Titans of Chaos

My horse reared up-it was some implanted program or instinct-to catch a volley of gunfire meantfor me in its armored fiberglass chest. Hammer blows struck my shoulder and leg on my left sideas I was flung back off the saddle. My armor stiffened into metal immobility, ringing like a bell asthe two shots ricocheted from the suddenly rigid surface.

Thunk. Then I was in the wet grass, watching my horse toppling backwards, its chest blown openby incendiary fire. I reached up with tendrils of hyperspace energy to deflect his momentum andweight so he did not fall on me. With a roaring scream, almost like the whistle of a bird, my steedfell beside where I lay, but did not crush me. I took cover behind the still-heaving body.

I was lashing out with my tendrils, trying to turn off as many monads of as many troopers as Icould, as they fled. I negated the energy supplies of several rifles. Others I gave free will, and theybecame snakes of iron, hissing, or molten ribbons, lashing.

Then certain of the shells, still flaring and buzzing, lodged among my dying steed's rib cage,erupted, sending ribbons of overspatial energy into the red and blue directions of hyperspace.

I felt a ripple of pressure across my hypersurface; my tendrils were crushed back into three-spaceand lay prostrate.

I saw the shining wheels of Leucosia and Parthenope draw back from the convulsion ofhyperenergies; but then my "eyes" above and below the world-plane were dazed by thespace-collapsing overpressure. I lost sight of the sirens, but they were not far away.

However, this was not the irresistible pressure of one of Miss Daw's songs, nor was the pressureeven, or intelligently applied. I was still able to force more substance into an unwounded tendril,wrap it around a nearby tree, negate my weight, and pull myself briefly in and out of hyperspace. Idisappeared and reappeared in a tree one hundred yards away.

I was glad I did: Blue dazzle lanced from the cyclopes-eyes of the fleeing Amazonian superhorses(who ran with their heads turned backwards) and smote the body of my steed. Some chemical orelectrical reaction broke open the cyclopes-eye in my steed; a ten-foot-in-diameter area explodedinto an instant mass of sticky white flame.

This was while they were running away at sixty miles an hour. I would hate to be a normal personon the receiving end of any serious attack from them.