Bloat cuts in. “I say Slothrop, is she a friend of yours too?”

Hmm? what’s happening… she, what? Here sits Bloat, smug, gesturing over at the rocks and a tide pool nearby… .

“You’re getting ‘the eye,’ old man.”

Well… she must have come out of the sea. At this distance, some 20 meters, she is only a dim figure in a black bombazine frock that reaches to her knees, her bare legs long and straight, a short hood of bright blonde hair keeping her face in shadow, coming up in guiches to touch her cheeks. She’s looking at Slothrop, all right. He smiles, sort of waves. She only continues to stand, the breeze pushing at her sleeves. He turns back to draw the cork from a wine bottle, and its pop arrives as a grace note for a scream from one of the dancers. Tantivy’s already halfway to his feet, Bloat gaping out in the girl’s direction, the danseuses snapshot in defense reflexes, hair flying, frocks twisted, thighs flashing—

Holy shit it’s moving—an octopus? Yes it is the biggest fucking octopus Slothrop has ever seen outside of the movies, Jackson, and it has just risen up out of the water and squirmed halfway onto one of the black rocks. Now, cocking a malignant eye at the girl, it reaches out, wraps one long sucker-studded tentacle around her neck as everyone watches, another around her waist and begins to drag her, struggling, back under the sea.

Slothrop’s up, bottle in hand, running down past Tantivy who’s doing a hesitant dance step, hands patting lounge-suit pockets for weapons that aren’t there, more and more of the octopus revealed the closer he comes and wow it’s a big one, holycow—skids to a halt alongside, one foot in the tide pool, and commences belting the octopus in the head with the wine bottle. Hermit crabs slide in death-struggle around his foot. The girl, already half in the water, is trying to cry out, but the tentacle, flowing and chilly, barely allows her windway enough to breathe. She reaches out a hand, a soft-knuckled child’s hand with a man’s steel ID bracelet on the wrist, and clutches at Slothrop’s Hawaiian shirt, begins tightening her own grip there, and who was to know that among her last things would be vulgar-faced hula girls, ukuleles, and surfriders all in comic-book colors… oh God God please, the bottle thudding again and again wetly into octopus flesh, no fucking use, the octopus gazes at Slothrop, triumphant, while he, in the presence of certain death, can’t quit staring at her hand, cloth furrowing in tangents to her terror, a shirt button straining at a single last thread—he sees the name on the bracelet, scratched silver letters each one clear but making no sense to him before the slimy gray stranglehold that goes tightening, liquid, stronger than he and she together, framing the poor hand its cruel tetanus is separating from Earth—

“Slothrop!” Here’s Bloat ten feet away offering him a large crab.