dived, the cheeping sound of a sleeping
bird was becoming a flooding blast of wild harp notes.

"The Jezbro!" Gotch wailed.

The Jezbro dived at the men on the ground. They heard it, saw it; they
scattered through the trees like frightened chickens fleeing from a
hawk.

The Jezbro selected a victim. Retch caught a glimpse of long, cruel
talons extended; saw the man grasped in them. The man screamed as the
talons touched him, tried to throw himself flat, tried to jerk away from
them. Huge wings fluttered, beating the air. The man did not escape.
The talons held. The beating wings lifted him.

Wild notes flooded outward. There was triumph in the music now. Huge
wings beat the air. The Jezbro climbed up above the trees. Held firmly
in the extended talons was a fully grown man.

Watching, Johnny Retch felt panic tumble through him, panic that was
like a sudden touch of an ice cold hand. They had warned him about the
Jezbro. Old Peg-leg had tried to tell him. Gotch had trembled in fear.
They had all insisted that there was _something_ here that did not
belong in the world as he knew it.

He had laughed at them, he had called them superstitious fools. To him,
there was nothing that was not of this world.

Nor was there now, when the moment of wild panic had passed. As the
Jezbro swept upward through the air, rising along the face of the cliff,
Retch jerked up the Tommy gun.

Smoke and lead blasted from the muzzle. The Jezbro was unharmed. Taking
careful aim this time, Retch fired again, a furious blast of rattling
sound.

The Jezbro swerved, the harp notes missed a beat.

From the suddenly loosened talons a figure plummeted downward, screamed
as it fell, stopped screaming as it crunched against the ground.

The Jezbro circled in the air. It rose upward, swooped. Huge wings
flapped, a tail structure was extended. From the gaping, extended mouth,
a scream arose. The Jezbro seemed to leap toward the summit of the sky.

A flash of light as brilliant as the explosion of a miniature atom bomb
flared for a brief second. Thunder clapped, rolled around the horizon;
echoed back. In the distance the veil that circled the island shimmered
and twisted as if it was about to collapse. It righted itself.

Except for a puff of swiftly dissipating white vapor, the air was clear.
Where wild harp notes had once flooded now was silence. Where a creature
that had once looked like a giant bird had flapped through the air now
there