was a chaos of green, windswept darkness. But there was bursting light
now overhead and rumbling claps, like thunder.

I saw Molo's body where the wind held him pinned against the side of a
flat, ten-foot rock butte, and dove for him, swimming down frantically
until I struck against the rock with a blow that almost knocked the
breath from me. Molo was still obviously unconscious.

How long it took me to get back to Anita, floundering with Molo's
body, I do not know. I managed to keep against the ground; was blown
back, and struggled forward again. The wind came with strange puffs.
In one of the lulls, I hauled Molo through the air and into the cave.

"Gregg!" Anita held to me, her arms around me. "Gregg dear, you were
gone so long!"

I was battered and bruised and breathless. The cave's mouth was like a
ten-foot tunnel leading downward into blackness.

"Gregg, I put Venza and Snap here."

They lay side by side, like two dead bodies, here in the greenish
darkness. We placed Molo with them. Together Anita and I crouched
beside them, clinging to each other, listening to the wild sweep of
the wind outside. The storm had burst into full fury now. It would
whirl us away like feathers, outside there now. The lightning and
thunder hissed and crashed. Stones and boulders were being flung like
hailstones.

This flimsy, weightless world! It seemed as though the rocks here on
which we were crouching would be shifted and carried away.

"Gregg! Gregg, is this the end?"

A mass of rocks fell at the opening, closing it, so that we were
buried here in the darkness. "Anita, my darling, I will never stop
loving you."

Darkness, with her arms around me and a shuddering world outside. But
here, only Anita and her soft arms.

"Gregg!"

Horror was in her voice. Then I saw what she was seeing. It was not
just Anita and I buried here in the darkness with the bodies of Snap
and Venza and Molo. Something else was here.

From the blackness of the cave, two green, glowing eyes were staring.
Their radiance showed me the outlines of a distended head. An insane
thing? But it was not another of the forest insects. This seemed to be
an animal. The glow of its distended head disclosed a lythe,
horizontal body, seemingly solid and muscled. A chattering, insane
animal, here in the dark with us! We heard mouthing, mumbling words,
and an eerie, cackling laugh as it came padding toward us.

The thing in the cave stared at us as we clung toge