And then something emerged into the moonlight out of the crevice.
Ward, entomologist though he was, found it hard to realize that he was looking at a kind of Corynocoris Distinctus almost a third as large as a human body. He fell back before it, crawling, dragging himself like a groveling dog. Hideous, unworldly creature, with six horny legs, a pair of popping-out eyes, two shining ocelli which looked straight into the rapidly frosting air, and a long, ferocious, quivering beak partly hidden behind one of the forelegs. The furry, spiny horror jumped at him. A sickening stench enveloped him as the body covered him, the legs pinning him in as in a cage.
Ward felt something insane creeping into his consciousness. He felt his rationality, such as remained, leaking out through his tortured eyes like blood. He prayed for a quick death, now that Red had the cage and would release the mercenaries. What did it matter about him? He was washed up anyway, and—
The titan-haired pseudo-woman with her Dianaesque body and her dead eyes, was on her feet and stood familiarly beside the distorted crab-like Corynocoris. Very difficult to believe that they might be from the same stalk. But Ward’s senses were dulled now. He lay helplessly waiting. He had lost much blood and had been drained of energy. Her form shifted hazily like a mirage. She must be desperate, filled with burning hatred of him, burning white-hot, and her emotionless, stolid voice was more horrible because of that.
“You did not bring the cage from the ship. But you know where it is, and other information which we demand.” A statement. “You must come with me to the Cavern of the Queen.”
She said nothing more, only made a gesture and the Corynocoris dragged him away. Down into the chasm, down further than Ward dared think about, and through corridors and labyrinthine passages that glowed with a strange phosphorescent effulgence. And reeked with some other vague, intangible quality of alienness that filled Ward’s fevered brain with horror.
Mists cleared, thickened, swirled, died and solidified; consciousness returned in degrees of awareness, stirred with nightmare. And, some time later, he heard the toneless voice of the sexless beauty say simply:
“Our Queen. Your conqueror.”
He shook foggy poisonous vapor from his head and sat up. He was in a gigantic cavern of ominous, crushing size, a roughly arching height that disappeared into steamy vapor. Stalactites and stalagmites barred the openings of numerous side tunnels like monstrous teeth in gaping mouths.