he now useless ray-pistol slipped from his limp fingers. Stupefied with
horror at the futility of the deadly Randchron ray against this terrible
adversary, he stood rooted to the spot. Then the thing reached for him
again; and his muscles were galvanized to action--to instinctive,
stupid, reasonless action.

Screaming incoherently, mad with horror of the stone claws that had
clutched at him, he turned and ran. In great leaps he bounded away from
the accursed lake and made for the taller trees and thicker vegetation
at a distance from the shore. It was the worst thing he could have done.
There was a chance that he could have reached his Dart, had he thought
of it, and soared aloft out of reach. But he thought of nothing. All he
wanted to do, in that abysmal fear that can still make a mindless animal
out of a civilized man, was to run and hide--to get away from the
fearful monster that had risen up to glare at him with those stony,
pitiless eyes, and to reach for him with two-fingered bands like
grinding rock vises.

* * * * *

Just as the sun fell below the rim of the asteroid, plunging it into a
darkness only faintly relieved by the light of the stars, he crashed
into the deeper underbrush. A trailing creeper tripped him in his mad
flight. He fell headlong, to lie panting, sobbing for breath, in the
thick carpet of blood-colored moss.

Behind him, from the direction of the lake, he heard a sudden clangor as
of rock beating against metal. This endured only a short time. Then the
solid ground beneath him shook slightly, and an appalling crash of trees
and underbrush to the rear told him that the stone colossus was on his
trail.

He leaped to his feet and continued his great bounds over the sharply
curved surface of the asteroid, banging against tree trunks, bruising
himself against stones, falling in the darkness to rise again and flee
as before in a mad attempt to distance the crashing sound of pursuit
behind him.

Then he felt himself writhing in thin air as his flying course took him
over the edge of a cliff. Down, down he fell, to land in a dense bed of
foliage far below. Something hit his head with terrific force. Pinwheels
of light flashed before his eyes, to fade into velvety nothingness....

* * * * *

Slowly, uncertainly he wavered back to consciousness. For a moment he
was aware of nothing save that he was lying on some surface that was
jagg