without a word, suddenly threw his hands tight around his younger sister. He took his mother's hand, and they walked slowly over to the sad line that was forming beyond the gate.

Rothwell turned to his daughter. "You going over there too, kitten?" The words were gruff in his tight throat.

She wiped a hand quickly across her cheek. "No, Dad, I guess I'll stay here with you." She stood close beside him.

Aku, forgotten until now, cleared his throat. "I think the loading should start, General."

Raising his hand in a half-salute, Rothwell signaled to a captain standing near the gate who turned and motioned to a small cordon of military police. Shortly, a group of fifty of the first youngsters in the line separated from the others and moved slowly out onto the concrete ribbon towards the waiting ship. The rest of the line hesitated, then edged reluctantly up to the gate, to take the place of the fifty who had left. They waited there, the children of a thousand families, suddenly dead quiet, staring after the fifty that slowly moved away.

They walked quietly, in a tight group, without any antics or horseplay which, in itself, gave the event an air of unreality. Approaching the ship, they seemed to huddle even closer together, forming a pathetically tiny cluster in the shadow of the towering space cruiser. The title of a book that he had read once, many years before, flashed unexpectedly in Rothwell's memory, The Story of Mankind. He looked sadly after the fifty, then back at the silent line. Were these frightened kids now writing the final period in the last chapter? He shook himself, work to be done, no time now for daydreams.

As the fifty reached the ship and started to enter the elevator, Rothwell turned and beckoned to some technicians standing out of sight just inside the entrance to the control tower. Three of them ran out and set up what looked like a television set, only with three screens. One ran back, unreeling a power cable, while a fourth flicked on a bank of switches, making feverish, minute adjustments. Rothwell felt the sweat in his hands. "Is it okay, Sergeant?"

The back of the sergeant's shirt was wet though the air was cool. "It's got to be, sir!" His fingers played across the knobs. "All that metal, the whole thing is critical as ... Ah!" He jumped back. The screens flashed into life.

Aku stiffened. His lieutenant gasped audibly, made a jerky movement towards the screens, then suddenly became aware of three MPs standing beside him, hands nonchalantly cradling blunt-nosed weapons.

All three receivers showed similar scenes, the milling youngsters and the ship, but from up close, the pictures jerking and swaying erratically as if the cameras were somehow fastened to moving human beings. Then the scenes condensed into a cramped, jostling blackness as the fifty crowded into the elevator and were lifted up the side of the ship.

Next, were three views of a large room, bare except for what appeared to be overhead cranes and other mechanical paraphernalia of a military shop or warehouse. For a while the fifty moved about restlessly, then the cameras swung about simultaneously to face a wall that slowly slid apart.

Rothwell froze. "Good Lord!"

Six murky things moved from the open wall towards the cameras, which fell back to the opposite side of the room. Each was large, many times the size of a man, but somehow indistinct, for the cameras didn't convey any sense of shape or form. For an instant, one of the screens flashed a picture of a terrified human face, and arms raised protectively as the shadowy things moved in upon the group.

A projection snapped out from one, grabbed two of the humans, and hurled them into a corner. Then it motioned a dozen or so others over to the same spot. With similar harsh, sweeping movements, the group of humans was quickly broken up into three roughly equal segments. One of the groups seemed to be protecting someone who appeared seriously hurt. A black tentacle lashed out and