He spun round, whipping the gun from his pocket, and for more than a second he was paralyzed. For that eternity he saw the thing, deep in the far shadows, dimly illumined by the marginal reflections from the beam of the headlights — something gross and swollen, a dirty grey-white, shaped rather like a great bleached sausage, hideously bloated. Then the darkness swallowed it again, even as his shot smashed the silence into a hunDr.ed tiny echoes.
The girl was struggling to her feet. He snatched at her wrist.
"This way."
He got her into the car and slammed the door. Steel and glass closed round them to give an absurd relief, the weak unreasoning comfort to the naked flesh which men under a bombardment find in cowering behind canvas screens. She slumped against his shoulder, sobbing hysterically.
"Oh, my God. My God!"
"What was it?" he asked.
"It's escaped again. I knew it would. He can't handle it—"
"Has it got loose before?"
"Yes. Once."
He tapped a cigarette on his thumbnail, stroked his lighter. His face was a beaten mask of bronze and granite in the red glow as he Dr.ew the smoke down into the mainsprings of his leaping nerves.