Curtis looked down at the dog-spider-toad, his eyes slowly beginning to focus. The creature wiggled like a seal with a fish in sight, then slid and bumped down the steps, with Curtis following him.
"Clyde!" cried Beryl and rushed toward Curtis.
The outstretched tentacles of the beast stopped her, but at a touch from Curtis they fell away and Beryl was in his arms.
Stern watched the scene sourly and with rage in his heart. Why hadn't Clyde waited another year? Then nothing could have changed things. Now he would lose not only Beryl, but the management of the money that was left, and the marketing of new patents on the machine. Curtis did not approve of speculation, especially when it lost money.
"You've changed, Clyde," Beryl was saying as she hugged him. "What is the matter—do you need a doctor?"
"No, I don't want a doctor, but I have to get home," said Curtis.
Stern felt anger again beating in his brain like heavy surf on a beach. Curtis was sick. The least he could have done was die. Well, maybe he still would. And if he didn't he could be helped to—Stern saw the beast looking at him intently, malevolently. Its face might have looked almost human, now that it was so close, if it had possessed eyebrows and hair. As it was, its nose rose abruptly and flared into two really enormous nostrils, but its mouth looked small and wrinkled, like that of an old grandmother without any teeth.
They turned to the doorway without noticing the absence of the reporters, who had long since run off to telephone and get photographers.
Curtis walked slowly. He would stop for a moment, look about as if expecting something entirely different, and then he would move forward again.
They all got into the car, Curtis and Beryl on the front seat, with Beryl driving, and Stern and the creature in the rear. As Beryl drove, Stern looked savagely at the back of Curtis's head, but he felt the beast staring at him balefully. Could it be a mind reader? That was ridiculous. How could anything that couldn't speak read a person's mind?