he dakta came plummeting earthward as its
super-keen senses saw and smelled the attractive bait waiting below. The
thing, as it came near, was like some figment from a nightmare. It had a
reptilian body between a twenty-foot spread of leathery wings, and a
long beak with a double row of pointed teeth. One of the things that
Gerry had seen flying over that lonely sea when he first brought the
_Viking_ down through the canopy of clouds that covered the planet of
Venus!

"So _that_ is a dakta!" Angus muttered, "bonny little creature!"

The winged lizard checked its flight momentarily some ten feet off the
ground, directly above one of the captive Amazons. Then he dove down.
The girl screamed and twisted away to the length of her tether, and the
toothed beak just missed her. The first of the hunters fired as the
dakta whirled and lashed out again, but the bullet exploded off to one
side.

Gripping the writhing Amazon with his beak and his clawed feet, the
dakta flapped his great wings and soared upward again. Two more of the
hunters fired together. One of the explosive bullets missed entirely,
the other blew one of the girl's legs to pieces but did not harm the
monster that held her.

Then Lansa tossed aside his green robe and stood up. Gerry saw that he
held a ray-tube, either one from the _Stardust_ or one of the new ones
he now claimed to be able to make in Giri-Vaaka. The tube slanted
upward. Murky light played around its muzzle. The dakta gave a shrill
and almost human scream. Then it dropped its mangled victim and fell
twitching to the ground. Its leathery skin was turned black where the
ray-blast had struck it. Along the edge of the field, the close packed
crowds broke into wild cheering and Lansa acknowledged it with a
condescending gesture of one upraised arm.

The hunt went on. Sometimes the dakta came singly, sometimes in pairs.
The hunters had the range better now, and dropped them consistently. On
several occasions the flying lizards were brought down before they had
time to seize a victim at all, but most of the time one of the prisoners
was killed or mortally wounded before the dakta was slain. A Green Man
tethered to the stake next beyond Closana had been ripped about the
throat by the raking teeth of a dakta's bill, and was breathing with a
sort of gurgling moan as he bled to death. So far, that was the nearest
that one of the flying lizards had come to Gerry or his two companions.

And then Gerry sa