He got to his feet and walked toward the window, as if to look out at the storm. As he passed Tansy's chair he saw that her rippling fingers were creating a strange knot resembling a flower, with seven loops for petals. She stared like a sleepwalker. Then he was at the window, shielding her.
The next lightning flash showed him what he knew he must see. It crouched, facing the window. The head was still blank and crude as an unfinished skull.
In the ensuing surge of blackness, the sphere of alien thoughts expanded with instant swiftness, until it occupied his entire mind.
He glanced behind him. Tansy's hands were still. The strange seven-looped knot was poised between them.
Just as he was turning back, he saw the hands jerk apart and the loops whip in like a seven-fold snare—and hold.
And in that same moment of turning he saw the street brighten like day and a great ribbon of lightning split the tall elm opposite and fork into several streams which streaked across the street toward the window and the stony form upreared against it.
Then—blinding light, and a tingling electrical surge through his whole body.
But in his mind's eye was indelibly traced the incandescent track of the lightning, whose multiple streams, racing toward the upreared stony form, had converged upon it as if drawn together by a seven-fold knot.
The sphere of alien thoughts expanded beyond his skull at a dizzy rate, vanished.