Ellis looked at his watch and considered prayer. He had three minutes left.
When the Morid came, Ellis was sitting dumbly on the sand, nursing his broken ankle and considering with a shock-detached part of his mind a fragmentary line of some long-forgotten schooldays poem.
What rough beast is this ... the rest eluded him.
The underbrush beyond the shack rustled and the Morid’s ravening image sprang to Ellis’ mind with a clarity that shook his three net-participants to the core—one of them past endurance.
Vann, in the station, said “Dear God,” and braced himself for the end. In Washington, the operator fainted and had to be dragged from his console.
Aboard the Federation ship, Xaxtol radiated a shaken “Enough!” and tentacled a stud that sent his craft flashing on its way through subspace.
At Charlie Trask’s shack, Max bounded across the clearing and into the brush. There followed a riot of squalling and screaming that brought Charlie out of his shack on the run. Ellis sat numbly, beyond shock, waiting for the worst.
Unaccountably, the worst was delayed.
Charlie came back, clutching a protesting Max by the scruff of the neck, and threw down something at Ellis’ feet. Something small and limp and magenta-furred, smeared with greenish blood and very, very dead.