Carlos raised his gun to shoot. Hodges made a gesture and said a few words. The odds of Carlos’s gun jamming were about 1 in 50,000, but that is exactly what happened. “Please,” he said. Carlos tossed a grenade, one of the same thermate devices he had used in our Devonian adventure. Hodges caught it in mid-air and tossed it disdainfully aside. It did not explode.
Schwartz came in behind him. “They killed… my boys,” he gasped.

“And I shall punish them for it. Carry the bodies to the time bell. We need ballast, and we can use the gear,” Hodges said. His head bobbed as he walked, a motion which now called to mind a stalking carnosaur. But his perpetual slouching brought to mind another image: a puppet, imperfectly controlled by invisible strings. Two bodyguards followed behind, obviously very nervous. I felt a rough-edged blade press against my throat. Marcos was back up. Meanwhile, more Ophites came out. Some hauled away the cart, while others carried away bodies. Zaratustra shouldered Heidi, armor and all, and carried him out. All of them studiously ignored us.

“Now that we have you at our mercy,” Hodges said, “what shall we do with you?” He stopped in front of me, and smiled. “Before you die, shall I tell you everything your betrothed hasn’t shared with you?” I struck him reflexively. His head jerked, and his eyes rolled, but the rest of his body seemed unaffected. My hand went numb. He went on toward Carlos without comment, as if my blow were too inconsequential to respond to. “And you, Wrzniewski, what are we to do with you? You knew what I am and what I can do, yet still you came to fight me. You stupid Aborigine—and all the more stupid for your learning. Did you think sheer incorrigibility could save you?”

Carlos ejected the bad cartridge and loaded a new one. A guard stepped between them, preparing to shoot Carlos, but Hodges waved him aside, and then moved toward Carlos. “What I find truly unfathomable,” he said cheerfully, “is that you have no faith. You trust no God, true or false. The closest thing you have to an object of faith is the weapon you hold in your hand.” With one short lunge, he reached Carlos and pushed the gun aside before he could even try to fire. “But in the end, your gun is no more effectual than a totem of a superstitious savage—less so, in fact, since the savages at least have faith in something beyond themselves and their works. You, Wrzniewski, are nothing more than a savage stripped by civilization of the savage’s one redeeming virtue. And so you hide, not behind a sacred amulet, but behind the latest technological toy. Did you really think it would do you any good, even if it worked?”

Carlos answered: “I didn’t come because I thought I could beat you. I came back because I never leave my mates in a lurch, and because I finally realized that I just couldn’t let a nasty f* like you get his way unopposed. And faith? I guess you could say I have a kind of faith. The faith of every Mesozoic fuzzball that ever stood its ground before a carnosaur. The faith of every man who ever stood unarmed against a lion. The faith of the mustard seed that throws the mountain into the sea. You act big, but I know what that means. You’re like any predator. When men run away, you crush and kill. But what happens when someone stands his ground?”

“So,” Hodges said nastily, “you think courage can save you?”
“Did I say anything about `saving’?” Hodges froze. “You hesitate, and that means one of two things. Either you might not be able to kill me, or if you do kill me, you get weaker. Either way, you walk out of here over my dead body—and maybe that’s all that ever really matters. So, shall we test a hypothesis? Or call it a draw and all go home?” Hodges grinned. He set his gun to Carlos’s brow and pulled the trigger.
It jammed.

Carlos laughed, long and loud. A guard dropped his weapon in shock. “Now try and jam this, you SOB!” Carlos cried. He whipped out his rock hammer and swung. Hodges raised his arm to intercept the blow. I think he caught it—but it certainly didn’t do him any good. The hammer struck home with a loud crunch of bone, and Hodges fell like a puppet with its strings cut. The other raised his weapon to fire, but Carlos fired the rifle with his free hand and got him first. Then Hodges started to rise. There was a steadily rising hiss, which I realized came from his throat. Carlos stared into the inhuman eyes. “So that’s how it’s going to be, aye?” he said. “Well, I came prepared for that.” He pulled out a double-barreled flare pistol. One barrel jammed, but the other fired a flare right into Hodges’ chest. He fell over, a cloud of smoke rising from his wound. This time, instead of landing in an inert heap, he writhed about and howled, with a sound that seemed impossible from a human throat.

