Boone snatched the ensign's nerve-gun. Cat-footed, he moved forward. Ahead, something shifted in the shadows. He became aware of a vague, phosphorescent glow. A whisper of sound. A floundering wallow of movement. Raw-nerved, Boone flicked on his light-rod. Its beam sprayed out across a creature like nothing ever seen before in earth or heaven. A bulbous thing, a nightmare of pseudopodal horror. But before he could fire, it began to change. First it drew together, a bubbling mass like green calf-slobber shot with blood. A rank stench of musty death curled to him from it. Then, while he watched, a shape began to rise out of the slime; a shape-- He caught his breath. His blood froze. _It was a woman!_ Now she stood erect and naked, shrouded from the hips down in the slime-mass. Her hands caressed her high, proud breasts. She laughed and stretched her arms out toward Boone. In spite of himself, he took a dragging step forward. Then another, and another. As from afar, the ensign's shout dinned in his ears. He half turned. As one, woman and slime-mass lunged towards him. And now, incredibly, Boone saw that there were fangs beneath the laughing lips; that, like Medusa, the woman was crowned not with rippling hair, but writhing serpents. He screamed as the voice on the com-box had screamed; blazed point-blank at the naked belly with his nerve-gun. The soft flesh shimmered, darkened. Great scales took form. The smooth body distorted into the plated, cartilaginous torso of a dragon. Boone hurled himself aside as its great horned head lanced forward. With all his might, he threw the nerve-gun into the yawning mouth. The mighty jaws clamped down. The metal crumpled. Behind Boone, thunder crashed in the passage. A fire-bolt from a blaster smashed into the monster. Dragon and slime-mass alike exploded into spattering fragments. Half-stunned, Boone felt the ensign's fingers dig into his shoulders and drag him back towards the lift-shaft. But he shook them off. "No. I've got to see--" Even as he spoke, he knew that the words were coming out an incoherent mumble. He staggered back anyhow ... clawed amid the smoke and debris. His hands came up green and stinking with viscous slime. Numbly, he stared down at them. "Then--it was real--no optical illusion--" "Real? Of course it was real!" This from the half-hysterical ensign. "I saw it all--the woman, the dragon! If I'd been two seconds later with the blaster, it would have got you!" Boone slumped against the wall. "That thing--" * * * * * A muffled crash of sound from the lift-shaft cut in on him. Red lights flashed on the call-board. "Third level--!" The ensign's voice rang raw with tension. "Come on!" Boone lunged for the lift. Together they plummeted downward ... stumbled out into a murky, smoke-eddying third level passage. More slime, purple this time, and a man with a blaster.