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1) "A Fred alien, and everybody else except a human, can never die. Even when you shoot his body to Swiss cheese, so his blue guts and red blood dribble out the holes onto the deck, his consciousness remains intact. Blow his head apart, and it floats as a ghost, drifting like invisible smoke—still thinking, hearing and seeing, feeling and desperately dreaming. You can talk to them; they actually hear you. The Freds and other races pile their dead in fantastic cenotaph theaters where they are entertained day and night by elaborate operas and dances of great beauty, all to keep the 'dead' vibrant and interested until such time as they're needed for revivification—assuming there's enough left of the body and enough interest on the part of an animate Fred to pay for it. I'd shot the captain nine days ago as he lay on the floor, reaching up to implement and lock in the preprogrammed course for Fredworld. Despite the best efforts of me and Arlene and our contractor-advisors Sears and Roebuck—a Klave binary pair who each looked like a cross between Magilla Gorilla and Alley Oop—we couldn't figure out how to change course or even shut off the engines."

2) "Jesus, I felt homesick. Just a few months ago—my time—I was wasting my life at Camp Pendleton, loafing and pulling the occasional watch, thinking of not reupping and dropping back into the world instead. I had a fiancee, now deceased; I had parents and high-school friends; I had the expectation that the world would look pretty much the same twenty years later. Then we got sent to Kefiristan, but even that was all right; it was crap, but it was the crap I'd always known was possible in my chosen profession. But when they yanked us out of the Pearl Triangle and boosted Fox Company up to Phobos... well, they yanked me out of my comfortable reality and threw me into primordial chaos. So now I was jogging the length and circumference of an alien spaceship, hurling toward an unknown star at nearly lightspeed, with a plural alien as ally and a mutable thing for a guide; the only constancy was Arlene Sanders, now my last and only friend."

3) "'Christ, S and R—do something!' Having issued my first military command in a week, I did what any good military man does when confronted with an invisible enemy: I ran in circles, screaming and shouting. Sears and Roebuck looked frustrated, being constitutionally unable to follow the order 'do something.' Then Arlene, whirling rapidly in every direction with her magazine-fed shotgun, thought of the obvious: 'Fly! Isn't this stupid Fred ship steered by consensus?' 'Yes! I don't know what that means!'"

4) "Then the overcaptain's face softened. 'Actually studied first mission in school; strange to meet legends in flesh.' 'You read about it?' I asked. 'There's a book?' 'Two books. Many books, but two originals: Knee-Deep in the Dead and Hell on Earth. Woman named Lovelace Jill wrote them, said was on mission with you.'"

5) "I came to the room with the sabotaged radio and the incinerated map. No matter—the floor plan of the facility was burned into my brain, either by the sheer horror of the memory or else by the Resuscitators when they resurrected me here. Didn't need the map, in any event, and the radios were useless inside the RAM of an alien computer. I felt like I'd been drafted into a computer game, jerked by electronic strings like a meat puppet."

6) "The brain is a gifted storyteller. 'We are all greater artists than we realize,' or whatever the hell that guy said, whoever the hell he was."

7) "'You're a product of genetic engineering, created by a race of creatures we call the Freds, who have heads like an artichoke, if you know what that is—covered with colored leaves—and grow taller and smaller as part of their mating cycle. You've seen them, right? Is my description right on, or what?' 'Sssssspeak!' demanded the spiney, but it closed its mouth, swallowing the rest of its spittle. I took that as a good sign. 'You know they're members of a grand galaxy-wide conspiracy of philosophical-literary criticism that is reasonably well-translated into English as the Deconstructionists. They're fighting the other school, called the Hyper-realists. You were sent here to prepare us for invasion and conquest by the Freds, and they told you that we would roll over and beg for mercy if you came looking like our ancient demons, right?'"

8) "Above us was sky, horribly enough; we had come down more than two kilometers through the solid rock of Phobos... and here, at the bottom, directly overhead we saw the stars! It made no geographic sense, but, of course, it didn't have to—it was nothing but computer software, after all."

9) "I shrugged. I know when I'm beat. 'So long, boys, can't say it's always been a treat, but it's been real.' Even Arlene turned her attention away from her true love's final resting place to smile in farewell. 'Don't take any wooden Fredpills,' she said, thoroughly confusing the Klave. 'Has been it a slice,' said the pair of Magilla Gorillas. Without another word, they turned left and strode off, marching in unison, subvocalizing all the way to each other. They disappeared around a tall ancient-looking column that supported a statue of what looked like Brigham Young, and we never saw Sears and Roebuck again."

10) "The End...?"

