orror--the horror of one released from
the fascination of a snake. She screamed his name.

Then a huge lizard paw swept forward and seized her body. A second
gripped her as she screamed again. And Tommy Reames was deathly,
terribly cool. The whole thing had happened in seconds only. He was
submerged in slimy, sticky ooze which was the crushed fungus that had
tripped him. But he cleared the gun. The flashlight limned a ghastly,
obscenely fat body and a long tapering tail. Tommy aimed at the base
of that tail and pulled the trigger, praying frenziedly.

A stream of flame leaped from the gun-muzzle. Explosive bullets
uttered their queer cracking noise. The thing screamed horribly. Its
cry was hoarsely shrill. The flashlight showed it swinging ponderously
about, with Evelyn held fast against its body in a fashion horribly
reminiscent of a child holding a doll.

Tommy was scrambling upright. Jaws clamped, cold horror filling him,
he aimed again, at the sharp-toothed head above Evelyn's body. He
could not try a heart shot with her in the way. Again the gun spat out
a burst of explosive lead. And Tommy should have been sickened by the
effect of detonating missiles. The thing's lower jaw was shattered,
half severed, made useless. It should have been killed a dozen times
over.

But it screamed again until the jungle rang with the uproar, and then
it fled, still screaming and still holding Evelyn clutched fast
against its scaly breast.

CHAPTER IV

_The Fifth-Dimension World_

Tommy flung himself in pursuit, despairing. Evelyn cried out once more
as the lumbering thing fled with her, giving utterance to shrieking
outcries at which the tree-fern jungle shook. It leaped once, upon
monstrous hind legs, but came crashing heavily to the ground. Tommy's
explosive bullets had shattered the bones which supported the
balancing tail. Now that huge fleshy member dragged uselessly. The
thing could not progress in its normal fashion of leaps covering many
yards. It began to waddle clumsily, shrieking, with Evelyn clasped
close. Its jaw was a shattered horror. It went marching insanely
through the blackness of the jungle, and with it went the unholy din
of its anguish, and behind it Tommy Reames came flinging himself
frenziedly in pursuit.

Normally, the thing should have distanced him in seconds. Even
crippled as it was, it moved swiftly. The scaly, duck-shaped head
reared a good twenty feet above the fallen tree-fern frond