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eBook Category: Science Fiction/Fantasy
eBook Description: Reidel had been caring for the animals on the colony ship before its destruction. He hadn't expected to find himself the leader of the survivors. While there were only seven of them, but they were a varied group, both in psi powers and in temperment. He also had to deal with the people on the Closed Planet they had been marooned on... and then there were the enemy aliens to worry about.

eBook Publisher: Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, Published: 1962
Fictionwise Release Date: January 2010

20 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [158 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [176 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [116 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [488 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [130 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [158 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [176 KB] , hiebook (KML) [316 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [208 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [107 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [135 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [189 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [181 KB]
Words: 37760
Reading time: 107-151 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"Get clear, get clear," Reidel shouted, "the units are set to go off almost at once after we surface! Grab the kits and run, but get clear!"

Still dazed with the long agony of deceleration from interstellar space, the handful of survivors stumbled down the steps of the life-ship which, like the mother ship, carried a self-destroying mechanism set to implode upon surfacing, unless set in place before landing by a crew member.

They got their first look at one another in that moment when they emerged into glaring, yellow sunlight and dusty, windswept space. They didn't waste time looking. They fled, scattering like seed blown by intangible disaster, across sandy wasteland that seemed to heave and sway under their groping feet. Behind Reidel one of the women caught her foot, twisted her ankle and fell heavily to the sand. Reidel, not urgently but with desperate haste, picked her up and shoved her along.

"This is far enough," Reidel shouted. "Lie flat! Get down!" Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw the little ship for the first and last time, still glowing red from their brief searing trip through atmosphere.

The old man collapsed, rather than fell, and Reidel bent over him, thrusting a hand into the neck of his shirt. His hand came away reddened. The tall woman dropped to her knees beside them.

"Is he - dead?" she faltered.

"Not quite."

The others had thrown themselves flat in the sand, and Reidel could hear one of them still crying in convulsive spasms. The tall woman alone stood, like a frozen statue, staring at the red pulse of the ship. Reidel, straightening from the old man's inert body, was gripped by the intense fear in her eyes; he too gazed, almost tranced, at the glowing, pulsating ruby shimmer.

Then the crimson frame buckled and with a slow, almost lazy grace, erupted skyward. Shouting, Reidel threw himself forward, dragging the woman roughly down. The blast of sound and the thundering inrush of tormented air rocked the desert, while the units vibrated, fragmentized, vaporized, atomized. A crimson glow lingered where the ship had been; it wavered, drifted and was gone.

On the sand of the alien world nothing remained but a little heavy, dark-reddish dust, unscattered by the wind.

"Well," said Reidel, in a curious flat voice, "that is most emphatically that."