"I told Marras Cooms about Movaine, and he sent me and a half dozen other boys back up here with riot guns to see what we could do for him. Which was nothin', of course." Baldy gulped again. "We finally cut this end of him off with a beam and took it back down."
"The thing didn't show up while you were here?"
Baldy shuddered and said, "Naw."
"And the technician ... Eltak ... was dead?"
"Sure. Hole in his head you could shove your fist through."
"Somebody," Quillan observed, "ought to drill Rubero for that stupid trick!"
"The Duke did—first thing after we got back to the fourth level."
"So the Hlat's on the loose, and all we really have at the moment are the cubicles ... and Rest Warden Kinmarten. Where's he, by the way?"
"He tried to take off when we got down to Level Four, and somebody cold-cocked him. The doc says he ought to be coming around again pretty soon."
Quillan grunted, shoved the Miam Devil Special into its holster, said, "O.K., you stay here where you can watch the room and those passages and the hall. If you feel the floor start moving under, scream. I'll take a look at the cubicle."