aptures into escapes.

But now the guns were empty.

"Feet," said Pink, quoting an ancient joke, "feet, do your stuff!"

Circe was amazing, dodging and pirouetting and even hurdling the gross
feet when they couldn't be side-stepped. Pink gamely followed her lead,
Jerry now slung over his shoulder. There was panting in his ears--Daley
must be having tough going. Then he recognized the deep wheezing
breaths: they were his own.

"Daley?" he gasped.

"Right behind you, Pink."

The mouth of their corridor was in sight. Then there were djinn, a row
of them standing side by side with feet firmly planted to make a
barrier. My God, he thought, this is it! Circe vanished, he did not see
where. The feet were there, and arms reaching down for him. He pitched
sideways, flipped by a questing finger; crashed on his shoulder, rolled,
still miraculously hanging onto Jerry. The brashest course was the only
one. He gathered himself and jumped onto a toe. It was as hard as the
rock. And this thing, he said irrelevantly in his mind, this massive
piece of solidity can vaporize into a gin bottle! He slid down the toe
and scuttled ratlike under the lofty legs and was in the clear. The
tunnel, itself an astoundingly high cave, appeared directly before him.

There was no time now to look for Circe and Daley, vital though their
safety was to him. He carried Jerry into the tunnel and loped with
multiyarded strides for the plain. He could not see any lamp-glare but
his own. But he could not stop. Humanity in that instant overcame all
his private desires. There were fifty-eight souls who would be blotted
out if he didn't make the _Elephant's Child_ in two minutes. Sixty-one,
if you counted Daley and Circe and Pink himself. In less than one of
those minutes he had traversed the tunnel and come out above the plain.

The ship was still there. Some distance away from it stood the big trap,
and even yet giants were speeding toward it from all points of the
compass. Pink gasped a breath and launched himself out and down the
steep hillside. He took it all in that one jump. As he was landing, a
curiously weightless man on this tiny planetoid, Jerry came to life and
writhed suddenly in his arms, upsetting his balance. Pink fell and his
left ankle shrieked with pain as it turned under him and was smashed
into the gray rock by his dropping body and Jerry's.

He sprawled full length and knew his ankle was broken or sprained. Jerry
rolled free and coll