Through a tormenting haze of pain and exhaustion Tom stared at the forbidding, unscalable walls towering tall and precipitous around him.
The realization knifed through him.
They were trapped.
Swaying, he whirled toward the break slope — even as the vehicles arrived at the crest and — motors laboring, grating and growling — began to creep down the incline.
He was frantic. Like a caged wild animal, he turned and turned and turned around in the trap, desperately seeking a way to escape.
There was none.
For a moment he stood immobile in the middle of the flat, circular crater bottom, ringed with dead and withered brush tumbled down from above, his hand holding on to Randi in a vise-like grip.
All around him loomed the tall, steep crater walls. Below them a small fan of rocks broken off the hard volcanic cliffs formed a short incline up to the near-perpendicular palisades — and on the only way out, the gentle slope of the break in this formidable, insurmountable barrier, the monsters that had hunted him all his life were inching down toward him and his mate. Squat, threatening and noisy, they lumbered on, striking terror into his mind…
Paul didn't move his eyes from Tom. Sergeant Hays was at the wheel of his scout, coaxing it down the slope. A few more feet and the vehicles would reach the crater bottom. The moment of truth was close at hand. What would Tom do?
He threw a quick glance at the vehicles around him. Of the six, two were Ranger jeeps, each with three men — Stark in one of them. The remaining four were Air Force scouts. Howell was on his right, Ward on his left. The rest of the three-man vehicle complements were his EST troops. Eighteen men in all. He had thought it all out carefully. Yet — he ached with tension.
He stood up in his scout, gripping the windshield, his knuckles showing white. Below, Tom turned to stare at him. He returned the gaze. He thought he could see the hate, the rage, the terror that distorted his friend's face. He knew it was there…
Suddenly Tom whirled around. Never letting go his grip on Randi, he struggled in a stumbling run toward the towering crater wall, away from the pursuing creatures, away from the enemies closing in on him — bent on doing the impossible. If it cost them their lives…
At once Paul's arm shot up over his head, a flare pistol gripped in his hand. The brilliant red flare exploded from the muzzle and arched up out of the crater like a long-delayed cinder from a primordial volcanic eruption.
Immediately, from evenly spaced points all along the crater rim, flames shot up and columns of black smoke billowed into the air. Blazing balls of fire at once started to tumble down the sheer crater walls, pushed and kicked over the edge by the Guardsmen ringing the rim. The flaming, kerosene-soaked tumbleweeds hurtled down, trailing long tails of glowing embers and sooty smoke, bouncing off the volcanic rock all along the inside of the crater in an avalanche of fire and sparks. Rolling out on the bottom, the burning missiles crashed into the circle of withered brush, instantly igniting the dry clumps to form a horseshoe ring of blazing, crackling flames — open only toward the break slope, blocked by the oncoming vehicles.
The long-dead volcano had suddenly borrowed violent, fiery life…
Terrified, Tom stood rooted to the ground, staring at the sheet of roaring fire barring his way. Panic ripped at the raw edges of his mind. He whirled toward the lone opening in the ring of flames. The monsters were closing the gap. One of them suddenly slipped, lurched and threatened to overturn on the slope. Angrily it grated and whined and spun its wheels in roaring fury, digging in and spewing ash and sand. The fearful uproar of the crackling flames and the roaring, clanging monsters assailed him.
His terror broke through to the last reservoir of strength still in him and set it surging through his pain-racked body — the final flare-up before the burn-out.
Turning away from the terrifying monsters, he tugged at Randi. Exhausted to the marrow of her bones, she sank to the ground. The limits of her endurance reached — and passed — she buried her face in her hands.
Frantically Tom tried to lift her up. He could not. The monsters were almost upon them; the frightening creatures clinging to them were jumping out. He stared at them, eyes wild with terror. In primeval fear he looked at the leaping flames. Then — abruptly — he spun around and raced away from the monsters straight for the crackling, blazing wall, belching fire and smoke, barring him from his escape attempt up the sheer crater wall.
His mouth stretched open in a frenzied scream, drowned by the roar of the flames, he leaped through the inferno and raced for the cliff.
Suddenly he stopped. He turned. His hand went to the crusted, matted spot high on the crown of his head. He stared through the smoke and flame toward Randi lying on the ground, helpless, imprisoned within the hellfire. And from the monsters the menacing creatures were running toward her. He saw her raise her head and gaze toward him. Through the haze of smoke and heat their eyes spanned the distance and met. Total, unreasoning fury born of utter despair gripped him. Snarling his hate, his rage and his torment, he hurled himself back through the fiery wall. He raced to Randi's side — to crouch in desperate defiance over her.
And the fearful creatures, his enemies, his pursuers, his tormentors were upon him.
With a savage snarl, half growl, half scream, he threw himself on the nearest foe.
With the instant, automatic reaction of deep-seated training, Paul tensed to deliver a lethal blow to his attacker. His hands flew up. In the last possible moment he checked himself. He clenched his fists at his side and turned to parry Tom's savage attack with his shoulder. He spun around. He tried to get a grip on his enraged assailant. He failed.
Tom whirled to face his enemy, snarling his fury and hatred, totally absorbed in his rage. Paul's body grew taut to meet the onslaught of the maddened creature that was Tom. He knew he could not fight back. Not as he had been trained to do. His senses were wholly alert. He was aware of Hays and Howell racing to join him and Ward running toward them with his medical kit. He saw Stark and his Rangers take up their positions, ringing them, to prevent Tom from escaping, should he break away. He sensed that his emergency-team members were fanning out and speeding toward the ring of blazing brush, their Indian backpack extinguishers bouncing on their backs.
And Tom attacked.
He hurled himself at Paul, oblivious of the two men racing toward them. Together the three tried to subdue him, warding him off, careful not to inflict any further physical injury, knowing that an accidental blow to Tom's head could be fatal. But no restraint hampered the infuriated Tom. He fought with blind, black fury. It was man-beast against mere man. Howell's face was raked by Tom's nails as Howell deliberately refrained from striking him. Paul was scratched and kicked; Hays’ arm was gashed by Tom's teeth. And still Tom eluded them…
The crater seethed with activity. To Stark's shouted orders the Rangers paced around them, containing the fight. On the break slope National Guardsmen were pouring down into the crater pit to help the emergency team battle the crackling flames, the fire-fighters pumping the hand cylinders on the extinguishers, shooting heavy streams of water onto the fire. The steam and smoke rising from the burning brush, washed red by the flames, obscured the air. It was a scene from hell itself.
In the affray of sound and action no one heard or paid attention to the urgent sputtering of the radio in Colonel Howell's scout…
Randi watched the fight in horror — and yet with the awed realization that Tom was fighting to protect her. Her mind, assailed by the pervasive din, registered the frantic action through a mist of fatigue. Her eyes fell on one of the Rangers moving closer to the struggling men.