Up on the dais Torkine had fired his last futile little bolt, and now he had flung my projector away. He was still holding Dora. Amazement, futility, then terror was on his face as he gazed at the writhing, bellowing monster and then at the wild scene of chaos out on the rocks—the crowd of milling, panic-stricken humans with the little Physicals darting among them. Popping, wrathful, miniature duplicated voices of the Supreme One. Violet-yellow flashes were hissing from the Physicals. The running, milling, screaming humans were falling.
Johnny and I were running, trying to get to the dais. Then we saw that Torkine had lifted Dora in his arms; had leaped down and was running with her over the dark spread of rocks. The lights over the dais abruptly now were extinguished. The dimness of the night sprang around us, hideous with human screams of agony and terror; ghastly with the glares of the little popping bolts and the red-yellow, wrathful glare of the monster.
Where had Torkine gone? We could not see him. We darted sidewise as a group of running men and women with Physicals chasing them swept past. And then again we saw Torkine. He was still carrying Dora, leaping over the rocks, zig-zagging, trying seemingly to reach the space-disc. The dark outlines of it were apparent no more than a hundred feet away.
"No Physicals there!" Johnny gasped.
We slanted our running leaps to head off Torkine. And suddenly he saw us and jumped to a little rocky butte where he stood leering down at us with his arm holding Dora as she sagged against him. A knife was in his hand now. The red-yellow chaos off to our left glistened on its naked blade. For a second I thought that he would plunge it into Dora's breast.
Then suddenly behind him the little box-bodies of Physicals had appeared. Tentacle arms reached for him so that he dropped Dora. For a second she staggered, slumped and then fell over the little brink. Johnny and I scramblingly caught her; I snatched her in my arms and ran, with Johnny beside me. We reached the dark, space-disc doorway, and I turned to look back. Torkine was wildly slashing at a tentacle arm of a Physical that gripped him. Weird tissue-flesh of the damnable, gruesome thing. The steel knife-blade slid harmlessly on it; and then as he wildly stabbed at a box-like chest, the knife-blade broke. He screamed with a last agonized, throat-splitting cry as the plucking little things tumbled him from the rock and engulfed him....
"Tom, there they come! Hurry! Get inside—" Johnny gasped.