het's heart. It seemed an age before he could
bring his pistol up and fire.

* * * * *

Detonite, as everyone knows, does not explode on impact; the cap of
fulminate in the end of each bullet sets it off. But even this requires
some resistance--something more than a dry, red husk to check the
bullet's flight. There was no explosion from the tiny shell that Chet's
pistol fired, but the bullet did its work. The creature fell plunging to
the rocky ground, and its transparent wings sent flurries of dust where
they beat upon the ground. There were others that went down, for the
bullet had gone on and through the great swarm.

And then they attacked.

The very fury of the assault saved the huddle of humans. So close were
the red things pressed together that their vibrating wings beat and
locked the swarm into a mass. They were almost above their prey. Chet
knew that he was firing upward into the swarm, but the sound of his
pistol was lost. The red cloud hung poised in a whirling maelstrom; and
the pandemonium of clashing wings whipped down to them not only the
sound of their dry scraping but a stench from those reptile bodies that
was overpowering.

Sickly sweet, the taste of it was in Chet's mouth; the sound of the
furious swarm was battering at his ears as he knew that his pistol was
empty.

There were red bodies on the bare rock before him. A scaly, scabrous
thing was pressing against his upflung hands that he raised above his
head--a loathsome touch! A beak that was a needle-pointed tube stabbed
his shoulder before he could flinch aside: the quick pain of it was
piercingly sharp....

* * * * *

Other red horrors dropped from the main mass overhead; he saw Harkness
beating at them wildly while he made a shelter of his body above the
crouched figure of Diane. Two of them--two incredible, beastly, flying
things! He saw them so plainly where they hovered, and Harkness striking
at them with a useless, empty gun, while they waited to drive home their
lance-like beaks.

The picture was so plain! His brain was a photographic plate,
super-sensitized by the utter horror of the moment. While the red
monster stabbed its beak into his shoulder, while he drove home one blow
against its parchment body with his empty pistol, while the wild,
beating wings lifted the creature again into the air--he saw it all.

Here were Diane and Harkness! Nearby Schwartzmann was o