Beside one of the windows stood a man, blaster at his hip. Advancing upon him, crouching like a beast of prey stalking food, was another man. The smell of burned flesh tainted the room as the blaster whispered.
Something had happened to the painting of “The Watchers.” It had swung on a pivot in its center, revealing behind it a cavern of blackness. Starlight was shattered by a glinting object that stood within the darkness.
The man who held the blaster was talking, talking in a baffled, ferocious, savage undertone, talking to the thing that advanced upon him, a rattle of words that had no meaning, half profanity, half pure terror, all bordering on madness.
“Alf!” shrieked Carter. But Alf didn’t seem to hear him, went on talking. The thing that stalked him, however, swung about, huddled for an indecisive instant.
“Lights!” yelled Lathrop. “Turn on those lights!”
He heard Carter fumbling in the darkness, hunting for the switch. Scarcely breathing, he stood and waited, the Martian weapon in his hand.
The man in the center of the room was shambling toward him now, but he knew he didn’t dare to shoot until the lights were on. He had to be sure what happened.
The switch clicked and Lathrop blinked in the sudden flood of light. Before him crouched Peter Harper, clothes ripped to smoldering ribbons, face half eaten away by the blaster, one arm gone — crouching as if to spring.
Lathrop snapped the weapon up, pressed the button. The blue radiance flamed out, bored into Peter Harper.
There was no shrinking this time. The spear of blue seemed to slam the man back on the floor and pin him there. He writhed and blurred and ran together. The clothes were gone, the eaten face, with the scraggly, pink whiskers disappeared. Instead came taloned claws and a face that had terrible eyes and a parrot beak. A thing that mewed and howled and yammered. A thing that struggled in vicious convulsions and melted — melted and stank.