Gregson gaped. The Frenchman was ... wavering. It was the only way to describe it. He seemed to be blurring and shifting mistily, but only for an instant.
An instant was long enough. Gregson had his gun out and pumped three shots into Lasseux's body. The Frenchman looked incredulously at him a moment, then crumpled.
Gregson took four steps back and let the gun drop from his nerveless fingers. "It was a trick," he said in a half-whisper. "He killed the Russian and made up the story about him—but he couldn't control his own wavering! Lucky thing I got him first, wasn't it?" He turned to Beveridge for confirmation, but the Englishman was gazing at him sternly, coldly, almost angrily.
"He was wavering, wasn't he?" Gregson asked. "You saw it too—that sort of blurring?" The American knotted his hands tensely. "Well, now the alien's dead—unless it's taken a new host. You don't think that's possible, do you, Beveridge? I mean, if you shoot the body it's in, can it hop to the next person like that? Do you think...."
"Yes," said the Englishman. "I think so."
He was wavering.
But he held the gun.
Gregson yelled once and charged madly toward Beveridge. The bullet caught him in mid-run and sent him spinning back toward the crumpled corpse of Lasseux. Coldly, Beveridge fired twice more, then stopped wavering.
Ten minutes later, the rain of bombs began to shower down on Earth.