ded, quick and harsh. "Not the stockade!"

The rifleman kept running, seeming not to hear him in his panic.
Prentiss called to him once more:

"Not the stockade--_you'll lead the unicorns into it!_"

Again the rifleman seemed not to hear him.

The unicorns were coming in sight, converging in from the north and east
and south, the rumble of their hooves swelling to a thunder that filled
the night. The rifleman would reach the stockade only a little ahead of
them and they would go through the wall as though it had been made of
paper.

For a little while the area inside the stockade would be filled with
dust, with the squealing of the swirling, charging unicorns and the
screams of the dying. Those inside the stockade would have no chance
whatever of escaping. Within two minutes it would be over, the last
child would have been found among the shattered shelters and trampled
into lifeless shapelessness in the bloody ground.

Within two minutes all human life on Ragnarok would be gone.

There was only one thing for him to do.

He dropped to one knee so his aim would be steady and the sights of his
rifle caught the running man's back. He pressed the trigger and the
rifle cracked viciously as it bucked against his shoulder.

The man spun and fell hard to the ground. He twisted, to raise himself
up a little and look back, his face white and accusing and unbelieving.

_"You shot me!"_

Then he fell forward and lay without moving.

Prentiss turned back to face the unicorns and to look at the trees in
the nearby grove. He saw what he already knew, they were young trees and
too small to offer any escape for him. There was no place to run, no
place to hide.

There was nothing he could do but wait; nothing he could do but stand in
the blue starlight and watch the devil's herd pound toward him and
think, in the last moments of his life, how swiftly and unexpectedly
death could come to man on Ragnarok.

* * * * *

The unicorns held the Rejects prisoners in their stockade the rest of
the night and all the next day. Lake had seen the shooting of the
rifleman and had watched the unicorn herd kill John Prentiss and then
trample the dead rifleman.

He had already given the order to build a quick series of fires around
the inside of the stockade walls when the unicorns paused to tear their
victims to pieces; grunting and squealing in triumph as bones crushed
between their teeth and they flung