Mrs. Cannon’s mind shut off. Branches hit at her face as she withdrew from the bushes she had parted. She didn’t notice the little whips, or the small cuts they made on her cheek. That could not possibly be a human being! But the sounds now coming all too clearly from the forest mound were explicit.

The woman turned, but could not leave. The image was a magnet she could not resist. She scolded herself for a wanton, but her hands moved of their own accord to part the bushes again and let her look in with burning eyes. Quick glances at the road assured her she was alone. The man did not know she was watching. Oh, what an abysmal act! How outrageous for him to be doing this thing! In her woods! She wanted to scream at the pervert to stop, to get out, but her voice was imprisoned by her own undeniable if unbidden excitement. She wanted to run back to her car, but her feet were rooted by an inner wish she did not suspect she owned, beyond her conscious control.

Suddenly, as the man heaved up in his own excitement, moonlight gleamed on metal handcuffs. Now it was plain to her who the man was. A scream flared in her throat, but she stifled it. The last thing in the world was to let this beast know she had seen him in his obscene act. He would vent his lust and brutality on her.

Hilda Cannon fled to her car, while Bo Leslie, blissfully unaware that he had had a visitor, continued his unanticipated satyric tryst. He plunged harder and harder in his mounting lust. He did not know that the vibrations of his act were reaching nearby creatures. Their antennae were lifting, rising, dipping as his signals told them of his presence. This swarm of roaches had been pleasantly ensconsed in an old snake burrow, had not been called back to the Central Nest. They had fulfilled their mission for this day, but if there was new food now—or possibly new danger, as from the dump rats that had suddenly become Enemy—then they were ready to move again, at once.

Restlessness passed from great roach to great roach as the vibrations came over the forest floor stronger and heavier. As Peter Hubbard would explain in the Yarkie laboratory later, people didn’t understand that when they saw household roaches scurrying for the kitchen cracks, it wasn’t so much that the light had been turned on. True, roaches preferred the dark, but their first alarm system was their sensitivity to vibration. It was the approaching footsteps that sent them fleeing long before a light switch was ever touched.

Bo was approaching his orgasm. Without his hands to lift him, he reared back and thudded down, sending clearer and clearer tremors along the ground.