des. They were
surrounded by the uncivilized ones of Titan! And those of the ovoids had
run off at the first sign of danger.

The din from the forest was augmented by the whistlings of a second
pteranodon which darted after the remaining ovoids, following swiftly as
these retreated with ludicrous, wabbling haste.

* * * * *

Ora screamed and struck out at something with her fist. A naked arm had
reached out from the underbrush and grasped her wrist. Carr wheeled and
his ray pistol spat crackling flame. The savage, an undersized red man
with an enormous head, rose unsteadily from his hiding place, a look of
terrible hate in his contorted features. Then, like a punctured balloon,
his body collapsed into the nothingness of complete disintegration.

"Back, back to the _Nomad_!" Carr roared, dragging Ora with him and
leveling his pistol at a group of the bronze brutes who rushed into the
space where the vessel lay amongst the trees.

Mado was busy with his torpedo tube and a vast explosion shook the
ground beneath them as a trio of the savages were blasted out of
existence. A great tree toppled and crashed across the nose of the
_Nomad_, its roots ripped from the soil by the concussion.

Ora had whipped out her own pistol and was firing as they fell back.
Game kid, she was! Carr gloated as he saw she was making each shot tell.
But this couldn't last; there were hundreds of them now, long-armed and
big-headed red devils swarming in from every direction. Carr dodged none
too quickly to save his skull from a swift-flung stone, which clanged
against the _Nomad's_ hull. There was a perfect hail of the missiles
now: one struck his left arm a numbing blow, and he heard a sickening
thud and Ora's moan as she was hit. And there were winged darts, from
blow-guns.

A dusky moon-face leered into his own, horribly close, and he yelled his
rage as he drove it back with a swift uppercut. But the horde of savages
came on in ever increasing numbers and with renewed vigor.

"Quick--inside!" Carr hissed in Ora's ear as his fingers found the rim
of the manhole. He'd have her safely within in a moment.

Detis clambered out with the thought machine in his arms, and a singing
dart from one of the blow-guns pierced him through and through. A look
of astonishment spread over his kindly features, and he fell forward,
dying.

And then Carr looked up into a grinning face behind a huge club that was
swinging do