The machines, or whatever the things were, still lay where they had stopped, looking like huge grey slugs, each engaged in producing several of its disgusting bubbles at different stages.
I dodged back as another was cast off, but this time nothing happened to find our window. I risked leaning out for a moment to pull the casement windows shut, and got them closed just in time. Three or four more lashes smacked against the glass with such force that one of the panes was cracked.
Then I was able to attend to Phyllis. I lifted her on to the bed, and tore a strip off the sheet to bind up her arm.
Outside, the screaming and shouting and uproar was still going on, and among it the sound of a few shots.
When I had bandaged the arm I looked out again. Half a dozen objects, looking now like tight round bales, were rolling over and over on their way to the street that led to the waterfront. I turned back again and tore another strip off the sheet to put round Phyllis's left hand.
While I was doing it I heard a different sound above the hubbub outside. I dropped the cotton strip, and ran back to the window in time to get a glimpse of a plane coming in low. The cannon in the wings started to twinkle, and I threw myself back, out of harm's way. There was a dull woomph! of an explosion. Simultaneously the windows blew in, the light went out, bits of something whizzed past, and something else splattered all over the room.
I picked myself up. The outdoor lights down our end of the Square had gone out, too, so that it was difficult to make out much there, but up the other end I could see that one of the sea-tanks had begun to move. It was sliding back by the way it had come. Then I heard the sound of the aircraft returning, and went down on the floor again.
There was another woomph! but this time we did not catch the force of it, though there was a clatter of things falling outside.
'Mike?' said a voice from the bed, a frightened voice.
'It's all right, darling. I'm here,' I told her.
The moon was still bright, and I was able to see better now.
'What's happened?' she asked.
'They've gone. Johnny got them with the plane at least, I suppose it was Johnny,' I said. 'It's all right now.'
'Mike, my arms do hurt'
'I'll get a doctor as soon as I can, darling.'
'What was it? It had got me, Mike. If you hadn't held on '
'It's all over now, darling.'
'I ' She broke off at the sound of the plane coming back once more. We listened. The cannon were firing again, but this time there was no explosion.
'Mike, there's something sticky is it blood? You're not hurt?'
'No, darling. I don't know what it is, it's all over everything.'
'You're shaking, Mike.'
'Sorry. I can't help it. Oh, Phyl, darling Phyl So nearly If you'd seen them Muriel and the rest It might have been '
'There, there,' she said, as if I were aged about six. 'Don't cry, Micky. It's over now.' She moved. 'Oh, Mike, my arm does hurt.'
'Lie still, darling. I'll get that doctor,' I told her.
I went for the locked door with a chair, and relieved my feelings on it quite a lot.
It was a subdued remnant of the expedition that foregathered the following morning Bocker, Ted Jarvey, and ourselves. Johnny had taken off earlier with the films and recordings, including an eye-witness account I had added later, and was on his way to Kingston with them.
Phyllis's right arm and left hand were swathed in bandages. She looked pale, but had resisted all persuasions to stay in bed. Bocker's eyes had entirely lost their customary twinkle. His wayward lock of grey hair hung forward over a face which looked more lined and older than it had on the previous evening. He limped a little, and put some of his weight on a stick. Ted and I were unscathed. He looked questioningly at Bocker.
'If you can manage it, sir,' he said. 'I think our first move ought to be to get out of this stink.'
'By all means,' Bocker agreed. 'A few twinges are nothing compared with this. The sooner, the better,' he added, and got up to lead the way to windward.
The cobbles of the Square, the litter of metal fragments that
lay about it, the houses all around, the church, everything in
sight glistened with a coating of slime, and there was more of
it that one did not see, splashed into almost every room that fronted on the Square. The previous night it had been simply
a strongly fishy, salty smell, but with the warmth of the sun at work upon it it had begun to give off an odour that was already fetid and rapidly becoming miasmic. Even a hundred yards made a great deal of difference, another hundred, and we were clear of it, among the palms which fringed the beach on the opposite side of the town from the harbour. Seldom had I known the freshness of a light breeze to smell so good.
Bocker sat down, and leant his back against a tree. The rest of us disposed ourselves and waited for him to speak first. For a long time he did not. He sat motionless, looking blindly out to sea. Then he sighed.
'Alfred,' he said, 'Bill, Muriel, Leslie. I brought you all here. I have shown very little imagination and consideration for your safety, I'm afraid.'
Phyllis leaned forward.
'You mustn't think like that, Dr Bocker. None of us had to
come, you know. You offered us the chance to come, and we took
it. If if the same thing had happened to me I don't think
Michael would have felt that you were to blame, would you, Mike?'
'No,' I said. I knew perfectly well whom I should have blamed for ever, and without reprieve.
'And I shouldn't, and I'm sure the others would feel the same way,' she added, putting her uninjured right hand on his sleeve.
He looked down at it, blinking a little. He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them, and laid his hand on hers. His gaze strayed beyond her wrist to the bandages above.
'You're very good to me, my dear,' he said.
He patted the hand, and then sat straight, pulling himself together. Presently, in a different tone:
'We have some results,' he said. 'Not, perhaps, as conclusive as we had hoped, but some tangible evidence at least. Thanks to Ted the people at home will now be able to see what we are up against, and thanks to him, too, we have the first specimen.'
'Specimen?' repeated Phyllis. 'What of?'
'A bit of one of those tentacle things,' Ted told her.
'How on earth?'
'Luck, really. You see, when the first one burst nothing came in at my particular window, but I could see what was happening in other places, so I opened my knife and put it handy on the sill, just in case. When one did come in with the next shower it fell across my shoulder, and I caught up the knife and slashed it just as it began to pull. There was about eighteen inches of it left behind. It just dropped off on to the floor, wriggled a couple of times, and then curled up. We posted it off with Johnny.'
'Ugh!' said Phyllis.
'In future,' I said, 'we, too, will carry knives.'
'Make sure they're sharp. It's mighty tough stuff,' Ted advised.
'If you can find another bit of one I'd like to have it for examination,' said Bocker. 'We decided that one had better go off to the experts. There's something very peculiar indeed about those things. The fundamental is obvious enough, it goes back to some type of sea-anemone but whether the things have been bred, or whether they have in some way been built-up on the basic pattern ?' He shrugged without finishing the question. 'I find several points extremely disturbing. For instance, how are they made to clutch the animate even when it is clothed, and not attach themselves to the inanimate? Also, how is it possible that they can be directed on the route back to the water instead of simply trying to reach it the nearest way?
'The first of those questions is the more significant. It implies specialized purpose. The things are used, you see, but not like weapons in the ordinary sense, not just to destroy, that is. They are more like snares.'