"We didn't mean to call it," Alice said, "but maybe.... Or maybe it was the Hyra called it. I mean, when we hit deep space and they began to increase. Maybe when they increased they made a--a quiver in space that attracted it. They're not alive in the way other things are. They're different. Or maybe a part of them has always been where the Vanderlark is." McFeen rubbed his hands over his face. He got another bottle of phlomis from the locker, uncapped it, and then put it aside without tasting it. "What are we going to do, Alice?" he asked humbly. Alice stood up, smoothing the folds of her wrinkled dress. In this moment she had an odd dignity. "I'm awfully scared, Mac," she said as if in explanation. "The best thing I can think of is to put the Hyra cage in the life raft. And then jet the raft off away from the ship. Maybe the Vanderlark will follow it. When the Hyra are gone, maybe the shadow will leave us alone." There were only three Hyra left in the cage. The shadow had filled all except the cage's extreme end. McFeen looked at it and then averted his gaze. His face was so white that the brownness of his skin looked like greasepaint laid on a mask. Alice was standing behind him. He muttered something. He laid hold of the cage and tried to lift it up. There was an instant's resistance. Then the shadow welled up enormously, in a horrible puffing-out of black. McFeen was left holding the top edge of the cage. All the rest was gone. He stood looking stupidly at the metal for a moment and then dropped it on the deck. He began to back away. He was screaming on a single high note. He hadn't stopped screaming when, without any perceptible motion, the blackness, the limitless blackness, closed over him. Alice turned and ran. The life raft was aft of two hold; she couldn't have got through to the raft even if she had thought of it. She ran from the hold to the cabin, from the cabin into the control room. The Vanderlark found her there, pressed flat against the metal of the prow, mumbling "No no no," over and over and trying to push her way out through the ship with her hands. Quietly and easily it extended itself and made her a part of it. Then there was silence. After a while the Vanderlark flowed over the whole ship. And then there was nothing there at all but the Vanderlark.