Gertrude broke Sam Kapper's body in two.
I can still hear the noise it made. The blood ran dark and sluggish down her arms. It worried me that Kapper's face didn't change expression. The little black box on his belly split with the rest of him.
Something rose out of it. Something no bigger than my forefinger that carried a cold green blaze around it like a ball of St. Elmo's fire.
Gertrude threw Kapper away. I heard the two flopping thuds of him hitting the floor. Some guy was down on his knees close to me. His lips moved. I don't know if he could remember his prayers. Somebody else was vomiting, hard. I wanted to, but my stomach felt frozen.
The cold green fire had a shape inside it. I couldn't make it out clearly, except that it looked horribly human. It put out four thin green filaments. Don't ask me if they were physical things like tentacles, or just beams of light, or maybe thought. I don't know. Whatever they were, they worked.
They connected with the four black, snaky heads of the female cansins. I felt the shock of them connecting with my own nerves. And it was like something had welded those four brutes together into one.
They had been four. Separate, with hard outlines. Now they were one. One single interlocking entity. I guess it was just my being so scared and sick, but I thought I saw their outlines blur a little.
Gow spoke suddenly. His voice was pretty loud, and calm.
"That was it," he said, as though it was the only thing in the world that mattered. "They ain't complete by themselves. Like the zurats back home on Mercury. They got a community brain. No wonder Gertrude was lonesome."