“Your majesty, we must go!”

King Leothan nodded. The Radiants had almost arrived. They had spread out as they approached to form a huge crescent that would envelope the city. Their intention was plain. No-one was to be allowed to escape. The Radiants intended to kill, or curse, the entire population. Anyone who escaped to the west would be hunted down to ensure a clean sweep, and then Leothan's advisors had suggested that they would visit every other Helberian city, one at a time, until the troublesome country had been wiped from the map. Even hiding in Marboll Tower would only delay the inevitable. The Radiants could leave a few of their number behind to starve them out.

Everyone remaining in the city had been moved into the Tower nonetheless, there was nothing else to do. The remaining ballistae had been positioned in the entrances to try to keep the creatures out, but their supply of bolts was low and, when they had run out, the corridors and passageways were easily wide enough to allow a Radiant to crawl through, slithering along the floor on their tentacles. One by one the inner doors would be broken down and those cowering within would be dragged out and killed. The only doubt was how many of the creatures the defenders could take with them before they were overwhelmed.

“I wanted to speak to my daughter one more time before we left,” said the King mournfully. “The six hours are almost up. I thought I could tell Nilon that we'd complied with his wishes, bluff it out somehow...”

“All their officers are dead,” said Amberley, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “There's no-one left who knows the codes.”

“I shouldn't have let her go, George. If I'd kept her here, at least we'd be together at the end. Now she's going to die surrounded by enemies, strangers...” He got a hold of himself with an effort. This self pity was unbecoming of a King. He still had subjects, and they needed a leader, not a grieving father. “What's done is done,” he said. “I always knew there was a risk she wouldn't come back, I agreed to it anyway.” He made himself stand up straight, threw his shoulders back. He had to make a good impression. Even now, there were still a few people out and about in the streets who would see him and be either encouraged or disheartened by his demeanour. He was still the King, so long as he still had a single subject looking up to him. “Let's go,” he said.

Amberley nodded and they walked with stately dignity through the corridors of the ministry building, Balhern and four members of the palace guard going ahead of him, Darnell and two runners following behind. Most of them were wearing their dress uniforms, as if they were on their way to some great state occasion to be seen by cheering crowds and foreign dignitaries. Leothan had had the idea while discussing the city's last defence with his Generals, and as soon as the meeting had been over he’d returned to his chambers and told his equerry to fetch his coronation robes. If he was going to die today, then he wanted to look his best for it. When he’d emerged from his dressing chambers, though, he’d found that his generals and the senior members of his palace staff had all had the same idea. Amberley’s uniform was a riot of gleaming brass and gold braid, and Darnell's uniform looked as though it had arrived from the tailors just that morning. Balhern, still wearing his regular duty uniform, looked sour and unhappy, as if it had been prearranged and he’d been deliberately left out of it.

When they reached the main entrance and went outside, Leothan looked up into the sky. It was clear and blue, fine and warm, but a brisk breeze was blowing from the east, the same breeze that was speeding the Radiants of their way towards them. There was no sign of the creatures yet, but the last news they'd had was that they had just crossed the Tolham hills travelling low to the ground, attacking every human they came across on the way. That would slow them a little, but not much. By all accounts, they could cast curses almost continually and they were strung out in a line so that their curses overlapped, blanketing the ground so that there would be no escape even hiding in a basement. The King had no human subjects left in a strip of country five miles wide stretching from Marboll to the easternmost edge of his Kingdom.

There were carriages waiting for them by the gates. Leothan and Amberley climbed into the leading coach and it set off immediately without waiting for a command from the passengers. Around them, the streets were quiet and empty. The only sounds were the cries of birds and the howling of the wind among the rooftops. Here and there, the streets were blocked by rubble where Carrow artillery had demolished a building or left a crater in the road itself. Damage that would now never be repaired. Even the Electric Messiah, the machine the scientists had been trying to build, had failed to materialise. The scientists would have been taken to the Tower by now, at his orders. I should have let them stay, he thought. Let them keep working right up until the end. What difference did it make whether they died in the Tower or in their laboratory? If they'd been left to keep on working, there was always the chance that they might have gotten the damned thing to work at the last moment. Now, even that hope was gone.

