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finally we broke the kid’s will. Your father and his fellow slans didn’t even know they had a

traitor in their midst.”

“How … how did you break him?” Kathleen asked. “What did you do to the poor young

man?”

“We used drugs and sleep deprivation. We tested sonic pain-amplifiers. But the most

effective thing was to apply raw electrical wires to his tendrils. The shock proved quite

excruciating. After two days of that, the slan boy was a puddle of jelly, willing to do anything

we demanded, ready to believe anything we promised him.”

“You’re a monster,” Anthea growled.

“I’m a success story. That was exactly what my job entailed—wasn’t it, Mr. President? You

always turned a blind eye when it served your purposes.”

Gray didn’t answer.

“The traitor provided us with the access routes and security codes we needed. We staged

our great assault, fifty of my most trusted slan hunters, fully armed and ready. I also had a

backup plan, five hundred officers ready to come charging in the event we started to fail. But

that wasn’t necessary. Our young traitor did his job perfectly, opening the way for us. The slans

thought they were safe, cozy in their beds, when we barged in. Ah, it was wonderful!”

Jommy didn’t take his eyes from Petty, but Anthea looked around the large chamber, the

burn marks and bullet holes on the walls and floor. “So you just killed them all,” she said,

barely a whisper.

“I won’t say that it was easy. The slans put up one hell of a fight—I lost twenty of my

men—but gunfire eventually brought them down.” The slan hunter turned his grin toward

Jommy. “I remember your father. He was hard at work in his laboratory trying to understand

the antique machinery of Samuel Lann. Demonic machinery. Who knows what strange

apparatus that is?” He indicated the tall humming equipment. “Cross was one of the last to fall,

and I was quite impressed at how well he fought, considering he had a bullet lodged in his

shoulder.”

Gray crossed his arms over his chest. “Quite an operation, Mr. Petty. How come I never

heard about it?”

“I’d intended to make a grand announcement, to show the world how the slans were still

hiding among us, but then I realized how much I could learn from this underground base, so I

kept the operation under wraps. We removed the bodies of my men, but left the dead slans

where they were. Bait. We knew the slans would come back, eventually.”

“But you left all this technology here,” Gray said. “Why didn’t you report it?”

“We had already found plenty of slan redoubts—like the place where Jommy met

Kathleen.”

“Where
you
shot her dead,” Jommy said.

“Oh, stop complaining about that. She’s fine now. The truth is, my teams had already

analyzed so many of the hideouts, we knew what to expect. My experts spent days down here

studying notes, copying technology, but most of it was incomprehensible. Just like all the other

places. Eventually I just left this place behind. The slan bodies were beginning to smell, and it

was hard to concentrate on the work.” His face contorted in a grimace.

“You just left them here to rot?” Kathleen was appalled.

“It helped maintain the veracity of the scene. I maintained a careful watch on the base. It

was like a piece of cheese in a mousetrap, and I knew that sooner or later more slans would

come.” He gestured to all of them standing there. “Now look at the mice I caught! I just didn’t

expect that the world would end in the meantime.”

Even without his tendrils, Jommy had been tempered by his ordeals, like fine steel. He

squared his shoulders and looked the slan hunter in the eye. “Using traitors, and torture, and

overwhelming weapons—you seem to be extremely good at beating people when you have an

unfair advantage.”

“I’m extremely good at
winning
. That’s what counts.”

“So you can’t win in a fair fight, that’s what you’re saying?”

“It’s never a fair fight against slans.”

“It’s a fair fight now.” Jommy pressed forward so close that Petty had to step back, still

holding up his gun. “My tendrils have been cut off. I have none of the mind powers you’re so

afraid of. It’s just me and you. Your secret police killed both of my parents. You shot Kathleen,

the woman I love.” He raised his fists. “Will you fight me now?”

Petty laughed yet again, but this time it had a nervous undertone. “Why on Earth should I

do that? I’ve already won.”

Joanna let out a sarcastic snort. “A strange way to define victory—your planet taken over,

your government disbanded, your cities destroyed, and your secret police force wiped out,

while you hide here, underground. Yes, Petty, it sure sounds like you’ve won.”

With a defensive snarl, Petty set the pistol down on a lab table next to his armored vehicle.

He turned back to face Jommy. “She’s right, you know, much as I hate to admit it. There isn’t

really a point anymore. I killed Lorry, but the tendrilless are still coming. We can’t fight them,

and we’re all going to be wiped out before long—but I’ll do this for my own satisfaction.” He

lifted his fists, too. “I don’t need anything but my bare hands to put an end to you once and for

all, Jommy Cross.”

Jommy held the slan hunter’s gaze. “Whenever you’re ready.”

They slowly circled each other. Joanna and Kathleen stepped back toward the armored car.

Anthea watched warily next to Kier Gray.

Jommy knew that the chief of secret police had thorough practice in hand-to-hand fighting,

while he himself had never been formally trained. However, Granny had turned him into a

scrappy young man who could take care of himself. Right now he wanted nothing more than

to wrap his hands around Petty’s throat.

He punched, ducked as the other man swung back, then withdrew to hold up his guard.

With a sneer, the slan hunter said, “Why so fancy? This isn’t some formal boxing contest.”

Then he threw himself headlong into Jommy’s abdomen, butting with enough force to knock

the wind out of him.

