f the
battle had been changed.

The ring of living armor presented by the other soldiers was broken as
the enormous, dying termite charged among them. Furthermore, the
fountain of thick brown liquid exuding from its head, smeared the limbs
of the soldiers the blind, crazed thing touched, as well as its own.

In thirty seconds or less the wounded giant was down, still alive, but
wriggling feebly in a binding sheath of its own poison. And with it, so
smeared as to be utterly out of the struggle, were three of the others.

Quick to seize the advantage, Jim leaped to wrench his spear from the
conquered giant's head. And side by side he and Denny started again the
charge against the ruler's guards, which, while still mighty in defense,
were by their very nature unable to attack.

* * * * *

Three of these guards were left. Two of them were the freaks with the
great, armored, bung-heads--and the soft and vulnerable bodies. The
third was of the syringe type, with invulnerable horn breastplate and
body armor--but with a head that, now its fatal liquid was exhausted,
was useless in battle.

"Take 'em one by one," grunted Jim, setting the example by swinging his
spear at the body of the nearest guard. "We'll get at that damn thing
with the overgrown brains yet!"

His spear clanged on iron-hard horn as the termite swung its unwieldy
head to protect its unarmored body. The force of the contact tore the
spear from his hand; but almost before it could drop, he had recovered
it. And in that flashing instant Denny had darted in at the side of the
thing and half disembowelled it with a thrust of the acid-blunted point
of his three-foot bar, and a lightninglike wrench up and to the side.

"Only two left!" cried Jim, stabbing at the flabby head of the
syringe-monster that loomed a foot above his own head. "We'll do it yet,
Denny!"

But at that moment a clashing and rattling at the doorway suddenly burst
in on the din of the eery fight. Both men stared at each other with
surrender in their eyes.

"Now we _are_ all through!" yelled Jim, almost calm in his complete
resignation. "But we'll try to reach that devilish thing before we're
doomed!"

* * * * *

In the heat of the swift, deadly fray, the two men had forgotten for the
moment, that these few soldiers ranged against them were not all the
fighters in the mound city. But the quaking intellect they were striving