So, it’s the end, he thought, but at least we will end with dignity. People will remember us for that, and there will be people to remember. Maybe thrown back to a life of nomadic hunter gatherers, maybe kept in cages like farm animals, but some people would survive because the Radiants needed humans to adopt, and those people would remember! If Helberion ends up nothing more than a story told to adopted animals, he thought, then let’s make sure it’s a good one.

It was only a five minute carriage ride to the Tower. It occupied the centre of the city and every main road converged on it, including Liberty Avenue, the wide boulevard beside which Paisley Palace and the ministry building stood, along with all the other great buildings of government such as the treasury and the courthouse. These buildings were important, but they sat to the side, pushed away from the centre of the city by the Tower, emphasising its overwhelming pre-eminence in the city's history and culture. If not for the Tower there would be no Marboll, and there very possibly wouldn’t be a Helberion either, for it had been the presence of the Tower, offering, as it did, a defensible place of refuge during the barbarian invasions, that had allowed civilisation to take root and flourish in this part of the world. If Ihvon Ironhand, the local warlord of the time, had not ordered its construction, much larger and more powerful than it had needed to be at the time as a tribute to his famous vanity, many historians argued that the lands between Carrow and Ultumbria would still be in a state of a lawless anarchy today, as the lands further east still were. These days, of course, the Tower was little more than a tourist attraction, but the walls were still just as strong as they'd ever been, even if the deep ditch that had once surrounded it had long since filled with water, forming a wide, tranquil moat.

The three carriages clattered across the drawbridge together into the courtyard, which was bounded by the first of the three concentric walls, the last to be added as the castle had grown in size and importance. The walls were useless against enemies that could float on the wind above them, of course, and so the carriages went on without slowing, following the road halfway around the circumference of the tower grounds to the great gates in the second wall, and then to the gates in the third wall, the highest and strongest wall of all and the first to be built after the Tower itself. Only then did the carriages stop, in front of the original structure built of dark granite that sat like a monolith at the centre of everything, so perfectly constructed that the gaps between individual stones could only be seen with great difficulty so that it gave the impression of having been carved from a single titanic block of stone.

There was a large courtyard of crushed granite in front of it, across which the wheels of the carriages crunched as they came to a stop in front of the inner dyke, a deep, grass covered trench that encircled the Tower itself. The dyke was crossed by a drawbridge that sloped up to the great gates in the first floor, the gates that opened into the tunnel that ran through the fifteen foot thick wall, and as the King and his retinue walked through he looked up into the trapdoors in the ceiling that would once have dropped all kinds of deadly substances on any invader that somehow managed to get that far. There had been no time to re-arm the deadfalls, unfortunately. Leothan would have liked nothing better than to drop burning coals on the Radiants’ hydrogen filled flotation sacks.

The earthquake that had shaken the city had had virtually no impact on the structure, the King had been told. It looked solid enough to survive the end of the world itself! It gave an overwhelming impression of safety and security as the King and his retinue walked in through the north doors. Once those great doors of iron strapped oak were closed, it was impossible to imagine that there was anything in the world that could threaten those inside. The last of the army and the last remaining folk of the city certainly seemed calm and reassured as they crowded the halls and corridors of cold, perspiring stone, but Leothan had to keep reminding himself of the truth, that the creatures that were almost upon them had shown themselves capable of tearing through the strongest doors with ease. Over the centuries, thick wood had shown itself to be better at resisting the weapons of human attackers than any other material, even solid steel, but it would take steel doors like the doors of a bank vault to keep out the Radiants, and no-one had ever guessed that such a thing would be necessary.

Inside the doors, up against the walls, stood two ballistae, ready to be moved into place the moment the last people were in. Every other entrance was already covered by the new weapons, with soldiers standing ready to man them and defend them with guns and swords. Even though the doors were not expected to stop the Radiants, they were closed and bolted anyway, just for the little extra time it would buy them. Only the north doors still stood open as they waited for the soldiers who had been guarding the Carrow prisoners. The Carrow prisoners themselves would probably escape from the kickball stadium before long, much good it would do them. If they were expecting the Radiants to spare them, Leothan thought they were going to be disappointed.