Straining to catch his breath, Jommy pummeled him on the back. The two men grappled,

broke apart again, then flung themselves upon each other. Jommy didn’t have his tendrils, no

way of using his abilities to read Petty’s thoughts for a hint as to the moves his opponent might

be planning. He defended himself with animal fury.

Petty crashed a fist into Jommy’s left eye, and an explosion of pain made him reel

backward. He shook his head to clear his vision, but his eyelid began to swell, puffing shut.

Petty slashed with an open hand and curled fingers, trying to use his nails to jab the other

eye, but Jommy caught his wrist. He pulled, practically wrenching his opponent’s arm out of

its socket, and tumbled the other man to the floor. Shaking his head again, Jommy regained

his balance. He stood back and allowed Petty to get to his feet again.

The slan hunter stood up, flexing his sore arm, and gave Jommy a curious look. “Following

rules and niceties? What’s your game, Cross?”

“You think fighting fair and being honorable is a game? I feel sorry for you, Mr. Petty.”

That angered the slan hunter, who flung himself upon Jommy again in a flurry of

pummeling fists. Several hard blows caught the young man on the shoulder, in the chest. One

even glanced off his chin, but Jommy struck back, a quick rabbit punch to the middle of the

man’s chest, another to his abdomen. Then, as Petty tried to recover, Jommy hit him again

squarely on the jaw.

The slan hunter staggered backward—and tripped on Jem Lorry’s body. With his feet

knocked out from under him, he sprawled flat on his back, cracking his head on the hard

floor.

Jommy pounced, putting one foot on the fallen man’s chest, glaring down at him. “I should

just kill you, Petty. You deserve it. But I’ve defeated you—that’s worse. It doesn’t matter how

long any of us lives now, because you know you’ve been bested by me.”

The slan hunter worked his jaws as if looking for words to spit. Jommy glared at him one

last time, then took his foot off the man’s chest. “It’s over. Nothing will bring back my parents

or undo all the harm you’ve done, but I’ve had my revenge.”

Petty glowered as he struggled to get up, to gather his dignity. Then, moving with the

swiftness of a striking rattlesnake, he reached into the lining of his tattered black jacket and

yanked out a second pistol, one of the weapons favored by the secret police. “Maybe none of us

will survive—but I’ll certainly survive longer than you.”

Only a few feet from the slan hunter and his pistol, Jommy tried to dive out of the way. The

sound of gunfire was deafening inside the underground slan hideout. Kathleen screamed,

rushing forward.

Then John Petty twitched, spasmed, and slumped face-first to the stone floor. His gun

clattered on the ground, and his head lolled to one side. He blinked his eyes in shock. A great

wound on the side of his chest pumped blood. He gasped and gurgled.

Kathleen set his other weapon back on the table. “It’s what he deserved,” she said

matter-of-factly. “It’s what he did to me.”

She ran up to Jommy, throwing her arms around him and gave him a hug nearly strong

enough to knock the breath out of him again.

«
^
»

The gigantic tendrilless occupation fleet was still on its way. Earth didn’t have a chance.

Jommy and his four companions gathered in the surveillance room to study images from

small slan sentry probes that drifted in space beyond the Moon. The bright lunar backdrop

filled most of the visiplates, its barren landscape reflecting golden sunlight. The mountains and

craters were scorched by unfiltered solar radiation during the half-month of day and frozen by

impenetrable cold the rest of the time.

As Joanna worked to adjust the views on the visiplates, he marveled at the extreme

resolution of the pictures being transmitted from so far away. It only made the heavily armed

enemy fleet seem more terrifying.

“They’re passing the Moon now.” Joanna looked up at her companions. “That means

they’re ahead of schedule. They’ll be here in less than a day.”

“How can we possibly stop them?” Kathleen said. Gray, Anthea, and Joanna all looked just

as hopeless.

Jommy wracked his brain, hoping to pull a miracle out of his hat. Even slan technology

wouldn’t help them now. If his father or any of the surviving slans had been capable of

stopping a force so powerful, then they would never have needed to hide underground for so

many years.

As rank upon rank of attack ships cruised by, huge atomic-powered wheels, Anthea was

more intent on the round, dark lunar craters. She leaned closer to one of the large viewing

plates. “Look, something’s happening on the Moon.”

Jommy saw that, indeed, as the armada cruised over the stark lunar landscape, the circular

gouges scooped out by ancient meteor impacts began to shift and change. Unexpected lines of

orange sliced across the crater bottoms, as if the rocky floor were cracking … splitting open.

Then craters all across the surface of the Moon began to glow and
open
. Joanna exclaimed,

“The crater floors are artificial!” The neat fissures widened, spreading apart as camouflaged

doorways to reveal a huge and mysterious complex beneath.

“Those aren’t craters at all,” Kathleen said. “They look like—”

“They’re hangars,” Jommy cried. “Hidden
hangars
.”

The tendrilless occupation force reacted in a flurry to the remarkable and unexpected

changes below. Their formal ranks broke apart as the gigantic atomic-powered ships took

evasive action.

After the artificial crater floors yawned open, enormous warships climbed out like moray

eels hidden in a coral reef. A few tendrilless ships opened fire without further

provocation—and without effect. The strange vessels continued to launch by the hundreds,

thousands, then tens of thousands.

Kathleen was frantic and confused. “What are those ships? Who are they?”

“This is not possible,” Gray said in barely a whisper. “I never suspected!”

Jommy couldn’t keep his grin hidden. “You know who they are, Kathleen. It’s no wonder

even John Petty couldn’t find them. No one could find them! They chose the most unexpected,