"They seem to be—" I stopped communicating.
The Pat had disappeared!
The thing of protoplasm nearest me was moving but I was no longer interested. I remember the Pat had touched the upper extremity of the creature and had vanished, had ceased to be.
The old sickness was back. I was lonely. I wanted the other entity. I could not, did not wish to exist without the Pat.
I darted frantically about the metal shell, here and there, searching, searching. Where was the Pat? I screamed for it. I thought Pat as far away as I could reach, but there was no reaction, no response at all.
In my frenzy, I was back beside the creatures of protoplasm before I realized it, near the one I had not yet examined.
"Perhaps they took her," I thought. It was not logical, but it was a hope. Hope is emotional; I was becoming more emotional than rational.
I touched the larger of the two creatures, experimentally; moved cautiously inside it, searching, searching.
Suddenly I was seized by a great force, an inexorable power that grasped me and wrenched me, tearing me from the point in space I had occupied a moment before. My perception blurred, but I was not frightened. Without the Pat I did not care what happened. I was intensely curious. "So this is how it is," I reasoned in a flash, "to cease to be."
And I ceased to be....