unded in his ears. Enemies, human and animal, ringed him in Kurgo's
house: but up above lay a clean, cold highway, an open highway,
stretching straight to the heart of the danger which was his
destination. He turned the mitten-switch over to quick repulsion and
leaped up to the waiting heavens.

* * * * *

On the ground was a world of night: a mile up showed a great circle of
black, one edge of which was marked by a faint, eery glow from
further-setting Jupiter.

Save for that far-off spectral hint of the giant occulted planet, Hawk
Carse sped in darkness. Through the open face-plate the night wind
buffeted his emotionless, stone-set face: his suit whistled a song of
speed as the gusts laced by it. Down and ahead his direction rod
pointed, and with ever-gathering momentum he followed its leading
finger. The lights of Porno dwindled to points; grew yet finer, then
were gone. Several times a sparse cluster of other lights, lonely in
the black tide of III's surface, ran beneath him, signaling a ranch.
The last of these melted into the ink behind, and there was a period
unrelieved by sign of man's presence below.

And then at last one bright solitary spot of light appeared, far
ahead. It was a danger signal to the Hawk. He had to descend at once.
From then on, speed had to be forsaken for caution. Watchful eyes were
beneath that light, lying keen on the heavens; a whole intricate
offense and defense system surrounded it. It was the central
watch-beacon of Lar Tantril's ranch.

Carse swooped low.

He came into the night-world of the surface. No faint-lit horizon
showed; there was only the darkness, and darker shadows peopling it.
At the height of a mile there had been no signs of the satellite's
native life, but at an elevation scarcely above the treetops the
flying man was brought all too close to the reality of the denizens of
the gloomy jungle below. Out of the black smother came clues to the
life within it: sounds of monstrous bodies moving through the
undergrowth and mud, recurring death-screams, howls and angry
chatterings....

* * * * *

This below; there was more above. He was not the only living thing
that soared in the night. Swift fleeting batlike shapes would appear
from nowhere for one sharp second, would beset him one after another
in an almost constant stream, thinking his comparatively clumsy,
bloated bulk easy prey, and then be gone. He