"I can't help that." Boone shoved the other away. "You go ahead...."
The ensign threw him one last taut, frustrated glance, then wheeled and ran off down the passage towards the carrier lock. A score of steps he ran....
Only then, out of the murk, a primordial horror rose before him—a thing of tentacles and feelers massed about a hideous white skull-face.
It happened too fast for shouts or screaming. The ensign's head jerked back and sidewise. He tried to veer.
Too late. With a sound that came straight from hell, the skull-thing lurched forward. The tentacles engulfed him.
Convulsively, Boone clawed the blaster from the dead hands of the man beside the lift-shaft ... lanced a fire-bolt into the monster's leering face.
Face and monster vanished in a blaze of ear-shattering sound and blue-white flame.
Then the echoes died and Boone was alone again—shaking, retching. Of the ensign, no trace remained.
Numbly, Boone stumbled back into the lift and dropped it fullspeed down the shaft to the tenth level, the very heart of the great sphere-ship.