“Drop the hammer, or I’ll cut his throat!” Marcos warned. She pressed the knife closer to my throat. Incredibly, Hodges began to rise yet again. He let out a demonic cackle. Carlos stepped back, but held his hammer at ready. Marcos drew back her blade ever so slightly. One guard ran for the door. The Hodges-thing slavered a command in German, and he froze, pleading, “Nein, nein!” Meanwhile, the plume of smoke rising from Hodges’ chest became a flame, and then suddenly, his whole body burst into flame. I glimpsed this burning effigy of a man lunging for the guard, and Carlos stepping between them with hammer raised. Then the sprinklers activated, and we were all enveloped in a haze of water, smoke and steam.

Marcos and I were hit by a blast of scalding steam. I protected my face with my hands, but she got it right in the face. For a moment, she went rigid from the pain, and I pulled myself free. Swinging blindly, I pummeled her with my fists. She tried to strike back, but she could see even less than I could. Listening for her painful grunts and the telltale whistle of her blade, I dodged her wild strokes. Finally, I got her right on the chin with a powerful upper cut. She went down, and her knife rattled on the concrete. I picked it up gingerly. It was a traditional Indonesian blade, so roughly made that it looked like it was forged from iron filings. A green fluid covered the blade. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that I was very lucky she hadn’t even scratched me.

Meanwhile, I heard the sound of Hodges moving, making disgusting squelching noises as he moved, and the guard screaming, and Carlos swinging his hammer. Once I heard the hammer strike home, not with a crunch but with a splat. Then I heard Carlos swear, and moments later the guard’s scream came echoing out of the tunnel. Then I heard the sound of very heavy footsteps. I heard Dr. Marcos’s voice through the fog: “You fools, you’ve accomplished nothing. It was already too late to stop the launch, and now we have our weapons—and our leader, too. You destroyed…only a vessel. Schwartz will return, and he will kill you. You shall not win, for it is prophesied…no gun will slay him.”

The smoke was still too thick to see clearly. From the corridor, I heard Zaratustra say wryly, “What, flames already?” Carlos fired a wild volley of bullets and grenades into the corridor. The exotrooper did not even break stride. Before I could even see him, he fired a volley of flechettes that almost minced Carlos. Then he made a final leap, and landed beside me with a mighty thump, as if he had dropped from the sky. A very large and very modern pistol was in his hand. Before I could react, he planted a targeting laser on my chest and pulled the trigger, but his gun jammed. He pointed at a nearby dinosaur and pulled the trigger, and the head disintegrated in a cloud of sawdust. But when he pointed the gun back at me, it jammed again. “Interesting,” he said. He holstered his gun and unsheathed his claws. “I shall have to dispatch you with weapons that will not jam.”

I retreated, and Schwartz pursued, easily closing the distance. Carlos fired a high explosive grenade, which narrowly missed. The blast rocked Schwartz, but failed to slow him down. Then Carlos fired a flare shell. Zaratustra froze and covered his eyes. For the first time, he screamed. Carlos fired a second HE grenade, and hit Zaratustra right in the chest. He toppled rump-first into the display case, where he became soundly stuck.

Carlos fired a smoke grenade at the tiny gap between helmet and breastplate. The grenade was too big to penetrate, but the explosion made the helmet jump visibly. Thin streams of smoke came from behind the face plate. Schwartz must have been blind, nearly deaf, and barely able to breath. “Come on,” Carlos said, aiming the rifle almost point-blank at the terrorist’s face mask. “Let’s see those pretty blue eyes.” Schwartz tasered him and sent him flying with a slap.