“Look!” said one of Darnell's runners, pointing to the eastern skyline. Everyone followed his finger and saw a line of tiny points of light strung out in a line, rising slowly into sight above the inner wall. Leothan felt a cold chill shooting down his spine. He’d given many orders during the course of the war, sent many good people to their deaths while sitting sagely in his palace, but now he was on the front line, facing personal danger, even the likelihood of death, for the first time. To actually see the enemy approaching... Was it always like this for his soldiers as battle approached? The Brigadier had described many battles during the years of their friendship. He’d described the chaos and confusion of battle, the bloodlust that came over a soldier when the fighting started, the sick horror of the aftermath of battle as they did a head count to see who was still alive, but he’d never described anything like this. The awful anticipation of an unavoidable battle that they couldn't possibly win, a nausea in the pit of his stomach as if he might be about to throw up in front of all his subjects. The Brigadier had lost battles, he knew. All military commanders did from time to time, no matter how brilliant they were. There were battles he’d known he was going to lose before they'd even begun, but he’d never described feeling the way the King did now. Perhaps he just lacked the imagination, he thought. He was a practical man who dealt with the problems facing him and didn't waste time with introspection. If he’d been there now, he would be running options and strategies through his head, not quivering with fear. I have to be the same, he told himself. He looked around, saw the others looking at him, waiting for his orders.

“We've got time yet,” he said. “We'll wait.” Amberley nodded, and they all stared at the gate in the inner wall, thirty yards away on the other side of the central courtyard, willing the soldiers to come running through, sprinting for the safety of the Tower. “We should at least get the ballistae into position,” said Captain Machett, the man in charge of the Tower garrison. “Save some time later.” Amberley nodded and gave the order. The ballista crews began pushing the great wooden crossbows into the middle of the hall, facing the doors, ten yards in front of them. They were scratching the tiled floor, the King noted, feeling a slightly hysterical laughter trying to rise up inside him. The tiles that had been laid on the original stone surface a century earlier, when advances in military technology had already made the Tower redundant as a defensive structure and Bengoll Strake, following the secession of eastern Helberion from Carrow under his leadership, had had the building redecorated to serve as his palace.

The Chamberlain will be furious! thought the King. Who was the Tower's Chamberlain these days? It had used to be old Ben Herrick, but that had been in his father's day. He remembered him from when King Goswen, his father, had brought him here during a ceremonial visit, but he’d been old then. Chances were that someone else had the job now. He should really know, he knew. Darnell would know, of course. He briefly thought about asking him...

Pay attention to the matter at hand! he chided himself. His mind was shying away from the horror and awfulness of the situation, looking for an escape in mundanities, but the people around him deserved his full attention. He looked back up at the Radiants. They were closer now, visibly growing larger as they approached. They would be over the outer districts of the city by now, casting curse after curse at the buildings even though there should be nobody left in them. Nobody except the occasional stubborn family either refusing to accept the reality of the situation or so afraid of change that they would rather die in their own homes than live the rest of their lives as penniless refugees. The King had sent his men from door to door finding whoever they could and sending them out of the city by force, but they were bound to have missed a few. Would they be running ahead of the Radiants, now that they could actually see them coming? Would they sudden appear through the door in the inner wall, terrified and desperate, holding half raised animals in their arms along with the occasional prized possession?

Nobody appeared. Neither civilians nor soldiers, and the Radiants drew closer still. “How close do you have to be before they can curse you?” asked Machett. “Are the ballistae too close to the door?”

“Pull them back five yards,” said Amberley. The Captain nodded gratefully, and soon there were more scratches on the floor as the great machines were pulled back, their steel rimmed wheels totally unsuitable for the finely crafted floor of one of the city’s greatest tourist attractions.

“We should close the doors, Sire,” said Field Marshall Amberley.

“Not yet.”

“Sire...”

“I said not yet! There's still time.”

“The stadium’s not that far away, they've had plenty of time to get here if they were coming. Something must have happened. Maybe the Carrowmen overpowered them... Sire, if it’s armed Carrowmen who come pouring through that gate...”

At that moment, though, they heard the unmistakable sound of running men approaching. The Field Marshall's suggestion made everyone tense up and the soldiers raised their weapons, but it was their own men, arriving at last. Running as though all the demons of hell were after them. Leothan looked up. The Radiants were almost upon them, pushed forward by a howling gale that came in through the open gate, tugging at their clothes and making the tapestries flap against the walls. “Come on!” he muttered under his breath as the soldiers ran, their arms pumping and their faces contorted into masks of desperation. “Pick your bloody feet up!”

