"Do you feel all right now?"
"I guess so. I can get up now. I do have to get up, don't I?"
"I think you'd better."
After she left I did some thinking. The sparkling haze had been outside the ship and I'd seen a water buffalo through the port. Murdo had seen a boa-constrictor. Then the haze penetrated the hull and got inside the ship. And Jane had seen a tiger in the companionway.
Were they phantoms? Was Jane's tiger a tiger of the mind? Murdo swore his snake had been real and my buffalo left a mark on the port. I sat there trying to think. With the sparkling fog drifting around me. It seemed to be trying to tell me something.
Things grow worse. Today, at mess, Murdo was holding forth about a Plutonian ice bear he'd killed. I think he was trying to cover the gloom that has settled over us. Anyhow, he'd just got to the point where the bear was charging down on him when we heard the roar of thunder from outside. Maybe I'd better repeat that for the record. We heard a roaring through the walls of the space ship. In the void. Nothing goes through the walls of a space ship in the void but we all heard it and jumped to the port. And we all saw it.
An ice bear as big as ten of the largest that ever lived in the Plutonian ice flows. A huge ravening beast that rushed through the void at the ship and tried to tear the port out of its metal seat with teeth as big as the height of a man.
The women fell back, screaming. Keebler, in his usual stupor stared blankly as though not realizing what was going on. Kelvey looked to Murdo for guidance. When none came he crouched behind a chair.
Murdo fell back slowly, step by step as though his eyes were fastened to the quartz and it was hard to pull away. I don't remember what I did. Murdo was saying "My God—my God—my God," as though chanting a ritual. He tore his eyes from the sight and looked at me.
"You wanted big game, buster," I croaked. "There it is."