The tribesmen, their first horror a little abated, by sheer reaction from shame of their own terror, exploded into sudden rage.
"There's only two of them—come on!"
And then of a sudden they were all of them running back down the corridors, jostling, crowding, screaming, Price with Arrin beside him, with old Sweetbriar ahead, with Sawyer shouting in hoarse anger. A mob, not an army, a mob urged forward by its own horror.
Around the corner, and into the corridor where the two black shapes came gliding fast. And it was like walking into night and death, into bitter black winds and the stabbing of cruel swords, as the might of alien minds blasted at them.
Tribesmen screamed and fell, clawing at their own heads. The mass behind forced over them, forced the reeling first wave right into the unimaginable shapes.
"Pull them down!"
Price was in the screeching fore-front now and he closed his eyes and struck with his knife at the cloudy darkness of a cowl.
A cold like that of outer space struck through him and he staggered, fainting and falling, and his mind closed on the awful sight of packed men swaying and pulling and striking at the two tall cowled shapes, mobbing them, beating them down.
When Price opened his eyes he was in another corridor and old Sawyer was slapping his face with rough hands.
"Yes," said Sawyer thickly. "They're dead. And a good many men dead with them, and some others that act like their brains are dead."