automatically as the lesser of two evils.

His aunt Katisha, her inquisitorial duty discharged, dropped the
discolored handkerchief pointedly on Oliver's desk and rejoined Glenna
and Orella Simms. The car drove away. Oliver, left alone in the
growing dusk of evening to his miserable introspection, found his
wandering attention returning unaccountably to the crumpled
handkerchief, and drew it closer for a better look.

It was only a harmless square of linen, smudged with dust and spotted
with blood from Bivins' chow-bitten leg--but with his closer look
Oliver's world sprang up and exploded with a shattering bang in his
startled face.

The dust was quite ordinary, but Bivins' blood was not.

It was green.

He was never quite sure, later, just what happened next. He retained a
vague memory of roaring away in his Aunt Katisha's car through a
reckless showering of crushed shell; sometimes he could recall the
cool onrush of wind whipping his face and the frantic dodging of
approaching headlamps on the highway. But in the main, his descent
upon the Furnay estate was a blank.

Only one fact stood out with freezing clarity, excluding any thought
of his Aunt Katisha's certain wrath or of Orella's maidenly
reproaches: Perrl-high-C-trill-and-A-above was in Deadly Danger, and
there was none but Oliver Watts to rescue her.

There was a brief instant of lucidity as he approached the Furnay
gates through the cabbage palms and was forced to choose a course of
action.

The attendant certainly would not admit him without orders from Mr.
Furnay, who as certainly would not give them; the walls were much too
high and sheer for climbing; and to make the need for haste even more
critical, it was only too obvious that the Furnay gang was about to
depart.

A tremendous saucer-shaped ship had landed by the menagerie building,
where it sat with circular peripheral ports aglow and lines of bold
enigmatic hieroglyphs fluorescing greenly on its smooth undersurface.
Jointed metal figures scurried here and there, chivvying the last of
Mr. Furnay's herbivores up a ramp into the belly of the ship; the
predators, in cages drawn by other sleek robot stevedores, followed in
orderly procession.

Oliver solved his problem of entry by driving headlong through the
iron grillwork.

There was a raucous yelling from the gateman, a monstrous rending of
metal and jangling of broken glass. Aunt Katisha's car slewed
erratically down the Furnay drive,