There was not a sound.
He picked up an ottoman and placed it against the wall. He sat with his back tight against the panelling, watching the door with wide eyes.
Try that door, see if it’s locked too.
He didn’t dare, he realized. Not yet. He sensed vaguely what he would feel if he found it locked; he wanted no more just now than that chilling guess.
‘Listen,’ he hissed to himself, furiously, ‘you’d better do something. Build something. Or maybe just think. But don’t sit here like this.’
Think. Think about that mystery in there, the pointed face with its thick lenses, which smiled and said, Go on, die.
Think about something else! Quick!
Janie. By herself, facing the pointed face with the—
Homo Gestalt, a girl, two tongue-tied Negroes, a mongoloid idiot, and a man with a pointed face and—
Try that one again. Homo Gestalt, the next step upward. Well, sure, why not a psychic evolution instead of the physical? Homo sapiens stood suddenly naked and unarmed but for the wrinkled jelly in his king-sized skull; he was as different as he could be from the beasts which bore him.