They grinned and went through the door, dropping to the street.
They turned.
It was coming across the square, flowing along on vast black tentacles towering over twenty feet high, with a great torso seemingly sculpted out of living black marble. A head that held ten staring eyes looked down at them. Six arms thrust out of the torso, moving like tentacles, fringed with cilia thick as fingers.
"Lord," whispered Mussdorf. "What is it?"
"Don't know," said Emerson. "Maybe it's friendly—"
"Friendly?" queried Mussdorf harshly. "That doesn't know the meaning of the word! I'm going to let it taste a blast—"
His hand dove for the sun-blaster in his holster; yanked it free and upward, firing brilliant yellow jets as he jerked the trigger.
"Look out!" yelled Emerson.
The thing twisted sideways with an eerie grace, dodging the amber beams of solar power that sizzled past its bulbous head. As it moved, its tentacled arms and legs slithered out with unthinkable rapidity, fell and wrapped around Mussdorf.
The big Earthman was lifted high into the air, squeezed until his lungs nearly collapsed. He hung limp in a gigantic tentacle as Emerson ran to one side, trying for a shot without hitting Mussdorf. But the thing was diabolically clever. It held Mussdorf aloft, between itself and Emerson, while its other arms stabbed out at Gunn and Nichols, catching them up and shaking them as a terrier shakes a rat.