The finger raised slowly from the stud. His feet lifted as his body moved fitfully back, back, back—
"Greg—help me, Greg—"
Her eyes stopped him. They tumbled into terrible clarity. She whispered starkly.
"Greg—help me—kill it, Greg. For me—Kill it."
He felt his lips part in a great and terrible cry of torture. His shoulders began to twitch slightly. His arms and fingers took up the jerky rhythm. Horror and a violent crimson flood of unfamiliar emotions mushroomed like a volcano of madness. Something began crumbling away.
He lurched forward. He felt the heat-blaster heaving, throwing out its deadly load. The gun had weight and power in his hand as he crouched lower and moved in.
The power load swathed in long slicing arcs. Steam and sickening stench fell around him. He moved in. He stumbled forward kicking out to right and left at the quivering slices of stuff that were falling around him.
Destruction. Kill. Death. This was all three, and in a giant, almost inconceivable quantity.
Her face through the steaming cloud. Her throat moving as she swallowed. Brightness, the brightness of disbelief and impossibility coming into her eyes.
He kept moving in until the monstrous mutated gray thing was thoroughly dead. Until every separate tendril and patch was blasted to smoke. Then he lifted her broken body in his arms.