not even twitched after the heavy bullet tore through it. There was
a stomping rush in the little thicket he had been watching. Ed took two
long quick steps to one side to clear a couple of trees, threw up the
gun and fired as something flashed across a thin spot in the brush. He
heard the whack of the bullet in flesh and fired again. Ordinarily he
did not like to shoot at things he could not see clearly, but this did
not seem the time to be overly finicky. There was no further movement in
the brush.

He stood there several long moments, listening, and there was no further
movement anywhere. He eased the hammer down, fed in three rounds to
replace those he had used, and walked slowly back to the first thing he
had shot.

At that range, the bullet had not opened up, but it had not needed to.
It had practically exploded the creature anyway--the .450 has two tons
of striking energy at the muzzle. From what was left, Ed deduced a
smallish, rabbit-sized thing, smooth-skinned, muscular, many-legged,
flattish, mottled to camouflage perfectly in the leaves. There was a
head at one end, mostly undamaged since it had been at the end of a long
muscular neck, with a pair of glazing beady eyes and a surprisingly
small mouth. When Ed pressed on the muscles at the base of the skull,
the mouth gaped roundly and a two-inch long spine slid smoothly out of
an inconspicuous slot just below it.

At middling distances or better, Ed could still see as well as ever, but
close up he needed help. He got out his pocket magnifier and studied the
spine. It looked hollow, grooved back for a distance from the point. A
drop of milky looking substance trembled on its tip.

Ed nodded thoughtfully to himself. This was what had made him uneasy, he
was pretty sure. What was the thing in the brush, then? Innocent
bystander? He got stiffly to his feet, conscious now of the ache in his
wrist that had taken most of the recoil of the first shot, the torn web
between his right thumb and forefinger where the hammer spur had bitten
in; and walked over to the thicket.

* * * * *

The thing in the brush was larger, quite a bit larger, and the bullets
had not torn it up so badly. It lay sprawled with three of its eight
legs doubled under it, a bear-sized animal with a gaping, cavernous,
toothless mouth out of all proportion to the slender body which seemed
designed mainly as a frame for the muscular legs. It was not quite dead.