"So am I, kind of. We got maybe a week or two to be glad in. We have a few condensed food tablets in my pack. Everything else is back at camp. The tablets will last a little while...."
He could hear the girl crying softly, but the closing of the entrance had shut off the last gleam of light from the cave, and he couldn't see her. Awkwardly he reached out in the darkness, found her, drew her gently to him.
For a long time there was silence broken only by an occasional soft whisper of sound as one or the other changed his position. Andy realized that he was a little thirsty, and he wondered if this was the forerunner of the violent pangs to come.
He was aware of her soft whisper.
"Sh—Look—"
A spot of weirdly glowing light was moving slowly along the cavern floor. Without body, or visible means of locomotion, it seemed to flow along. Andy felt his hair rising as he looked at it.
"Give me your heat-gun," he whispered, and the weapon was passed over to him. He lined up the sights and waited.
The small spectral figure slowly approached. It hesitated, moved back, then came forward again. Andy forgot that he was thirsty, that he would soon be hungry, that he was doomed to die.
He could hear the girl breathing hard.