on other than a blind instinct to attack any
other living being within reach, for they promptly headed for the three
captives from Earth.

As the creatures came shambling rapidly forward on powerful bowed legs,
and with the tips of their long hairy arms brushing the ground, they
looked like grotesquely distorted apes. The crowning horror of those
shambling figures, however, lay in the fact that they were completely
headless!

Even when the things approached to a distance of less than ten feet
before halting in momentary indecision, Blake could detect no sign of
any normal skull in the blunt space at the top of the powerful hairy
torso. There was a furry-lipped mouth opening of some kind in the hollow
between the bulging shoulders, but of eyes, ears, nose, or brain cavity
there was no discernible trace.

For a long moment the headless ape-things and the three human beings
stood silently facing each other. Mapes' pistol was leveled pointblank
at the nearest of the creatures, but their overwhelming numbers made the
gangster hold his fire.

There were two distinct groups of the things. At least twenty members of
each group were in the crowd facing the Earthlings. To the rear of these
attackers two oddly repulsive objects were carried and carefully
shielded by picked guards of four unusually large and powerful
ape-things.

* * * * *

The nature of those two guarded objects puzzled Blake. They looked like
large eggs of dirty-gray jelly, about a yard in length. They were
obviously alive, for their gelatinous masses quivered and trembled in
constant activity. Blake noted that there seemed to be a curious
connection between the ebb and flow of pulsations in the egg-masses and
the movements of the ape-things.

His attention was abruptly recalled to the headless things in front of
him as they suddenly began shambling forward again. There was no
possible mistaking the intention of those advancing horrors. They were
moving to the attack.

They reached barely to Blake's shoulders, but he realized that their
enormous numbers and hook-taloned hands would make the result of the
battle almost a foregone conclusion. The fact that the headless things
were without eyes was no handicap to them. The swift certainty of their
movements proved that they had a sense of sight of some kind that was in
every way as efficient as eyesight.

Blake looked hurriedly around him, seeking a place where they might b