They came in low over the jagged mountains and followed the rutted slopes down the hills to the valley.  The starfighter screamed in agony when Major Carliss took it down to skim the surface of the doomed planet.  Gnarled limbs of grotesque trees swished past the stubby wings while she studied the viewing screen, mapping a route where there was the least chance of detection by the invaders.  This was much lower than any starfighter should be forced to fly but necessary if they were to carry out the plan.

     As they entered the valley, there was nothing but rock and crusted earth.  Several colonies had been seeded here, but none had survived to the third generation.  Except for the grotesque trees on the mountains, it was impossible to get vegetation to grow in all but a few isolated places.

     Behind, beyond the stark mountains, light flickered as the first wave of invaders unleashed their weapons.  Major Carliss took her eyes from the controls and glanced sideways at Captain Marsh.

     “Lots of time, Major,” Captain Marsh said.

     She wiped her gloved hand across her steel-blue eyes.  “Good,” she said, and turned back to the controls.

     A crack squadron of starfighters had lured the invaders out of the stars to this planet where the fleet of ancient starships had been assembled.  Then they had shot off into space, leaving Major Carliss and Captain Marsh behind to activate the omega device when the invaders came charging in.  They had waited until the enemy had opened fire on the abandoned fleet.  Now if they could reach the far side of the planet without being detected by the invaders, they could shoot out toward the stars, make the transition to hyperspace, and rendezvous with the war fleet.  The operation had all been calculated with precision.  So far everything was going according to plan.

     “We'll have three minutes and four point seven one seconds to spare,” Major Carliss had said when she first told Captain Marsh about the plan.  “That's enough time to stop at Flavia's for a drink.”  She accompanied her remark with a sexual invitation.  Marsh had liked the long, lanky pilot the first time he met her.  She wore her long hair in the manner of pirates.  She was not like the others he had worked with.  There was action behind her brag and, he suspected, a softness behind her swagger.   That she had been assigned this mission attested to the confidence commanders had in her ability.

     As more and more of the invaders fired on the abandoned fleet, the flickering light behind them became a constant glow.  When they topped a rise and dropped deeper into the valley, the mountains were lost from view.

     “Major!” Captain Marsh said suddenly.  “I've picked up something!”  They sat side by side with a console between them.  Major Carliss turned her head to look at him.  Both well knew there wasn't supposed to be life on the planet.  It had been checked thoroughly before plans were made to use it for the operation.

     “I've picked up something that shouldn't be there, but I'm not sure what it is.”

     “Go to visual!”

     At first, the low elevation they were flying prevented them from seeing anything except the cracked brown earth sweeping by beneath the starfighter.  Then the scanner locked onto a silo.  After a second or two, a dwelling and an old space shuttle appeared.  Surrounding the hut there was a little green oasis with a blue pool of water.

     “Major,” Captain Marsh said in sudden excitement, “I have a life form on the scanner.”

     “Is it human?” she asked, glancing across at the screen.

     Captain Marsh worked with the instrument for a moment.  “Yes!  Yes, it is,” he said.

     The hut looked primitive.  It had been constructed of stone from the surrounding area and bits of plastic, taken from the space shuttle, no doubt.  In the back of the dwelling stood the silo.  It had been built from the best known construction materials.  Even from what they could see on the small screen, it looked impregnable.  Beside the silo, resting in the sunlight, the old space shuttle looked as if it had just landed from somewhere in the past.

     As Captain Marsh watched the screen, a man came out through the doorway of the hut, put his hand above his eyes, and looked toward them as if he had heard the screaming ship.

     “We've got to warn him,” Major Carliss said, gazing into Captain Marsh's eyes but not asking his approval.

     “There may not be enough time.”

     “We'll have to take the chance.”

     They were still seven kilometers out.  Major Carliss maneuvered the starfighter for a straight-in landing.  If they were lucky, the landing and takeoff would only take one minute and three point two two seconds from their safety margin.  That would leave them two minutes and one point four nine seconds to get to the man, warn him, and get back to the ship.  There might be enough time after all.

