The Invader, Alfred Coppel [ebook reader android txt] 📗

street below, probing at him as he clung to the sheer facade of the building. Panic drove him upward. A continuous, wailing roar rose from the canyon below, a fear-laden hideous cacophony. The Triomed felt himself weak with terror, part of which was his host's and part of which stemmed from within himself. The terror and fear of not knowing what had gone wrong and why he stood now in such peril.

At last he reached the roof. He heaved himself over the parapet and lay for a moment, flanks heaving painfully. Then he stiffened with a new fear. He was not alone. The roof was occupied. A score or more of armed bipeds blocked him into a triangular corner of the roof. He got to his feet and stumbled backward. Their weapons were aimed at him. He retreated until the parapet stopped him, warning of the sheer drop to the street far below.

A figure separated itself from the armed mass. A flash of recognition came—partially his own, partially his host's. It was the small biped he had seen in the searchlight beam running toward the cubicle he had deserted so long ago it seemed.

The small creature began speaking, making soft, soothing noises, advancing all the while, a tiny glass vial in his hands.

Without knowing why, the Triomed felt his lips pull away from his teeth in a snarl. He heard a deep, rumbling growling sound in his own throat. The biped stopped, and the Triomed could smell his sudden fear.

He felt a surge of incomprehensible rage come over him—he crouched menacingly.

The creature took a step closer. Another. The Triomed tensed.

The creature was within reach, extending the vial. The alien could see that it was tipped with a sliver of steel. He sprang—

The weapons crashed. The alien felt the thudding impact of projectiles penetrating the brain case. In a panic he began to extrude from the pineal gland. If death overcame the host while he had rapport, he, too, would die. And if he died, Triom would die.

He felt his huge body totter. There was another blast from the weapons and he sensed the projectile coming—with what seemed to be agonizing slowness to his quickened senses. It was spinning in the darkness. It struck the eye, smashed it, moved inward, along the base of the brain....

The Triomed felt one deep, searing agony that was his alone as the bullet crushed him. The hot metal acrid touch was the last thing he knew before death came....

The policemen stood about in a circle, staring down in mixed awe and relief at the huge body on the roof.

"I've seen him a dozen times in the park," one said. "He always seemed so—so peaceable." He shook his head. "What in hell do you suppose came over him?"

The keeper looked up from where he knelt over the deep, still chest, bloody and riddled with bullets. "It happens like this sometimes," he said. "You can never tell about gorillas."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Invader, by Alfred Coppel