Grimes' forehead and felt bone crush beneath the blow. Mouth sagging open with the amazement of death, Grimes sank to the floor. The Captain's body lunged clumsily over him, flailing the flashlight at Spencer's head.

"Captain, you hit Grimes," the young man shrilled the self-evident as he back-pedalled, forearms shielding his head from the Captain's awkward left-handed blows. Whirling he fled through the doorway and along the corridor. But he was a short-legged young man, running too long in the same spot, and the Captain loped behind him, heavy flashlight raised to strike.

With a terrific effort the Captain struggled to recapture his own body. Concentrating a rush of thought on his right knee he made it buckle, pitching him on his face upon the stones. It had not yet learned to put out his hands to break his fall. When it managed to raise his head, Spencer's footsteps had faded away and it was quivering angrily.

Then came further horror. His own fingers punished him. Experimentally they probed his left eye. When the thing felt his tremors of agony it screwed his thumbnail into the eyeball. When he regained consciousness the pain was on the other side of a wall of numbness. His body sat up, and he realized that it had been unable to move him while he was unconscious.

Perhaps I can catch it by surprise? Cautiously he raised his right hand toward the back of his neck, thinking a jumble of thoughts that he hoped would conceal his purpose. He almost reached it. Quivering angrily it forced his hand down again to discipline his eye. Through the curtain of pain he thought back: if it had access to the thinking part of my brain, my first thought about catching it would have given me away. As it was, I very nearly succeeded. It is torturing me now because it is frightened. Next time it is off guard, I will strike quickly.

As it stood him up, he tried again. Its punishment made him faint. But that was a moral victory for him. If it became over-emotional and killed him, that would be a moral victory too. With the death of Grimes, he had lost interest in survival, but the thing had not. He suspected it knew it was the last of its species. Probably its drive for survival and reproduction was tremendous. If he were to die, the thing, like the tiny model parasite in his pocket, would be without means of locomotion. A helpless sack and a mouth, that's all it would be if he were dead.

It walked his body unerringly through pitch darkness to the refrigerator room, picked up the rifle by 

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