Only he hadn't fired quite quick enough. He sprawled dead on the floor-plates, his chest torn wide open as if by talons. Red lights were flashing all over the call-board now. Alarm bells jangled wildly. The captain's voice rasped from the com-box: "All hands! Make for your closest emergency carrier and stand by to abandon ship! Central Control will blow all carriers clear in three minutes! Repeat, Central Control will blow all carriers clear in three minutes, so get aboard fast! All hands...." Stiff-lipped, Boone stared up at the call-board. "Seven levels signalling! It's an attack in force, then...." The ensign clutched his arm. "Let's go! There's a carrier at the end of the passage!" Boone started to turn, then stopped short. "Eileen--!" "What?" "The other biologist--the girl with Titan fever." "Let the medmen worry about her! They'll take her off if she's not too sick to move!" "No!" Spasmodically, Boone jerked free. "We can't leave her!" "But there's no time!" "I can't help that." Boone shoved the other away. "You go ahead...." The ensign threw him one last taut, frustrated glance, then wheeled and ran off down the passage towards the carrier lock. A score of steps he ran.... Only then, out of the murk, a primordial horror rose before him--a thing of tentacles and feelers massed about a hideous white skull-face. It happened too fast for shouts or screaming. The ensign's head jerked back and sidewise. He tried to veer. Too late. With a sound that came straight from hell, the skull-thing lurched forward. The tentacles engulfed him. Convulsively, Boone clawed the blaster from the dead hands of the man beside the lift-shaft ... lanced a fire-bolt into the monster's leering face. Face and monster vanished in a blaze of ear-shattering sound and blue-white flame. Then the echoes died and Boone was alone again--shaking, retching. Of the ensign, no trace remained. * * * * * Numbly, Boone stumbled back into the lift and dropped it fullspeed down the shaft to the tenth level, the very heart of the great sphere-ship. There was another monster waiting for him when he came out--a creature that looked for all the world like a huge, iridescent coffin whose lid came up to bare rows of razor-edged shark-teeth. Raw-nerved, he blasted it to atoms; then, belly churning, waded through stench and putrescent fragments towards the tech quarters where Eileen lay. As he did so, the ship rocked sharply. For an instant Boone went rigid, then cursed aloud. That jolt--it could have been only the impact of the carriers' departure. Now, truly, he was alone--alone in the void on a sphere of death, where nightmare monsters roamed lusting for his blood. Alone with Eileen, perhaps. If she were still alive. _If...._ He quickened his pace, moving along the corridor cold-eyed and wary, his finger taut on the blaster's trigger. The last door to the right. A card that said, "Miss Rey."