with an urgent demand singing through Shann's
brain.

"Give us a fix point--away from camp but not too far. Quick!"

A fix point--what did the Survey officer mean? A fix point ... For some
reason Shann thought of the ledge on which he had lain to watch the
first Throg attack. And the picture of it was etched on his mind as
clearly as memory could paint it.

"Thorvald----" Again his voice and his mind call were echoes of each
other. But this time he had no answer. Had that demand meant Thorvald
and the Wyverns were moving in, putting to use the strange
distance-erasing power the witches of Warlock could use by desire? But
why had they not come sooner? And what could they hope to accomplish
against the now scattered but certainly unbroken enemy forces? The
Wyverns had not been able to turn their power against one injured
Throg--by their own accounting--how could they possibly cope with
well-armed and alert aliens in the field?

"You die--slow----" The Throg officer clicked, and the emotionless,
toneless translation was all the more daunting for that lack of color.
"Your people come--see----"

So that was the reason they had brought him to the landing field. He was
to furnish a grisly warning to the crew of the cruiser. However, there
the Throgs were making a bad mistake if they believed that his death by
any ingenious method could scare off Terran retaliation.

"I die--you follow----" Shann tried to make that promise emphatic.

Did the Throg officer expect the Terran to beg for his life or a quick
death? Again he made his threat--straight into the web, hearing it split
into clicks.

"Perhaps," the Throg returned. "But you die the first."

"Get to it!" Shann's voice scaled up. He was close to the ragged edge,
and the last push toward the breaking point had not been the Throg
speech, but that message from Thorvald. If the Survey officer was going
to make any move in the mottled dusk, it would have to be soon.

Mottled dusk.... The Throgs had moved a little away from him. Shann
looked beyond them to the perimeter of the cleared field, not really
because he expected to see any rescuers break from cover there. And when
he did see a change, Shann thought his own sight was at fault.

Those splotches of waxy light which marked certain trees, bushes, and
scrubby ground-hugging plants were spreading, running together in pools.
And from those center cores of concentrated glow, tendrils of mist
lazily curled out, as a ma