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normally induce unconsciousness but minimum power didn’t pack much of a punch. I exited the aircar, adjusted my gloves, draped my E across my chest and yanked at the jumble of equipment strapped to my waist.
    Snow Leopard looked appraisingly at the extra equipment I carried and cracked a grin, letting his guard down for a moment. “You look like a military surplus sale, Thinker.”
    Dragon chimed in, “Hey, Thinker, can I borrow something if I need it down there? You know I don’t like to carry stuff.”
    Psycho could be more obnoxious than Dragon. “Hey, Thinker, can you haul my gear, too?”
    “Blackout, will you?” I didn’t mind. I always took as much stuff as I could carry. I knew the only way I’d really need something was to leave it behind.
    The forest darkened. I glanced up at the clouds blotting out the sun. Violet shadows and a fine mist filled the air. Angel wings hovered above me. We’d named the delicate, jelly-like creatures air angels.
    The entrance lay at the edge of a blackened, crumbling, dead city, choked with vegetation. Enormous tree roots snaked around the city, strangling it with glacial patience. Massive green trees rose amid the shattered stones of a fossilized past. Tiny, colorful flying creatures glided past, trailing the air angels. A stronger breeze stirred the forest. Nothing on screen.
    We stood in the heart of the past. Broken stone blocks rested all around us, the tomb of a city, now part of the forest. It was officially designated Site 5543. The mist turned to pelting rain. Perfect—the tunnel will fill up with water and we’ll all drown.
    We gathered around the entrance, along with a few life techies that had just arrived in another aircar. Then Squad Alpha arrived to guard the area and watch our backs. It could be a trap. We still didn’t know what we were up against or where the damned Systies were hiding. This tunnel or passageway would be a lovely spot to trap and kill a few Legion troopers.
    Our camfax automatically blended with the surroundings. At that moment, we looked dark and wet. I re-ran the system checklist on my comtop. The darksight worked fine. So did the breather and the comset. We wouldn’t need the breather except for the water. Unless the tunnel caved in. Or they used gas. Or smoke.
    Hardly anything to worry about.
    “This could be tremendously amusing.” Coolhand had perfected his rather grim sense of humor on Planet Hell. A tall, slim youth, he came from some lost, hopeless spacer ratworld. Curly dark brown hair, friendly green eyes, a narrow, clean-cut face, tanned a pale brown. He was a musician, happiest when strumming his ionic lektra, his only real possession. In the field he was cautious, but good, so they made him a Two.
    He looked up as three more aircars converged on our location from different directions—the clearing would soon run out of room. “I feel kind of sorry for this Scaler,” Coolhand said, gesturing towards the aircars. “All this attention. I think the brass are upset ‘cause they haven’t found anybody to shoot yet.”
    There had been no opposition to our landing. No evidence of Systie intrusion at all. The fireworks had been for nothing, but we had no regrets, not for an instant. There is only one way to land on a new, potentially hostile, planet—successfully! And that meant kill anyone or anything that got in the way. There’s no time to quibble over philosophy, or to chat with the natives, discussing your benign intentions.
    Back on Atom , during the long voyage, I’d admitted the truth to myself. I’d loved Hell. It was my darkest secret. I must be insane, I’d thought. Somehow I slipped past the psych tests. Would they send me back? Eventually, I discovered the others were just as crazy. The Legion knew exactly what it was doing. We were the scum of the Outers, the dreamers and the lost. We looked up at the stars and found the Legion gate. It was a one-way gate—no one who went in ever came out. No information