Static electricity discharged in crackling blue sheets as he tore through the grove, hissing against his insulating clothes and stinging his face and hands. Something floated through the dark air, long and supple and dripping slime, grimacing at him with its horrible wet mouth. Another illusion or mirage, he thought somewhere in the back of his mind. They no longer bothered him—in fact, he'd have missed them if they never showed up again—but—Eileen—
The cottage nestled under the tall whispering trees, a peak-roofed stone building in the ancient style that Langdon had thought most appropriate to the enchanted planet. There was little of Terra about it after its century and a half of existence; it was covered with fire-vines over which danced the seeming of little flames; luminous flying creatures nestled against the doorway, and he had never found the cause of the dim sweet singing he could always hear around it.
The door stood ajar, and Eileen was sobbing inside. Langdon came in and found her huddled on a couch before the fireplace, trembling so that it seemed her body must be shaken apart, and crying, crying.
He sat down and put his arms about her and let her cry herself out. Then he remained for a while stroking her hair and saying nothing.
She bit her lip to keep it steady. Her voice was like a small child's, high and toneless and frightened. "It bit," she said.
"It was an illusion," he murmured.
"No. It bit at me. And its eyes were dead. It came out of the floor there, and it was all in rags."
"You had an illusion frighten you," he said. "A psyche-feeder flying nearby caught your increased nervous output, drew on it, and that of course frightened you still more ... they're easy to drive away, Eileen. They don't like certain pulse patterns—you just think at them the way I showed you—"
"It was real," she insisted, quietly, with something of a child's puzzlement that anything should have wanted to hurt her. "It was black, but there were grays and browns and red too, and it was ragged."