     Captain Marsh increased the magnification so that only the man's head appeared on the screen.  The face was dark, indicating its genetic origin.  He had an elderly face showing the many wounds of time.

     “Isn't that Mim Kieraque?” Major Carliss asked suddenly, leaning across the console for a better look at the screen.

     “I thought he was dead,” Captain Marsh said.

     “He dropped out of sight after his wife was killed in the war on Oron.  No trace of his body was ever found.  Officially, he was listed as missing in action.  However, everyone assumed he was killed along with his wife.”

     Captain Marsh punched in the name on the console.  When the face appeared on the monitor, it was the same as the one on the screen but less elderly and with not so many wounds.

     “Good heavens, it is him!” Captain Marsh exclaimed.

     “Fantastic!” Major Carliss cried.  “At the time of his disappearance, his method of creating and controlling antimatter was well established.  Kieraque had begun work on something new, something to do with antiphotons to make a starship invisible.  His idea was far-fetched.  After his son got killed during the Pons uprising and his daughter in a training mishap, most scientists began to treat him as a crackpot.  Nevertheless, the few who knew him personally thought that he was on the verge of bringing his idea to fruition.

     “If he has indeed come up with a device to render starships invisible, just think what it would mean to our government.  We could chase the invaders out of our galaxy and send them back to the far side of the universe where they came from.”

     “If he did indeed come up with such a device, as you say, Major, he many not want to give it to the government.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “According to the edufiles I studied during navtraining, before he was listed as missing in action and presumed killed, it seemed he was at war with the Federation over their misuse of his weapons.  He blamed our government, not the enemy, for the death of his son.”

     “Surely you don't think---”

     “I think.”

     “But the human race!”

     “We'll see.”

     The one thing that disturbed Marsh about the Major was her passion for patriotic duty.  She was a beautiful woman with rare intelligence.  She would make someone a good wife.  To his mind, it was unhealthy for anyone to be so much in love with a government, to the exclusion of more important things, and doubly unhealthy for a woman like her.

     The ground outside the green looked cracked and wrinkled, but there was no rock.  Probably they had been used for the hut.  Major Carliss went straight in and landed the starfighter at the edge of the green.  After she removed her helmet, she shook out her hair, picked up a breath stimulator, and dropped through the hatch.  She loped across the uneven earth to meet the old man.  By the time Captain Marsh got out of the ship and caught up, the two were already arguing.

     “I won't go with you, young lady,” the old man said stubbornly.

     “But our government needs you!”

     “Damn your government.”

     “What about the human race?”

     “The same be said.”

     Captain Marsh only half listened.  His eyes were on the horizon where he could still see an occasional flash of light.  He was conscious of the odor of green grass, for it had been so long since he had seen it and smelled it.  Every time he saw the light his guts tightened.  He expected at any moment to see the white flash that would tell him the omega device had exploded and their safety margin had moved into the negative zone.

     The old man said, “Look, young lady, if I sound indifferent to the predicament of the human race, it is because I truly feel that way about it.  I helped our government build new and more powerful weapons with which to annihilate entire planets whose peoples had opinions that differed from our own.”

     “Our way of life must be preserved at all cost,” Major Carliss said passionately.

     The old man looked at her with his mild brown eyes as if he had heard this a thousand times or more.  Then he went on.

     “I had a wife, and wonderful children.   After the accidents the usual treatment didn't help her very much.  She begged me to stop working on weaponry, and to take her away to some far-off planet where there would be no war.  I tried to reason with her, using the age-old argument that our government stood for good and any planet that didn't accept our way of life was evil.”

     “It's still that way!” Major Carliss cried.

     Captain Marsh took his eyes from the horizon.  They were both talking nonsense while time was running out.  What a time to argue politics!

     “It's funny how a man can be made to believe such bilge when everything he sees tells him otherwise,” Kieraque continued.  “When my wife grew tired and finally left me, Oron was a peaceful colony with no quarrel with our government and no desire to be like it.  However, someone, I suspect within the government, started a rumor that rare minerals could be found on Oron, gold, silver, diamonds, and especially tira crystals, those little green tears that shed a million deaths.

