During all this time with the girl, Atwood had been conscious of that weird, gruesome undercurrent of humming which seemed a sinister background to this little world. And now, as momentarily they were silent here in the small rocky recess, abruptly he was aware that the humming had greatly intensified. Ah-li at the same instant noticed it. Terror leaped to her face as her hand gripped his arm.
"That humming—" he murmured.
"Yes. Oh, evidently this is the time for the genes to come out! I thought so; that is why I was out in the tree-tops tonight—to see if any were around."
The genes. On Earth they might remain always as sub-microscopic spores, multiplying in human nerve and brain tissue to cause the ghastly poliomelitus. But here they were merely lurking monsters, seasonally growing into visible things of horror. Things with a voice. Countless billions of them, with their blended tiny voices faintly audible.
The rock recess here was dark. It was like a little cave, with an open, narrow front. Atwood and the girl were seated several feet back from the entrance. And now, as the tiny humming suddenly was increasing, in the grotto entrance close before them, a little spot was visible on the rocks. A spot, like a dot of saffron glow. For that stricken second numbly Atwood stared at it; an inch-long blob of glow, with a tiny solid nucleus.
Only a second or two Atwood and Ah-li sat transfixed with horror. The glow was expanding. A swift expansion—so swift that it was like a saffron balloon being blown up into size tremendous. As though hideous forces of nature, held in check, now abruptly were released. A tentacled thing, big as a football. But before Atwood and the girl could more than struggle to their feet, it was a monstrous saffron thing of horror—a round, glowing, luminous pulpy mass, big as Atwood now. Its bulk blocked the cave-entrance.
"Good God—" Atwood muttered. "We're penned in here!"
There was no chance for them to leap away. In terror Ah-li was clinging to him. The dark narrow confines of the recess were lurid now with the monster's ghastly yellow light. Its hideous voice was a humming throb. For another second it stood blocking the opening, apparently its full size now, with long tentacles weaving like tongues of yellow fire; and a ring of clustered eyes in its center, balefully glowing.
And then, with a rolling lunge, it hurled itself forward!