Ben brushed away the dust from his face-plate, turned up his helmet's oxygen valve. Then he knelt by the fallen creature.
A new fear came to Ben Curtis—a fear almost as great as that of being caught in Simon's crushing grip. It was the fear that he had killed again.
But even in the near-darkness, he could distinguish the labored rise and fall of the massive chest.
Thank God, he thought.
From the direction of Jacob's ship, a flash of light caught his eye. The black shapes of helmeted men were becoming larger, nearer.
Ben tensed. The spacemen couldn't have heard sounds of the struggle, but they might have noticed movement.
Puffing, Ben plunged into the darkness to his left, slowing only long enough to consult the dial of his compass.
"Sixty-eight degrees," he breathed.
The compass dial was now his only companion and his only hope. It was the one bit of reality in a world of black, screaming nightmare.