Beastchild Read Free Page A

not amusing.
        The naoli had introduced mutated rats into the humans' home planet some sixty years ago, one of the preliminary weapons for the five-plus decades of the final assault. They had bred true in the sewers and cellars and had done their damage.
        Bright teeth: gnashing.
        Hulann held the light on the rat, keeping it hypnotized. He looked around for a weapon, something, anything. It was not his time to be particular. To his right was a length of steel pipe that had twisted loose, fallen to the floor. The end had twisted away in some bomb blast and was pointed, deadly. He inched to it, stooped, and picked it up with his free hand.
        The rat hissed at him.
        He advanced on it, clutching the pipe so firmly that the muscles of his six-fingered hand ached.
        Perhaps the growing brightness of the light warned the rat. It stiffened, then scurried along the beam, almost escaping the blinding radiance.
        Hulann shifted the lamp, leaped, jabbed the sharp end of the pipe up at the low beam, caught the mutant on its flank. Blood appeared.
        The rat screeched, scurried further along, confused and angry. Froth tipped its brown lips and flecked its dung-colored fur. When he followed it with the light, it scrambled about on its perch and tried to go back the way it had come.
        He jabbed at it again.
        It fell onto the floor, momentarily escaping his light. When it came to its feet, almost instantly, it saw him and came for him, chittering insanely. It was more than likely rabid; the mutated rats had been built with a low tolerance for diseases which they might catch and later transfer to humans.
        He stepped back. But that was not a good move, and he knew it.
        The rat's feet chattered on the cement floor. Pieces of cement, shards of glass, and other small debris rattled out from under it.
        There was no time to open a link with the Phasersystem and send for help. He would be dead by the time they got there. He had to rely on his own agility. He side-stepped, swung out at the beast with the pipe and connected, locking it end for end.
        The rat's squeal echoed from wall to wall. For a moment, there were a hundred rats in the room. It came up, staggering, and scampered back at him, completely mad now.
        He swung again, missed the rat, and slammed the pipe into a steel support beam. There was an explosion of sound in the room, and the concussion surged back into his arm, making it numb. The pipe fell out of his fingers, clattered on the floor.
        The noise made the rat leap aside and fall back. But now that the echo had died, it came at him once more.
        His hand was still too weak to grasp anything.
        The rat was close enough to leap. It had almost launched itself-when a chunk of concrete smashed into it, crushing its hindquarters. Another chunk rained down, missing it. A third connected. And a fourth. It stopped squirming then-absolutely dead.
        In his excitement, Hulann had all but forgotten the voice that had first called out a warning to him. The warning that had been in pure Terran.-Unaccented Terran. Massaging his numbed arm, he looked around until he saw the human.
        It was a young one, about eleven years old, crouched on a shelf of rubble to his left. It looked down on him with a curious expression, then eyed the rat.
        "Is it dead?"
        "Yes," Hulann said.
        "Are you all right?"
        "Yes."
        "It was a mutant."
        "I know. Yes. A mutant."
        The boy looked at the naoli, then back the way the alien had come. "You're alone?"
        Hulann nodded.
        "I guess you'll turn me over to the rest of them."
        Hulann's chest was afire. He was waging a constant battle between his mind and overmind, trying desperately to stifle at least a little of the fear his organic brain was feeding the higher levels of his thinking apparatus. He had seen