Desperately, he tried to move faster ... faster....
The face rushed in. He screamed aloud.
Then he was falling. Head over heels, he pitched down into depths at once black as night and shining white and shimmering with weird iridescence.
The third monster rose out of the mists beneath him.
It was a thing of horror beyond the telling, with a body Boone sensed more than he saw.
But from that body rose a long and sinuously slender eyestalk, surmounted with a huge human eye.
It was the eye that held Boone; for as he stared into it in mute, numb fascination, he knew that it would draw him ever closer till at last the slime-mass that was the body could swirl out and suck him in.
A black wave of despair engulfed him. Of a sudden his palms, his whole body, were drenched with sweat. The feeling that he was falling faded. Vaguely, he became aware of roughnesses beneath him. A breeze washed over him and he chilled.
Slowly, painfully, he opened his eyes ... stared up into the murk of night.
But it was a night that was already dying. Far off to one side, a dim glow marked the coming of the day.