He collected wits and breath to stave off the black pall of shock that still threatened.
“Come down from there and help me push the launch off,” he called up to Charlie Trask. “We’ve got to get off this key. Fast!”
Charlie separated a menu-sized shrimp from his bucket.
“You grounded her,” he said sourly. “Push her off yourself.”
“Listen,” Ellis said desperately. “That blast was a ship from space, from another star. A wild animal escaped from it, something worse than you ever dreamed of. We’ve got to get out of here before it finds us.”
Charlie grunted and chose another shrimp.
The Morid, as Xaxtol had pictured it, rose vividly in Ellis’ memory, fanged and shaggy and insatiably voracious, a magenta-furred ursine embodiment of blood-lust made the worst by its near-human intelligence.
He described it in dogged haste, his eyes frozen to the tangle of inland underbrush behind the shack.
“No such varmint in these kays,” old Charlie said.
The launch radio blared again in Weyman’s voice, speaking urgently of jet bombers and deadlines. A glance at his watch brought Ellis up from the sand in galvanic resolution.