The leading soldier, an officer, paused and ushered for his men to go ahead of him. “Don’t stop, you idiot!” cried someone, Leothan didn't know who. “They're already going as fast as they can!” The officer remained where he was, though, waving his men past one at a time, visibly counting them, and only when the last man had passed him did he finally start running again, going flat out in an effort to reach the temporary safety of the Tower. The Radiants were close now, though. They were above the outer wall, crossing the outer courtyard, close enough that their piping could be heard, the utterings of so many creatures mingling together to form a single pure note like a bow drawn slowly across the strings of a violin. A sound that heralded the end of human freedom and independence.

The first men came rushing through the doors, continuing to run as they passed the two ballistae and the men standing beside them until they hit the far wall, cushioning the impact with their spread hands. More men came through, then more. Twenty, thirty, until the hall was crowded. Captain Machett detailed members of the Tower garrison to take them deeper inside the Tower, to where the rest of the refugees were waiting, but the soldiers hesitated, anxious to see if their fellows behind them made it.

The last of the enlisted men had a limp, they saw. An injury gained in battle, they presumed. The officer took him by the arm and half carried him towards the Tower, still twenty yards away. Some members of the Tower garrison, looking splendid in their ceremonial uniforms, started forward to meet them half way and help them in, but Machett yelled at them to stay where they were. They stared at him in disbelief, but obeyed and stayed where they were, watching as anxiously as the rest. “Your Majesty,” said Machett, “those doors are big and heavy, it takes time to move them. We should begin shutting them now.”

“No! They're almost here!”

“We can leave them open a crack, a big enough gap for them to squeeze through. If we don’t, we won't get them closed before the Radiants get here!”

“Begging your pardon, Sire, but he’s right,” added a member of the Tower garrison. “Takes us a good long time to get ‘em closed usually. Takes four of us to do it too.”

The King stared at him, then nodded reluctantly and four of the brightly uniformed men ran forward, two to each door. They heaved with their full strength to get the massive wooden doors moving and had to keep pushing as they turned with glacial slowness. More men ran forward to help them and, seeing it, Leothan feared he’d made a mistake leaving it for so long. Behind him, the ballistae crews loaded bolts into their weapons and stuffed the ‘eye of a needle’ hole with oil soaked rags. The crews then began winching the launching plate back, the mechanism clacking as the ratchet stop slipped from one tooth in the winching cog to the next. It took them nearly a full minute to complete the operation, plenty of time, once the door had been breached, for a Radiant to push its way in and slaughter the crews before they could launch another bolt. They might kill one or two Radiants before being overrun, but that was the best they could hope for. A numbing sense of despair began to settle over the King.

“Your Majesty,” said Darnell, “You must go deeper into the Tower. It's not safe here.”

“Nowhere is safe, Phil, but if we're all going to die, I want to see a Radiant burn first.”

“You have to survive as long as possible! The bulk of what’s left of the army is here, in the Tower. They'll sell their lives defending you...”

“Is that what you want for me, Phil? To stand there and watch while hundreds of good men are butchered defending me? No! I'm staying here!” He drew his sword, a ceremonial weapon decorated with gold and precious jewels. It had never intended to actually be used in combat, but it had a core of steel and had a sharp edge. It would bite through Radiant flesh as well as any normal sword. “My wife and children are below?” he asked.

“Yes, Sire, and no doubt wishing you were with them.”

“They'll understand. My place is here, with my men...” A disturbance at the doors attracted his attention. The left hand door had been closed, the inch thick steel bolts being shot top and bottom, while the other was almost closed, with a gap of just eighteen inches or so left. Through that gap, Leothan saw the last two men struggling onward, the officer half carrying the injured man, but there was a Radiant right behind them, its piping rising to a higher tone as it prepared to cast a curse. “I have a shot!” cried the Sergeant in charge of one of the Ballista crews.

“Take it!” shouted back Captain Machett. The Sergeant ordered one of his men to light the bolt with a smouldering taper. It burst into flames, the Sergeant pulled the trigger and the bolt flew, through the gap in the door, hitting the Radiant squarely in its buoyancy sacks. There was a gout of fire as the creature burst into flames and everyone in the hallway cheered with savage delight. A moment later the two men squeezed in through the gap between the doors and the Tower soldiers pushed it the rest of the way closed. Two men ran forward with a heavy wooden bar that they fitted into supports in the door while another man threw more bolts into the floor and ceiling. Almost immediately after, the doors began to thump as blows were rained upon it from outside, and Leothan knew that the same thing would be happening at the Tower's other entrances, especially the ones opening onto the roof that had never been designed to withstand an assault. “How long until they break through?” he asked the room at large.

