ell
among the lashing branches of its fellows. The other man was caught for
a moment in a mass of dead and motionless wood, but a cunningly directed
ray dissolved the entangling branches around him and he lay there, free
but unable to arise.

* * * * *

The rays played on ruthlessly. The brown, heavy powder was falling like
greasy soot. Trunk after trunk crashed to the ground, slashed into
fragments.

"Cease action!" I ordered, and instantly the eager whine of the
generators softened to a barely discernible hum. Two of the men, under
orders, raced out to the injured man: the rest of us clustered around
the first of the two to be freed from the terrible tentacles of the
trees.

His menore was gone, his tight-fitting uniform was in shreds, and
blotched with blood. There was a huge crimson welt across his face, and
blood dripped slowly from the tips of his fingers.

"_God!_" he muttered unsteadily as kindly arms lifted him with eager
tenderness. "They're alive! Like snakes. They--they're _hungry_!"

"Take him to the ship," I ordered. "He is to receive treatment
immediately," I turned to the detail that was bringing in the other
victim. The man was unconscious, and moaning, but suffering more from
shock than anything else. A few minutes under the helio emanations and
he would be fit for light duty.

* * * * *

As the men hurried him to the ship, I turned to Dival. He was standing
beside me, rigid, his face very pale, his eyes fixed on space.

"What do you make of it, Mr. Dival?" I questioned him.

"Of the trees?" He seemed startled, as though I had aroused him from
deepest thought. "They are not difficult to comprehend, sir. There are
numerous growths that are primarily carnivorous. We have the fintal vine
on Zenia, which coils instantly when touched, and thus traps many small
animals which it wraps about with its folds and digests through
sucker-like growths.

"On your own Earth there are, we learn, hundreds of varieties of
insectivorous plants: the Venus fly-trap, known otherwise as the Dionaea
Muscipula, which has a leaf hinged in the median line, with teeth-like
bristles. The two portions of the leaf snap together with considerable
force when an insect alights upon the surface, and the soft portions of
the catch are digested by the plant before the leaf opens again. The
pitcher plant is another native of Earth, and several varieties of it
are f