“Back quick. They don’t like heat,” he said.
This was putting it very mildly. The napalm caught, tongues of flame and roiling, greasy smoke climbing up to the sky. Under Jason’s feet the earth shifted and moved. Something black and long stirred in the heart of the flame, then arched up into the sky over their heads. In the midst of the searing heat, it still moved with alien, jolting motions. It was immense, at least two meters thick and with no indication of its length. The flames didn’t stop it, just annoyed it.
Jason had some idea of the thing’s length as the street cracked and buckled for fifty meters on each side of the pit. Great loops of the creature began to emerge from the ground. He fired his gun, as did the others. Not that it seemed to have any effect. More and more people were appearing, armed with a variety of weapons. Flamethrowers and grenades seemed to be the most effective.
“Clear the area, we’re going to saturate it. Fall back.”
The voice was so loud it jarred Jason’s ear. He turned and recognized Kerk, who had arrived with truckloads of equipment. He had a power speaker on his back, the mike hung in front of his lips. His amplified voice brought an instant reaction from the crowd. They began to move.
There was still doubt in Jason’s mind what to do. Clear the area? But what area? He started toward Kerk, before he realized that the rest of the Pyrrans were going in the opposite direction. Even under two gravities, they moved.
Jason had a naked feeling of being alone on the stage. He was in the center of the street, and the others had vanished. No one remained. Except the wounded man Jason had helped. He stumbled toward Jason, waving his good arm. Jason couldn’t understand what he said. Kerk was shouting orders again from one of the trucks. They had started to move too. The urgency struck home and Jason started to run.
It was too late. On all sides the earth was buckling, cracking, as more
loops of the underground thing forced its way into the light. Safety lay ahead. Only in front of it rose an arch of dirt encrusted grey.
There are seconds of time that seem to last an~ eternity. A moment of subjective time that is grabbed and stretched to an infinite distance. This was one of those moments. Jason stood, frozen. Even the smoke in the sky hung unmoving. The high-standing loop of alien life was before him, every detail piercingly clear.
Thick as a man, ribbed and grey as old bark. Tendrils projected from all parts of it, pallid and twisting lengths that writhed slowly with snake-like life. Shaped like a plant, yet with the motions of an animal. And cracldng, splitting. This was the worst.
Seams and openings appeared. Splintering, gaping mouths that vomited out a horde of pallid animals. Jason heard their shriekings, shrill yet remote. He saw the needle-like teeth that lined their jaws.
The paralysis of the unknown held him there. He should have died. Kerk was thundering at him through the power speaker, others were firing into the attacking creature. Jason knew nothing.
Then he was shot forward, pushed by a rock-hard shoulder. The wounded man was still there, trying to get Jason clear. Gun clenched in his jaws, he dragged Jason along with his good arm. Toward the creature. The others stopped firing. They saw his plan and it was a good one.
A loop of the thing arched into the air, leaving an opening between its body and the ground. The wounded Pyrran planted his feet and tightened his muscles. One-handed, with a single thrust, he picked Jason off the ground and sent him hurtling under the living arch. Moving tendrils brushed fire along his face, then he was through, rolling over and over on the ground. The wounded Pyrran leaped after him.
It was too late. There had been a chance for one person to get out. The Pyrran could have done it easily-instead he had pushed Jason first. The thing was aware of movement when Jason brushed its tendrils. It dropped and caught the wounded man under its weight. He vanished from sight as the tendrils wrapped around him and the animals swarmed over. His trigger must have pulled back to full automatic because the gun kept firing a long time after he should have been dead.