54

The creature seemed to stop in midair, as if struck by a bolt of lightning.  Its body contorted, its eyes popped wide, it collapsed to the floor of the chamber and clawed at its own flesh.

"Five hundred feet..." Amanda said.  "Four-fifty..."

"It's working," said Chase.  He couldn't take his eyes from the porthole.  "My God..."

With the chamber pressurized to six hundred and fifty feet, the squeeze on the creature — on its sinuses and lungs, on its stomach cavity and every other pocket in its body that contained air — had been nearly three hundred pounds per square inch.  Now, as Amanda brought the chamber back to surface pressure, the air within the creature was escaping with the speed and violence of a balloon bursting.

*          *          *          *          *

It could not see, it could not hear, it could not breathe.  Every joint and sinew felt aflame.  Its stomach seemed to want to invade its chest, its chest to swell into its head, its head to fly to pieces.

It had no conception of what was happening, could not know that the air inside it was decompressing at a rate far faster than its body could accommodate, that bubbles of nitrogen were scattering through its tissues, lodging everywhere and growing inexorably, tearing the tissues apart.

Desperately it clutched itself, as if to force its misshapen body back into form.

*          *          *          *          *

Chase watched, fascinated, as the creature caromed from one side of the chamber to the other.  Blood leaked from its mouth and ears; its eyes bulged, straining at their sockets, and it raised a hand as if to contain them.  But before the hand could reach the face, one of the eyes launched itself from its socket — like a grape squeezed from its skin — and dangled grotesquely by red strands of muscle fiber.

The image was surreal — a writhing, pulsing, swelling figure that might have been created by a lunatic sculptor and controlled by a mad puppeteer..

"Two-fifty," Amanda said.  "Two hundred... what's happening?"

"Its' on its knees," said Chase.  "It's... holy shit!"

The creature exploded.

A thick crimson mist filled the chamber; globules of blood and pieces of flesh struck the porthole, and stuck.