“You can’t take both of us down that easily,” I said. I picked up a dead guard’s AK 47, which was fitted with a bayonet. “If what the witch said is true, I won’t be able to shoot you, but she didn’t say anything about knives.” I poked experimentally at the belly armor.

Schwartz caught the bayonet in his left hand and snapped it off. “The question is academic,” he said. He coughed, spitting up red foam that trickled out from under his mask. “Observe.” He drew his gun. Before I could react, he pushed the gun under his face mask and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He holstered his gun. “You see?” he said wearily. “18 years ago, in Serbia, I was cornered, ready to take my own life. I tried. I could not. Then they appeared to me in a vision. I asked for death. They said I did not know what I asked. And they showed me what awaits me. Truly was it said: `better to have a millstone tied around his neck and be cast into the sea! Better if he had never been born!’ Still, I said, give me death, for there was no better that They could give me. Finally, They said that They could not. They told me I was marked for a course, and that I could not die until I had run the measure of my destiny. But, They said that they could offer something better. The one thing I truly desired: Oblivion, sleep without dreams—a consummation devoutly to be wished!” He planted hands and feet against the wood and began to push, struggling to free himself. The already ravaged case shook and groaned. I stepped back.

“And you, you are one marked as I was. That is why Hodges did not harm you. He could not. But I am not under his limitations. He is opposite; I am equal. Now let us see who is stronger.” With that, he gave a great push, and did a spectacular back flip out of the hole. He landed on his feet with enough force to leave shoeprints in the concrete.

I emptied the AK 47, hitting him repeatedly in the helmet. One struck a bullet lodged in his forehead and drove it deeper, knocking him down, but not unconscious. While Schwartz was getting up, I drew a dead Ophite’s pistol and fired a shot point-blank into his face mask. He merely slapped the gun from my hand; I was lucky he didn’t break off my hand in the process. Once again, I ran from him.

Schwartz staggered after me, slower than before. The motors in the right thigh of his suit whined in distress. Even so, he quickly gained on me. In desperation, I picked up the closest thing to a weapon in sight: a fiberglass replica of a Megaloceros antler sometimes used by the company for promotional photos. I ducked under Schwartz’s swinging fist and swung the antler at his dragging right leg. One prong got stuck in the damaged machinery, and I yanked hard, hoping to drag him off his feet. Instead, the prong snapped off.

Schwartz came at me even faster than before, slashing with his open left hand and stabbing with his right fist. I parried his blows as best I could with the unwieldy antler. I felt like I was fighting a duel with a combine harvester. I had no illusions that I could defeat Schwartz like this, or even hold my ground. My only option was to retreat before the relentless onslaught, and hope to get hold of a better weapon before I ran out of floor. When I reached the edge of a diorama of Cretaceous Mongolia, I knew it was time for me to make my last stand.

I turned my back on Schwartz long enough to toss the antler into the diorama and then vault over a glass barrier into the small but elaborate display. Schwartz shattered the barrier without breaking stride. I picked up the antler and darted between a pair of mounted dinosaurs. Schwartz came after me at a more leisurely pace. He paused ever so briefly to get the dinosaurs out of the way. He knocked over an oviraptor with a kick and beheaded a Gallimimus with a karate chop. A rat-like protolemur was crushed under foot. I bounded onto a rock ledge at the very back of the exhibit. Using the antler as a prod, I pointed a fluorescent overhead lamp in my pursuer’s face.

For the second time, Schwartz screamed. He held up his left hand to block the light while slashing blindly with his right fist. I parried his wild blows and then brought the antler down like an axe on his right shoulder. It went cleanly into a joint in the armor. I felt a slight shock as electrical connections were covered. Yellow hydraulic fluid and a little blood oozed from the joint. His right arm dropped twitching to his side. I ducked to avoid his slashing left hand. With one hard tug, I pulled the antler free. He jabbed clumsily at my belly with his right hand, but I darted left to avoid the blow and then stabbed him in the neck.