“Probably not long,” someone said, he didn't see who. “Doesn't matter really. We're not going anywhere.”

The words hung in the air like the stench of a rotting corpse, and nobody had an answer for them as the hammering on the doors continued.

☆☆☆

“Have you finished yet?” asked Andrea McCrea without taking her eyes from the pump that would drive the alternator's water cooling system. A bullet had hit the live steam inlet and the whole components had had to be replaced. She tightened the locking bolt with a spanner, grunting as she put all her strength into it. A leak of live steam would be bad to anyone who happened to be standing nearby.

“Just about,” replied Shanks, winding the last few turns of rubber insulated copper wire onto the ceramic spool. His hands stung with a dozen tiny cuts and abrasions where the wire had cut into his skin, and the knife wound throbbed with every tiny movement, but he persevered nonetheless, keeping the wire tight as he completed the last few turns. He applied small blobs of glue to keep the ends in place, applying wooden clamps to hold them still while they dried. They would be using the coil while the glue was still wet, though, so he took great care while attaching it to the great apparatus that occupied most of the work bench. One contact came loose while he was doing so, and he pushed it back into place against the soggy patch of wet glue, adjusting the position of the clamp to hold it. “That's it, I think. What next?”

“Reconnect the secondary coils, then get the battery ready,” said Andrea as she applied a smouldering taper to the waxy fuel of the steam pump. A flame leapt up from the fuel pellet and began warming the water in the tank that sat above it. “I'll get this thing going, then adjust the spark gap.” Shanks nodded and began searching out the loose lengths of wire that connected the various parts of the apparatus. “You know, I get the feeling that this thing is way more complicated than it needs to be. Once we figure out how it does what we hope it'll do, I think we’ll be able to make a much smaller, more compact design.”

“Let’s just get it working first,” replied Andrea. “It doesn’t matter how ugly it is. We can pretty it up later.” Shanks nodded and concentrated on his work, tightening the screws that held each wire in place. Then his attention was diverted by a glow that shone down from one of the small windows high up near the ceiling. He looked up and saw the dangling tentacles of a Radiant just on the other side of the glass. “We've got company!” he said.

Andrea looked up, and made a visible effort to remain calm. “It’s okay,” she said. “There's no way it can know we're in here.”

“The lights are on!” hissed Shanks, trying to keep his voice low in case it could hear him. “It can see the light shining out through the window!”

“Everyone ran for the Tower in a hurry,” replied Andrea, also speaking in a low voice. There had been an edge of panic in his voice that worried her and she tried to sound reassuring. “It'll just think someone left the lights on before leaving.”

“What if it decides to investigate? Just to make sure?”

“Just keep working!”

“Can it curse you from that distance?”

Andrea glanced up. The window was very high, but their work bench was standing against the wall and there was nothing on the other side but a wide city street. Would a brick wall block the power of the curse? Even if it did, how much of a barrier would a simple brick wall be to the brute, physical strength of a Radant? “No,” she said, as if the very word might have the power to protect them. “We're perfectly safe in here. Keep working!”

Shanks glanced up at her. Her hair was a tangled mess where she'd pushed it up out of her eyes and tied it up with a length of hairy string. Her face was streaked with grease and soot and her lab coat was torn where she'd caught it on a nail someone had hammered into the bench for some reason. Her breath was coming in sharp little gasps as she fought against the fear that threatened to overwhelm her, but her eyes were bright and her face was flushed with determination. Shanks had been on the brink of running, driven by fear to find some small, dark hole to hide in until the danger had passed, but now he felt his heart glowing with admiration for the woman. Gradually the panic subsided and he forced his breathing to slow to a steady rhythm. “Right,” he said. “Perfectly safe...”

