"Blue leader reports the first two cottages are empty." Frank's voice cut off his companion.

  "Empty?" Deep furrows ran across Gerald's brow. "How can that—" He caught himself. Drawing a deep breath, he repressed the panic that threatened to dissolve his composure. "Frank, I want to examine those cottages myself."

  Even as they walked through the quiet morning toward the lake, the earphone buzzed again with the Red leader's report that all floors of the hotel were secured—and all were empty! Gerald gnashed the double row of reptilian teeth hidden behind his human mask. Something had caused the humans to flee their headquarters. But what?

  Damn! What did I overlook? What did I miss? Calmly he replayed in his mind everything he had learned of today's attack and the resistance's secret weapon. Nothing! I overlooked nothing!

  The bark of explosive projectile weapons rent the morning's stillness as Gerald and Frank approached the first of the cottages. The sizzle of energy bolts from the muzzles of the shock trooper rifles sounded in immediate reply.

  Gerald pivoted to see four of his soldiers crumple to the ground. Blossoms of orange and red fire came from the windows of the fifth white cottage—the small house containing resistance communications. Another round of fire cracked from the open windows of the small building. Three more soldiers fell, and the remaining troops started to scatter, seeking cover.

  "No!" Gerald's voice screamed out above the din of battle. "Take the house! Advance! Advance! Take them! Open fire!"

  One hundred and seventeen black rifles swung about to home in on the white house. Blue bursts of pulsing light spat from their muzzles; a spray of energy converged on the open windows. Human cries resounded from within.

  Twice more the reports of gunpowder weapons barked to bring an eighth shock trooper to his knees. Again the electric sizzle of the energy rifles answered.

  Gerald heard a cry from the house, then nothing. He held up an arm. The bombarding bolts halted. His head cocking from side to side, the high captain listened and heard nothing. His arm fell.

  The shock troopers advanced with Gerald and Frank behind them. Reaching the cottage, five of the forward men ran to the dooi; blasted it open, then ducked inside. A minute later one appeared in the doorway, waving an all

  clear.

  "Blue leader" Gerald ordered when he and Frank moved toward the secured house, "continue your search of the remaining cottages."

  Gerald's gaze moved over the interior of the cottage. The three small rooms revealed the sprawled bodies of eight men and women who had died in the senseless defense of the house. Fools! What did they hope to gain? Surely they realized they were outnumbered.

  "Our fire knocked out their radio." Frank's helmeted head tilted to a smoldering mass of melted metal in the corner of the living room. The heap of slag was all that remained of the radio and the portable generator used to power it. "I doubt if they had the time to warn anyone of the attack."

  Gerald nodded although doubt and anger railed through his brain. Attack? What attack? Where are the human fighters? Eight is not the more than three hundred who cowered here yesterday. . . . Where is the victory in cutting down a mere eight?

  "High Captain, I think you'd better take a look at what we've found in the last cottage," the voice of the Blue unit leader cracked from the earphone.

  Without reply, Gerald motioned Frank from the house, then strode down the small line of cottages. The Blue leader and three of his men dragged two cardboard boxes out the door of the last house.

  "What is so important, Sergeant?" Gerald demanded when he reached the men.

  "I'm not certain." The soldier shook his helmeted head. "First I found these."

  Gerald accepted two plastic bags the sergeant handed him. Each was packed with white pills twice the size of the aspirin tablets humans were so fond of as a remedy for their myriad of aches and pains. Gerald flipped the bags over. A white adhesive label clung near the closed mouth of each. Scrawled on the tags were the words "antitoxin: 100

  count."

  "Any idea what they are?" Frank asked, staring at the bags.

  Gerald frowned and shook his head, then glanced back at the sergeant. "What else did you feel was so important for me to see?"

  "These." He pointed to the two boxes the men tilted forward. "The cottage is packed with this."

  Gerald's frown deepened. The two boxes were stuffed with plastic packets of red powder that from all appearances looked like dried human blood. The labels on these simply read "v-dust."

  "Strange," Frank mused when he lifted one of the bags. "Ever seen this before?"

