r?"

"Scoop?" The Zid's avid cries discouraged curiosity before it was well
born. "We'd never make it. We couldn't possibly outrun that beast."

The Zid crashed against the door and drove it inches ajar, driving back
their barricade. One taloned paw slid in and slashed viciously at
random. Jeff ducked and strained his weight against the bunk,
momentarily pinning the Zid's threshing forelimb.

Chafi Three chose that moment to reappear, nearly causing Jeff to let go
the bunk and admit the Zid.

"Your female's suggestion is right," the Ciriimian croaked. "The Zid
does not swim. Four and I are arranging escape on that premise."

The Zid's talons ripped through the door, leaving parallel rows of
splintered breaks. Both slanted red eyes glared in briefly.

"Then you'd damn well better hurry," Jeff panted. The door, he
estimated, might--or might not--hold for two minutes more.

The Ciriimian vanished. There was a slithering sound in the distance
that sounded like a mountain in motion, and with it a stertorous
grunting that all but drowned out the Zid's cries. Something nudged the
cottage with a force that all but knocked it flat.

"_My Scoop!_" Jennifer exclaimed. She let go the barricade and ran to
the window to throw open the storm shutters. "Never mind the door. This
way, quick!"

* * * * *

She scrambled to the window sill and jumped. Numbly, Jeff saw her
suspended there, feet only inches below the sill, apparently on empty
air. Then the door sagged again under the Zid's lungings and he left the
bunk to follow Jennifer.

He landed on something tough and warm and slippery, a monstrous tail
fluke that stretched down the beach to merge into a flat purplish
acreage of back, forested with endless rows of fins and spines and
enigmatic tendrils. The Scoop, he saw, and only half believed it, had
wallowed into the shallows alongside his dock. It had reversed its
unbelievable length to keep the head submerged, and at the same time had
backed out of the water until its leviathan tail spanned the hundred-odd
yards of sloping beach from surf to cabin.

Just ahead of him, Jennifer caught an erect fin-spine and clung with
both arms. "Hang on! We're going--"

The Scoop contracted itself with a suddenness that yanked them yards
from the cottage and all but dislodged Jeff. Beyond the surf, the
shallows boiled whitely where the Scoop fought for traction to draw its
grounded bulk into the water.