byEver inward from the jagged horizon the machines of death crept, edged, scurried, rocketed, and tunneled towards him. It seemed as if all this purple-sunned creation had conspired to isolate, to smash him. To the west—for all planets share a west, if nothing else—the nuclear bombs bloomed, meaningless giant fungi. Invisibly overhead the spaceships roared, distant as gods, yet shaking the yellow sky. Even the soil was treacherous, nauseated by artificial earthquakes—nobody’s mother, least of all an Earthman’s.
“Why don’t you cheer up?” the others had said to him. “It’s a mad planet.” But he would not cheer up, for he knew what they said was literally true. Soon they would fall back and the enemy would retake the mangled thing they called an objective. Was it the sixth time? The seventh?