  Gerald shook his head. He didn't have time to be bothered with an examination of the resistance fighters' supplies. Where were the humans who had filled the hotel yesterday? And where was their secret weapon?

  "Wonder what it is? Food concentrate?" Frank ran a gloved finger into the bag's mouth, opening it. The same finger dipped into the powder. It clung to his leather glove when he withdrew his finger.

  While Gerald ordered his troops to regroup at the squad vehicles, Frank edged back his faceplate and pulled the gas mask from his face. He sniffed at the red powder and moved his head from side to side.

  "Doesn't have an appetizing odor." A long, red, forked tongue flicked from his human-masked mouth and lapped at the rust-colored powder. "It tastes even worse. I don't see how even humans could eat this garbage! But, then, I don't see why we should worry what hu—uh—arrragh!"

  Gerald's head jerked around when the captain choked. The bag dropped from Frank's palm and spilled to the ground as both his hands snaked to the neck of his uniform, ripping it open.

  "Can't bre— Can't breathe." Frank's words came in sharp, wheezing gasps. "The powder ... the powder . . ."He doubled over, his body racked by quaking spasms that drove him to his knees.

  "Frank!" Gerald stepped forward to aid his former captain.

  Frank's right arm raked at the air, warning his companion away. "The powder. Po-poison. Get—get away."

  Poison? Gerald's brain raced. Poison—toxin—antitoxin . . . His eyes rolled down to the two bags in his hand— two bags of white pills marked antitoxin—while he backed away from the pile of red dust beside the now writhing captain.

  In an instant his mind made the logical leap. Even though every man and woman in the fleet of Mother Ships had been immunized against all terrestrial diseases, that did not preclude the human development of a new strain of virus or bacteria deadly only to those who had come to subjugate a water-rich planet light-years from their own home world. The red dust so boldly labeled with the V of the resistance movement was the rumored secret weapon!

  And in his hand was the antitoxin used to protect the fifth columnists who aided the rebelling humans here onplanet. Gerald's heart pounded, pumping green blood through his system until it reverberated in his temples. He saw it now! He was as certain of his deductions as he had been of anything in his life!

  "Get away from him!" Gerald ordered while his fingers clawed at the plastic, ripping open one of the bags. "Stay away. They've developed a poison to use against us. Burn the house! Burn the boxes! And burn him!"

  As Gerald yanked his gas mask from his nose and mouth, the Blue leader and his men opened a spray of energy bolts on the toxin-packed cottage. The blasts soon consumed the white house in flames. While Gerald gulped a single antitoxin tablet down his dry throat, the blasts swept over the now dead Frank and the boxes of toxin beside him.

  "Sergeant," Gerald called to the Blue unit leader. "Take these and distribute them to as many of the men as possible. Then get the men back into the shuttles."

  With one last glance at the burning cottage, Gerald turned and ran toward his own vehicle. It still wasn't too late to salvage the day. The over two hundred remaining shock troopers under his command—all immune to the resistance's V-Dust—could be the factor needed to turn away the mob now storming Visitor Security in Chicago's Loop. His promotion as well as Alicia's bed were still within his grasp—if he worked quickly.

  "Get the men into the shuttles," Gerald called out before he stepped into his own craft, hastened through the interior, and settled into the pilot's couch. His fingers jabbed at a series of buttons before him on the console. Direct communications to Alicia's Mother Ship opened. "High Captain Gerald here. I have just discovered and destroyed a cache of highly toxic material the resistance intends to—"

  "Too late, Gerald!" Alicia's own voice blared over the craft's intercom. "Chicago Security has fallen to the toxin."

  Gerald listened in horror to his commander's thumbnail sketch of all that had occurred while he had led an attack on the abandoned resistance headquarters.

  "All able fighting units are immediately ordered back to the Mother Ship," Alicia concluded. "The Supreme Commander John has ordered a withdrawal from Earth's atmosphere."

  "But—but my men and I are immune," Gerald stammered while his vision of glory and power crumbled. "I can strike the Loop within minutes. I can—"

  "Immediate withdrawal from all action and return to the Mother Ship," Alicia shouted. "Immediate withdrawal!"

