heading toward an island luridly lighted by the blast. For effect he added, on the key’s minuscule beach, a totally imaginary shack of driftwood, complete with bearded hermit.

He knew immediately when authority arrived at the other end of the net. There was a mental backwash of conversation that told him his orders even before the Washington operator set himself for their relay.

“They want an eyewitness account from Ellis,” he told Weyman. “As if—”

Ellis broke into the net at that moment, radiating a hazy image—he was still partially blinded from the glare of the blast—of a lowering key overhung by a dwindling pall of pinkish smoke. In the foreground of lagoon and mangroves stood a stilted shack not unlike the one Vann had pictured, but without the hermit.

Instead, the rickety elevation of thatched porch was a blot of sable darkness relieved only by a pair of slanted yellow eyes gleaming close to the floor.

Climactically, Xaxtol entered the net then with an impact of total information that was more than the human psyche, conditioned to serialized thinking by years of phonetic communication, could bear.

The Washington operator screamed and tore off his helmet, requiring restraint until he could compose himself enough to relay his message.

Ellis, in his launch, fainted dead away and ran the boat headlong aground on the beach of Dutchman’s Key.

Vann reeled in his chair, teetering between shock and lunacy, until Weyman caught him and slid the Telethink from his head. It was minutes before Vann could speak; when he did, it was with a macabre flippancy that Weyman found more convincing than any dramatics.

“It’s come,” Vann said. “There’s an interstellar ship out there with a thousand-odd crew that would give Dali himself nightmares.”

Weyman had to shake him forcibly before he could continue.

“They’re sorry they can’t put down and help us,” Vann said. “Galactic regulations, it seems. But they feel they should warn us that they’ve let some sort of bloodthirsty jungle monster—a specimen they were freighting to an interplanetary zoo—escape in a lifeboat. It’s loose down here.”

“Dutchman’s Key,” Weyman breathed. “What kind of brute could live through a blast like that?”

 Prev. P 4/11 next