1) "What could be more dangerous than when I was almost crushed like a bug when I helped save Ken from the spider-mind and the steam demon on the train? Or when I was driving the truck and the two missiles from the bony almost got me? (Poor Dr. Ackerman called those things revenants. Boy, he sure came up with some weird names. He said all the creatures were like monsters from the id. I wonder what he meant.)"

2) "My parents took me to a horror film when I was only six, one of the dozens of movies about the Aztec mummy. The monster didn’t really frighten me; but the sight of young maidens being sacrificed by evil priests gave me nightmares for a week. Their idol looked like Moloch. As I grew older, I began seeking out the image of Moloch. I found it in the old silent German movie, Metropolis, and it showed up in a frightening picture about devil worship. But I’ll never forget how effectively it was used in the movie they used to make the transition from the old series, Star Trek Ten, to the new one, Star Trek: Exodus."

3) "ALBERT GALLATIN: I like being here. SANDERS: Albert? You don’t feel you’ve been sacrificed to Moloch? GALLATIN: The opposite. This is wonderful. It’s better than sex. SANDERS: Well, I’ll grant you it’s up there. HIDALGO: What do you think about that, Sergeant Taggart? TAGGART: About what, sir? HIDALGO: Do you think this disembodied condition is better than sex? TAGGART: Nothing is better than a clearly delineated chain of command, sir!"

4) "'How did it begin?' asked Arlene, suddenly as enthusiastic as Albert. 'You call them books,' said S&R. 'The Holy Tests.' 'Texts,' I did it again, almost unconsciously. 'Texts,' they said. I felt like giving them an A-plus. 'Books are twelve million years old. The Freds disagree with us.' 'With the Klave?' I asked. 'All of us. Not only Klave-us, but all that are here us. We bring you for going to the war.' 'Literary criticism,' marveled Arlene. I wasn’t about to forget that she’d been an English major for a while. Albert clapped like a little kid who’d just been given the present he always wanted—understanding. 'The two sides are literary critics, conquering stellar systems to promote their own school of criticism. I love it. It’s too insane not to love. What is their primary disagreement over the twelve-million-year-old books?' S&R gave us one of their best sentences: 'The Freds want to take the books apart.' Arlene screamed, but it was a happy kind of scream. 'Oh, my God,' she said, 'they’re deconstructionists!'"

5) "I shouldered the burden of command. Sergeant Taggart had a plan. 'Let’s go!' covered both my strategy and my tactics."

1) "Comes a time when you have to say the hell with it, if only for a moment. Arlene and I had recently faced the worst thing anyone can face, worse than the monsters or dying in space. We knew what it meant to lose your sanity... and come back to yourself again. Arlene started whistling 'Molly Malone.' She'd picked one of the few songs to which I knew the words. I sang along. All that was missing was a bottle of Tullamore Dew, the world's finest sipping whiskey. As it was, our duet seemed to transform the lengthening shadows of dusk in Utah into the cool glades of Ireland. I wondered if doom had come there. Were there demons in Dublin?"

2) "'In space,' she said finally, 'on Phobos, we found a giant swastika.' She let her observation hang in the air, waiting for the Mormon to respond. 'What do you think it means?' he asked. Arlene sighed. 'I don't know; except it's a reason for me to hate them more.' 'I would hate them just as much,' said Albert, 'if you had found the cross up there, or the flag of the United States, which I believe was also inspired by God. A symbol used by aliens means nothing to me. We know them by their fruits.' 'Oh, fug,' said Jill. 'This is like being back in class. Don't give me a test, Albert.'"

3) "The next town along the line was Buckeye. We ditched the truck cab, then waited for night. We found an alley and enjoyed the busy sounds of night life in this modern world: troop trucks every few minutes, the tramping of little zombie feet, screams of pain, howled orders from hell-princes, and the occasional earthshaking tread of steam-demons. Even more soothing to our shattered nerves were mechanical sounds that reminded me of the spidermind, evidently a smaller model. I wondered if this one got better mileage. 'Have you noticed an odd thing?' whispered Arlene. 'You mean besides everything?' I replied."

3) "Inside the main part of the store, the fluorescent lights were on and burning steady. But the refrigeration was off, and there was a rotten smell of all kinds of produce, milk, and meat that had been let go before its time. 'Ew,' said my Mormon buddy, and he hit the center of the bull's-eye. The meat smelled a lot worse than the bad vegetable matter. And oh, that fish! If I hadn't been wide awake on adrenaline—compared to which caffeine is harmless kid stuff—I would never have believed what I saw next. Nothing on Phobos or Deimos had the feeling of a fever dream compared to the spectacle of... 'Hell in the aisles,' breathed Albert. The grocery store was as busy as a Saturday afternoon in the good old world. Mom and Dad and the kids were there. Young lovers wandered the aisles. Middle-class guys with middle-sized guts in ugly T-shirts pushed shopping carts down the center aisle with no regard for who got in the way. Nothing had changed from the way it used to be... except that everyone was dead. [...] They didn't eat any of the groceries. They seemed caught up in the behavior of the past, as if the program had been so hard-wired into their skulls that not even losing their souls could erase the ritual of going to the grocery store."