     “My wife and I were on Oron when the war broke out.  I had gone there to beg her to return to me.  I would take her to any place in the galaxy she wanted to go.  Unfortunately, she was killed in the first day of fighting.  Later, after most of the people had been annihilated, they discovered that Oron had no tira crystals and very few rare minerals.  Our government covered up the incident very nicely---not the war, of course, but the reason for the war.  It was too late then for me.  My wife was gone, and with her the last love of my life.  I came here to this planet where no colony could possibly survive, in hopes of living out the remainder of my life in peace.”

     The old man had talked rapidly, as if he had waited all these years to tell his story and explain his reasons for isolating himself from the mainstream of life.  After he finished he showed the sad effect of it.  Major Carliss said she was sorry.  He shrugged it off.  Beyond the horizon, in the direction from which they had come, the whole sky suddenly turned white.  After a moment the ground began to tremble.

     “What was that?” Kieraque asked, his eyes reaching to the horizon.

     Captain Marsh realized that their time had suddenly become Zero.  From this point on, their safety margin would be in the negative zone.  “The omega device,” he said.  The old man jerked his eyes from the horizon, his face masked with fury.

     “The omega device!  What have the fools wrought?”  His eyes went to the silo and returned to Carliss.   For an instant, he looked as if he were watching the daughter he had lost.  He said, “If you two plan to see the future, you had better point your ship straight for deep space and head for the farthest galaxy.  Even then you may not find safety.”

     When Captain Marsh glanced at the old man, he felt an un-named terror grip his heart.  He took the major by the arm and started dragging her toward the ship.

     “Come with us,” Major Carliss cried over her shoulder.

     “This is my home,” the old man said.  “I have a right to defend it from all invaders.”  Then his face went grim.  “When the devil unleashes his fury, there's no place you can go.”

     “Please!” she cried, holding out a hand to him.

     “There's no time left,” Captain Marsh said.

     When they reached the ship, they scrambled aboard.  The earth was trembling more violently now.  The cracks had begun to widen.  It was difficult for Captain Marsh to read the instruments.  Major Carliss touched the controls and sent the starfighter screaming across the widening fissures that sprang up in the brown earth as the force from the omega device caused the planet to break up.  The machine had become an extension of her hands.  Somehow she got the ship off the ground.  Then air slammed into the ship and buffeted it around as if it were made of paper.  After the first shock wave passed, Captain Marsh glanced at the screen which was still locked onto the old man and his outpost on the planet.  The hut had already broken up and lay in a heap of rubble on the ground.  The old man was at the door of the silo, holding onto the facing as he staggered about trying to keep from falling.  When at last he regained his balance, he went into the silo.

     It occurred to Captain Marsh that Kieraque might have indeed developed something new.  With his contributions to science, he was obviously a brilliant man.  He could have developed something new and have it stored in the silo.

     “Head for the farthest galaxy.  Even then you might not find safety,” he had said to Major Carliss.  But what did he mean when he had said, “When the devil unleashes his fury-----?”

     Suddenly he said, “Go to hyperspace!”

     “It's too dangerous.”

     “Go to hyperspace,” he said grimly, and reached across the console to engage the control himself, but Major Carliss sensed the urgency of his command and engaged it before he got to it.  Out of the corner of his eye, Captain Marsh saw a flash of black lightning.  At the same instant, the whole planet disappeared, leaving nothing behind for his sensors.  Then a black monster charged across space, trying to get them and devour them.  As the starfighter strained to reach the speed necessary to make the transition to hyperspace, an enormous force slammed into it, flinging it out,out, out, on the breath of a black nightmare, to some distant void where it would take forever to find a port where they could land and find out if they were living or dead.

     While Captain Marsh gazed in horror at the black monster on the monitor, a foolish thought entered his head: Will we be the newborn or the last born?  He suppressed a desire to laugh hysterically.  With a great effort of will, he pulled his eyes away from that fearsome thing and looked at Major Carliss.

     What a time to smell perfume!

     As her hands worked with the controls, trying to get them to respond, she stared back at him, her steel-blue eyes growing wider.  His eyes fell on her sensuous lips.  Would there be time to kiss her? 

     It was the only thing he could think of worth trying.