Incapable as yet of movement, the two watched. The shadow – a single shadow – began to split in two. There came a rending sound, like sailcloth tearing, as the two halves of the shadow struggled to break apart – struggled and succeeded. Two of them now: one of which seemed human, and the other the size and roughly the shape of a dog, except it was not a dog. Then both of them moving back a little, merging with the shadow of the nodule, and a further moment of struggling with the power cable. There was more electrical sputtering and a second shower of sparks . . .
And the lights went out!
The two men backed toward the shaft going down to the core. Their legs were jelly but they forced movement out of them. A faint wash of light came from behind them, over their shoulders: residual light from the sphere-gate, shining up through the shaft. But along the walkway where they’d been, all was now night.
‘If he – it – they are going to come,’ Litve stuttered, ‘then it has to be along this walkway.’
Khuv’s throat was too dry and tight to answer, but he thought: that’s right. They were both wrong. The thing from the tank, or rather metamorphic vampire material from the core of the thing in the tank – not dead but subsumed into Agursky, and now released to even up the score, two against two – didn’t have to come that way at all. It came under the walkway!
Almost at the mouth of the shaft, where the walkway turned sharply to the left and once more descended as stairs, the thing struck. Something coiled up over the handrail, wrapped itself clingingly around Litve’s waist, dragged him screaming through the shattering rail. He was there, beside Khuv, and he was gone. His flamethrower put forth a single blast of flame, and looking down Khuv saw what had him. The thing from the tank, yes: a great flat tentacled leech now, which smothered Litve’s face and the upper half of his body like a mass of leprous dough, while its many-jointed ‘limbs’ wrapped him and crushed his body like so many pythons! And eyes in the surging filth of the thing, staring up unblinking at Khuv where he choked and gurgled on the walkway.
Litve’s flame-thrower went clattering; Khuv knew that was the end of him; he aimed his own weapon and sent searing flame blasting into the heaving obscenity where it threshed on the magmass floor. Screaming his rage and terror, he burned it – burned it – burned it. Until the white heart of his torch turned yellow, hissed, crackled into silence, until the pilot-light itself went out. Then came Agursky’s chuckle again, and through the reek and the smoke Khuv saw him coming. He saw him closing with him, his hands elongating, reaching . . .
He dropped his empty weapon, ran, stumbled, went flailing down the stairwell into the heart of the place; and down the stairs from the landing onto the boards of the Saturn’s-rings perimeter. Agursky came close behind, chuckling, flowing, inexorably pursuing. Khuv looked back and saw him: the impossible gape of his jaws, the nightmare of his bone dagger teeth meshing like a mincer in the cavern of his mouth. He screamed and raced for the nearest Katushev cannon.
‘Shit, shit!’ he screamed, and: ‘Oh, God! Oh mother of – ‘ He leaped up onto the Katushev’s platform, slid into the gunner’s chair, traversed the assembly to face Agursky where he loped after him. But … he had no idea how to fire the thing!
Before Agursky could reach him, he leaped out of his seat, fled across the rings and onto the gantry bridging the gap to the sphere. The power was off and the gate in the electrical fence open; Khuv ran through it, reached the spot where the boards were scorched and blackened. The Gate was the only route open to him now, but better that than –
He skidded to a halt, threw up his hands before him to ward off . . . something he couldn’t believe, something from the mind of a raving lunatic! He stared at the sphere and his eyes bulged, popped in his white mask of a face. Agursky had seen it, too, and he was likewise brought up short. And a third pair of eyes had seen it, had indeed been watching it for some time.