He was running, stumbling, falling, running again toward the spot where
the red-starred satellite of the Enemy (Enemy, what a madman's word
now!) would land.
Running like a child, running like an idiot, arms waving, mouth
laughing, throat shouting--
Thank you, oh _Thank_ you God....
He was within twenty yards of the craft when its outer lock opened.
Fifteen when the uniformed figure who stepped out caught sight and
sound of him, ten when the rifle was aimed at him, five before he could
comprehend the mindless meaning of it--
_But we are the only two human beings left!_ his brain whimpered....
_All of the Enemy must die!_ a remembering part of his mind intoned....
But someone had trained the Enemy, too.
The scarlet insigne emblazoned on the streamlined metal shell seemed on
fire in the filtered Venusian sunlight.
Thorn's plunging hands grabbed the muzzle of the weapon even as it
fired, wrenched it aside without feeling the hurt where his left
earlobe had been.
"Great God, you _imbecile_--"
Twisting the weapon, struggling, trigger-finger constricting to fire
again, a final, sudden twist, the finger wrenched against the trigger
even as the butt was swinging upward, the muzzle swinging down....
The muffled explosion.
The gaping, oozing hole in the Enemy's breast.
Joshua Thorn looked down at the crumpled figure, watched as the
slow-moving shadow of a cloud eddied across it.
He tried to sob, for he could not pray again.
He turned. Back toward Vanguard-I. If only he could cry.
Behind him, the Enemy lay dead. All, now, all of the Enemy ... was dead.
Her body would soon be turning cold.