"Sit down," she said suddenly. He stared. "No, you must! They want you to sit down."
"I didn't hear—" he began, then shrugged. He sat down.
"Now lie stretched out and open your face mask."
"Here? Listen—Ann—Miss Mei-Ling, whatever you said your name was! Don't you feel the heat? If I crack my mask—"
"But you must." She spoke very confidently. "It is s'in fo—-what do you call it—telepathy, I think. But I can hear them. They want you to open your mask. No, it won't kill you. They understand what they are doing."
She hesitated, then said, with less assurance, "They need us, McCray. There is something ... I am not sure, but something bad. They need help, and think you can give it to them. So open your helmet as they wish, please."
McCray closed his eyes and grimaced; but there was no help for it, he had no better ideas. And anyway, he thought, he could close it again quickly enough if these things had guessed wrong.
The creatures moved purposefully toward McCray, and he found himself the prisoner of a dozen unattached arms. Surprised, he struggled, but helplessly; no, he would not be able to close the plate again!... But the heat was no worse. Somehow they were shielding him.
A tiny member, like one of the unattached arms but much smaller, writhed through the air toward him, hesitated over his eyes and released something tinier still, something so small and so close that McCray could not focus his eyes upon it. It moved deliberately toward his face.
The woman was saying, as if to herself, "The thing they fear is—far away, but—oh, no! My God!"