  An echoing snap, like the breaking of a limb, reverberated through the squad vessel as communication was cut from the other end. Gerald slammed a fist against the side of the couch. A string of curses in his native tongue spewed from makeup-disguised lips. He had been so close to success, to assuring his steady climb to power, real power, within Alicia's forces. So close!

  "Troops are within the shuttles," a voice said over his earphone.

  Gerald sat straight. His hands reached out and took the craft's controls. Immediate withdrawal and return to the Mother Ship were his orders, and he intended to obey them, lie had made enough mistakes this morning.

  "Secure for liftoff," he ordered over intership communications, waited thirty seconds for the troops to prepare themselves, then he eased his shuttle craft back into the aii; heading for the silver-blue saucer that still hung above the heart of Chicago.

  An hour later, a fleet of fifty Visitor Mother Ships shot from Earth's atmosphere into the darkness of space. Below, cheering crowds watched and celebrated. Earth had met, laced, and defeated the first alien threat to come from the stars—all because of a simple child's toy and some red dust it carried inside.

  Chapter Two

  Samuel Walker strapped a razor-honed, sheathed stiletto above his right ankle. Dropping the cuff of his black pants leg to conceal the weapon, he stood and slipped a .32-caliber snub-nosed revolver into a clip holster. This he hid at the small of his back inside the waist of his trousers.

  Grabbing a black turtleneck sweater tossed across a lumpy, springless cot, Walker poked his arms through the sleeves, pulled it over his head, and gave the collar a half roll downward. Carefully he arranged the loose fold of fabric at the bottom of the sweater to hide the revolver's bulge. Satisfied with the position of cloth and weapon, he lifted a black belt from the cot and tightened it around his waist.

  From the belt dangled the first line of defense in the small arsenal of weapons he carried—a holstered .45-caliber automatic and a sheathed hunting knife that had a seven-inch blade with an inch of sharpened false edge running along its top. The revolver and stiletto were snugly hidden, just in case.

  Walker caught a glimpse of himself in a jagged mirror

  fragment hanging on a scarred, bare wooden wall. Pursing his lips, he gave a dubious shake of his head. He looked as 11 he had just escaped from Alfred Hitchcock's—

  His mind went blank; he couldn't recall the name of the movie he had seen so many times on late-night television. It starred Cary Grant as a former cat burglar. Grace Kelly was Grant's romantic interest, he remembered as the plot of the movie rolled through his mind. But he couldn't drag up the movie's title.

  Comes from being locked away in this damned stall for too long, Sam Walker, he told himself. You're beginning to forget what the real world was like.

  With a so-what-does-it-matter shrug to the mirror's reflection, Walker turned to glimpse the alluring dance of two very bare and very swollen-looking breasts as Kathleen Wagner pulled a black turtleneck over her head. The bottom of the sweater hung on the budlike thickness of her coral-liued nipples for an instant before the fabric dropped to veil the sleekness of her body.

  "Quit your grinning, Mister. And close your mouth. You're starting to drool." Kathleen's hazel eyes rolled to him with mock exasperation as she patted stray strands of her dark walnut hair into place. "After six months together, I'd think you'd be bored with cheap thrills!"

  "Still making up for those first seven weeks when you were playing hard to get? Give me another sixty or seventy years to get bored."

  Walker leaned toward the tall, statuesque woman. The kiss he intended for her cheek slid an inch downward and planted itself firmly on her lips. Her arms encircled him. Her mouth opened, and her tongue rushed to greet his. The enthusiasm took him by surprise. After all, they had just spent two hours making love while they waited for the summer sun to drop beneath the horizon.

  "Mmm," Kathleen purred when she slowly eased from him. "Enough of that or we'll never get our shopping done tonight."

  A wry smile lifted the corners of Walker's mouth. He reached down, grabbed a second belt with a .45 and hunting blade strung on its length, and handed it to the black-clad beauty. Kathleen had a way with euphemisms. Here they were, living in a horse stall in the middle of the stable area of the abandoned Arlington Park Race Track, they carried more heavy artillery than he ever had during his years in Vietnam, they were about to slink into the night to scrounge what they needed to stay alive from deserted supermarkets, and Kathleen described their venture as shopping.

