only growth being a
lichenous sort of vegetation, gray-green in color.

* * * * *

Here and there on the ground were the imprints of sharp, split hoofs,
and Correy pointed these out to me with the comment that one of the
guards had reported seeing a number of slender-legged animals roaming
here in the star-light, apparently seeking water, but frightened by
the strange apparition of our ship.

"From the way he described them, they're something like the deer we
used to have on Earth," he said. "I've seen the fossils in the
museums, and they had little sharp, split hoofs like--"

One of the men behind us shouted a warning at that instant, and we
both whirled in our tracks. My eyes fell instantly upon one of the
strangest and most fearsome sights I have ever seen--and I have
explored many strange and terrible worlds.

To our left, a huge circular section of the earth had lifted, and was
swinging back on a hinge of glistening white fibers; a disk as great
in diameter as the height of a man, and as thick as a man's body.

Where the disk had been, gaped a tunnel slanting down into the earth,
and lined with the same glistening white fibers which covered the
bottom of the disk, and hinged it in place. As I looked, there sprang
from this tunnel a _thing_ which I shall call a spider, yet which was
too monstrous to be called by such an innocuous name.

It was rust red in color, with eight bristling legs, each tipped with
three curved and tufted claws. On each side of its face was an armored
mandible, tipped with shining fangs, and beside them, slender,
six-jointed palps stretched hungrily.

The man who had seen the disk fly up opened fire without orders, and
if he had not done so, some of us would not have returned to the ship.
As it was, the atomic pistol whispered a steady stream of death which
spattered the hairy body into an oozing pulp while it was still in
mid-air. We leaped away, adding our fire to that of the alert guard
who had first seen the apparition, and the spider, a twitching bundle
of bespattered legs, fell on the spot where, an instant before, we had
been.

Almost at the same instant two other great circular trap-doors swung
up, just beyond the first, and their hairy, malignant occupants leaped
toward us.

* * * * *

Our pistols were ready, now, however, and the portable ray equipment
was humming. The ray dissolved the first into a sifting