“I know,” Norman said, and Barnes shouted over the intercom, “Positive pressure! Get positive pressure!” Norman saw Ted on the floor just before he tripped over him and fell heavily against the computer consoles, his face near the screen, the glowing letters large before him: 

 DO NOT BE AFRAID. 

“Jerry!” Ted was shouting. “Stop this, Jerry! Jerry!”

Suddenly Harry’s face was next to Ted, glasses askew. “Save your breath, he’s going to kill us all!”

“He doesn’t understand,” Ted shouted, as he fell backward onto the couch, flailing arms.

The powerful wrenching of metal on metal continued without pause, throwing Norman from one side to the other. He kept reaching for handholds, but his hands were wet, and he couldn’t seem to grasp anything.

“Now hear this,” Barnes said over the intercom. “Chan and I are going outside! Fletcher assumes command!”

“Don’t go out!” Harry shouted. “Don’t go out there!”

“Opening hatch now,” Barnes said laconically. “Tina, you follow me.”

“You’ll be killed!” Harry shouted, and then he was thrown against Beth. Norman was on the floor again; he banged his head on one of the couch legs.

“We’re outside,” Barnes said.

And abruptly the banging stopped. The habitat was motionless. They did not move. With the water streaming in through a dozen fine, misty leaks, they looked up at the intercom speaker, and listened.

“Clear of the hatch,” Barnes said. “Our status is good. Armament, J-9 exploding head spears loaded with Taglin-50 charges. We’ll show this bastard a trick or two.”

Silence.

“Water… Visibility is poor. Visibility under five feet. Seems to be… stirred-up bottom sediment and… very black, dark. Feeling our way along buildings.”

Silence.

“North side. Going east now. Tina?”

Silence.

“Tina?”

“Behind you, sir.”

“All right. Put your hand on my tank so you-Good. Okay.”

Silence.

Inside the cylinder, Ted sighed. “I don’t think they should kill it,” he said softly.

Norman thought, I don’t think they can.

Nobody else said anything. They listened to the amplified breathing of Barnes and Tina.

“Northeast corner… All right. Feel strong currents, active, moving water… something nearby… Can’t see… visibility less than five feet. Can barely see stanchion I am holding. I can feel him, though. He’s big. He’s near. Tina?”

Silence.

A loud sharp crackling sound, static. Then silence.

“Tina? Tina?”

Silence.

“I’ve lost Tina.”

Another, very long silence.

“I don’t know what it… Tina, if you can hear me, stay where you are, I’ll take it from here… Okay… He is very close… I feel him moving… Pushes a lot of water, this guy. A real monster.”

Silence again.

“Wish I could see better.”

Silence.

“Tina? Is that-”

And then a muffled thud that might have been an explosion. They all looked at each other, trying to know what the sound meant, but in the next instant the habitat began rocking and wrenching again, and Norman, unprepared, was slammed sideways, against the sharp edge of the bulkhead door, and the world went gray. He saw Harry strike the wall next to him, and Harry’s glasses fell onto Norman’s chest, and Norman reached for the glasses for Harry, because Harry needed his glasses. And then Norman lost consciousness, and everything was black.

AFTER THE ATTACK

Hot spray poured over him, and he inhaled steam. Standing in the shower, Norman looked down at his body and thought, I look like a survivor of an airplane crash. One of those people I used to see and marvel that they were still alive.

The lumps on his head throbbed. His chest was scraped raw in a great swath down to his abdomen. His left thigh was purple-red; his right hand was swollen and painful.

But, then, everything was painful. He groaned, turning his face up to the water.

“Hey,” Harry called. “How about it in there?”

“Okay.”

Norman stepped out, and Harry climbed in. Scrapes and bruises covered his thin body. Norman looked over at Ted, who lay on his back in one of the bunks. Ted had dislocated both shoulders, and it had taken Beth half an hour to get them back in, even after she’d shot him up with morphine.

“How is it now?” Norman said to him.

“Okay.”

Ted had a numb, dull expression. His ebullience was gone. He had sustained a greater injury than the dislocated shoulders, Norman thought. In many ways a naive child, Ted must have been profoundly shocked to discover that this alien intelligence was hostile.

“Hurt much?” Norman said.

“It’s okay.”

Norman sat slowly on his bunk, feeling pain streak up his spine. Fifty-three years old, he thought. I should be playing golf. Then he thought, I should be just about anywhere in the world, except here. He winced, and gingerly slipped a shoe over his injured right foot. For some reason, he remembered Levy’s bare toes, the skin color dead, the foot striking his faceplate.

“Did they find Barnes?” Ted asked.

“I haven’t heard,” Norman said. “I don’t think so.”

He finished dressing, and went down to D Cyl, stepping over the puddles of water in the corridor. Inside D itself, the furniture was soaked; the consoles were wet, and the walls were covered with irregular blobs of white urethane foam where Fletcher had spray-sealed the cracks.

Fletcher stood in the middle of the room, the spray can in hand. “Not as pretty as it was,” she said.

“Will it hold?”

“Sure, but I guarantee you: we can’t survive another one of those attacks.”

“What about the electronics. They working?”

“I haven’t checked, but it should be okay. It’s all waterproofed.”

Norman nodded. “Any sign of Captain Barnes?” He looked at the bloody handprint on the wall.

“No, sir. No sign of the Captain at all.” Fletcher followed his eyes to the wall. “I’ll clean the place up in a minute, sir.”

“Where’s Tina?” Norman asked.

“Resting. In E Cyl.”

Norman nodded. “E Cyl any drier than this?”

“Yes,” Fletcher said. “It’s a funny thing. There was nobody in E Cyl during the attack, and it stayed completely dry.”

“Any word from Jerry?”

“No contact, sir, no.”

Norman flicked on one of the computer consoles.

“Jerry, are you there?”

The screen remained blank.

“Jerry?”

He waited a moment, then turned the console off.

Tina said, “look at it now.” She sat up, and drew the blanket back to expose her left leg.

The injury was much worse than when they had heard her screaming and had run through the habitat and pulled her up through the A Cyl hatch. Now, running diagonally down her leg was a series of saucer-shaped welts, the center of each puffed and purple. “It’s swollen a lot in the last hour,” Tina said.

Norman examined the injuries. Fine tooth-marks ringed swollen areas. “Do you remember what it felt like?” he said. “It felt awful,” Tina said. “It felt sticky, you know, like sticky glue or something. And then each one of these round places burned. Very strong.”

“And what could you see? Of the creature itself.” “Just-it was a long flat spatula-thing. It looked like a giant leaf; it came out and wrapped around me.”

“Any color?”

“Sort of brownish. I couldn’t really see.”

He paused a moment. “And Captain Barnes?”

“During the course of the action, I was separated from Captain Barnes, sir. I don’t know what happened to Captain Barnes, sir.” Tina spoke formally, her face a mask. He thought, Let’s not go into this now. If you ran away, it’s all right with me.

“Has Beth seen this injury, Tina?”

“Yes, sir, she was here a few minutes ago.”

“Okay. Just rest now.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, Tina?”