He did not regret having taken the gamble. It was better to be free and pursued than imprisoned with a gigantic insect in total darkness. The memory made his flesh crawl. It had never completely stopped crawling, but even a limited freedom of movement, a freedom that could end at any moment, was better than the feeling that you were hideously trapped and had no chance of keeping terror at arm's length. There was no chance at all if you waited in blind panic with the deadliness drawing closer, relentlessly closing in.
Any action was better than the paralysis of inertia, the helplessness which panic could bring about. Any action. He must keep remembering that. Must force himself to remember, keep all of his thoughts centered on the one aspect of the struggle that was vital when survival became the sole prize to be won, the only issue immediately at stake.
He looked at Janice and nodded, sensing the need for continued haste. They headed straight for the nearest building, with no exchange of words now, for they were both too sharply aware of the danger to experience a need to talk further about it or even to pause for breath.
TEN
It was hard for Loring to realize that they had reached the building so fast, harder still to accept the fact that they were almost inside of it. The high portals arched above them, glimmering in the radiance, and their shadows were flickering on both sides of the entrance-way before he remembered that he had at first decided it would be wiser to bypass the structure—to circle around it and keep on fleeing.
Fortunately he had looked back and changed his decision without conscious deliberation, so instinctively that the wisdom of it did not dawn on him until he was less than forty feet from the base of the building. The quick, backward glance had shown him the pursuing insect clearly, etched sharply against the glow, and its terrifying nearness had made him change his mind almost automatically, with a nightmarelike absence of any clear-cut reasoning process.
Only now did he realize that the human mind cannot think or will anything, dreaming or awake, in a completely purposeless way. And he had certainly not been dreaming. The creature was so near, so close on their heels, that they could not hope to outdistance it by running.
The building, then, was their only refuge. Into an imprisoning darkness again, but darkness was better than a hopeless attempt to escape pursuit in the open.
Darkness? How could they be sure? This building might be lighted, as bright within as without. And what could be worse, if you were trapped, with all escape cut off, than a blinding burst of illumination?
It could be far worse than any darkness. You staggered and fell, and the light burned through your eyelids into your brain, no matter how tight you tried to shut your eyes.