ach, with
the fear making his heart pound rapidly, with the fear making it
impossible for him to think. Fear--for Diane. I love you, Di, he
thought. I love you. I never stopped loving you. We were wrong. We were
crazy wrong. It was like a sargasso, inside of us, an emptiness which
needed filling--but we were wrong. Diane--

* * * * *

He reached the Gormann and plunged inside the airlock, swinging the
outer door shut behind him. He waited. Would the pressure build up
again, as it had built up for Diane? He did not know. He could only
wait--

A red light blinked over his head, on and off, on and off as pressure
was built. Then it stopped.

Fifteen pounds of pressure in the airlock, which meant that the inner
door should open. He ran forward, rammed his shoulder against it,
tumbled through. He entered a narrow companionway and clomped awkwardly
toward the front of the ship, where the radarscope would be located.

He passed a skeleton in the companionway, like the one he had seen in
another ship. For the same reason, he thought. He had time to think
that. And then he saw them.

Diane. On the floor, her spacesuit off her now, a great bruise,
blue-ugly bruise across her temple. Unconscious.

And the thing which hovered over her.

At first he did not know what it was, but he leaped at it. It turned,
snarling. There was air in the ship and he wondered about that. He did
not have time to wonder. The thing was like some monstrous, misshapen
creature, a man--yes, but a man to give you nightmares. Bent and
misshapen, gnarled, twisted like the roots of an ancient tree, with a
wild growth of beard, white beard, heavy across the chest, with bent
limbs powerfully muscled and a gaunt face, like a death's head. And the
eyes--the eyes were wild, staring vacantly, almost glazed as in death.
The eyes stared at him and through him and then he closed with this
thing which had felled Diane.

It had incredible strength. The strength of the insane. It drove Ralph
back across the cabin and Ralph, encumbered by his spacesuit, could only
fight awkwardly. It drove him back and it found something on the floor,
the metal leg of what once had been a chair, and slammed it down across
the faceplate of Ralph's spacesuit.

Ralph staggered, fell to his knees. He had absorbed the blow on the
crown of his skull through the helmet of the suit, and it dazed him. The
thing struck again, and Ralph felt himself falling.