Jerry shot his tesselated pads forward, trying to push and pummel the thing away, but the few blows that landed rebounded from that shiny body like pith-balls bouncing from an electrostatic plate.
Then the jellyfish grappled with, and held onto, one of Jerry's arms, and began calmly to tuck it into its digestive cavity. If the pad had been only lightly tactile before, it became supersensitive now, as the creature's digestive juices began to erode it into its component chemicals.
Jerry felt as if he'd rammed his hand into an open wood fire. He tried to scream; nothing emerged between his jaws except that futile tongue-stump. The jellyfish, climbing in a leisurely fashion down the limb it was ingesting, flicked out a tentacle and began doing something horrible to Jerry's upper right eye. It sent waves of pain into his mind, and almost blotted out all thought, except for a maniac notion that urged Jerry to laugh at the creature's ambition. For its highly maneuverable tentacle-tip was diligently attempting to unscrew the eye.
Jerry's right arm was gone. Tentacles flipped and floundered all about his head-section. The digestive cavity of the jellyfish was widening, trying to take in Jerry's head at a single swallow. He saw, with the five usable eyes remaining, a crystally concavity, the sides glinting with digestive fluid tinted beautiful emerald by the foliage out beyond its semi-transparent body. Then the thing closed over his head, and the last of the eyes began to sear and sting.
Jerry's mind cried out in anguish ... and lightning flashed across his consciousness. White, silent lightning.
Pain ceased.
The time of Contact had passed.
III
Captain Daniel Peters paced agitatedly back and forth before the couch holding that still figure in its bulky helmet. The last glow of the sunset had vanished behind the trees around the clearing minutes before. Peters took three puffs from a just-ignited cigarette, then crushed the white cylinder under his heel.