When the alien saw Weston and his gang approach, he did nothing. He only stood there and watched them come. He still wore the same pack of apparatus on his back and the controls at his waist. The tendrils around his double wrists flicked nervously. And many there were who wondered what had become of Scarface—the man with the gun.
Weston stopped in front of the alien, about five feet from him, which was approximately just beyond the other's reach.
"Now talk, damn you!" he said. "You got us into this and you're going to get us out of it!"
But the alien gave no answer. Nor did his single, multi-faceted eye move from its fixed focus upon the man who addressed him. It glared in its concentration, indefinably.
Weston turned to his men. "He's dead beat," he said. "Those bullet wounds made him weak. We gotta capture him, but don't mess him up too much. We'll just get him down and tie him up. Somebody get some rope!"
Confidently, Weston dropped his axe temporarily and hitched up his trousers. As he did so, his arms and chest bulged and glistened massively in the eternal light of the sky. Sceranka hulked ponderously behind him, his ham-like paws ready for action. Five more of Weston's best huskies closed the semi-circle before the alien.
Henry could feel the pulse in his arteries, and he saw a pink spider making a web in front of him, in the timeless, geometrical design that all such spiders made. Beside him, he could feel Martia's tenseness. Down by the beach, the waves rolled peacefully across the sands, sighing with the eternal voice of the sea. The jungle smelled of damp rot and sickly sweet flowers. And he sweated.
Weston, grinning somewhat tensely now, slowly lifted up his axe again, with the blunt end toward the alien. He took one swift step forward, but that was all. The alien emitted a blood-curdling, monstrous roar and waded into the gang, just as Weston reversed his axe and struck him a blow in the neck. It was an interrupted blow, because the alien's great arms flew up and sent Weston sailing unconscious through the air. He then grabbed Sceranka, oblivious to three arrows in his side and four men climbing onto him, striking, punching and tearing at him. Sceranka's rib case popped audibly as he was instantly crushed and mangled. Then the alien turned and tore one man's arm off and sent another of his attackers flying after Weston, headless. The others turned and ran.
But they did not get far.