Blood came squirting forth, and for a moment, I thought the demonic prophecy was undone. The wound was only superficial, however. Schwartz struck back with a slash that I barely avoided in time. I feinted at his neck, and when he raised his hand to shield his neck from a second blow, I hit him in the lower back, stabbing between the overlapping plates that covered his abdomen. The antler snagged on something, and Schwartz was able to pull it from my hands. He spun around and lowered his head, like a many-horned bull preparing to charge. I narrowly avoided impalement on his crown of steel spines, only to be thrown over his left shoulder. The next thing I knew, he had me pinned to his chest with his left arm. His right fist hovered like a metal wasp a few inches from my face.

“You killed my boy,” he hissed. “You die slow—hrn?” With an uncomprehending grunt, he slapped his hand to his chest and fell over. I fell too, landing beside him. There was an electric sizzle, and he started to rise. I rolled to escape a thrust from his right hand. There were more electrical sounds, and he sat up only to fall again. There was another power surge, and he started to rise yet again. But then the central motor on his back burst into flames. A split second later, smoke and flame issued from every joint of his suit. His helmet was blown off by a plume of flame. I narrowly avoided being run though by the crown of spikes. For a moment, he stayed upright. Then he fell for good, his right hand still raised in a one-finger salute.

Moments later, Carlos staggered over. “What happened to him?”
“He must have had a heart attack,” I said. “It must have been a combination of things. Ling said that he was on an amphetamine-based drug, which might have strained his heart. Then you gave him a dose of tear gas, which is known to trigger cardiac arrest. After that, and all his injuries, his heart finally couldn’t take it any more. Power surges from his suit started to revive him, like a defibrillator. But then the motor burned out, and then there was nothing left to keep him alive. Another `fantastic coincidence’.”
“We’re going to have to storm the control room,” Carlos said, picking up his assault rifle. “But first, we have to check on something. We’re going to find Hodges.” I grabbed Zaratustra’s gun and went after him. He waved me back. “If anything happens to me, you have to get back,” he said.

Hodges had left an obvious trail. A series of foot prints, formed from his melting boot soles, went down the corridor. Drops of blood, pieces of charred clothing and occasional bits of burned flesh also marked the trail. A bloody handprint marked where he had steadied himself against a wall. On closer examination, I realized that the very skin of his palm had peeled off. Carlos registered no reaction to any of this, but proceeded with an intent, searching look. Finally, we found the ditched sole of a boot, fused to the floor. Carlos signaled be to come forward. I approached, though I was nauseated by the very smell. I stopped and stared. The body of the guard lay huddled against the wall. He bore no visible wounds, but a look of unspeakable terror was frozen upon his face. On top of him was what was left of Charles Hodges—seemingly nothing but a silhouette of a human form, already blurred by the sprinklers. I looked more closely. There was charred clothing and tissue there, including a sleeve stuck to the dead guard’s ankle. But there was nothing that could be called a body. “He must have disintegrated,” I said, not really believing it for a moment.

Carlos laughed humorlessly. “How? Even a crematorium couldn’t destroy the bones. And they sure aren’t here. Besides, why wasn’t the guard’s body also consumed? No, here’s what I think is more likely. Hodges was dying. The last hope of the thing living through him was to change itself, to metamorphose or molt. But it needed power to do it—a sacrifice. It became something else. Maybe more powerful, maybe less. Maybe human… maybe not.”

“Maybe his servants took away his body.”
“Hasn’t that been said before?”
“What if you’re right?” I said. “Then what?”
“Then there’s nothing we can do about it,” Carlos said. “We could try to get to the time bell and find out, but that would only get us killed. But, it will be something to think about on long, dark nights. C’mon, Ted, we got things still to do.”