The thing was at least sixty feet tall and all eyes and mouth. The mouth yawned, showing yellow daggers a foot long. As for the eyes—well, they burned with the cold luminosity of an intelligent and inimical being. I didn't know what the thing was. One minute I'd been examining an interesting rock formation, a second later I was hiding behind it, watching the ravening thing that had appeared out of nowhere.

Other members of the expedition were sprawled here and there on the desert too. I could see Max Feld, our paleontologist, curled in a tight plump little ball under an outcropping of weathered limestone, and there was Roy Laurence, the biochemist, flat on his stomach peering at the thing incredulously.

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