  "You get the door and I'll get the lights." Buckling the belt about her slim waist, Kathleen crossed the stall to three unscented candles burning atop a footlocker.

  Shopping! Walker's smile widened while he moved to the door created when he had nailed the two-part stall door together during his first week of hiding, and unlatched it. That Kathleen could find levity in their day-to-day survival rituals was nothing short of a miracle. At times she and her undaunted sense of humor were all that kept him from climbing the walls.

  Waiting until he nodded, Kathleen bent and blew out the candles. If she ever thought he was overcautious in his rule that the door should never be opened with a light burning inside, she never mentioned it. Nor had she objected when he had lined the interior of the stall with black construction plastic to eliminate the possibility of light radiating out through cracks in the walls and drawing the unwanted attention of reptilian eyes.

  Besides, the plastic helped cut the smell, Walker thought, remembering how ineffectual the disinfectant and lime he had spread over the stall's floor had been. The ancient odor of horse manure and urine, permanently implanted in soil and wood over years of racing seasons, constantly hung in the air. The unsavory nature of the abandoned thoroughbred racecourse was one of the main reasons he had chosen it as a hiding place.

  "What's our choice tonight? Rolling Meadows, Palatine, or Arlington Heights?" Kathleen whispered as she moved through the door Walker opened. "I understand there's a new Hunan restaurant in Palantine. Want to give it a try?"

  "We slip across Northwest Highway, hit the supermarket, and get back here as soon as possible." Walker lifted two burlap bags from the wall when he walked from the stall and handed her one.

  "1 was hoping we could make it to a bookstore. I've gotten hooked on MacDonald's Travis McGee stories."

  "We'll have to make do with the book spinners at the supermarket tonight," Walker insisted as they stepped from beneath the shedrow and into the light of a full moon. "Can't shake that nagging feeling at the back of my mind."

  Walker's gaze rose to the sky. For the fifth night in a row an unobscured panorama of stars burned in the heavens. The Visitors' Mother Ship no longer floated over Chicago, its oblate spheroid form no longer blotting out half the sky.

  Only twice in the months Walker had been trapped in the Chicago area had the gargantuan spacecraft left its position above the city. On both occasions it had been gone for a single night. As restless as it had made him to have the city-sized ship constantly hovering over him, it only tripled his disquiet having it gone and not knowing why it had left or where it was.

  "Think we should pick up some batteries for the radio?" Kathleen turned from the empty sky to face him.

  "It wouldn't hurt." Walker started down the row of long, deserted barns whose vacant stalls had once held some of the finest racing stock in the country. "But I doubt if we'll learn anything."

  The only news that made it on the air was carefully screened by the aliens, then parroted by their official human spokesperson Kristine Walsh. Kathleen and he had tossed their portable radio into a corner after several weeks of unsuccessfully trying to glean any real information about the Visitors' activities from the Chicago broadcasts. Sony Walkmans scrounged from abandoned electronics stores and a wealth of tapes from deserted shops provided far more stimulating listening.

  "Could they have emptied Chicago and moved on to another city, Sam?" Kathleen reached out and took his hand, her fingers trembling.

  "They're fast, but not that fast." Walker tried to inject confidence into his words, but the flatness of his tone fell far short of reassuring.

  Both Kathleen and he knew how fast the Visitors eliminated the populations of towns when they decided to move. Kathleen knew better than he, as she had escaped the Visitors by hiding in a trunk in her cellar the night the shock troopers raided Arlington Heights. She had believed that she was the only one left in the Chicago suburb until Walker discovered her cowering in an aisle of a deserted grocery two weeks later.

  That day they had joined together for mutual survival. Seven weeks later they became lovers. Six months had passed since that accidental meeting. Walker considered them husband and wife, although no official marriage vows had ever been spoken nor even mentioned. Certain things between a woman and man never need words, he realized. Other bonds existed than those on paper; stronger, more permanent ones that stemmed from the heart and soul.

 

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