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"Subject A is a male of the species, 2.4381 meters tall, weight estimated at
two hundred forty to two hundred and sixty-eight kilograms. It won't be
possible to totally eliminate the material in which they are embedded without
extraction from the esti-
mations. Sorry. The main body surface area is very tough, very dense. The skin
is at least one point two centimeters thick, more aptly described as a 'hide'
than mere skin, and various vital areas seem further protected by bony plates
at or very near the exterior. Both hands and feet are overiy large in
proportion to
272 Jack L. Chalker the body and are hairless, with that mottled texture
consistent and the palms probably rock-hard to the touch, although they
certainly bend and flex in the expected manner. The talons at the ends of the
fingers are suited to ripping and tearing flesh, consistent with the teeth,
which contain no herbivorous molars at all. They are true flesh-eating
carnivores, no question."
"By the gods," Krisha intoned under her breath as the long-
dead voice went on. "I am looking at the scans but they mean little to me."
"Or me," Chin agreed. "Manya?"
The Gnoll was trembling visibly, her eyes fixed on the small viewing plate,
intoning prayer after prayer.
Krisha seemed somewhat stricken herself and looked up at
Chin. "Her mind keeps saying 'Demons' Demons! They have awakened Hell
personified.' "
' 'Manya!'' Morok shouted at her.
The science officer seemed not to notice, then pointed a gnarled finger at the
projection. "There! The ftill scan! Now they will pull back and restore it!"
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The tiny figure, still a computerized diagram, now showed a full figure.
Humanoid, big bigger than Savin by a head and, slowly, more and more detail
was laid in as the voice continued to drone on with its observations.
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"Oh, gods of eternity, protect us!" Savin prayed. "Manya is right. Look!
Look!"
Gun Roh Chin had to admit that even the hair on the back of his own neck was
tingling as he saw what they had found.
The creature didn't look quite the way his own religious teach-
ers had pictured them, but it was still clearly recognizable, from the small
homs on its head to the dull red eyes, fanged mouth, even the cloven hooves.
There was no question in his mind that he was looking at, not a
representation, not an abstract estimation, and not someone's imagination, but
a real, three-dimensional photograph of an ac-
tual, in the flesh, classical demon.
"There must have been bodies in that thing," he commented dryly, his feelings
at the moment impossible to describe. "They thought they were dead. They put a
lid on this because they knew the effect this sort of discovery would have not
just on our reli-
gion or even the Mycohl's but on their myriad faiths as well."
He could see the scene now; these cold, pragmatic, utterly materialistic
scientists with their faith firmly rooted in what could
THE DEMONS AT RAINBOW BRIDGE 273
be seen, felt, touched, and demonstrated, excited by the discov-
ery of what must have been a burial place, intact, for what might have been
the galaxy's earliest spacefaring civilization. They had poked, probed, and
scanned for weeks, probably months, to learn what they could before physically
attempting to disturb or remove the remains, just in case exposure to air or
light might cause damage or deterioration.
Finally, though, they had all they could get from their instru-
ments, their data filling those recording cubes and probably be-
ing beamed back to the highest levels of the Exchange. Finally, there came the
time when they could do no more without phys-
ically extracting the bodies from the sarcophagi they lay in.
And the sleepers had awakened and wreaked horrible ven-
geance on those who had defiled their tomb and disturbed their sleep.
"I almost hesitate to ask this," he said, his throat curiously and almost
painfully dry, "because I'm not sure I want to know the answer, but it must be
asked."
"Yes?" Morok responded, watching in added horror as a sec-
ond scan was being dispassionately discussed on the tape.
"They were in suspended animation, not dead. They were freed, awakened,
whatever. They came out and they killed all these people and somehow also
fried the ship up there. Then what?"
"Uh? What do you mean?"
"Where did they go next?"
At that moment there came a roaring noise from outside, and in their current
mental shape all weapons snapped to the ready
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recording playing.
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Near both the research shuttle and their own, they could see another,
differently designed shuttle coming in for a landing.
"The Mycohl!" Chin swore. "I'd forgotten about them! Just what we really
needed right now!"
THE JUGGLERS' RACE
The star-shaped Durquist draped himself over his instruments, then said,
"There is nothing alive on that ship. Nothing."
"Scan the colony," Modra Stryke instructed him. "I want to know ifanything's
alive anywhere here." She paused and shook her head. "What in God's name could
have happened here?"
Jimmy McCray.
"It's the dunes worid all over again," the telepath swore under his breath,
not realty replying to the parasitic creature on his back. "This smells really
bad."
"It is even worse than it looks," the Durquist reported. "I
do not scan any living forms below, but I scan not one but three parked
shuttles."
Tris Lankur rushed to the command screens. "Put them up, Durquist. Full
enlargement."
McCray, Lankur, and Stryke all gathered around the screen.
"What the hell?" Tris Lankur exclaimed, frowning. "The brown rectangular one
there is from the orbital vessel. It's sim-
ilar to ours. That dull gray oval one, though that's Mizlaplan!
And the black one that's kind of beetle-shaped that's Mycoh-
lian!"
"They had a bloody interstellar convention down there,"
McCray commented.
"I read no higher form anomalies below, either," the Dur-
quist reported. "And if those are foreign shuttles, where are
274
THE DEMONS AT RAINBOW BRIDGE 275
their base ships? And what the hell were they doing here in the first place?"
"That's easy enough," Lankur replied. "They're here, some-
place. Either automated or with a standby skeleton crew, watch-
ing us from out there someplace. Or chasing each other. I can't see those two
groups in particular having any son of friendly arrangement."
"You think the winner's getting ready to jump us?" McCray asked. "I mean, what
if them bastard heathen Mycohl jumped the research ship and camp down there
'cause they were on to something real important and stuck out here in the
middle of nowhere? The Holy Joes get wind of it and figure on an am-
bush or vice versa. You said yourself they're all pretty close by
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