4) "'Don't worry about me,' Jill said, following my example and kicking the corpse. 'They're just bags of blood, and we've got the pins. It's no big thing.' No one was joking now. Arlene looked at me with a worried expression. This was no time to psycho-analyze a fourteen-year-old who was doing her best to feel nothing. This sort of cold attitude was par for the course in an adult, a mood that would be turned off (hopefully) in peacetime; but hearing it from a kid was unnerving. The words just out of her lips were the cold truth we created. Do only the youngest soldiers develop the attitude necessary to win a war? Until this moment, I wouldn't have thought of Arlene and myself as old-fashioned sentimentalists; but if the future human race became cold and machine-like to fight the monsters, then maybe the monsters win, regardless of the outcome."

5) "'As I said, his name's Ken Estes. He's a computer software designer slumming as a CIA analyst. Low-level stuff, not a field agent or anything. He was born in—' 'No time for the family background,' I interrupted. 'Keep him focused on how and why he became a cybermummy.' Somewhere, water was dripping. I hadn't noticed it before, but it was very annoying while waiting for Jill to pass on the messages in silence. Finally, she spoke again: 'When the aliens landed and started the war, Ken was told by his superiors that the agency had developed a new computer which the operator accessed in V.R. mode.' 'What's V.R.?' Albert asked. 'Old term; this guy's in his thirties! Virtual Reality; we call it burfing now, from 'body surfing,' I think.' 'Oh, the net,' said Albert."

6) "We took Sig-Cows off'n the first two zombies we killed; better than the pistols, even though they were still just 10mm. The next one had a beautiful, wonderful shotgun. I'd take it, even if it was a fascist pump-action."

1) "'Yeeah!' 'It's not my fault!' 'You killed her!' 'Shut up! It wasn't me. I'll show you who it was. [...] Look out there. LOOK! that's who done it. That's who killed y'r mother. The police, Silvia. They're not here t'protect us. They're here t'keep us workers in line... t'keep us poor an' tired... an' t'kill us if we try t'change that. An' they shot y'r mum because she wanted things different, un'erstand? They shot y'r mum because she wanted a better life f'r you, an' Elga, an' y'r little brother."

2) "'Well, our man in the Schupo says the paperwork confirms their claim that they never intended to let the demonstration occur at all.' 'So, either the police lied to the Communist leaders, or those leaders lied to the demonstrators. Which do you prefer?' 'Neither– But look, there's something else, something that troubles me more.' 'My summons to Leipzig.' 'Yes! What's it for?' 'Our article on the nascent air force has upset a few people, it seems.' 'But... On what grounds can they call you to a federal court?' 'Can't you guess? What's the last legal resort of a faltering state faced with evidence of its hypocrisy?' '...' 'I'm being charged with treason.'"

3) "'It's the air, my dear– the famous Berlinerluft! You've lived here nearly a year now– surely you've felt it before.' 'I suppose so... Kurt and I have stayed up all night together on more than one occasion, but I just assumed–' 'Of course, of course: 'love.' An assumption I've made myself, on more than one occasion in the past. And even with the very same man!' 'So you no longer believe in love?' '...I believe that people believe in love.'"

4) "'I'm afraid I'm not very good company these days. So– Help out a despairing pacifist. What is this 'other way' of seeing things?' 'Well... It's more, just... a comfort. Just think... The trees, the grass, the water, all of this beauty and life– The changing of the seasons, year after year, since long before we were born... No matter what happens to us, all of it will still be here long after we're gone.'"

5) "I feel ill. And I am not alone. When I see anyone else these days at the Romanisches, there is the usual spirited talk, but the words are thin, the faces pale. Even more than usual, we appear to subsist on coffee and cigarettes. Cups rattle in saucers, a statement delivered with a little more than the requisite passion collapses into a hacking cough. We know the routine, touch on the usual subjects, undercut our deepest hopes with reflexive cynicism. I derive little comfort from any of it. The world outside is filled with different sorts of words. Thanks to the emergency election, the rhetoric has come in thick, like smoke downwind of a burning building. The air is consumed by chanted slogans and playground songs, the sky held aloft by walls of words. Walking home, I see a copy of the paper disintegrating in the runoff from autumn's first rain. The letters slip away, one by one. And I sit here typing more of them; swimming against the tide."