There came the sound of breaking glass and the tinkling as the remains of the window fell to the floor in a silver shower. Shanks bowed his head and hunched his shoulders instinctively, even though their work table was several yards to one side. Then he looked up and saw tentacles reaching in through the hole where the window had been. He cried out in terror, frozen to the spot, but they couldn’t reach him. The window was too high, and too small for the creature to fit its body through. The creature soon realised this, though, and began tearing at the edges of the hole, tearing bricks out and dropping them to the ground, a dozen yards away from where they were standing.

“Keep working!” shouted Andrea, grabbing a pair of graphite contacts from the box at her feet. She started connecting wires to them, working with desperate speed, then attached them to the scaffold poles which held the apparatus together. While she was doing that, another Radiant appeared at another window and began tearing its way through it.

Shanks picked up a jar of acid and tried to pour it into the outer chamber of the battery, but his hands were shaking so much that most of it spilled onto the wooden bench and the tiled floor, where it smoked as it ate away at it. Some landed on his feet and he gave a yelp as he shook the potent yellow liquid off before it could burn its way through to his flesh. The glass was wet with acid now and he had to wrap a cloth around it before he could pick it up again. He felt it burning its way through the cloth as he poured the liquid, as slowly and carefully as he could while masonry fell around him and the air was filled with the sound of piping. He gave silent thanks that neither of the windows was above the apparatus, or it would have been wrecked by now.

He threw the cloth aside the moment he was done with it, then wiped his hands on his lab coat. Some acid had gotten through to his skin and it burned a little, but not seriously. He picked up another bottle of chemical to fill the inner chamber of the battery, then inserted a new pair of electrodes. The battery was now ready to deliver current.

“All ready!” He yelled. Andrea nodded as she finished tightening screws, casting her eyes across the apparatus to make sure they hadn't made a mistake in their haste. The water in the steam pump was still heating up, but it would be a while before the apparatus would be hot enough to need cooling. “Turn it on!” she yelled.

Shanks reached for the switch that would turn the machine on, knowing, even as he did so, that it wouldn't work. Why would it? None of the others had. He was kidding himself if he thought that adding a tuning circuit would make a difference! Do it anyway, he thought, though. Why not? If they were going to die anyway, why not give it one more shot anyway, just in case? If there was just one chance in a million that it might actually work...

He’d actually laid his hand on the switch and was about to throw it when there was a thunderous crash as part of the wall collapsed. He staggered back in terror as clouds of dust filled the room and suddenly there were fat, luminous tentacles reaching for him. The bulk of the creature’s body filled the hole in the wall, he saw eyes staring at him. Its piping rose in pitch as it prepared to cast a curse and Andrea turned to run, sobbing in terror, all her previous strength and courage vanishing...

She tripped on a piece of masonry and fell, cutting her hands on broken glass. She scrambled to climb back to her feet, smearing blood on the tiles, but the Radiant was already casting its curse. Shanks could only stare in horror as her body writhed and contorted as if she were in agony, but the torment was all in her mind, the terrible knowledge of what was about to happen to her. She stared back at Shanks as if begging him to help her, but then she literally shrank inside her clothes as her humanity was torn away. Shanks had a last glimpse of her head narrowing and elongating, her braincase shrinking, before it was hidden by the folds of her lab coat. A moment later she vanished from view altogether, while the animal she'd been reduced to struggled to free itself from the pile of clothing it was tangled up in.

Shanks stared in horror and disbelief as the small dog extricate itself and ran from the room, howling in terror even though it no longer had the intellectual capacity to know what it was afraid of. All it knew was that something terrible had been done to it, something that it was no longer capable of understanding. Then, though, the sound of falling masonry jerked the scientist back to his own dire situation. The Radiant was struggling to fight its way into the room. The hole it had made was almost big enough, but it couldn’t quite fit its body through. It was staring at him with all the eyes on that side of its body, and the tone of its piping told him that it had just cast another curse, one that had no more effect on him than the one before. He saw its eyes widening in surprise, then narrow in anger.

“Yes!” he shouted. “You know what I am now, don't you? You destroyed our civilisation, drove us to the brink of extinction, but we're not gone yet! One day, one of us will get you! All of you!” He looked back at the apparatus. Complete now, just waiting to be turned on. “Who knows! Maybe it’ll be me!” It was the only thing left for him to do. Turn it on and pray to Those Above that this time they'd gotten it right. Beside him, the Radiant made one final effort, and this time it burst through into the room with a shower of dust and masonry. It lashed out with its tentacles, and Shanks leapt forward for the switch...