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whole.”
    Linc paused in his flight to grab Hendricks and pull him along. The reactor technician was out of his mind, his own eyes glazed, not with the healing power of the Eyes, but with madness.
    The three of them ran from the stare of the Eye, and found themselves in the middle of the melee. Around them the Eyes bobbed and swooped, and the ground was slippery with their blood. But they were healed over. The men were no longer a fighting unit, but a panicked horde of individuals. Bullets rained upward, piercing their targets, and the targets shot skyward, wounded and bleeding, only to return to the fight healed. And always, there was that pull, that constant pull upon Linc that impelled him to approach.
    Students bumped into him, their guns discharging uselessly. Others fired volleys at the empty air. The field had changed from order to chaos, with the cries and screams of maddened minds.
    Streaming blood from one of the Eyes fell on Linc and soaked into his shirt. Close by, a student jerked straight. His body stiffened, then went limp, and his gun fell from his open hands. He walked through the mob of running, whirling men, oblivious to the noise and jumble. An Eye sailed backward before him, the sun glinting on its healing surface. As Linc watched it the pull caressed him again, and grew from a caress to a tug. Another man, a policeman, joined the zombie student, and the Eye took him, too.
    Linc broke from the tug of the thing. Sweat from his own body was mingling with the now cold blood of the Eye on his shirt.
    â€œTo hell with Iverson’s orders!” he yelled to Wes. “We’ve got to fight them off!”
    He dashed for the student’s abandoned gun and raised it to his shoulder, blasting away at the Eye that had now gathered four men and was leading them out of the battle toward the field beside the woods. He saw the searing tear as his shot hit home, smack in the middle of the Eye.
    â€œBull’s-eye!” he shouted in triumph, and let go another blast. But the Eye bobbed upward, evading, and even as it did, he saw the wound he had made in it glazing over, the flow of blood halting, the sides of the hole growing together and scarring over.
    â€œWes!” He swiveled to find his friend. “What are we going to do?”
    But Wes didn’t hear. He was yards away, a gun raised, shooting at another of the giants.
    The sound of gunfire grew less and less. The circle around Linc broke, cascading outward as men took flight. Those who did not flee stood in their places, numb, alone, unaware. Hendricks was one of them. He wasn’t muttering any more.
    Linc refused to run. The battle was useless against a self-healing opponent, but he wouldn’t run. These men, these boys, were here because of him, and he had to cover their flight. He shot upward, missing or hitting, it hardly mattered which, but the hits were at least a delaying action. The Eyes were massed over him and their seepings and weepings splashed over him, in his hair, on his face, but he wouldn’t run. Men in flight went limp and shuffled away, but he ignored them. Whatever Iverson said, this was his fight, after all. The Eyes wouldn’t get him.
    Wes backed into him, also fighting. Together, he and Wes would battle for the world. Then Wes’ hands were on his shoulders, shaking him, and Wes’ desperate shouts hit his ears.
    â€œLinc! Come to your senses, Linc! It’s no use! We’ve got to get out!”
    Linc heard, but couldn’t understand; then Wes’ shaking dashed sweat into his eyes and with the sting of it he came back to himself. There was no force left on the field. The battle was done.
    â€œWhere’s Iverson?” Linc gasped, frightened. Nothing must happen to the old man. “Where are the rest of our own men?”
    â€œIverson has gone back to the lab. Come on, Linc. Please!”
    Six Eyes were circling the bloody ground; two Eyes were escorting twenty men