Trigger flung herself backwards, rolled six feet to one side, stood up, backed away and stopped again. 22 The blackness in the room was complete. She spun the Denton to kill. There was silence around her and then a soft rustling at some distance. It might have been the cautious shuffle of a heavy foot over thick carpeting. It stopped again. Where was Lyad? Her eyes shifted about, trying to pierce the darkness. Black-light, she thought. She said, "Lyad?" "Yes?" Lyad's voice came easily in the dark. She might be standing about thirty feet away, at the far end of the room. "Call your animal off," Trigger said quietly. "I don't want to kill it." She began moving in the direction from which Lyad had spoken. "Pilli won't hurt you, Trigger," the Ermetyne said. "He's been sent in to disarm you, that's all. Throw your gun away and he won't even touch you." She laughed. "Don't bother shooting in my direction either! I'm not in the room any more." Trigger stopped. Not because of what that hateful, laughing voice had said. But because in the dark about her a fresh, pungent smell was growing. The smell of ripe apples. She moistened her lips. She whispered, "Pilli--keep away!" Eyeless, the dark would mean nothing to it. Seconds later, she heard the thing breathing. She faced the sound. It stopped for a moment, then it came again. A slow animal breathing. It seemed to circle slowly to her left. After a little it stopped. Then it was coming toward her. She said softly, almost pleadingly, "Pilli, stop! Go back, Pilli!" Silence. Pilli's odor lay heavily all around. Trigger heard her blood drumming in her ears, and, for a second then, she imagined she could feel, like a tangible fog, the body warmth of the monster standing in the dark before her. It wasn't imagination. Something like a smooth, heavy pad of rubber closed around her right wrist and tightened terribly. The Denton went off, two, three, four times before she was jerked violently sideways, flung away, sent stumbling backward against some low piece of furniture and, sprawling, over it. The gun was lost. As she scrambled dizzily to her feet, Pilli screamed. It was a thin, high, breathless sound like the screaming of a terrified human child. It stopped abruptly. And, as if that had been a signal, the room came full of light again. Trigger blinked dazedly against the light. Virod stood before her, looking at her, a pair of opaque yellow goggles shoved up on his forehead. Black-light glasses. The golden-haired thing lay in a great shapeless huddle on the floor twenty feet to one side. She couldn't see her gun. But Virod held one, pointing at her. Virod's other hand moved suddenly. Its palm caught the side of her face in a hefty slap. Trigger staggered dumbly sideways, got her balance and stood facing him again. She didn't even feel anger. Her cheek began to burn.