"I can't tell, sir. He has some sort of gadget in his hands, but he just seems to be squatting there."
"At the door?"
"No. To the left of it, at the wall."
"You have your cameras going?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right. Get everything that happens. Under no circumstances shoot or give the alarm—even if he kills me. Let him go. I don't think that will happen, but if it does, let him go. I think I can talk to him. I don't think there's much danger. I'm going to leave the phone open so you can record everything, and—"
There was a muffled noise from the living room. He heard Captain Greer's gasp as he turned. He could see through the bedroom door to the wall of the living room. A large section of the ferro-concrete wall had sagged away and collapsed, having suddenly lost its tensile strength. On the top of the rubble, frozen for a long instant, stood the Nipe, watching with those four glowing violet eyes.
Mannheim let go the phone and turned to face the monster, and in that instant he realized his mistake.
The Nipe stared at the human being. Was this, at last, a Real Person? It was surprising that the man should be awake. Only a minute before, the instruments had shown him to be in the odd cataleptic state that these creatures lapsed into periodically, similar to, but not identical with, his own rest state. And yet he was now awake and fully dressed. Surely that indicated—