The figure that came streaking out of the burning base was itself in flames. The size and shape were human, but no detail could be made out. The Tick immediately shouted, "Burn it!" But Zotgjakt only stepped to one side, and the Tick himself flinched back after a glimpse of a human face in agony.

The figure staggered for almost ten meters before collapsing. By then, the fire was smoldering more than blazing, and as a cloud of steam as burning flesh met snow further dissipated the heat. Zotgjakt and the squires closed in. A sharp crackling sound came from within the cloud, and Zotgjakt immediately raised the carbine and pumped. Then the Tick shouted: "Oh, kaka- Wait!" Zotgjakt and the Flea both turned their heads in confusion. The Tick pointed a trembling finger at a gauge for the auxiliary tanks on his back. "I… I got a leak."

"Then get your pack off!" Zotgjakt roared. "Quick!" The Tick began fumbling for the right catches, latches and bolts to undo, and the other two rushed to him to help. That was when a shape came out of the haze.

Even before the transformed figure cleared the steam, its most prominent feature could be clearly seen: three red eyes, shining as bright as the dying flames, near the top of a stout, stumpy shadow barely a meter tall. Then features came into focus: The writhing mane of tentacles, the impossibly flexible limbs, the reverse impressions of hands and feet and faces bubbling up from beneath the blue hide. Above the red eyes, in particular, two emerging faces made the Thing's head swell like the temples of a hydrocephalic, bearing the unmistakable likenesses of Jackson and Colby.

"Take hold of the frame and pull!" Zotgjakt commanded the Flea as he pounded and pried at the last moorings of the storage frame. "When it comes loose, throw it at that!"

The Thing staggered, less like an injured or dying creature than a human in an epileptic fit. The spasms grew rapidly worse, bending limbs in unpredictable and often incompatible directions, until the whole that was the Thing could no longer move, but only go through its contortions where it stood. All the while, the malignant swelling grew, until the bulging brow fissioned into two new heads. The human faces contorted as painfully as the alien body, mouthing screams of blasphemy, and from the Thing's own mouth came an agonized cry: "WHOOO AAM I-I-I?" Then the chimera drove a sloth's claw into its central eye and sliced down, as if executing the judgment of Solomon on itself.

"Hey-" the Flea started to say as the frame came loose in his hands.

"Throw it!" Zotgjakt bellowed. The squire obeyed, and his throw knocked the Thing to the ground. Then the trio all ran for the garage, Zotgjakt pausing just long enough to send a flicker of flame at the pinned creature. The resulting fireball bored a crater into the ice.

"I was just thinking," the Flea finished, "weren't our stilts in there?"

"You… complete… ass," Andrews snarled as he strode toward Zaratustra with a sledgehammer. His feet splashed in a puddle of water from a dripping pipe. "I had everything under control. Just a few hours, and it would have been over. But you had to come all the way here, and now I'm gonna have to kill you."

Zed raised his head and spoke: "Why bother? If you think none can be allowed to leave, then blow the base and be done with it."

A blow jolted Zed's helmet. "You actually thought I'd do that?" Andrews said, then laughed. "Nuh-uh. That would knock out the observatory, and then they'd send people to fix it right away. Can't have that. And what would be the point? I know I'm human… and I'm getting out of here alive!" He raised the hammer, ready to charge. Then Zed heaved, shifting enough debris to swing his left forearm. A spool for his spear gun unwound, sending a length of cable lashing out as a whip.

Andrews sidestepped, and the cable landed limply in the puddle at his feet.

Andrews grinned. "I know what I am… and I know what they are… but I don't know what the hell you are. I just might take you apart and find ou-" A surge of electricity from Zed's exoskeleton shot through the cable, and Andrews staggered back.

"Drop the weapon, and I shall have to let you live," Zed announced calmly.

"We both know," Andrews said, "things just don't work that way." Then he charged again, bounding over a second lash of the cable, stepping in the puddle… where he staggered, advanced again, then froze, and finally fell. Zed jerked at the cable, dislodging the other end from a thick power from where it had lodged, in the insulation of a thick power cable in the generator room.

With another two minutes of shoving, Zed was free. He looked at Andrews; the dwindling infrared signature alone confirmed he was dead. "He would probably have survived," Zed said, "if he had not fought to keep going… He was human, then."

"Does it grieve you?" Irene asked. Tears streamed from her own eyes.

"No," Zed answered, "I was fairly certain it would be necessary to kill him either way. Does that grieve you?" His visor locked with her eyes. Above, there was a crash, followed by tramping feet and half-intelligible shouts.

"Don't you wonder," Irene said softly, "if it might not have been better if the chimerae had won? They must be a peaceful race, by nature. Surely, they must have done much good… Every creature of every world made as one mind, and every world part of a greater mind… And who is to say the creatures did not welcome it, with the joy of a thousand millennia?..."

"Animals," Zed said coldly. Irene stared blankly. "The chimerae assimilated worlds of animals, without minds on the level of men, perhaps not even man's nearer kin. And so, the chimerae were unprepared for human minds, already having thought and will and consciousness. Instead of bringing unity to Earth, the chimerae brought discord into themselves."

Zed strode toward Irene. "You were alone, with one of them- a `body' from the BANZARE expedition. Weren't you? When the original chimera escaped, everyone but you ran to investigate. Was that the plan, all along?"

"What if- I- knew? What if I was willing?" Irene said. "What if there are others who would gladly join- enough that the chimerae would have no need to assimilate the unwilling?"

"Then those who join will shine like stars among men," Zed said, "and the other men will hate them, and then the other men will kill them." He shrugged. "Things never seem to end well when men are confronted by those who exemplify their virtues."

Irene's gaze was forlorn, but still pleading. "Then, there is something else," Zed said. "The chimerae did not fall to Earth by accident. They came to Earth, in the spirit, perhaps, of missionaries. Another ship followed, or was waiting, and attacked. Perhaps these missionaries lost the fight, or had no time to fight. Perhaps they chose not to fight at all. In any event, their ship was smashed, and when it crashed upon the Earth, a second ship descended to wipe out any survivors. That ship… was also of the chimerae."

Irene shook her head. "You don't understand… They didn't understand…"

"Is it my duty to understand?" Zed said. "Enough to understand this, that even one mind cannot always be of one mind, and every body was members that are shed, and that is what was done to you."

"Zed!" Zotgjakt shouted from the other end of the corridor. "Anyone left?"

Zed turned to raise a warning hand. "Come, but have the squires stay back!" he ordered. "There may be danger of a second collapse!" As he spoke, there was a silky tearing. He turned back as Irene rose, and with a casual swing of the last of his cable, he cut her throat. She froze, clutching her neck. Zed waved Zotgjakt forward without taking his eyes off her, and there was more than a hint of regret as Zotgjakt emptied a tank.

"Aww, man," said the Flea, "I liked her."