Yet her beauty still remained, and that was his chief interest. The fluid motion, contour, symmetry and rhythm remained as before; was the justification for her continued existence in his eyes. Her motions did not follow her mental direction at all now. She reached her hands out as though trying to part thick mist like a solid web. She groped about in small circles. Then she stopped, her eyes parted wide, and she screamed. Through the holocaust of sound--the cries, bellows, and screeches and hisses of the swamp--her scream was almost soundless. Yet its mental significance cut into his great brain like a wound. _Torrg!_ The scream's effect had detracted even his wondrous instinctive mechanism for an instant. During that second the _Torrg_ heaved itself up almost beneath her. Something slithered through his brain, rippling down his long curved length--the closest emotion to fear his nervous system could approach. He hesitated, flinching away. He knew what to do. Why then, did he hesitate before the _Torrg_? The girl stood stiff with terror, mindless, muscles drawn tight, nerves twitching. He hesitated. He had about gained the maximum from her beauty. It was a passing thing. He could not possibly go on appreciating it much longer; she was a limited art form. And the _Torrg_--even _he_ was apprehensive of that one. Even _he_ had never challenged the ferocious deadliness of the giant _Torrg_. It was a mighty, mindless machine of destruction, and so difficult to kill. Its thick leathery body, slick with green scum, was almost impossible to pierce, and any one of its twenty writhing arms was a pounding, sucking, smashing bludgeon of power. He had five _amphos_ to live ... but if he tried to keep the _Torrg_ from this alien creature.... * * * * * He searched her mind, as the _Torrg_ raised up higher and higher from the thick nest of its pool. Vaguely, beneath her terror-stricken mind, he saw the symbol SQUID, enlarged many times. Its great green-colored caudal fins swayed impatiently, fanning huge swirling spirals of vapor, like smoke, throwing drops of swamp weed and mud until the groveling girl's beauty was almost buried in the steaming stench. Why had she reacted so adversely to that brief sight of him? Why was he so uncertain about his course of action? If he had a form suitable for her eyes, if he could look forward to having her always to watch its perfect rhythm of movement; if he were only assured of her beauty going on forever, flowering for his pleasure in this world of teeming ugliness, if-- The _Torrg_ acted almost too quickly for his reaction. But that unexpectedness of the _Torrg's_ move decided him. His instinct guided him again, guided him in a blinding streaking flash of sheer power.