsion she felt, for it was Dent's arms around her, not his. «No,» she said. «I had gold fever. I would have laughed at you.» They were both silent for a long time. «Dent?» «Ummm.» «You know that they'll never let us go.» «I've been trying not to think about that.» «They'll use us to make a body for another one of them. They killed Plough and his crew without the slightest hesitation. They need us, at the moment, to do the work aboard ship. When they don't need us anymore, they'll take the life out of us and toss it away just as they did with those on the Plough ship.» He squeezed her, kissed her. She did not answer his kiss, for her mind was elsewhere. «Now and then,» she said, «when she's concentrating on something else, she relaxes her control over me. If the time ever comes when I can take advantage of it, be ready.» He did not speak. He held her close, so