of the black warriors skidding forward on his face.

Maybe that will stop them, Mike thought desperately. Maybe they've
never seen firearms before. He held up his second shot for the
briefest moment hoping the savages would be awed into retreat.

But this was not the case. They charged forward in renewed fury and
Mike again went to work. He dropped three more of the charging maniacs
while Nicko, probably the poorest shot who ever lifted a rifle,
accounted for one unfortunate warrior with a twenty-shot spray of
atomic pellets.

The black men, who had had only a scant fifty yards to cover, were now
upon the three. Two of them seized Doree, an act which turned Mike
into a terrible fighting machine.

Not able to fire the gun effectively at such close range, he reversed
it and created bloody havoc, using the butt as a club. Two skulls
cracked sharply under its impact and as he fought, Mike saw Nicko go
down. He couldn't reach him.

Several warriors raised the iron-toothed clubs they carried and
crashed them down upon Nicko's unprotected body.

The result would have been comic under less grim circumstances. The
clubs of the warriors caused Nicko's almost indestructible hide to
ring like a great bell. The handle of one warrior's lethal bludgeon
snapped and the attacker stared at it in amazement. The rest beat down
again upon the prone Nicko, their clubs bouncing off and resounding in
a sort of anvil chorus.

The attention of the warriors bent upon annihilating Mike was diverted
by the intriguing spectacle of this strange four-armed creature
refusing to be clubbed to death. So Mike was able to get in some
telling blows that felled three more of the terrible warriors.

He knew however, that the end was already written in the bloody sands
around him. He could only fight to the last moment, bringing down as
many of the enemy as possible.

His heart was sick at what would surely be Doree's fate. He saw her
just beyond the perimeter of battle still held by her two captors who
were viewing the fight with rapt interest. If he could only reach her.
One swing of his gun butt and she would serve no vile purpose in the
hands of these raiders.

[Illustration: The beastman's intent was all too clear.]

Mike mowed a bloody path in her direction. He covered more than half
the distance before he knew he would never make it.

However, the end of this affair was not written in the sands, but in
the skies overhead. Mike realized th