spear rammed into St. Cyr's solar plexus and drove him back against the
wall with a booming thud. This seemed to be what Martin wanted. Keeping
one end of his spear pressed into the director's belly, he crouched
lower, dug his toes into the rug, and did his very best to drill a hole
in St. Cyr.

"Stop it!" cried Watt, flinging himself into the conflict. Ancient
reflexes took over. Martin's arm shot out. Watt shot off in the opposite
direction.

The lamp broke.

Martin looked pensively at the pieces, tentatively began to bite one,
changed his mind, and looked at St. Cyr instead. The gasping director,
mouthing threats, curses and objections, drew himself up, and shook a
huge fist at Martin.

"I," he announced, "shall kill you with my bare hands. Then I go over to
MGM with DeeDee. In Mixo-Lydia--"

Martin lifted his own fists toward his face. He regarded them. He
unclenched them slowly, while a terrible grin spread across his face.
And then, with every tooth showing, and with the hungry gleam of a mad
tiger in his tiny little eyes, he lifted his gaze to St. Cyr's throat.

Mammoth-Slayer was not the son of the Great Hairy One for nothing.

* * * * *

Martin sprang.

So did St. Cyr--in another direction, screaming with sudden terror. For,
after all, he was only a medievalist. The feudal man is far more
civilized than the so-called man of Mammoth-Slayer's primordially direct
era, and as a man recoils from a small but murderous wildcat, so St. Cyr
fled in sudden civilized horror from an attacker who was, literally,
afraid of nothing.

He sprang through the window and, shrieking, vanished into the night.

Martin was taken by surprise. When Mammoth-Slayer leaped at an enemy,
the enemy leaped at him too, and so Martin's head slammed against the
wall with disconcerting force. Dimly he heard diminishing, terrified
cries. Laboriously he crawled to his feet and set back against the wall,
snarling, quite ready....

"Nick!" Erika's voice called. "Nick, it's me! Stop it! _Stop it!_
DeeDee--"

"Ugh?" Martin said thickly, shaking his head. "Kill." He growled softly,
blinking through red-rimmed little eyes at the scene around him. It swam
back slowly into focus. Erika was struggling with DeeDee near the
window.

"You let me go," DeeDee cried. "Where Raoul goes, I go."

"DeeDee!" pleaded a new voice. Martin glanced aside to see Tolliver Watt
crumpled in a corner, a crushed lamp-shade