and wind tighter around him. He tore at them,
dislodged all but two. His sturdy Earth leg went back to sweep the
stalk-like legs of his attackers from under them. One of the things
went down, to twist weakly in a laborious attempt to rise again. But
the other, by sheer force of height and reach, began to bear Dex down.

Savagely he laced out with his fists, battering the pulpy face that
was pressing down close to his. The big eyes blinked shut, but the
four hose-like arms did not relax their clasp. Dex's hands sought
fiercely for the thing's throat. But it had no throat: the head, set
directly on the thin shoulders, defied all throttling attempts.

* * * * *

Then, just as Dex was feeling that the end had come, he felt the
creature wrench from him, and saw it slide in a tangle of arms and
legs over the smooth metal pavement. He got shakily to his feet, to
see Brand standing over him and flailing out with his fists at an ever
tightening circle of towering figures.

"Thanks," panted Dex. And he began again, tripping the twelve-foot
things in order to get them down within reach, battering at the great
pulpy heads, fighting blindly in that expressed craving to take as
many of the creatures into hell with him as he could manage. Beside
him fought Brand, steadily, coolly, grim of jaw and unblinking of eye.

Already the struggle had gone on far longer than they had dreamed it
might. For some reason the grotesque creatures delayed killing them.
That they could do so any time they pleased, was certain: if the
monsters could reach them with their shock-tubes through the double
insulated hull of the space ship, they could certainly kill them out
in the open.

Yet they made no move to do so. The deadly tubes were not used. The
screeching gargoyles, instead, devoted all their efforts to merely
hurling their attenuated bodies on the two men as though they wished
to capture them alive.

Finally, however, the nature of the battle changed. The tallest of the
attackers opened his tiny mouth and piped a signal. The ring of
weaving tall bodies surrounding the two opened and became a U. The
creatures in the curve of the U raised their shock-tubes and, with
none of their own kind behind the victims to share in its discharge,
released whatever power it was that lurked in them.

The shock was terrific. Without the glass and metal of the ship to
protect them, out in the open and defenceless, Brand and De