ut knowing why, the Triomed felt his lips pull away from his teeth
in a snarl. He heard a deep, rumbling growling sound in his own throat.
The biped stopped, and the Triomed could smell his sudden fear.

He felt a surge of incomprehensible rage come over him--he crouched
menacingly.

The creature took a step closer. Another. The Triomed tensed.

The creature was within reach, extending the vial. The alien could see
that it was tipped with a sliver of steel. He sprang--

The weapons crashed. The alien felt the thudding impact of projectiles
penetrating the brain case. In a panic he began to extrude from the
pineal gland. If death overcame the host while he had rapport, he, too,
would die. And if he died, Triom would die.

He felt his huge body totter. There was another blast from the weapons
and he sensed the projectile coming--with what seemed to be agonizing
slowness to his quickened senses. It was spinning in the darkness. It
struck the eye, smashed it, moved inward, along the base of the
brain....

The Triomed felt one deep, searing agony that was his alone as the
bullet crushed him. The hot metal acrid touch was the last thing he knew
before death came....

* * * * *

The policemen stood about in a circle, staring down in mixed awe and
relief at the huge body on the roof.

"I've seen him a dozen times in the park," one said. "He always seemed
so--so peaceable." He shook his head. "What in hell do you suppose came
over him?"

The keeper looked up from where he knelt over the deep, still chest,
bloody and riddled with bullets. "It happens like this sometimes," he
said. "You can never tell about gorillas."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Invader, by Alfred Coppel

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