n attack whose sheer fury made Blake give
ground before the menace of the lashing tentacles.

* * * * *

Blake took another backward step, then staggered as his foot struck a
rough spot in the ground. Zehru's tentacles were upon him before he
could recover himself. His club was jerked from his fingers and sent
hurtling far out of reach. Half a dozen of the tentacle-arms lashed
around his throat in a strangling grip.

He clawed wildly at the choking coils, but they failed to loosen even a
fraction of an inch. Desperately Blake sent his fists smashing into the
gray face. The scale armor of Zehru's skull, fast weakening in the
liquefying influence of the oxygen, gave way beneath that battering
attack. He staggered, and his coiling tentacles relaxed slightly.

Blake tore himself free. A final smashing blow, with every ounce of his
one hundred and ninety pounds behind it, sent Zehru crashing to the
ground. The Xollarian tried to rise, then feebly slumped back, his
strength spent. Blake leaped forward to finish his opponent, but stopped
as he saw that his efforts were not needed.

The deadly air of the enclosure was now overwhelming Zehru with swift
and hideous death. He was literally rotting before Blake's horrified
eyes, the gray-scaled skin sloughing off in streaming rivulets of pallid
ooze, and the entire body contorting in what was obviously a death
agony.

Sickened, Blake stepped back a pace or two. Zehru's tentacles feebly
beat the ground around him, then suddenly one of the writhing arms
blundered upon a thin cable running along the ground. Before Blake could
spring forward to stop him, Zehru with a last surge of power ripped the
fragile metal strand completely in two.

It was the Xollarian's dying effort. He slumped in a motionless, nearly
liquescent heap. But that last blind blow at the Earthlings threatened
to be a deadly one. The severed cable led to one of the black posts
surrounding the enclosure. With the cable's parting an entire section of
one of the gold-flecked barrier walls vanished. Xollar's deadly purple
mists were already surging in.

* * * * *

Speed was the Earthlings' only chance now. Helen was as quick to realize
the danger as was Blake. Side by side they started their mad race toward
where the silver arch-gate loomed nearly a hundred yards away.

They had covered barely half the distance when the air around them
began to show